ing himself to man. Every man who once places his feet firmly on that high vantage-ground, becomes (intellectually at least) a Prophet; that is to say, he is able to trace accurately the course of lights not yet arisen above the horizon of persons less fortunately placed. It seems to this writer natural and inevitable that whoever believes in the Divine Unity must be in advance of his age; so much so, indeed, that he does not understand why the Jewish Prophets should be considered more inspired than other deep thinkers.
The true Revelation, he considers, was given before the invention of writing. The Bible is an attempt to perpetuate the memory of it by writing; the rituals of savages aimed to do the same thing in a different way. Truth about religion and government will be brought to light whenever Judaism is frankly compared with the forest and cavern rituals. In fact, his mind seems to have been saturated with the idea that the germ of new Truth will always be found by following up two old strains of tradition to the point from which they originally diverged.
The second edition of the work is preceded by a letter of sympathy written by Boulanger to console a brother Philosopher who had been reviled and insulted by fanatics. He said that those who are too far ahead of their time to be understood should not puzzle contemporaries by the immediate publication of their ideas, but leave their work for posterity, who will be better able to appreciate it. The key-note of the book is the intense conviction that despotism is only made possible by some form or other of idolatry, i. e. by the worship of some defined part of the great Unity. He has a horror of both tyranny
