"Every intelligent man is now a monotheist," writes the late Dr. John Murdoch of Madras, an experienced observer.[74] "Many" (of the educated Hindus), says a Hindu writer, "--I may say most of them--are in reality monotheists, but monotheists of a different type from those who belong to the Br[=a]hma Sam[=a]j. They are, if we may so call them, passive monotheists.... The influence of the Hindu environment is as much perceptible in them as that of the Christian environment."[75] Professor Max Müller and Sir M. Monier Williams are of the same opinion. "The educated classes look with contempt upon idolatry.... A complete disintegration of ancient faiths is in progress in the upper strata of society. Most of the ablest thinkers become pure Theists or Unitarians."[76] That change took place within the nineteenth century, a testimony to the force of Christian theism in building up belief, and to the power of the modern Indian atmosphere to dissipate irrational and unpractical beliefs. For, in contact with the practical instincts of Europe, the pantheistic denial of one's own personality--a disbelief in one's own consciousness, the thought that there is no thinker--was bound to give way, as well as the irrational polytheism. Very unphilosophical may have been Lord Byron's attitude to the idealism of Berkeley: "When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 'twas no matter what he said." But that represents the modern atmosphere which New India is breathing, and it is fatal to pantheism. [Sidenote: The spread of monotheism traced.]