Now, the pretension of the human intellect is quite contrary to this experience. It claims to have progressively elevated mankind out of a state of primitive barbarism, to have indoctrinated them with the ideas of morality which they possess, to have humanised them, and thus affirms the converse of the theory of tradition which it pursues with much unreasoning and implacable animosity. The _Saturday Review_ (July 24, 1869), in reviewing Mr Gladstone's "Juventus Mundi," says--"Mr Gladstone is doubtless well aware that there was no portion of his Homeric studies which was received with more surprise, or with more unfavourable comment, than his speculations on what he described as the traditive and the inventive elements in the Homeric mythology."[83] In consequence, Mr Gladstone says he has endeavoured to avoid in his more recent work "a certain crudity of expression." The _Saturday Review_, however, says--"That 'the crudity of expression' here referred to seems to have been corrected and modified to some extent by disguising the process of argument by which it was sustained, and by the adoption of a lighter touch and slighter treatment of the subject than in the former book. But the theory itself, we believe, remains the same." [83] From a purely philosophical point of view, why should these speculations of Mr Gladstone have been received "with more surprise and unfavourable comment" than any other "portions of his Homeric studies?" I may assume, then, that the passage which I have elsewhere quoted from Mr Gladstone, and laid as the basis of my argument, still has his countenance and support, in spite of the manifest antagonism it has provoked. And this passage, I venture to think, acquires fresh light and an accession of force when placed in juxtaposition with the parallel passages from De Maistre and Dr Newman. These passages will present no difficulties to the believer in the Bible. How far the view is sustainable, with reference to the more recent conclusions in chronology, I shall consider in another chapter; but, assuming that it is not chronologically disproved, there is no intrinsic impossibility which will debar belief. The general probability of tradition being thus avouched,[84] I proceed to examine certain statements that have been made as to its necessary variability, and as to the uncertainty and indefiniteness of its utterances. [84] In one way, nothing is so uncertain as tradition, and, moreover, tradition is rarely positive and direct, but, on the contrary, prone to concrete into strange, fragmentary, and distorted shapes. As an instance, we may take the tradition which Genesis attests,--When Abraham's hand had been stayed by the angel from the sacrifice of Isaac, ... "He called the name of that place 'The Lord seeth.' Whereupon, even to this day it is said, '_In the mountain the Lord will see_.'"--_Gen._ xxii. 14.