POLYTHEISTIC AND MONOTHEISTIC PRIESTHOODS. 741 



plan of Solon this was to be changed. ... To every free 

 Athenian belonged henceforth the right and the duty of 

 sacrificing to Apollo.&quot; 



All which facts make it clear that not only the genesis of 

 polytheism but the long survival of it, and consequent 

 persistence of priesthoods devoted to different gods, arc 

 sequences of primitive ancestor-worship. 



612. But while, during early stages of polytheism, 

 overt efforts at subjugation of one cult by another are not 

 conspicuous, there habitually arises a competition which 

 is the first step towards subjugation. 



A feeling like that occasionally displayed by boys, boast 

 ing of the strengths of their respective fathers, prompts men 

 in early stages to exaggerate the powers of their ancestors, as 

 compared with the powers which the ancestors of others 

 displayed ; and concerning the relative greatness of the 

 deified progenitors of their tribes, there are certain to ariso 

 disputes. This state of things was exemplified in Fiji when 

 first described by missionaries : &quot; each district contending for 

 the superiority of its own divinity.&quot; Evidently among the 

 Hebrews an implied belief, opposed to the beliefs of adjacent 

 peoples, was our god is greater than your god. &quot;Without 

 denying the existence of other gods than their own, the 

 superiority of their own was asserted. In Greece, too, the 

 religious emulation among cities, and the desire to excite 

 envy by the numbers of men who flocked to sacrifice to 

 their respective deities, implied a struggle between cults a 

 struggle conducive to inequality. Influences such as those 

 which caused supremacy of the Olympian festivals above 

 kindred festivals, were ever tending among the Greeks to give 

 some gods and their ministers a higher status than others. 

 Religion being under its primary aspect the expression of 

 allegiance an allegiance shown first to the living patriarch 

 or conquering hero and afterwards to his ghost ; it is to be 

 expected that causes which modify the degree and extent of 



