We are told (on p. 121), with regard to the early Priesthoods that “it is clear” the Priesthood early developed political powers. But it is not clear at all. It is merely stated. True to the wearying puerility of his black and white “Progress” idea (Wednesday superior to Tuesday, Tuesday superior to Monday), Mr. Wells tells us that the temples began with an idol, “usually a somewhat monstrous half-animal form.” Why “usually”? We know nothing about it at all. We know the half-animal legend in Babylonia, or, rather, the purely animal legend that a fish started culture. We know the animal and half-animal deities of the Egyptians. But no one can say that the Greek or Italian shrine began with a half-animal figure, or that there was anything “monstrous” about it. No one can say that the primitive worship to which the Bible bears witness was that of a monstrous or half-animal figure. The thing is only set down thus in order to confirm the statements already gratuitously made that religion, like all other human affairs, begins in something offensive. It is the characteristic of these thin and erroneous theories, first, that they quote only what is in their own favour; secondly, that they bring in every possible indication, no matter how remote, which may be twisted into a support; and, thirdly, that those who promote them either are (as is usually the case) ignorant of, or (as is less common) refuse to mention, still more to study, any opposing evidence. They refuse to weigh the _full_ record of the past or (what is equally available) to make a _full_ examination of the present. Take this case of the fading away of Priesthood and the mastering of it by a civil power as a necessary part of human “Progress.” It is not what happened in our European community. It is not what happened in the history of our own race during the last twenty-five centuries, of which we know infinitely more than we do of the Euphrates or the Nile Valleys thousands of years ago. What happened in the history of our own race is very well known: the religions of Pagan European antiquity had Priesthoods—all of them. Those Priesthoods were of very varying political power, and the variation in their political power had nothing to do with the stage of culture. You do not find Priests more powerful in the lower stages of culture, less powerful in the higher stages of culture; you certainly find them more powerful in Gaul, for instance, than you do in the more barbaric world beyond the Rhine. There is hardly a trace of any Priesthood among the lowest of all, the Scythians.