56 FOOTFALLS OF INDIAN HISTORY
at the disposal of the crown to look from that distance to mobilise armies on the frontier. But if military plans could be carried out so far from their base as this, then we cannot object that Magadha was too remote to be the religious centre of the whole. Benares and Baidyanath are still left at its two extremes to tell us of the spiritual energy of its great period. The miracle that puzzles the imagination of historians — the sudden inception in the sixth century B.C. of religions of conscience in place of religions of power is, rightly viewed, no miracle at all. These religions themselves were always there ; it was only their organisation that began with the date named.
The events of history follow sequences as rigid as the laws of physics. Buddha was the first of the faith-organisers, and first in India of nation- builders. But Buddha could not rise and do his work until the atmosphere* about him had reached a certain saturation-point in respect to those ideas which the Upanishads preach. The founders of religions never create the ideas they enforce. With deep insight they measure their relative values, they enumerate and regiment them ; and by the supreme appeal of their own personality they give them a force and vitality unsuspected. But the ideas themselves were already latent in the minds of their audience. Had it not been so, the preacher would have gone uncomprehended. Through how many centuries had this process of democratising the culture of the Upanishads gone on ? Only by
