So also, the ancient and time-worn civil institutions of the north-European peoples have apparently not been of the high-wrought invidious character that comes of long and strenuous training in the practices and ideals of the patriarchal system; nor are their prevailing religious conceits extremely drastic, theatrical or ceremonious, as compared with what is to be found in the cults of the great dynastic civilisations of the East. On the whole, it is only through the Middle Ages that these peoples have been subject to the rigorous servile discipline that characterises a dynastic despotism, secular or religious; and much of the ancient, pagan and prehistoric preconceptions on civil and religious matters appear to have stood over in the habits of thought of the common people even through that interval of submergence under aristocratic and patriarchal rule. In the same connection it may be remarked that the blond-hybrid peoples of Christendom were the last to accept the patriarchal mythology of the Semites and have also been the first and readiest to shuffle out of it in the sequel; which suggests the inference that they have never fully assimilated its spirit; perhaps for lack of a sufficiently strict and protracted discipline in its ways and ideals, perhaps for lack of a suitable temperamental ground. There is, indeed, a curiously pervasive concomitance, in point of time, place, and race, between the modern machine technology, the material sciences, religious scepticism, and that spirit of insubordination that makes the substance of what are called free or popular institutions. On none of these heads is the concomitance so close or consistent as to warrant the conclusion that race and topography alone have made this modern cultural outcome. The exceptions and side issues are too broad and too numerous for that; but it is after all a concomitance of such breadth and scope that it can also not be overlooked. * * * * *