Hence has arisen the idea that certain persons, certain castes, certain institutions have a monopoly of Divine truth and grace, and are therefore in a position to dictate to their fellow-men how they are to bear themselves if they wish to be "saved," what they are to believe, what they are to do.

From this the transition has been easy to the further idea that salvation is to be achieved by blind and mechanical obedience,--by renouncing the right to follow one's own higher nature, to obey one's own conscience, to use one's own reason, to map out one's own life.

In order to induce men to yield the obedience which is required of them, their lower instincts have had to be appealed to (for the higher, ruined by the Fall, have presumably ceased to operate),--their desire for pleasure by the promise of Heaven, their fear of pain by the threat of Hell.

And in order that their lives may be kept under close supervision and their merits accurately appraised, an ever-increasing stress has had to be laid on what is outward, visible, and measurable in human life, as distinguished from what is inward and occult,--on correctness in the details of prescribed conduct, or again in the details of formulated belief.

As the idea of salvation through mechanical obedience develops into a systematised scheme of life, the higher and more spiritual faculties of Man's nature become gradually atrophied by disuse.