Shamash at Sippar, large holdings of land were
required which, cultivated by agents for the priests, or
farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of the
produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the temple
officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded to the
furnishing of loans at interest--in later periods, at
20%--to barter in slaves, to dealings in lands, besides
engaging labor for work of all kinds directly needed for the
temples. A large quantity of the business documents found in
the temple archives are concerned with the business affairs
of the temple, and we are justified in including the temples
in the large centres as among the most important business
institutions of the country. In financial or monetary
transactions the position of the temples was not unlike that
of national banks....

And so on. We may venture the guess that the learned professor said
more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures
were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of
Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that "all
polemical subjects shall be positively excluded!"

#Prayer-wheels#

These priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to find
them we have only to ask ourselves:

What countries are making no contribution to the progress of the race?
What countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or
industry?

For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of Siam,
that "they are exempted from all public charges, they salute nobody,
while everybody prostrates himself before them. They are maintained at
the public expense." In the same way we read of the negroes of the
Caribbean islands that "their priests and priestesses exercise an
almost unlimited power." Miss Kingsley, in her "West African Studies",
tells us that if we desire to understand the institutions of this
district, we must study the native's religion.

For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it
influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as
the religion of the Europeans is at times. The African
cannot say, "Oh, that is all right from a religious point of
view, but one must be practical." To be practical, to get on
in the world, to live the day and night through, he must be
right in the religious point of view, namely