The consequence, as I shall try to show, is that the theory has, in the Regent Moray's words, 'to pass over the bellies' of innumerable obstacles, by aid of a series of conjectures increasing in difficulty. Thus the reader's powers of acquiescence are strained afresh at the introduction of each new trial of his faith. If one stage out of so many stages of remote inference and bold presumption is unstable, the whole edifice falls to the ground. Meanwhile we shall have to offer a simple explanation of the circumstances of the Sacæan victim, only in a single instance demanding the use of one of Mr. Frazer's own conjectures, itself a legitimate hypothesis. The remainder of this essay is concerned with an examination of the difficulties of his theory, and of the 'bridges of hypothesis,' by which the 'yawning chasms' are to be crossed. V _THE APPROACHES TO MR. FRAZER'S THEORY_ I. THE EVOLUTION OF GODS Rites so remarkable as those of the pair of criminals, supposed to have played their parts in Babylon and Jerusalem, each with his female mate, are not historically known, but are part of Mr. Frazer's theory, and have analogies in folklore. Institutions so unparalleled as a whole, in our knowledge of human religion, cannot have been evolved except through a long series of grades of development. Mr. Frazer traces these grades throughout the 1,500 pages of his book. There are, in accordance with the method, large sections of the work devoted to illustrative examples of matters which do not bear directly on the main stream of the argument, and these are apt, by the very abundance of their erudition, to distract attention from the central hypothesis. To that I try to adhere through its numerous ramifications.