The intellectual movement in India appears thus to have been extensive and many-sided. In the multitude of sects there is a guarantee for freedom,[131] and competition in the proclamation of truth is better than monopoly; but in religion, as in trade, the competition of over-multiplying sects tends to increase adulteration. So in early Buddhist literature, while there is incontestable evidence of the existence of honest instructors, there is also unquestionable evidence of the abundance of quacks, who trifled with truth simply to make a gain of it, and of shallow but clever professionals, who dealt with gravest themes in the spirit of the mere debater.[132] So there, as in Palestine in the days of Coheleth, through over-discussion the old faith was rapidly evaporating. In the Brahmans, religion had degenerated into formalism; in the Teviggi, into traditionalism. In the philosophic Sramans it was in many instances passing into blank atheism; and among the ascetics, into despair. While this was the condition of the learned and of the few, the masses everywhere, like the Ammé Ha-árets in Palestine, were wandering—no man caring for them—further and further into the idolatries and sensualities of Hinduism. Morality was perishing, the writing on the heart was getting more indistinct, and conscience becoming more confused. Then, just as five centuries later, when faith was almost gone, Christ came to restore it by communicating new life, so when divine law was in danger of fading from the consciousness of men, there arose one to assert its eternal supremacy; preaching the creed of Coheleth without his fear of God, and enforcing the keeping of the commandments, not as expressed in Vedas or interpreted in Brahmanas, but as written in every fibre of the body and every faculty of the being, as the only way to safety.