In both sacraments the death-bed baptism of an earlier age seems to survive, and they both fulfil a deep-seated need of the human spirit.
Hence there is clearly a deep-seated difference between the religious feelings of the two continents.
As early as 1804, Humboldt expressed the opinion that petroleum was produced by distillation from deep-seated strata, and Karl Reichenbach in 1834, suggested that it was derived from the action of heat on the turpentine of pine-trees, whilst Brunet, in 1838, adumbrated a similar theory of origin on the ground of certain laboratory experiments.
But when a deep-seated antagonism is concealed beneath an unruffled surface, the most trivial incident will bring it to the light of day.
It was a deep-seated belief that those who took part in religious functions were liable to communicate this " holiness " to others (compare the complex ideas associated with the Polynesian taboo).
