THE WORK OF IDEAS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 547 



been brought about by obscure fanatics armed with nothing but 

 their faith. The great religions which have governed the world 

 and the vast empires that have extended from one hemisphere to 

 the other were not built up by men of letters, of science, or by 

 philosophers. The creed on which the civilization under which 

 we live was founded was first spread by obscure fishermen of 

 a Galilean market town. Shepherds from the Arabian deserts, 

 whose contemporaries hardly knew of their existence, were the 

 men who subjected a part of the Greco-Roman world to the 

 dogmas of Mohammed, and founded one of the vastest empires 

 known in history. 



A strong conviction is so irresistible that only an equal con- 

 viction has any chance of struggling victoriously against it. 

 Faith has no enemy to be really afraid of except faith. It is sure 

 of triumph when the material force opposed to it is the servant of 

 weak emotions and of weak belief. But if it is brought to face a 

 faith of the same intensity, the contest becomes very active, and 

 success is then determined by accessory circumstances usually 

 also of a moral order, such as the spirit of discipline and better 

 organization. In studying the history of the Arabians, to whom 

 we have just alluded, we find that in their first conquests, which 

 are the most difficult and the most important, they met morally 

 weak adversaries. They first bore their arms into Syria. They 

 found nothing more formidable than Byzantine armies composed 

 of mercenaries with little disposition to sacrifice themselves for 

 any cause. Inspired by an intense faith that multiplied their 

 forces by ten, they dispersed these armies without ideas as in an- 

 cient days a little handful of Greeks sustained by love for their 

 city scattered the innumerable hosts of Xerxes. Numerous ex- 

 amples in history stand in proof that when equally powerful 

 moral forces meet, the best organized always carry the day. 



In religion, as in politics, success always goes to believers, 

 never to skeptics ; and if the future threatens to belong to the 

 socialists notwithstanding the annoying absurdity of their doc- 

 trines, it is because they are to-day the only persons who are 

 really convinced. The modern directing classes have lost faith in 

 everything. They do not believe in anything, not even in the 

 possibility of defending themselves against the dangerous flood of 

 barbarians all around them. 



When, after a longer or shorter period of trials, transforma- 

 tions, discussion, and propaganda, an idea has acquired a definite 

 form and has penetrated the spirit of the multitude, it constitutes 

 a dogma, or one of those absolute verities which are not subject 

 to discussion. It then forms a part of those general beliefs on 

 which the existence of societies reposes. Its great characteristic 

 is its immunity from discussion. When a new dogma is thus im- 



