COULANGES, Fustel de.

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La Cité antique. First edition of the author's best known work, published at a time of renewed interest in religious history. "Its fundamental idea is that the beliefs of man are the determinants, and even the creators, of his institutions. In the preface to La Cité antique Coulanges wrote: 'The past never completely dies for men. Man may forget it, but he keeps it with him always. For such as he himself is in each epoch he is the product and résumé of all anterior epochs. If he descends into his own soul, he can rediscover there these different epochs, and distinguish them according to the impress which each had made on him.' (...) In antiquity Fustel found that religious beliefs were most powerful. Starting with the origins of the Greek and the Roman family, he discovered that the family group was built around the worship of deceased ancestors. Upon this cult of the dead was imposed a second religion: that of the forces of nature which was better adapted to social progress. This formed a sort of common denominator to all families and presided at the rise of cities, replacing diversity by unity of belief. The city was still modelled after the family; it had its hearth, its god, and its cult. Its law and institutions drew their roots from religion. In time men developed other interests and demanded new sanctions. A series of revolutions led to changes in government and in civil laws; the priest-king yielded to an oligarchy and that in turn to democracies. As the horizon of me

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