We can easily understand that, for the ancients, God was not everywhere. If they had some vague idea of a God of the universe, this was not the one whom they considered as their providence, and whom they invoked. Every man's gods were those who inhabited his house, his canton, his city. The exile, on leaving his country behind him, also left his

By degrees, as this old religion lost its hold, the voice of blood spoke louder, and the relationship of birth was recognized in law.

The association naturally continued to increase, and after the same fashion; several phratries, or curies, were grouped together, and formed a tribe.

These human souls deified by death were what the Greeks called demons, or heroes.25 The Latins gave them the name of Lares, Manes, Genii. “Our ancestors believed,” says Apuleius “that the Manes, when they were malignant, were to be called larvae; they called them Lares when they were benevolent and propitious.”26

This new circle also had its religion; in each tribe there were an altar and a protecting divinity.

The traditions of the Hindus, of the Greeks, and of the Etruscans, relate that the gods revealed social laws to man. Under this legendary form there is a truth. Social laws were the work of the gods; but those gods, so powerful and beneficent, were nothing else than the beliefs of men.

Before the tomb there was an altar for the sacrifices, as before the temples of the gods.19

The possession of a country was very precious, for the ancients imagined few chastisements more cruel than to be deprived of it. The ordinary punishment of great crimes was exile.

In Greece, too, each gens had its chief; the inscriptions confirm this, and they show us that this chief generally bore the title of archon.225