Again, the general prevalence of delusions in a tribe does not suppress the scepticism of individuals. It is reasonable to expect such scepticism to be most prevalent amongst men of rank, who are comparatively exempt from the oppression of popular sanctions; and probably this is the fact. Such exemption, by preserving a nucleus of relatively sane people, is one of the great social utilities of rank. The Basuto chief, Mokatchané, surrounded by people grossly superstitious, lent himself to their practices; but in paying his diviners he did not hesitate so say “that he regarded them as the biggest impostors in the world.”[474] In Fiji, it is doubtful whether the high chiefs believed in the inspiration of the priests, though it suited their policy to appear to do so. There was an understanding between the two orders: one got sacrifices (food), the other good oracles. A chieftain, on receiving an unfavourable oracle, said to the priest: “Who are you? Who is your god? If you make a stir, I will eat you”[475]—not metaphorically. In Tonga, “even seventeen years before the arrival of the first missionaries, the chiefs did not care to conceal their scepticism.” In Vavou, Taufaahan, having long been sceptical of his ancestral faith, on learning of Christianity, hanged five idols by the neck, beat the priestess, and burned the spirit-houses.[476] The Vikings, like the Homeric heroes, are said to have fought their gods; and at other times to have declared entire disbelief in them. Hence the easy conversion of the North to Christianity. Scepticism may have been fashionable at court much earlier: “It is scarcely possible to doubt,” says Mr. Chadwick, “that familiarity, not to say levity, in the treatment of the gods characterised the Heroic Age [Teutonic—A.D. 350-550] just as much as that of the Vikings.”[477] The burlesque representations of the gods in some passages of the _Iliad_ are a sort of atheism: in astonishing contrast with the sublime piety elsewhere expressed. And the inadequacy of such a literary religion (like that of Valhalla) may explain the facile reception (or revival) of the Mysteries in the sixth century B.C. History abounds with examples of rulers and priests who, in collusion, have used religion for political convenience, in a way that implied their own disbelief and opened unintentionally the doors of disbelief to others.