As regards the religion of his childhood, I feel certainly that it appealed to him strongly through all his life, and in the revulsion which seems to have followed the _Doctrine and Ritual_ he was drawn back towards it, but rather as to a great hierarchic system and a great sequence of holy pageants, of living symbolism. Respecting the root-matter of its teachings, probably he deceived himself better than he fooled his readers. In a multitude of statements and in the spirit of the text throughout, it is certain that the _Histoire de la Magie_ offers “negation of dogma” on its absolute side. We obtain a continual insight into free sub-surface opinions, ill-concealed under external conformity to the Church, and we get also useful side-lights on the vanity of the author’s sham submissions. In this manner, we know exactly what quality of sentiment led him to lay all his writings at the foot of the seat of Peter, for Peter to decide thereon. It is needless to add that his constructions of doctrine throughout are of the last kind that would be commended to the custodians of doctrine. At the same time there is very little doubt that he believed genuinely in the necessity of a hierarchic teaching; that, in his view, it reposed from a very early period in certain sanctuaries of initiation; that the existence of these is intimated in the records of the Mosaic dispensation; that they were depositaries of science rather than revelation; that Kabalistic literature is one of their witnesses; but that the sanctuaries were everywhere in the world, Egypt and Greece included. Of all these the Church of Christ is the heir, and though it may have lost the keys of knowledge, though it mistakes everywhere the sign for the thing signified, it is—from his standpoint—entitled to our respect as a witness and at least to qualified obedience.