reme stress laid on conduct in the Confucian system, which represents
the final Chinese ideal of life:[1975] man constructs his own moral
life, and extrahuman Powers, while they may grant physical goods, are
chiefly valued as incidents in the good social life. The great
speculative systems of thought, Confucianism and Taoism, gradually gave
rise to definite sacerdotal cults; but the priests of the Confucian
temples serve mainly to keep before the people the teaching of the
Master, and the Taoist priests have become largely practicers of magic
and charlatans. Chinese religious practice remains essentially
nonsacerdotal.

+1075+. The Peruvian cult presents a remarkable example of a finely
organized hierarchy closely related to the civil government.[1976] The
priests were chosen from the leading families; the highpriest was second
in dignity to the Inca only. The functions of the priests were strictly
religious; and as the masses of the people were devoted to the worship
of local deities and natural objects, it seems probable that the
sacerdotal influence was merely that which belonged to their supervision
of the State religion. Details on this point are lacking.

Priests played a more prominent part in Mexico, entering, as they did,
more into the life of the people.[1977] On the one hand, the numerous
human sacrifices, of which the priests had complete control, kept the
terrible aspect of religion constantly before the mind of the public;
and, on the other hand, the milder side of the cult (for the Mexican
religion was composite) brought the priests into intimate relations with
adults and children. As the priests, apart from their monstrous
sacrificial functions, appear to have been intelligent and humane, it is
not unlikely that their general moral influence was good.

+1076+. The influence of the priesthood on religion (and on civilization
so far as religion has been an element of civilization) has been of a
mixed character. On the one hand, while not the sole representative of
the idea of the divine government of the world (for soothsayers and
prophets equally represented this idea), it has stood for friendly
everyday intercourse between man and the deity, and has so far tended to
bring about an equable and natural development of the ordinary religious
life; it was involved in the sacerdotal functions that the deity might
be placated by proper ceremonies, whence it followed that the priest,
who knew the nature of the