ence
between moral good and evil, inferior gods or angels, some favorable to
men, others malevolent, and the immortality of the soul; but it gives us
pain to find these notions so miserably corrupted that they must have
had a very weak influence to excite men to virtue and deter them from
crime.--Jortin, Dissertation vi, p. 245.

This observation may be applied to the state of opinions even in the
most enlightened times of Greece, when the credulity and ignorance of
the common people, and the errors and doubts of the greatest
philosophers, proved the _necessity_ and the importance of the Christian
religion.

The possible attainments of a religious nature were very different from
ours. In the times of Lycurgus there were two hereditary kings or
presidents; their power was controlled by Lycurgus, through the gift of
equal authority to twenty-eight senators. The two kings commanded the
armies and high-priests of the temples. The senators were the executive
and legislative council of the state; with them the laws originated. The
assembly of the people elected the senators by saying yes or no to the
measures proposed to them, but had no right to discuss their
propriety--were not allowed the privilege.

Lycurgus allowed every family an equal amount of land; prohibited the
use of gold and silver, and made iron money the only currency of the
country, in order to check the avarice of the people. He forbade foreign
travel in order to retain the morals of his people, or keep them from
the corruptions of other nations. To produce a hardy people, he required
the women to indulge in all the athletic exercises of his government.
The children were inspected as soon as they were born, and those
considered worthy were handed over to the public nurses, and the
unworthy, that is, the deformed and sickly, were taken out and left in
the woods and upon the mountains to perish. All the children of the
Spartans were considered as the property of the state, and their
education consisted in accustoming them to endure the cravings of hunger
and thirst, with the scourge of discipline and every degree of
suffering. The business of Spartans consisted in preparing themselves
for war. They were disciplined in such a manner that it was necessary to
curb them constantly, lest they should rashly undertake to make
conquests. Out of this character of the Greeks arose that old saying,
"When Greek meets Greek then comes the tug of war."

Many of the laws