with Brahmanism proves that it remained practically dangerous to that system. In the fifth and sixth centuries of our era Buddhism in India "rapidly declined"--a circumstance hardly intelligible save as a result of violence. Tiele, after expressly asserting the "rapid decline" (Outlines, p. 139), in the next breath asserts that there are no satisfactory proofs of such violence, and that, "on the contrary, Buddhism appears to have pined away slowly" (p. 140: contrast his Egypt. Rel., p. xxi). Rhys Davids, in his Buddhism, p. 246 (so also Max Müller, Anthrop. Rel., p. 43), argues for a process of violent extinction; but in his later work, Buddhist India, he retracts this view and decides for a gradual decline in the face of a Brahmanic revival. The evidences for violence and persecution are, however, pretty strong. (See H. H. Wilson, Essays, as cited, ii, 365-67.) Internal decay certainly appears to have occurred. Already in Gautama's own life, according to the legends, there were doctrinal disputes within his party (Müller, Anthrop. Rel., p. 38); and soon heresies and censures abounded (Introd. to Sc. of Rel., p. 23), till schisms arose and no fewer than eighteen sects took shape (Davids, Buddhism, pp. 213-18). Thus early in our inquiry we may gather, from a fairly complete historical case, the primary laws of causation as regards alike the progress and the decadence of movements of rationalistic thought. The fundamental economic dilemma, seen already in the life of the savage, presses at all stages of civilization. The credent multitude, save in the very lowest stages of savage destitution, always feeds and houses those who furnish it with its appropriate mental food; and so long as there remains the individual struggle for existence, there will always be teachers ready. If the higher minds in any priesthood, awaking to the character of their traditional teaching, withdraw from it, lower minds, howbeit "sincere," will always take their place. The innovating teacher, in turn, is only at the beginning of his troubles when he contrives, on whatever bases, to set up a new organized movement. The very process of organization, on the one hand, sets up the call for special economic sustenance--a constant motive to compromise with popular ignorance--and, on the other hand, tends to establish merely a new traditionalism, devoid of the critical impulse in which it arose. [187] And without organization the innovating thought cannot communicate itself, cannot hold its own against the huge social pressures of tradition.