pushed to its logical conclusion. Doubtless there is much to be said on both sides; certainly much has been written and more has been said during the history of civilisation. The rationalists have set it forth as the struggle between ignorance and reason; the dogmatists as that between good and evil; certainly it was not a struggle on which Antonine was either old enough or wise enough to lay down any definite line of truth for the future guidance of the world. Unfortunately, this was just what he attempted to do. He knew that the national deity of every nation under heaven was fright, and forgot that its antithesis was truth. He knew that fright was bound to predominate; that men would continue to pay their worship as they paid their taxes, lest a worse thing should happen to them. It had been the same in Homer's day. Men had been brought up to fright, and as one God died they demanded another. The Prophets had given men Gods, laughing the while at the divinities they created, because they believed as little in the sacerdotal fables as Tennyson did in the phantom idylls of Arthurian romance.
The point is, that what the mass of men demand they will get. It is the usual law of supply and demand, where the man who can increase the demand and satisfy it to any extent is the successful founder of a new religion. This is undoubtedly the business of the sacerdotal caste in every generation, and their success is assured as long as they are capable of increasing the supply, while they whet the
