The methods of agriculture are still unscientific and unprogressive.
Nevertheless, the concentration of all ritual at a single point, and the practical exclusion of laymen from active participation in it - for the old sacrificial feast had now shrunk into entire insignificance in comparison with the stated priestly holocausts and atoning rites2 - lent powerful assistance to the growth of a new and higher type of personal religion, the religion which found its social expression not in material acts of oblation, but in the language of the Psalms. In the best times of the old kingdom the priests had shared the place of the prophets as the religious leaders of the nation; under the second Temple they represented the unprogressive traditional side of religion, and the leaders of thought were the psalmists and the scribes, who spoke much more directly to the piety of the nation.
Speaking generally, however, we must pronounce him unprogressive, since, on the whole, unreflective in regard to his ends.
Pentateuchal law is relatively unprogressive, it is marked by a characteristic simplicity, and by a spirit of reform, and the persisting primitive social conditions implied do not harmonize with other internal and external data.
In Madras also a mica industry has recently grown up. Tin is found in the Tavoy and Mergui districts of Lower Burma, and has for many years been worked in an unprogressive manner chiefly by Chinese labour.
