rm,
they had to satisfy the deep wants of the human soul, and their strength
had to be superior to that of the ancient Greco-Roman religion. To explain
the reasons for their victory we must try to reveal the nature of this
superiority--I mean their superiority in the struggle, without assuming
innate superiority.

I believe that we can define it by stating that those religions gave
greater satisfaction first, to the senses and passions, secondly, to the
intelligence, finally, and above all, to the conscience.

In the first place, they appealed more strongly to the senses. This was
their most obvious feature, and it has been pointed out more often than any
other. Perhaps there never was a religion so cold and prosaic as the Roman.
Being subordinated to politics, it sought, {29} above all, to secure the
protection of the gods for the state and to avert the effects of their
malevolence by the strict execution of appropriate practices. It entered
into a contract with the celestial powers from which mutual obligations
arose: sacrifices on one side, favors on the other. The pontiffs, who were
also magistrates, regulated the religious practices with the exact
precision of jurists;[9] as far as we know the prayers were all couched in
formulas as dry and verbose as notarial instruments. The liturgy reminds
one of the ancient civil law on account of the minuteness of its
prescriptions. This religion looked suspiciously at the abandonment of the
soul to the ecstasies of devotion. It repressed, by force if necessary, the
exuberant manifestations of too ardent faith and everything that was not in
keeping with the grave dignity befitting the relations of a _civis Romanus_
with a god. The Jews had the same scrupulous respect as the Romans for a
religious code and formulas of the past, "but in spite of their dry and
minute practices, the legalism of the Pharisees stirred the heart more
strongly than did Roman formalism."[10]

Lacking the recognized authority of official creeds, the Oriental religions
had to appeal to the passions of the individual in order to make
proselytes. They attracted men first by the disturbing seductiveness of
their mysteries, where terror and hope were evoked in turns, and charmed
them by the pomp of their festivities and the magnificence of their
processions. Men were fascinated by the languishing songs and intoxicating
melodies. Above all these religions taught men how to reach that blissful
state in which