Moses and Plato and the Apostle Paul may be cast from their throne to make way for a resuscitated Greek Epicurus in the person of a conceited French dogmatist! We shall therefore conclude, in accordance with the teaching of Socrates, that an open eye for final causes not only belongs to wisdom, but may often advance science, when proceeding {85} cautiously upon the due observation and connexion of facts; inasmuch as, in the words of an able metaphysician, “this universe is not an accidental cavity in which an accidental dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of reason as any diagram of the mathematician. That majestic spectacle could have been constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for reason, and by reason; and therefore everywhere, from the smallest particle, to the largest system, moulded and modelled and inhabited by DESIGN.”[85.1] The theological convictions of Socrates being so strong and so decided, it followed as a necessary consequence, in a person of so practical a character, that he should be a pious man, and that he should practise those rites and services by which the dependent position of man towards the gods is most naturally and effectively expressed. If man, as was taught in the above extract, is the only animal capable of religion, then the worship of the Supreme Intelligence becomes the peculiar sign, privilege, and glory of his humanity. An irreligious man, a speculative or practical atheist, is as a sovereign who voluntarily takes off his crown and declares himself unworthy to reign. Religious worship, therefore, being an act which a man is specially bound to perform in virtue of his humanity, neither Socrates nor any other pious heathen thinker could have any doubt as to the peculiar forms and ceremonies that ought to constitute this act. For all the heathens,--certainly {86} all Greeks and Romans,--held that religion was an essential function of the State, that Church and State, as we phrase it, are one and inseparable, consequently that every good subject owed allegiance to the religious traditions and observances of his countrymen, just as he did to the civil laws.[86.1] The gods were to be worshipped by every good citizen in every state,--νόμῳ πόλεως,--or, as we would say, according to the law of the land; and as the religions of Greece and Rome were not fenced with bristling dogmas in the shape of what we call a {87} Creed and Church Articles, but floated quite freely in the region of reverential tradition, while, at the same time, in those days, no man ever dreamed of haying a religion for himself any more than of having a civil government for himself, the conformity even of great thinkers to the popular faith was not naturally accompanied by any taint of that species of insincerity which has so often attached to the subscription of modern articles of belief.