ABSTRACT
Public religion and civic morals were fused: they were but different aspects of the same reality. To bring glory to the City was the same as enhancing the glory of the gods of the City: it worked both ways. The ingrained religious character of the political system of societies makes us appreciate this indifference of the State for what concerns the individual. The destiny of a State was closely bound up with the fate of the gods worshipped at its altars. On the one hand we establish that the State goes on developing more and more: on the other, that the rights of the individual, held to be actively opposed to those of the State, have a parallel development. The individual qua individual is part of the profane world, whilst the gods are the very nucleus of the religious world, and between these two worlds there is a gulf.
