peoples, by
whom a sharp distinction was made between the divine and the human. In
India it was chiefly the ascetic sages that were religiously eminent,
and in the prevailing pantheistic system these (as is remarked above),
absorbing the divine essence, sometimes became as powerful as gods, but
passed after death into the cosmic All, and remained human. The Mazdean
faith, like the Israelite, made it impossible to accept a deceased man
as a god.

+353+. Examples of the occasional divinization of deceased men in the
Hellenic world are given below.[653] In Rome the custom arose at a
comparatively late period, and it was the work not of spontaneous Roman
thought but of political philosophy.[654] The deification of the Roman
emperors after death had its ground in the reconstruction of Roman life
undertaken by Augustus. He recognized a principle of unification in the
resuscitation of the old national religion, in which the people
believed, whether he himself did or not. Religion in Rome was largely an
affair of the state; the leaders of the public religion were great state
officials. Augustus was made pontifex maximus, and it was only one step
farther to elevate the chief magistrate to the rank of a god. The good
sense of the time generally forbade the bestowment of this honor during
the imperator's lifetime, but an apotheosis was in accord with the
veneration paid to the manes and with the exalted position of the
Emperor as absolute lord of the Western world.[655] Popular feeling
appears to have accepted this divinization without question and in
sincerity; educated circles accepted it as an act of political policy.
The elevation of Julius Caesar and Augustus to the rank of gods
established the rule, and deceased emperors received divine honors up to
the triumph of Christianity.[656]

+354+. In China, Confucius was deified as the special exponent of the
state religion and the authoritative teacher of the principles of social
and political life. His religious cult is practiced by the government
(officially) and by the masses of the people; how far it is sincerely
accepted by the educated classes is uncertain. In China and in Japan the
gods of war are said to be historical persons deified.

+355+. The divinization of the Calif Ali by some Shiah sects was the
product of religious fanaticism under the guidance of Aryan conceptions
of the incarnation of the divine.[657]

+356+. _Mythical ancestors._ Mythical ancestors are usu