342 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



gions are far more really and practically shocked 

 and pained by the moral consequences of clerical 

 ascendency. About the dogmas they do not 

 know ; they were taught them in childhood, and 

 have not inquired into them since, and therefore 

 they are not competent witnesses to the truth of 

 them. But about the priesthood they do know, 

 by daily and hourly experience ; and to its char- 

 acter they are competent witnesses. No man can 

 express his convictions more forcibly than by 

 acting upon them in a great and solemn matter 

 of national importance. In all these countries 

 the conviction of the serious and sober majority 

 of the people is embodied, and is being daily em- 

 bodied, in special legislation, openly and avowed- 

 ly intended to guard against clerical aggression. 

 The more closely the Legislature of these countries 

 reflects the popular will, the more clear and pro- 

 nounced does this tendency become. It may be 

 thwarted or evaded for the moment by constitu- 

 tional devices and parliamentary tricks, but sooner 

 or later the nation will be thoroughly represented 

 in all of them ; and as to what is then to be ex- 

 pected let the panic of the clerical parties make 

 answer. 



This is a state of opinion and of feeling which 

 we in our own country find it hard to understand, 

 although it is one of the most persistent charac- 

 ters of our nation in past times. We have spo- 

 ken so plainly and struck so hard in the past, 

 that we seem to have won the right to let this 

 matter alone. We think our enemies are dead, 

 and we forget that our neighbor's enemies are 

 plainly alive: and then we wonder that he does 

 not sit down, and be quiet as we are. We are 

 not much accustomed to be afraid, and we never 

 know when we are beaten. But those who are 

 nearer to the danger feel a very real and, it seems 

 to me, well-grounded fear. The whole structure 

 of modern society, the fruit of long and painful 

 efforts, the hopes of further improvement, the 

 triumphs of justice, of freedom, and of light, the 

 bonds of patriotism which make each nation one, 

 the bonds of humanity which bring different na- 

 tions together — all these they see to be menaced 

 with a great and real and even pressing danger. 

 For myself I confess that I cannot help feeling as 

 they feel. It seems to me quite possible that the 

 moral and intellectual culture of Europe, the 

 light and the right, what makes life worth having 

 and men worthy to have it, may be clean swept 

 away by a revival of superstition. We are, per- 

 haps, ourselves not free from such a domestic 

 danger; but no one can doubt that the danger 

 would speedily arise if all Europe at our side 



should become again barbaric, not with the weak- 

 ness and docility of a barbarism which has never 

 known better, but with the strength of a past 

 civilization perverted to the service of evil. 



Those who know best, then, about the Cath- 

 olic priesthood at present, regard it as a standing 

 menace to the state and to the moral fabric of 

 society. 



Some would have us believe that this condi- 

 tion of things is quite new, and has in fact been 

 created by the Vatican Council. In the middle 

 ages, they say, the Church did incalculable ser- 

 vice ; or even if you do not allow that, yet the 

 ancient Egyptian priesthood invented many use- 

 ful arts; or if you have read anything which is 

 not to their credit, there were the Babylonians 

 and Assyrians who had priests, thousands of years 

 ago ; and, in fact, the more you go back into pre- 

 historic ages, and the farther you go away into 

 distant countries, the less you can find to say 

 against the priesthoods of those times and places. 

 This statement, for which there is certainly much 

 foundation, may be put into another form : the 

 more you come forward into modern times and 

 neighboring countries, where the facts can actu- 

 ally be got at, the more complete is the evidence 

 against the priesthoods of these times and places. 

 But the whole argument is founded upon what is 

 at least a doubtful view of human nature and of 

 society. Just as an early school of geologists 

 were accustomed to explain the present state of 

 the earth's surface by supposing that in primitive 

 ages the processes of geologic change were far 

 more violent and rapid than they are now — so 

 catastrophic, indeed, as to constitute a thoroughly 

 different state of things — so there is a school of 

 historians who think that the intimate structure 

 of human nature, its capabilities of learning and 

 of adapting itself to society, have so far altered 

 within the historic period as to make the present 

 processes of social change totally different in 

 character from those even of the moderately dis- 

 tant past. They think that institutions and con- 

 ditions which are plainly harmful to us now have 

 at other times and places done good and service- 

 able work. War, pestilence, priestcraft, and sla- 

 very, have been represented as positive boons to 

 an early state of society. They are not blessings 

 to us, it is true ; but then times have altered very 

 much. 



On the other hand, a later school of geolo- 

 gists have seen reason to think that the processes 

 of change have never, since the earth finally so- 

 lidified, been very different from what they are 

 now. More rapid, indeed, they must have been 



