Three Ideals. 83 



to such an extent favour the efforts of the anti-Christian 

 fanatics as to prejudice the conservatism of our civic 

 freedom. 



At the least it has influenced public opinion with re- 

 gard to continental politics, so far that the leaders of 

 that opinion condone or even applaud measures which are 

 directly opposed to all our traditional Liberal legislation. 



This no doubt is partly owing to the complexity of 

 the struggle going on between Church and State in 

 Germany, and a failure to distinguish between two very 

 different sets of actions which are respectively the ex- 

 pression of the two different tendencies which have been 

 above distinguished as civicism and paganism. 



One of these, civicism, is the continuance of the 

 general movement hostile to Christian theocracy, the 

 tendency of which movement is to break off religion 

 from connection with the State, and to withdraw from 

 those citizens who choose to devote themselves to reli- 

 gion all exceptional privileges, and all power or control 

 over the civil acts of those who do not voluntarily seek 

 their ministry. With this movement the traditional 

 Liberals of England may well enough sympathise. 



The other the pagan, or monistic tendency, is to 

 convey to the numerical majority of the nation an ab- 

 solute power over all the external manifestations of 

 internal belief, an absolute power over their persons and 

 their property ; in a word, to erect a more thorough and 



