companions and amplified by
narratives of accompanying transactions, formed the first histories.
And from these accounts of the doings of particular men and groups of
men, partly true but passing by exaggeration into the mythical, came
the wholly mythical, or fiction; which then and always preserved the
biographico-historical character. Add to which that out of the
criticisms and reflections scattered through this personal literature
an impersonal literature slowly emerged; the whole group of these
products having as their deepest root the eulogies of the priest
poet.

Prompted as were the medicine-men of savages and the priests of early
civilized peoples to increase their influence, they were ever
stimulated to acquire knowledge of natural actions and the properties
of things; and, being in alleged communication with supernatural
beings, they were supposed to acquire such knowledge from them. Hence,
by implication, the priest became the primitive man of science; and
led by his special experiences to speculate about the causes of
things, thus entered the sphere of philosophy: both his science and
his philosophy being pursued in the service of his religion.

Not only his higher culture, but his alleged intercourse with the
gods, whose mouthpiece he was, made him the authority in cases of
dispute; and being also, as historian, the authority concerning past
transactions and traditional usages, or laws, he acquired in both
capacities the character of judge. Moreover, when the growth of legal
administration brought the advocate, he, tho usually of lay origin,
was sometimes clerical.

Distinguished in early stages as the learned man of the tribe or
society, and especially distinguished as the possessor of that
knowledge which was thought of most value--knowledge of unseen
things--the priest of necessity became the first teacher. Transmitting
traditional statements concerning ghosts and gods, at first to
neophytes of his class only, but afterward to the cultured classes, he
presently, beyond instruction in supernatural things, gave instruction
in natural things; and, having been the first secular teacher, has
retained a large share in secular teaching even down to our own days.

As making a sacrifice was the original priestly act, and as the
building of an altar for the sacrifice was by implication a priestly
act, it results that the making of a shelter over the altar, which, in
its developed form became the temple, was