It is a matter of frequent remark that men, institutions, and peoples are apt to impart to each other their faults and vices more readily than their good qualities. Whether or not this be true, the two Ottoman institutions certainly seem to have taught each other some evil qualities. Luxury, venality, and unnatural vices were all strongly discountenanced by the Sacred Law; but all were fostered in the members of the Ruling Institution by the very conditions of the system, and by the sixteenth century all had come to be charged against the members of the Moslem Institution as well. On the other hand, the conservatism of the Moslem Institution and its resistance to progress came more and more to characterize the Ruling Institution. Members of the _Ulema_ taught even the pages of the palace and the princes on the intellectual side of their training, thereby exerting a constant influence which in the course of time operated powerfully on the Ruling Institution from top to bottom, till it, too, began to acquire a changelessness which resisted improvement and progress. With such a character once established, the end of the empire’s greatness was at hand. In a rapidly progressing world, a stationary position means a relative decline. The two institutions contributed strongly to each other’s power and permanence. The Ruling Institution defended the Moslem Institution by the sword, and carried out among the people the decisions of its wise men. It also protected the latter’s sources of regular revenue, and thus enabled the _Ulema_, secure of a living, to devote themselves to the study and teaching of the Sacred Law. The Moslem Institution, on the other hand, kept the Moslem population obedient and submissive to the sultan’s authority as expressed in the Ruling Institution. It taught that the Sultan was divinely appointed and therefore always to be obeyed, no matter what his character was or how oppressive his rule might become, so long as he did not transgress the Sacred Law; and that it was for the _Ulema_ alone to decide when he had made such a transgression. Accordingly the two institutions, so long as they acted in harmony, were absolutely impregnable in their position among the Moslems of the empire. THE RELATIVE POWER OF THE INSTITUTIONS These two institutions constituted, as it were, the two great parties in the Ottoman state.[709] The Moslem Institution was always strongly Islamic, and extremely conservative in all respects. The Ruling Institution was originally liberal both religiously and in its receptivity of new ideas, but it departed from its liberal tendency in much the same proportion that the Moslem Institution increased in power.