e of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred
knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and
is absorbed into the deity.

Among the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks the haoma, or
juice of a plant, considered to be both a plant and a god. Among the
Episcopalians, a contemporary Christian sect, the sacred juice is that
of the grape, and the priest is not allowed to throw away what is left
of it, but is ordered "reverently to consume it." In as much as the
priest is the sole judge of how much good sherry wine he shall
consecrate previous to the ceremony, it is to be expected that the
priests of this cult should be lukewarm towards the prohibition
movement, and should piously refuse to administer their sacrament with
unfermented and uninteresting grape-juice.

#Priestly Empires#

In every human society of which we have record there has been one
class which has done the hard and exhausting work, the "hewers of wood
and drawers of water"; and there has been another, much smaller class
which has done the directing. To belong to this latter class is to
work also, but with the head instead of the hands; it is also to enjoy
the good things of life, to live in the best houses, to eat the best
food, to have choice of the most desirable women; it is to have
leisure to cultivate the mind and appreciate the arts, to acquire
graces and distinctions, to give laws and moral codes, to shape
fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded--in short, to have
Power. How to get this Power and to hold it has been the first object
of the thoughts of men from the beginning of time.

The most obvious method is by the sword; but this method is uncertain,
for any man may take up a sword, and some may succeed with it. It will
be found that empires based upon military force alone, however cruel
they may be, are not permanent, and therefore not so dangerous to
progress; it is only when resistance is paralyzed by the agency of
Superstition, that the race can be subjected to systems of
exploitation for hundreds and even thousands of years. The ancient
empires were all priestly empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed
the will of the priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of
the gods.

Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us:

Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the
Aztecs....Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by
reserving to themselves the business of