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and they are widely venerated as recipients of divine revelation. 
And we can hardly doubt that Vasishtha or Visvamitra had a 
good deal to do with the retaining or formulating those higher 
thoughts that ennoble the nature-worship of the Vedic songs. 
So,in Mexico also, the milder and more hopeful system that 
tempered the fierce and sanguinary religion of the Aztecs was 
connected with the name of a Being who, though regarded as 
divine, may perhaps, inasmuch as he had something of a history, 
be conjectured to have been a human teacher in the times gone 
by.* The same may probably have occurred in other traditional 
forms of religion. The one man elevates religion, the many 
corrupt and deprave it. 
20. Now, how are we to explain this occurrence from time to 
time of high-soule dleaders in religious thought, who are able 
by personal influence to raise the spiritual state of nations and 
generations? Are they merely the product of their age? It 
would be curious if a general tendency to sinking were to 
produce an occasional elevation. This would be a very 
abnormal kind of evolution. Not but that the character of 
the age has generally something to do with the formation of 
the character and opinions of religious innovators. They 
frequently retain something of the popular errors prevalent 
around them. And a reaction from prevailing absurdities or 
abuses often has some influence in bringing into prominence 
the truths they lay hold of and proclaim. But whence arises 
this reaction? And what gives rise to the intensity with 
which they grasp and preach their own special verities, often 
unpopular and strange to the multitudes around them? On 
this there may be many psychological conjectures, but the 
facts of history point in one direction only. 
21. The men who have elevated religion have generally pre- 
sented themselves, and been regarded by their followers, in 
one or other of two aspects. They have come forward either 
as Revealers or as Reformers. Or these two claims may be 
combined. Mohammed, for instance, on the one hand, de- 
clared that he was only gomg back beyond the modern 
corruptions of the dominant religion to its purer condition 
nearer to its source. There had existed in Hastern Syria 
from the second or third century the semi-Christian sect of 
the Hlkesaites, who claimed to have returned to the original 
religion of Adam and Seth. It may be that Mohammed had 
taken a hint from these in his assertion that his religion was 
but the primeval one restored. But, if so, he, like other 
* Reville, Hibbert Leciures. 
