I maintain then that in this Roman religion, in spite of its dryness and formality, there was a distinct ethical and civilizing element. And in conclusion I may perhaps raise the question whether it was really, as has been so often asserted, such a conception of the unseen as could never admit of elevation and expansion. A religion, which in its best and simplest forms, could bind men together in the orderly dutiful life of family, gens, state, and federation, could hardly, if left to itself, have speedily become an inanity, even though based on the motive of fear rather than that of brotherly love. But this religion, as the State became more fully matured, came under the influence of two retarding causes. First, its ritual, always obnoxious to formularism, was gradually deprived of its meaning by great priesthoods which from causes which need not be here discussed became powerful political agencies. Secondly, the contact with a mature system of polytheism, adorned and in some sort materialized by art and literature, drew away the mind of the simple and wondering Roman from the task of developing his religious ideas in his own way. When a new world of thought broke on the conquering Roman of the Republic, his own religious motives were already drying up under the influence of a powerful State-organization. His _pietas_ lived on after a fashion for centuries, but more and more it lost that hold on the conscience, that appeal to trust and responsibility, which had once promised it a vigorous life and growth. While foreign gods and cults attracted his attention and admiration, or appealed to his sense that there was no quarter from which supernatural aid might not be called in for the advancement of his State, they failed to bind his conscience with the wholesome motives which lay at the root of his old native _religio_. And neither in the reaction of the fourth century B.C., nor in the protests of an austere Cato in the second, nor in the elaborate revival of Augustus, much less in any later effort of philosopher or autocrat to return to the old ways, was any permanent resuscitation of discipline or conduct possible. The problem of giving a real religion to the world-state into which the Roman dominion had then grown, was not to be solved either by Roman _pietas_ or Hellenic polytheism. Footnote 1502: Tertullian, _de Praescriptionibus Haereticorum_, 40. Footnote 1503: Collected by Aust in his work _de Aedibus sacris_, pp. 4 foll. Footnote 1504: Aust, op. cit., p. 14, note 1. Footnote 1505: Above, p. 190. Footnote 1506: Aust, op. cit., p. 15, note 1. Footnote 1507: See especially the speech of the consul Postumius in Livy 39. 15. Footnote 1508: See a paper by the author in _Classical Review_, vol. vii. p. 193 foll. Footnote 1509: