ing human credulity; a scientific inquiry would doubtless show that the alleged 'miracles' of the thaumaturgists of to-day are only old and well-known devices of trickery and suggestion. In this connection we would recommend the new 'religious communities,' sects, and circles now daily springing into existence to the attention of our police authorities and psychoanalysts. The exact science of religion confines itself to establishing the fact that all these religious phenomena are at bottom nothing but examples of barbaric atavism, and a hotch-potch of the most rudimentary forms of worship still subconsciously active in the human imagination. It has only needed a few fanatics, charlatans, and notorious swindlers to revive among the peoples of Europe, under the veneer of civilization, these prehistoric elements of religious belief."
Dr. Blahous got up from his desk. He had just finished the three hundredth and forty-sixth page of his little article, but still he did not feel weary. "I must think out an effective finish," he said to himself; "some reflections on progress and science, on the suspicious benevolence of the Government towards religious heterodoxy, and on the necessity of presenting a fighting front to reaction, and so forth."
The youthful savant, borne on the wings of his enthusiasm, went to the window and leaned out into
