of the supreme elevation of reason, they take for granted that human beings will not question or cavil at their statements. While other writers, when seeking to enforce the doctrines of any positive religion, invariably rest their contentions, implicitly or explicitly, on some superior authority, referring their readers or hearers either to the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, the Church, or some other recognized standard of belief and would think it in the last degree presumptuous to claim assent except to what can be found in or deduced from that standard; while those teachers who are not the exponents of any positive, revealed religion, endeavor to prove their conclusions from the common intuitions or the common reasoning faculties of mankind; the writers of these books do neither. They seem to speak with a full confidence that their words need no confirmation either from authority or from reason. If they tell us the story of the creation of the world, they do not think it needful to inform us from what sources the narrative is derived. If they reveal the character of God, it is without explaining the means by which their insight has been obtained. If they lay down the rules of religious or moral conduct, it is not done with the modesty of fallible teachers, but with the voice of unqualified command emanating from the plentitude of power. Of their decisions there can be no discussion; from their sentences there is no appeal.
3. It corresponds with this character that Sacred Books should very generally be anonymous; or more strictly speaking, impersonal; that is, that they should not be put forward in the name of an individual, and that no individual should take credit for their authorship. Understanding the expression in this somewhat wider sense, we may say that anonymity is a general characteristic of this class of writings. Their authors do not desire to invite attention to their own personality, or to claim assent on the ground of respect or consideration towards themselves. On the contrary, they withdraw entirely from observation; they appear to be thoroughly engrossed in the greatness of the subject; and to write not from any deliberate design or with any artistic plan, but simply from the fullness of the inspiration by which they are controlled. Hence not only are the names of the authors in most cases completely lost to
