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Fustel de Coulanges, "Histoire des institutions politiques et privees de l'ancienne France," vol. I., book II., ch. It is the imperial almanac for the beginning of the fifth century.
Fustel de Coulanges was a good writer, although throughout his life he recommended and practised the avoidance of metaphor. On the contrary we see no harm in repeating that the historian, considering the extreme complexity of the phenomena he undertakes to describe, is under an obligation not to write badly. But he should write consistently well, and never bedeck himself with finery.
In the same work, Part II, chapters i and ii, the author treats of religious or sub-religious ideas as affecting conduct. Compare Westermarck, op. cit., chapter xl. See, also, The Ancient City, by Fustel de Coulanges. In the last chapter referred to, animals, drunkards, idiots, the insane, etc., come on the stage. The chapter is full of curious information.
Unfortunately the Latin peoples, especially in the last twenty-five years, have based their systems of instruction on very erroneous principles, and in spite of the observations of the most eminent minds, such as Breal, Fustel de Coulanges, Taine, and many others, they persist in their lamentable mistakes.
Thus no historian can feel perfectly safe in adopting the results of another's work, as may be done in the established sciences, for he does not know whether these results have been obtained by trustworthy methods. The most scrupulous go so far as to admit nothing until they have done the work on the documents over again for themselves. This was the attitude adopted by Fustel de Coulanges.
This is what Fustel de Coulanges intended to convey when he declared that ancient man had no conception of the meaning of liberty. Liberty is no doubt a somewhat confusing and ambiguous term; it is hard to cut it loose from its political associations, from national independence and democratic self-government.
Yet there is nothing stern or solemn in this home-religion to-day, nothing of that rigid and unvarying discipline supposed by Fustel de Coulanges to have especially characterized the Roman cult.
In short, the desiccation of North-West Asia goes on at a rate which must be measured by centuries, instead of by the geological units of time of which we formerly used to speak. Seebohm. The same remark applies, in a still higher degree, to the most elegant writings of Fustel de Coulanges, whose opinions and passionate interpretations of old texts are confined to himself.
And there is reason to believe that the early forms of Shinto public worship may have been evolved out of a yet older family worship much after the manner in which M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his wonderful book, La Cite Antique, has shown the religious public institutions among the Greeks and Romans to have been developed from the religion of the hearth.
Here we find certain elements of that primitive belief that would escape us in a mere examination of the Chaldæan tombs. We see how they understood the connection between the living and the dead, and why they so passionately desired to receive due sepulture. These ideas and sentiments are identical with those which M. Fustel de Coulanges has analysed so deeply in his Cité antique.
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