But demonology apart, what would have countervailed against the superiority of reason and the intellectual prestige of the world except a belief in a tradition of primitive revelation? What else will account for the different recognitions of philosophy and religion--priests and sophists? What else would have prevented mankind from resorting in their difficulties to where the greatest intellect was found? At page 134, this truth seems to gain partial recognition in the pages of Mr Baring Gould:-- "In conclusion, it seems certain that for man's spiritual well-being, these forces ('the tendency to crystallise, and the tendency to dissolve') need co-ordination. Under an infallible guide, regulating every moral and theological item of his spiritual being, his mental faculties are given him that they may be atrophied, like the eyes of the oyster, which, being useless in the sludge of its bed, are re-absorbed. Under a perpetual modification of religious belief, his convictions become weak and watery, without force, and destitute of purpose. In the barren wilderness of Sinai there are here and there green and pleasant oases. How come they there? By basaltic dykes arresting the rapid drainage which leaves the major part of that land bald and waste. So in the region of religion, _revelations and theocratic systems have been the dykes saving it_ from barrenness, and encouraging mental and sentimental fertility" (p. 134). It is impossible that we should quarrel with this illustration, it is so exactly to our point. Is it not another way of affirming the position which I maintain against Sir John Lubbock? (ch. xii.) May not we, too, take our stand upon these "oases" of tradition, which "revelations" and "theocratic systems" have formed, and ask what the human intellect has been able to achieve for the spiritual cravings of man in the waste around? Mr Baring Gould, indeed, says (p. 61):-- "A power of free volition within or outside all matter in motion was a rational solution to the problems of effects of which man could not account himself the cause. Such is the origin of the idea of God--of God _whether many_, inhabiting each brook and plant, and breeze and planet, _or as_ being a world-soul, _or as_ a supreme cause, the Creator and sustainer of the universe. The common consent of mankind has been adduced as a proof of a tradition of a revelation in past times; but the fact that most races of men believe in one or more deities proves nothing more than that all men have drawn the same inference from the same premises. It is idle to speak of a 'Sensus Numinis' as existing as a primary conviction in man, when the conception may be reduced to more rudimentary ideas. The revelation is in man's being, in his conviction of the truth of the principle of causation, and thus it is a revelation made to every rational being."