Personal leadership has undoubtedly played a great part in connection with afflatus, in gathering and guiding the religious Communities. Afflatus requires personal mediums; and probably success depends on the due adjustment of the proportion between afflatus and medium. As afflatus is the permanent element, and personal leadership the transitory, it is likely that in the cases of the dwindling Communities, leadership has been too strong and afflatus too weak. A very great man, as medium of a feeble afflatus, may belittle a Community while he holds it together, and insure its dwindling away after his death. On the other hand, we see in the case of the Shakers, a strong afflatus, with an ordinary illiterate woman for its first medium; and the result is success continuing and increasing after her death. It is probably true, nevertheless, that an afflatus which is strong enough to make a strong man its medium _and keep him under_, will attain the greatest success; or in other words, that the greater the medium the better, other things being equal. In all cases of afflatus continuing after the death of the first medium, there seems to be an alternation of experience between afflatus and personal leadership, somewhat like that of the Primitive Christian Church. In that case, there was first an afflatus concentrated on a strong leader; then after the death of the leader, a distributed afflatus for a considerable period following the day of Pentecost; and finally another concentration of the afflatus on a strong leader in the person of Paul, who was the final organizer. Compare with this the experience of the Shakers. The afflatus (issuing from a combination of the Quaker principality with the "French Prophets") had Ann Lee for its first medium, and worked in the concentrated form during her life. After her death, there was a short interregnum of distributed inspiration. Finally the afflatus concentrated on another leader; and this time it was a man, Elder Meacham, who proved to be the final organizer. Each step of this progress is seen in the following brief history of Shakerism, from the American Cyclopaedia: