ivalent to
superstition.

Consider now these various states of mind--that of the people, ready
to add almost any deity to the large and vague number already
recognised; that of the poet, who finds the deities such useful
literary material; that of the magistrate or public man, who, without
enthusiasm or necessary belief, regards religion as a thing useful to
society; and that of the philosopher, who thinks all the current
religious conceptions unsound, if not absurd, and morally almost
useless.

Manifestly a society so composed will be one of unusual tolerance. The
Romans had no disposition to force their religion on the subject
provinces of the empire. Their religion was the Roman religion; the
religion of the Greeks might be left Greek, the Jewish religion
Jewish, and the Egyptian religion Egyptian. Any nation had a right to
the religion of its fathers. Nay, the Jews had such peculiar notions
about a Sabbath day and other matters that a Jew was exempted from the
military service which would have compelled him to break his national
laws. All religions were permitted, so long as they were national
religions. Also all religious views were permitted to the individual,
so long as they were not considered dangerous to the empire or
imperial rule, or so long as they threatened no appreciable harm to
the social order. If a Jew came to Rome and practised Judaism well and
good. It was, in the eyes of the Romans, a narrow-minded and
uncharitable religion, marked by many strange and absurd practices and
superstitions, but if a misguided oriental people liked to indulge in
it, well and good. Even if a Roman became a proselyte to Judaism, well
and good, so long as he did not flout the official religion of his own
country. If the Egyptians chose to worship cats, ibises, and
crocodiles, that was their affair, so long as they let other people
alone. In Gaul, it is true, the emperor Claudius, predecessor of Nero,
had put down the Druids. Earlier still the Druids had already been
interfered with; but that was because the Druids--those weird old
white-sheeted men with their long beards and strange magic--were
performing human sacrifices--burning men alive in wicker frames--and
such conduct was not only contrary to the secular law of Rome, but
even to natural law. And when Claudius finally suppressed them, or
drove the remnant out of Gaul into Britain, it was not simply because
they worshipped non-Roman gods and performed non-Roman rit