Religions create miracles by the very need that they themselves feel for them, they create them as evidence in their own support; miracles enter as a necessary element into the process of mental evolution which engenders religion. The distinguishing mark of the word of God is that it alters the order of natural phenomena. Mohammedanism alone made its way in the world without the assistance of visible and gross evidence in its favour, appealing not to the eyes but to the spirit, as Pascal would say; and in this respect it may perhaps claim an intellectual elevation that Judaism and Christianity cannot. But if Mohammed refused the gift of miracles, with a good faith that Moses seems not to have possessed, his disciples hastened to force it upon him, and have supplied his life and death with an appropriate setting of marvellous legend. Ground of belief must be had; the messenger of God must present some visible sign by which he may be recognized. [Sidenote: Prevalence of belief in special providence.] It is evident that divine providence or protection must have been conceived in the beginning as quite _special_, and not as acting by general laws. The course of the world was one continual series of divine interventions in the natural order of things, and in the affairs of men; divinities lived in the midst of mankind, in the midst of the family, in the midst of the tribe. This result may be explained as due to the very character of primitive humanity. Primitive man, who is the most credulous, is evidently also the least responsible of mankind; incapable of governing himself, he is always willing to abandon himself to the management of somebody else; in every circumstance of life he needs to share some part of his burden. If a misfortune happens to him, he relies on anybody or anything rather than on himself. This characteristic, which has been remarked in a number of races of mankind, is especially visible in infants and in infant peoples. They lack patience to follow without skipping a link in the chain of cause and effect; they do not understand how any human action can produce any great effect, and are, in general, much astonished at the disproportion which exists between effects and their causes—a disproportion which is only explicable in their eyes by the intervention of some foreign cause. Hence the need, so remarkable in feeble minds, to discover some other than the real explanation for a phenomenon; the real explanation is never, in their eyes, truly sufficient. For a vanquished soldier, the defeat is never sufficiently explained by scientific grounds; for example, by his own cowardice, by the ill-management of the men on the field, by the ignorance of the leaders; before the explanation is complete the notion of treason must always be added. Just so, if one of the lower classes has an attack of indigestion, he will not admit that he has eaten too much; he will complain of the quality of the food, and perhaps even suggest that