ed system
of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the
most complaisant indulgence in the details.(9) Its practical
results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as
we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare
to please the Stoa.

State-Religion

Closely allied to this new state-philosophy--or, strictly speaking,
its other side--was the new state-religion; the essential
characteristic of which was the conscious retention, for reasons of
outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which
were recognized as irrational. One of the most prominent men of
the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that
the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented
solely on account of the multitude, which, as reason had no power
over it, required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of
intelligence had certainly no need of religion. Beyond doubt the
Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments,
although they did not oppose science and religion to each other
in so gross and downright a fashion. Neither Laelius nor Scipio
Aemilianus can have looked on the augural discipline, which
Polybius has primarily in view, as anything else than a political
institution; yet the national spirit in them was too strong and
their sense of decorum too delicate to have permitted their coming
forward in public with such hazardous explanations. But even in
the following generation the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola
(consul in 659;(10)) set forth at least in his oral instructions in
law without hesitation the propositions, that there were two sorts
of religion--one philosophic, adapted to the intellect, and one
traditional, not so adapted; that the former was not fitted for
the religion of the state, as it contained various things which
it was useless or even injurious for the people to know; and that
accordingly the traditional religion of the state ought to remain
as it stood. The theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion
is treated throughout as a state institution, is merely a further
development of the same principle. The state, according to his
teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter is
older than the picture; if the question related to making the gods
anew, it would certainly be well to make and to name them after a
manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the
parts of th