Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/561

Rh 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 conviction 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 ancient days a little handful of Greeks sustained by love for their city scattered the innumerable hosts of Xerxes. Numerous examples 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 doctrines, 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, transformations, 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