406 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



ness and simplicity to the conclusion that a man both 

 may and should keep no small part of his opinions to 

 himself, if they are too widely different from those of 

 other people for the sake of union and the strength 

 gained by concerted action ; and we also find the Pope 

 declaring of one of the brightest saints and luminaries 

 of the Church that we need not follow him when it is 

 plainly impossible for us to do so. Is it so very much 

 to hope that ere many years are over the approxima- 

 tion will become closer still ? 



I have sometimes imagined that the doctrine of 

 Papal Infallibility may be the beginning of a way out of 

 the difficulty, and that its promoters were so eager for 

 it, rather for the facilities it afforded for the repealing 

 of old dogmas than for the imposition of new ones. 

 The Pope cannot, even now, under any circumstances, 

 declare a dogma of the Church to be obsolete or untrue, 

 but I should imagine he can, in council, ex cathedra, 

 modify the interpretation to be put upon any dogma, 

 if he should find the interpretation commonly received 

 to be prejudicial to the good of the Church : and if so, 

 the manner in which Rome can put herself more in 

 harmony with the spirit of recent discoveries, without 

 putting herself in an illogical position, is not likely to 

 escape eyes so keen as those of the Catholic hierarchy. 

 No sensible man will hesitate to admit that many an 

 interpretation which was natural to and suitable for 

 one age is unnatural to and unsuitable for another ; as 

 circumstances are always changing, so men's moods and 

 the meanings they attach to words, and the state of 

 their knowledge changes ; and hence, also, the inter- 



