Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/622

604 to make him less of a tyrant at home, and this influence, extending through scores of generations, has assisted powerfully in securing for women all that they now enjoy. Even the Ivanhoes of the thirteenth century made fearfully tough husbands, and led their "queens of love and beauty" wretched lives; but still they had to make some show of living up to the gush and swagger of the tournament, and the women were better off than they otherwise would have been.

Millions have drifted into intimate relations with the bath-tub and clean linen who, at the outset, had no intention of going further than such superficial cleansing as would make a good impression on those around them whose favorable opinion it was desirable to have.

The traditional young lady who, notified that she was to go to a party that evening, called down the stairs to her mother to know if she were to wash for a high-necked or a low-necked dress, undoubtedly came in time to value cleanliness for its own sake, and make her ablutions without careful reference to the amount of surface her costume would reveal.

We shall go far, however, to find so good an illustration of the rapid development of pretense into actuality as is afforded by the history of religions. All religions began with shows, forms, and external observances, which, per opere operato, as the Catholics used to hold of baptism, speedily became faith. The conquerors, rulers, and soldiers who, for political and selfish reasons, imposed the Christian and Mohammedan religions on more than half the world, only attempted to compel extrinsic acceptance of their forms and ceremonies. What one generation did under the shadow of a sword which was quick to smite, succeeding ones did from what was considered the deepest religious instincts. Outward forms, which were terms of capitulation exacted by conquerors, quickly grew into symbols of true inward faith. Belief sprang from the reflex action of acts. Men did certain things to save their lives or property, and then fully accepted the spiritual meaning of those things. So long as Christianity relied merely on the teaching of its doctrines, it made slow progress indeed. Three centuries after Christ Constantino the Great, for political reasons, gave to it the powerful aid of the sword of state, and thereafter its spread was much more rapid. Still, it required more than one thousand years of bloody propaganda, by blade and fire, before its ascendencyascendancy [sic] became acknowledged throughout the whole of Europe. By the end of the fourth century the energetic militarism of Theodosius the Great—frequently exerted by armies of barbarians—had nominally overthrown paganism throughout the Roman Empire, and nominally established not only Christianity, but the Nicene form of that faith. His successors devoted such