This much, however, must be conceded on all hands, that there are certain fundamental intuitions, universal and necessary, which underlie the almost universal practice of expiatory sacrifice, namely, _the universal consciousness of guilt, and the universal conviction that something must be done to expiate guilt_, to compensate for wrong, and to atone for past misdeeds. But _how_ that expiation can be effected, how that atonement can be made, is a question which reason does not seem competent to answer. That personal sin can be atoned for by vicarious suffering, that national guilt can be expiated and national punishment averted by animal sacrifices, or even by human sacrifices, is repugnant to rather than conformable with natural reason. There exists no discernible connection between the one and the other. We may suppose that eucharistic, penitential, and even deprecatory sacrifices may have originated in the light of nature and reason, but we are unable to account for the practice of piacular sacrifices for substitutional atonement, on the same principle. The ethical principle, that one's own sins are not transferable either in their guilt or punishment, is so obviously just that we feel it must have been as clear to the mind of the Greek who brought his victim to be offered to Zeus, as it is to the philosophic mind of to-day.[138] The knowledge that the Divine displeasure can be averted by sacrifice is not, by Plato, grounded upon any intuition of reason, as is the existence of God, the idea of the true, the just, and good, but on "tradition,"[139] and the "interpretations" of Apollo. "To the Delphian Apollo there remains the greatest, noblest, and most important of legal institutions--the erection of temples, sacrifices, and other services to the gods,... and what other services should be gone through with a view to their _propitiation_. Such things as these, indeed, _we neither know ourselves, nor in founding the State would we intrust them to others_, if we be wise;... the god of the country is the natural interpreter to all men about such matters."[140] [Footnote 138: "He that hath done the deed, to suffer for it--thus cries a proverb thrice hallowed by age."--Æschylus, "Choëph," 311.] [Footnote 139: "Laws," book vi. ch. xv.] [Footnote 140: "Republic," book iv. ch. v.]