bore with them ideas and customs that differed in detail rather than in essence from those of the earlier classical epoch; and though they no doubt had “thralls,” i.e. chattel-slaves, yet those thralls at worst were in as good a position as he household slaves of the peasant-lord of early Rome, were frequently manumitted, and remained the freedmen of their former masters, still doing service to them.
And this idea of service in return for 52 protection, which had been once a Roman idea, was still an essential part of the life of the barbarian tribes, and they imported it into the society that was gradually growing up from the débris of classical society.
Thus met the two elements necessary for the social life of the new epoch— one the result of the internal decay of the old system; the other, the growth of the unbroken original barbaric constitution.
But the ethical and religious conditions were also changing, along with the economical: the break-up of the constitution of the cities destroyed the social religion of city-worship; and though some of the forms of the old ancestor religions and nature-cults of the ancient tribes still survived, the real characteristics of that religion had vanished.
To fill the void so created in men’s minds after the fall of this public faith, there arose another that concentrated the interest on the individual personality, now completely dissociated from its old social ties; concentrated it indeed on this individuality as being something 53 supernatural, and bearing a mysterious relationship with the supreme supernatural power of the universe. Thus it created a religion of the holiness of the soul, as distinct from that righteousness of the material man shown through his actions under a sense of his responsibility to his fellow-men, as embodied in the society of which he was a part.
This personal religion took the form of Mysteries, some of which were of ancestral or nature-worship origin, but which now received a new