worked directly for them in their several trades or were let out to those who needed their services" (29.)

"The worship of their deities by the Babylonians formed one of the most important aspects of the national life, and, as their temples were the largest of their buildings, so the priests were the most powerful class in the community. In each city the largest and most important temple was that devoted to the citygod. Situated on a lofty platform and rising stage upon stage, these ziggurats or temple-towers dominated the surrounding houses, and were more imposing than the royal palaces themselves. At the summit of each the image of the god reposed in his shrine, and around its base clustered the temple offices and the dwellings of the priests. The temples were under the direct patronage of the kings, who prided themselves on the rebuilding and restoration of their fabrics as much as on the successful issue of their campaigns, while the priesthood were supported by regular and appointed offerings in addition to the revenues they drew from the lands and property with which the temples were endowed. The influence of the priests upon the people was exerted from many sides, for not only were they the god's representatives, but they also regulated and controlled all departments of life. They represented the learned section of the nation, and in all probability the scribes belonged entirely to the priestly class. They composed and preserved the national records, and although some of the later Assyrian kings collected libraries in their palaces, this was probably accomplished only with the cooperation of the priesthood and by drawing on the collection of tablets preserved in the great temples throughout the country" (30).

The priesthood was, in fact, a part of the upper class; and the religious phase of social development must be studied principally from the standpoint of the great, allpervading institution of cleavage.

Paradoxically speaking, the religious idea has been valuable to society, not for its intrinsic worth as an idea,

but in the proportion that it has lent itself to the practical, terrestrial needs of real life. And it has lent itself to these needs by functioning as a concrete structural notion upon which secular institutions can form themselves. What is meant is, that in studying religious history we are examining social, secular history under the special guise of religious history. The sooner we assimilate this paradoxical fact, the sooner we shall be prepared to begin to understand the religious phase of social evolution. Religion has been a positive element in human history in the proportion that it has been "materialistic." We say this, and enclose the term in quotation points, in the consciousness that we shall not improbably be misunderstood and misrepresented in all good faith. So long as religion has been involved in the satisfaction of some tangible social need, just so long has it been a dramatic element in the evolution of society. But in the proportion that these needs are satisfied, and religious institutions come to represent merely the idea upon which they are nominally based, just in this degree does religion cease to be a positive, dramatic factor in society, and revert to the status of a simple idea, surviving, changing, or perishing strictly on its absolute merits.

In the present connection we are concerned to emphasize that, given the religious idea as a psychological fact, religious history must be studied principally from the standpoint of cleavage.

Perception of this truth helps us again to see that the upper-class control of any given phase of society-industrial, political, religious, etc. was more or less mixed up with all kinds of social functions. Oriental civilization, as previously pointed out, represents a primitive stage of social evolution; and all primitive social life, as contrasted with modern society, is relatively indefinite and undifferentiated.

§ 37. We have obtained passing glimpses of oriental education in the course of our survey. This department of life, too, was in the hands of the upper class.

The schools were in charge, or under the direction, of the priesthood. It was the schools that fostered and extended the beginnings of human learning — writing, mathematics, astronomy, etc. It was the schools that educated the aristocracy, and freely trained poor children of promising talents to become useful members of the community.

In addition to the various glimpses of oriental intellectual life thus far obtained, a passage from Professor Rogers' work on Babylonian and Assyrian history affords an instructive insight:

"The closing years of Asshurbanapal's long and laborious reign were largely spent in works of peace. Even during the stormy years he had had great interest in the erection of buildings and the collection and copying of books for his library. In such congenial tasks his latter days were chiefly spent. The two kingdoms were ransacked for the clay books which had been written in days gone by. Works of grammar, of lexicography, of poetry, history, science, and religion were brought from ancient libraries in Babylonia. They were carefully copied in the Assyrian style, with notes descriptive, chronological, or explanatory, by the scholars of the court, and the copies were preserved in the palace, while the originals went back to the place whence they were borrowed. The library thus formed numbered many thousands of books. In it the scholars, whom Asshurbanapal patronized so well, worked carefully on in the writing of new books on all the range of learning of the day. Out of an atmosphere like that came the records of Asshurbanapal's own reign. Small wonder it is that under such conditions his historical inscriptions should be couched in a style finished, elegant, and rhythmical, with which the bare records of fact of previous reigns may not be compared at all" (31).

Assyria was originally an off-shoot from Babylonia; and it is to the mother country at a still earlier period that we must look for more primitive stages of intellectual cul

ture. From the Persian Gulf in the east to Upper Egypt in the west the Babylonian language was known and used, at least fifteen hundred years before Christ, for purposes of international communication. Babylonian culture was carried westward to the Greeks, who, in turn, did a great deal of the thinking upon which modern science and culture are based. Professor Sayce has given such a vivid sketch of the oriental postal system, through which flowed many of the currents of intellectual life, that his account should be read in this connection.

"There were excellent roads all over Western Asia, with post-stations at intervals where relays of horses could be procured. Along these all letters to or from the king and the government were carried by royal messengers. It is probable that the letters of private individuals were also carried by the same hands. The letters of Tel-el-Amarna give us some idea of the wide extension of the postal system and the ease with which letters were constantly being conveyed from one part of the East to another. The foreign correspondence of Pharaoh was carried on with Babylonia and Assyria in the east, Mesopotamia and Cappadocia in the north, and Palestine and Syria in the west. The civilized oriental world was thus bound together by a network of postal routes over which literary intercourse was perpetually passing. . . . The Canaanite corresponded with his friends and neighbors quite as much as the Babylonian, and his correspondence was conducted in the same language and script. Hiram of Tyre, in sending letters to Solomon, did but carry on the traditions of a distant past. Long before the Israelites entered Palestine both a foreign and an inland postal service had been established there while it was still under Babylonian rule. The art of reading and writing must have been widely spread, and when it is remembered that for the larger number of the Tel-el-Amarna writers the language and system of writing which they used were of foreign origin, it may be concluded that the education given at the time was of no despicable character" (32).

§ 38. Our inquiry thus far has shown us that oriental society, in every phase of its life, was organized on the lines of cleavage. This great institution seems to be wholly unjust. It seems to be wrong for an upper class to appropriate, consume, and control the labor products of a lower class by means of property right of any kind. But the beneficence of cleavage as a channel for the discharge of evolutionary force resolves the ethical problem into a question of relativity. A test of the question is to be found in a comparison of human life in the stone age, or among savages, and life in the more advanced societies. Let us frankly admit that great evils are involved in civilization as well as in the primitive struggle for existence. We have to inquire, first, whether the greatest good of the greatest number is better conserved, on the whole, by primitive conditions or by historic conditions. Do primitive conditions have a greater potency for human happiness than historic conditions? Or do the latter involve more actual and possible good than the former?

A careful study of the primitive struggle for existence, as contrasted with the conditions thus far brought out in our scrutiny of ancient civilization, cannot fail, we think, to show the superiority of the historic over the more primitive stage of human evolution. The upper class practically owned the lower class, and appropriated its labor without engaging to make repayment. There was no give and take between equals. But the upper class did not simply consume its appropriations in idle luxury. If cleavage had merely provided for the parasitic exploitation of the lower class, then the social groups wherein it became a factor must apparently have been swept aside in prehistoric times.* The societies that have emerged from

* Mr. Lester F. Ward, who has done so much good work in sociology, seems to have gone astray on the subject of class relations. In his Dynamic Sociology he identifies the parasitic-leisure class with the upper class of all history. As a matter of fact, parasitism is only an involution of the upper-class control of society. When settled society increases in population, the perfecting of land monopoly makes the subjec