The religion of the Greeks was the deification of the faculties and affections of man. Human character and personality preponderated therein, but it was neither inert nor wanting in intellect. The passionless, immovable deities of Egypt and Persia were superseded by the active and powerful hierarchy of Olympus. Free and independent, they were presided over by the great conqueror of those blind and deaf gods of necessity, who had reigned absolutely over all the ancient East. Under this new dispensation, the various forces of nature were emancipated and endowed with the affections, and subjected to the weaknesses, of mortal beings. Fountains, rivers, trees, forests, mountains, rose into objects of adoration under the form of nymphs, goddesses, and gods. Social existence was elevated to a corresponding degree, by the removal of castes, and the sacerdotal despotisms which had so long impeded the progress of democratic principles in individual and social life. Preceding nations, of lively sensibility, had reverenced as deities single rays of the Divine Being separated from their great centre; but the polytheism which prevailed over adolescent men, appeared in Hellas invested with a purer majesty. Oriental polytheism desecrated its altars and temples with images of deformity; but the West conceived a nobler symbol of divinity, when the Greek created God in his own image, and seemed to inhale life-giving breath while he worshiped in the midst of every phenomenon that could refine his taste or stimulate his imagination. This was utterly inadequate to the attainment of the great end of spiritual existence; but one important step in paganism was gained; natural religion, which had before been absorbed in the immeasurableness of the formless infinite, became fixed to the eye under the limitations of a cognizable form, eminently human, but suggestive of the divine. Thus, religion produced ideality in art, and art fostered enthusiasm in religion. The beauty and dignity of many altar-statues appeared to have descended from a higher sphere, and commanded the reverence due to beings of celestial birth. The earthly was so blended with the heavenly, and visibly presented, that Plato looked upon the harmony as something complete, and most ennobling in its power of assimilation. In all the public enterprises and festal assemblies of the Greeks, a high religious tone was present which paid homage only to the exalted and the beautiful. They were of the earth, earthy; but it is impossible not to look back with respect upon that people whose whole civilization was imbued with a spirit of renunciation, sublime self-sacrifice, and beneficent deeds. The magical splendor which yet pours about them, in the depths of that old world, after so many centuries, is nothing else than the reflection of their purer worship and nobler stamp of character. Of all the states, Athens, in this regard, as in every other, was by far the noblest.