A second very important result of such fusion by conquest must have been the breaking up to some extent of custom and the weakening of the religious sanctions. Under the new régime, both the conquering and the conquered peoples would find their old customs unsuited to their novel social relations, and inadequate to regulate their changed occupations. The old customs of both would inevitably be thrown into the melting pot; at the same time the religious sanctions of both would be weakened by the intimate contact of two systems, neither of which, in the presence of a rival system, would henceforth be able to claim unquestioned authority, until one had suppressed the other or a stable synthesis of the two had been effected. So long as each individual never had intercourse with any but those who accepted the national or tribal religion, it was well-nigh impossible for anyone to question its authority; but as soon as the devotees of two religions lived intermixed, the question—Which religion was true? must inevitably have arisen in some minds. The weight of custom and of religious sanctions, which lies so heavily on a primitive society, restricting all enterprise, forbidding inquiry and repressing the use of the intellectual powers, would thus be lightened and scope be given for experiment in thought and action. And either people, coming into more or less intimate contact for the first time with a system of beliefs and customs and institutions other than their own, must have been led to compare, discuss, and reflect upon these things; the sceptical spirit and the intellect must have been greatly stimulated. There must have been a conflict of ideas and the initiation of an age of discussion. In short such a fusion by conquest must have broken up what Bagehot calls the ‘cake of custom’ as nothing else could, and so have rendered the intellectual and moral traditions once more plastic and capable of progress. No doubt in many cases such disintegration of the old systems went too far, and the society, before it could evolve anew a sufficiently strong and adequate system of customs and sanctions, went to pieces. In modern times many primitive societies have been broken up and destroyed in just this way—namely, their customs and the religious sanctions of their morality have been undermined and weakened by the contact of the more complex systems of civilised men, and they have not been able to assimilate the new system rapidly enough to enable it effectively to replace their own shaken and decaying code.