228 



ARISTOCRACY AND EVOLUTION 



Theologians 

 " 1 



Book in in a way which was in all cases practically similar ; 

 just as the offer of a helping hand would make a 

 similar appeal to each one of a multitude of men 

 drowning. The official teaching of the Church with 

 regard to the Virgin's sinlessness, and the degree of 

 worship which is her due, has been the work, no 

 doubt > of the few > not of the many of priests, of 

 theologians, of Councils, of the spiritual aristocracy ; 

 but the doctrines which they have thus defined have 

 been no more fabricated by themselves than the 

 wines, good or bad, which a peasantry have made for 

 centuries, are made by the chemist of to-day, who at 

 last undertakes to analyse them. 



It has been said that the part which democracy 

 plays in the development of religion is shown us by 

 Church of Rome with greater distinctness than 





Catholicism 



the many so 



clearly because 



the part played j t j s by anv other great communion of believers ; and 



by the few is t 



defined by it the reason is that no other great communion ot 

 believers shows us with so much precision ^the part 

 played by an aristocracy, and thus leaves the part 

 played by democracy with so sharply defined a 

 frontier. The Roman Church alone is in possession 

 of a complete machinery by which all the pious 

 opinions of the whole body of its members the 

 opinions which have spontaneously shaped them- 

 selves in the minds of innumerable Christians as the 

 result of a multitude of independent spiritual experi- 

 ences, and which, when sufficiently manifested, have 

 been studied by various theologians, and reduced 

 by them to logical and coherent forms shall 

 be finally submitted to one great representative 



