58 PROLOGUE I 



So far as such equality, liberty, and fraternity 

 are included under the democratic principles 

 which assume the same names, the Bible is the 

 most democratic book in the world. As such it 

 began, through the heretical sects, to undermine 

 the clerico-political despotism of the middle ages, 

 almost as soon as it was formed, in the eleventh 

 century; Pope and King had as much as they 

 could do to put down the Albigenses and the 

 Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 

 turies; the Lollards and the Hussites gave them 

 still more trouble in the fourteenth and fifteenth ; 

 from the sixteenth century onward, the Protestant 

 sects have favoured political freedom in proportion 

 to the degree in which they have refused to 

 acknowledge any ultimate authority save that of 

 the Bible. 



But the enormous influence which has thus 

 been exerted by the Jewish and Christian Scrip- 

 tures has had no necessary connection with 

 cosmogonies, demonologies, and miraculous inter- 

 ferences. Their strength lies in their appeals, not 

 to the reason, but to the ethical sense. I do not 

 say that even the highest biblical ideal is exclusive 

 of others or needs no supplement. But I do 

 believe that the human race is not yet, possibly 

 may never be, in a position to dispense with it. 



