men"; next that where it does not do so it is because they are too inhuman to be made Christians. But while the orthodoxy of pagan Athens thus comes very well off as against the frightful crime-roll of organized Christianity, the dispassionate historian must nonetheless note the dehumanizing power of religion in Athens as in Christendom. The pietists of Athens, in their less brutish way, were as hopelessly denaturalized as those of Christian Europe by the dominion of a traditional creed, held as above reason. It matters not whether or not we say with Bishop Thirlwall (Hist. of Greece, 2nd ed. iv, 556) that "there never was a case in which murder was more clearly committed under the forms of legal procedure than in the trial of Socrates," or press on the other side the same writer's admission that in religious matters in Athens "there was no canon, no book by which a doctrine could be tried; no living authority to which appeal could be made for the decision of religious controversies." The fact that Christendom had "authorities" who ruled which of two sets of insane dogmas brought death upon its propounder, does not make less abominable the slaying of Bruno and Servetus, or the immeasurable massacre of less eminent heretics. But the less formalized homicides sanctioned by the piety of Periklean Athens remain part of the proof that unreasoning faith worsens men past calculation. If we slur over such deeds by generalities about human frailty, we are but asserting the impossibility of rationally respecting human nature. If, putting aside all moral censure, we are simply concerned to trace and comprehend causation in human affairs, we have no choice but to note how upon occasion religion on one hand, like strong drink on another, can turn commonplace men into murderers.