than human cultivation. His ill-mouthed masses move women's souls; can you? Ye scoff at Jupiter, yet he at least was believed in; you never have been. Idol for idol, the dethroned is better than the unthroned.' Superstition, that is, may be ridiculous to the reasoner; but to the politician it is a vast and living force to be reckoned with, and therefore to be respected. Bagehot's early leaning to Catholicism meant that he was susceptible to the historical prestige and imaginative fascinations of the Catholic Church. But then he was too thorough a Rationalist to accept Newman's recipe for suppressing doubt—that is, putting it down by an 'act of will.' In point of logic, the creed was false, though in practice, the Church might be not the less useful in its proper place. Though humbug, as Hosea Biglow remarked, has a 'solid value,' he won't believe it for himself. Some humbug, moreover, is purely mischievous. Both in religion and in politics dogmatism pretends to make absolute truths out of any principles that will lead to the desired conclusion. The Revolutionists illustrated the political evil; for in politics all absolute principles are necessarily absurd. Politics, as Burke had first shown, are 'made of time and place';
