ECCLESIASTICAL HIERARCHIES. 753 



a governmental organization so ramified that there was a sub- 

 sub-ruler for every twenty families, there went an immensely 

 developed priesthood. Torquemada s estimate of 40,000 

 temples is thought by Clavigero to be greatly under the 

 mark ; and Clavigero says&quot; I should not think it rash to 

 affirm, that there could not be less than a million of priests 

 throughout the empire : &quot; an estimate made more credible 

 by Herrera s statement that &quot; every great Man had a Priest, 

 or Chaplain.&quot; Similarly in Peru ; where, with an un 

 qualified absolutism of the Ynca, and a political officialism 

 so vast and elaborate that one out of every ten men had 

 command of the others, there was a religious officialism no 

 less extensive. Says Arriaga &quot; If one counts all the higher 

 and lower officers, there is generally a minister for ten 

 Indians or less.&quot; Obviously in the moral natures of the 

 Mexicans and Peruvians, lies the explanation of these 

 parallelisms. People so politically servile as those ruled 

 over by Montezuma, who was &quot; always carry d on the 

 Shoulders of Noblemen,&quot; and whose order was that &quot;no 

 Commoner was to look him in the Face, and if he did, 

 dy d for it,&quot; were naturally people content to furnish the 

 numberless victims annually sacrificed to their gods, and 

 ready continually to inflict on themselves propitiatory blood 

 lettings. And of course the social appliances for maintenance 

 of terrestrial and celestial subordination developed among 

 them with little resistance in corresponding degrees ; as they 

 have done, too, in Abyssinia. In the words of Bruce, &quot; the 

 kings of Abyssinia are above all laws;&quot; and elsewhere he 

 Bays &quot; there is no country in the world in which there are 

 80 many churches as in Abyssinia.&quot; 



Proof of the converse relation need not detain us. It 

 will suffice to indicate the contrast presented, both politically 

 and ecclesiastically, between the Greek societies and contem 

 porary societies, to suggest that a social character unfavour 

 able to the growth of a large and consolidated regulative 

 organization of the political kind, is also unfavourable to the 



