It is thus seen to be inaccurate to say, as has been said by an accomplished antagonist of apriorism, that "under the yoke of tribal custom skepticism can hardly arise: there is no place for the half-hearted: as all men feel alike, so all think alike: skepticism arises when beliefs are put into formal propositions." [109] It is broadly true that "there is no place for" the doubter as such in the tribal society; but doubters do exist. Skepticism--in the sense in which the term is here used, that of rational disbelief--may even be commoner in some stages of the life of tribal customs than in some stages of backward civilization loaded with formulated creeds. What is true is that in the primitive life the rationalism necessarily fails, for lack of culture and institutions, to diffuse and establish itself, whereas superstition succeeds, being naturally institution-making. Under such conditions skepticism is but a recurrent variation. [110] It is significant, further, that in the foregoing cases of unbelief at the lower levels of civilization it is only the high rank of the doubter that secures publication for the fact of the doubt. In Hawaii, or Tonga, only a king's unbelief could make itself historically heard. So in the familiar story of the doubting Inca of Peru, who in public religious assembly is said to have avowed his conclusion that the deified Sun was not really a living thing, it is the status of the speaker that gives his words a record. The doubt had in all likelihood been long current among the wise men of Peru; it is indeed ascribed to two or three different Incas; [111] but, save for the Incas' promulgation of it, history would bear no trace of Peruvian skepticism. So again in the Acolhuan State of Tezcuco, the most civilized in the New World before the Spanish conquest, the great King Netzahualcoyotl is found opposing the cults of human sacrifice and worshipping an "unknown God," without an image and with only incense for offering. [112] Only the king in such an environment could put on record such a conception. There is, in fact, reason to believe that all ancient ameliorations of bloody rites were the work of humane kings or chiefs, [113] as they are known to have been among semi-savages in our own day. [114] In bare justice we are bound to surmise that similar developments of rationalism have been fairly frequent in unwritten history, and that there must have been much of it among the common folk; though, on the other hand, the very position of a savage king, and the special energy of character which usually goes to secure it, may count for much in giving him the courage to think in defiance of custom. In modern as in early Christian times, it is always to the chief or king of a savage or barbarous tribe that the missionary looks for permission to proceed against the force of popular conservatism. [115] Apart from kings and chiefs, the priesthood itself would be the likeliest soil for skepticism,