From such pretenders to moral authority, the seeker for truth turns to the layman similarly concerned, and to those professional scholars who are capable of debating without passion, and in good faith. Professor Schmiedel and M. Loisy are still, it is to be hoped, types of many. The problem is in the end, unalterably, one of historical science; and only by the use of all the methods of sound historical science will it ever be solved. It is not merely in regard to the study of Christian origins that sociological problems are vitiated by the habitual passing of à priori judgments on issues never critically considered. When an expert hierologist like Dr. Budge tells us repeatedly that in ancient Egypt a "highly spiritual," "lofty spiritual" and "elevated" religion went hand in hand with a system of sorcery of "degrading" savagery, [469] we are led to inquire how the estimates of altitude are reached or justified. There appears to be no answer save that Dr. Budge holds certain theories about the universe, and, finding these more or less akin to the esoteric theology of Egypt, laurels his own opinions in this fashion. But Dr. Budge is no more entitled than any one else to settle such questions without rational discussion, and the reason of some of us revolts at the concept of a conjoined sublimity and imbecility as a spurious paradox. It is but a convention of supernaturalist apriorism, figuring where it has no right of entry. In precisely the same fashion, Dr. Estlin Carpenter credits to the Aztecs a "lofty religious sentiment," avowed to be "strangely blended with a hideous and sanguinary ritual." [470] The "lofty" is again a wreath for the writer's own philosophy of religion, in terms of which the act of the "good Samaritan," performed a million times by unpretending human beings, was imaginable only by a supernormal Jew, and unmatchable in pagan thought. In a word, these moral pretensions had better be withdrawn from the area of historical discussion proper. Involving as they do the inference that "lofty" religious conceptions are not merely of no moral value but potent sanctions for all manner of evil, they very effectually stultify themselves. But rationalism needs not, and should not seek, to turn such blunders to its account. As M. Loisy claims, the ground of historic criticism is not the place for such polemic, which tends only to confuse the scientific issue. That is hard enough to solve, with the best will and the best methods. APPENDIX A THE "TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES" (Nov. 1 and 8, 1891.)