rcised on the fortunes of peoples and on the
development or decay of their institutions.

[Sidenote: The belief in inspiration leads to the worship of living men
as gods. Outward experience as a source of the idea of God.]

To a certain extent, however, the evil has provided its own remedy. For
men of strong heads and ambitious temper, perceiving the exorbitant
power which a belief in inspiration places in the hands of the
feeble-minded, have often feigned to be similarly afflicted, and trading
on their reputation for imbecility, or rather inspiration, have acquired
an authority over their fellows which, though they have often abused it
for vulgar ends, they have sometimes exerted for good, as for example by
giving sound advice in matters of public concern, applying salutary
remedies to the sick, and detecting and punishing crime, whereby they
have helped to preserve the commonwealth, to alleviate suffering, and to
cement that respect for law and order which is essential to the
stability of society, and without which any community must fall to
pieces like a house of cards. These great services have been rendered to
the cause of civilisation and progress by the class of men who in
primitive society are variously known as medicine-men, magicians,
sorcerers, diviners, soothsayers, and so forth. Sometimes the respect
which they have gained by the exercise of their profession has won for
them political as well as spiritual or ghostly authority; in short, from
being simple medicine-men or sorcerers they have grown into chiefs and
kings. When such men, seated on the throne of state, retain their old
reputation for being the vehicles of a divine spirit, they may be
worshipped in the character of gods as well as revered in the capacity
of kings; and thus exerting a two-fold sway over the minds of men they
possess a most potent instrument for elevating or depressing the
fortunes of their worshippers and subjects. In this way the old savage
notion of inspiration or possession gradually develops into the doctrine
of the divinity of kings, which after a long period of florescence
dwindles away into the modest theory that kings reign by divine right, a
theory familiar to our ancestors not long ago, and perhaps not wholly
obsolete among us even now. However, inspired men need not always
blossom out into divine kings; they may, and often do, remain in the
chrysalis state of simple deities revered by their simple worshippers,
their bro