o be punctilious in all questions of precedence
and is prone to an assertion of mastery and an arbitrary exercise of
power--an habitual resort to force as the final arbiter.

In the later and maturer formulations of the anthropomorphic creed this
imputed habit of dominance on the part of a divinity of awful presence
and inscrutable power is chastened into "the fatherhood of God." The
spiritual attitude and the aptitudes imputed to the preternatural agent
are still such as belong under the regime of status, but they now assume
the patriarchal cast characteristic of the quasi-peaceable stage of
culture. Still it is to be noted that even in this advanced phase of the
cult the observances in which devoutness finds expression consistently
aim to propitiate the divinity by extolling his greatness and glory and
by professing subservience and fealty. The act of propitiation or
of worship is designed to appeal to a sense of status imputed to the
inscrutable power that is thus approached. The propitiatory formulas
most in vogue are still such as carry or imply an invidious comparison.
A loyal attachment to the person of an anthropomorphic divinity endowed
with such an archaic human nature implies the like archaic propensities
in the devotee. For the purposes of economic theory, the relation of
fealty, whether to a physical or to an extraphysical person, is to be
taken as a variant of that personal subservience which makes up so large
a share of the predatory and the quasi-peaceable scheme of life.

The barbarian conception of the divinity, as a warlike chieftain
inclined to an overbearing manner of government, has been greatly
softened through the milder manners and the soberer habits of life that
characterize those cultural phases which lie between the early predatory
stage and the present. But even after this chastening of the devout
fancy, and the consequent mitigation of the harsher traits of conduct
and character that are currently imputed to the divinity, there still
remains in the popular apprehension of the divine nature and temperament
a very substantial residue of the barbarian conception. So it comes
about, for instance, that in characterizing the divinity and his
relations to the process of human life, speakers and writers are still
able to make effective use of similes borrowed from the vocabulary of
war and of the predatory manner of life, as well as of locutions which
involve an invidious comparison. Figures of spe