Finally, history is attacking not only the object of religion, but religions themselves, by displaying all the sinuosities and uncertainties of the thought that constructed them; the primitive contradictions, corrected for better or for worse at some later period, the genesis of the precisest dogmas by the gradual juxtaposition of vague and heterogeneous ideas. Religious criticism, the elements of which will sooner or later find their way into elementary instruction, is the most terrible weapon that could be used against religious dogmatism; it has produced and will produce its effect in Protestant countries, where theology passionately engages the multitude. Religious faith tends to give place to curiosity about religion; we understand more readily the things we do not so absolutely believe, and we can be more disinterestedly interested in the things that no longer fill us with a sacred horror. But the explanation of positive religion seemed destined to be absolutely the opposite of its justification: to write the history of religions is to write a damaging criticism of them. When one endeavours to come to close quarters with their foundation in reality, one finds it retire before one little by little and ultimately disappear like the place where the rainbow rests upon the earth: one believes that one has discovered in religion a bond between heaven and earth, a pledge of alliance and hope; it is an optical illusion which science at once corrects and explains. [Sidenote: Religion undermined by primary instruction.] Primary instruction, which is sometimes made, nowadays, a subject of ridicule, is also an altogether recent institution of which in former times there scarcely existed a trace, and which profoundly modifies all of the terms of every social and religious problem. The modicum of elementary instruction that the modern schoolboy possesses, in especial if one adds some few notions of religious history, would alone suffice to put him on his guard against a great many forms of superstition. Formerly it was the custom for a Roman soldier to embrace the religion of any, and of every country, in which he was stationed for a considerable space of time; on his return home he would set up an altar to the distant gods that he had made his own: Sabazius, Adonis, the goddess of Syria, or Asiatic Bellona, the Jupiter of Baalbec, or the Jupiter of Doliche. To-day our soldiers and mariners bring back from their travels little more than an incredulous tolerance, a gently disrespectful smile in relation to gods in general. [Sidenote: And by the perfection of the means of communication.]