On the great day of atonement the high priest appears in a vicarious and representative capacity, and offers on behalf of the whole nation which he was considered to embody in his sacred person.
The concessions to Nominalism which such views embody make them representative of what Haureau calls " the Peripatetic section of the Realistic school."
They embody for the time being a vague consciousness of the divine, which is concentrated for some single act into an outward object, like a warrior's spear or the thunderbolt, 2 or the last sheaf of corn into which the Corn-Mother has been driven.
It would be well-nigh impossible to exaggerate the services rendered to the ancient British tongue, and consequently to the national spirit of Wales, by these Elizabethan and Jacobean translations, issued in 1567, 1588 and 1620, which were able definitely to fix the standard of classical Welsh, and to embody the contending dialects of Gwynedd, Dyfed and Gwent for all time in one literary storehouse.
It was an ideal that failed to embody itself and justify itself by its fruits.