the cunning of the fox or hare

, Bantam Classics (1997), 16: Not that the parting speech caused Amelia to philosophise, or that it armed her in any way with a calmness, the result of argument; but it was intolerably dull, pompous, and tedious; and having the fear of her schoolmistress greatly before her eyes, Miss Samuel did not venture, in her presence, to give way to any ebullitions of private grief.

Yet even seemingly secular colonial notions such as that of “a civilizing mission—or its more racialized version, “the white man's burden — or the 19th-century U.S. conviction of a manifest destiny have deep religious roots.

Unfortunately, as Anderson and Sørenson (1996) and Bowsher (2002) document, instrument proliferation can vitiate the test.