THE DIVISION OF THE CRITICAL PERIOD. 139 may be regarded as complete towards the end of the thirteenth century, though there were occasional irruptions from the East till the seventeenth, and the habit of crusading excitement required time for subsidence. When the protective and conservative office of the feudal régime was accomplished, the military spirit became disturbing; and the more so as the European authority of the papacy declined. Its services were partial, in guarding the nationality of the various European peoples; but then it was through this very military spirit that those nationalities were endangered. It declined, together with the spiritual power, when its political ascendancy would have stood in the way of progress. Division of the critical period. In any scientific analysis of the whole critical period of five centuries, from the fourteenth to our own,-the period must be divided into two parts; the first comprehending the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in which the critical movement was spontaneous and involuntary, without any intervention of systematic doctrine; and the other comprehending the last three centuries, during which the disorganization has proceeded under the growing influence of an avowedly negative doctrine, extended by degrees to all social ideas, and indicating the tendency of modern society to renovation, though the principle of renovation has remained undisclosed. By what has gone before, we see that the critical doctrine was not, as is commonly supposed, the cause, but the effect, of the decay of the system that was passing away. And nothing exhibits so plainly the provisional character of the Catholic régime as the spectacle of its sinking under the mutual conflict of its own instruments, without any systematic external attack: but the decay is not difficult to account for, after what we have seen of its germs, included in the organism in its best days, and sure to grow with a rapidity proportioned to its decline. Causes of spontaneous decline. The separation between the spiritual and temporal power was itself a cause of decline, both from the want of conformity of the existing civilization, and from the imperfection of the only existing philosophy. The military spirit is always aiming at exclusive rule, even when it has arrived at the defensive stage of character; and therefore the division of authority, desirable and useful as it was, was a premature attempt at what can be fully accomplished only when the industrial spirit shall have completely superseded the military. The theological spirit was no less disposed to pass its limits, the sacerdotal boundary being moreover thoroughly empirical and indeterminate. The mental discipline, which became more and more stringent and oppressive as the necessary convergence became more difficult, strengthened the sacerdotal disposition to usurpation. Again, though the temporal dominions annexed to the papacy became important among European sovereignties only when the Catholic system was in a state of political decline, the temporal sovereignty no doubt aided the spirit of ambition in the popes. Between an imperfect civilization on the one hand and a vicious philosophy on the other, the fundamental division which it was the glory of the period to have proposed, was overthrown; and the wonder would be that it lasted so long as to the fourteenth century, if we had not seen how slow and feeble was the growth of the new social elements, and how much remained to be done, to the last, before the function of the Catholic and feudal system was fulfilled. Our conclusions will be the same if we study the principal subdivision of each of these main powers; that is, the corresponding relation between the central and the local authorities. We shall see that the interior harmony of each power could have no more stability than their mutual combination. In the spiritual case there was a stronger peril of discord between the central sacerdotal authority and the national clergies, than always attends upon human imperfection. The system had special liabilities of its own. When the severe discipline necessary to preserve unity in the Church began to react, any partial rebellion might become important by attaching itself to national rivalries, under the guardianship of the respective temporal powers. The same causes which limited the territorial extension of Catholicism were fatal to its interior constitution, quite apart from dogmatic difficulties. In the most favouring countries the national clergy claimed special privileges, which the popes declared to be incompatible with the political existence of Catholicism; and the opposition was doubtless as real in more remote countries, though less formally expressed. At the same time the papal tendency to centralization, which indulged Italian ambition at the expense of all other, aroused very energetic and obstinate national susceptibilities on every hand. Thus there was danger of a breaking-up, from the formation of independent national Churches, before doctrinal schism was heard of. Considering the liabilities of such a system, and the imperfection of its intellectual bases, it is clear that no excellencies of organization could preserve it from decay when once its discordant forces were set free from their combined pursuit of a common end; that is, when the system had once reached its culminating point. As for the temporal case, we are all familiar with the struggles between the central power of royalty and the local powers of the various classes of the feudal hierarchy. No efforts to reconcile the contradictory tendencies of isolation and centralization, both of which were sanctioned by the feudal spirit, could possibly avail for any length of time; and the ruin of the system must follow upon the victory of either of them. The spectacle of this spontaneous decomposition suggests the reflection, first, that it confirms the estimate in the last chapter of the transitoriness of this extreme phase of the theological and military system; and again, that as the spontaneous decay was favourable to the growth of the new social elements, it becomes a fresh evidence of the fitness of the régime to carry on the great human evolution; and again, that the spontaneousness of the decay is really a distinctive feature of the Catholic and feudal régime, inasmuch as it was far more marked than in any preceding instance. In the spiritual order, carefully organized as it was, it is remarkable that the first agents of disorganization always and everywhere issued from the body of the Catholic clergy; whereas, there was nothing analogous to this in polytheism, in which the two powers were confounded. So provisional is the theological philosophy, that, in proportion as it advances, intellectually and morally, it becomes less consistent and less durable,—a truth which is confirmed by all historical observation. Fetichism was more deeply rooted and stable than polytheism, yet gave way before it. Polytheism had more intrinsic vigour and a longer duration than monotheism; and this appears, on ordinary principles, thoroughly paradoxical; while our theory explains it all by showing that the rational progress of theological conceptions consists in a perpetual diminution of intensity. trine. Decline under Turning now to the second period,-that in negative doc- which the destruction of the old system proceeded under the superintendence of a systematic negative doctrine, we must bear in mind what I have already said of the indispensable need of such a doctrine, to shelter the growing germs of the system to come, and to obviate the danger of eternal fruitless conflict, or of a return to an exhausted régime. As to the inevitableness of such a negative doctrine, that is easily established: for instance, we see it to be certain that Protestantism must arise, in course of time, from the very nature of the monotheistic régime. Monotheism introduces into the very heart of theology a spirit of individual examination and discussion, by leaving comparatively unsettled those secondary matters of belief which polytheism dogmatically fixed to their last particulars; and thus a natural though restricted philosophical liberty was admitted, at least to determine the proper mode of administering the supernatural power in each particular case. Thus theological heresy is impossible in polytheism, and always present in monotheism; because speculative activity must fall into more or less divergence with regard to essentially vague and arbitrary conceptions; and the division between the spiritual and temporal powers greatly enhanced the tendency in the case of Catholicism, because it incited free inquiry to extend itself from theological questions to social problems, in order to establish among them the special applications of the common doctrine which could be proved legitimate. The tendency gained strength perpetually during the whole period of the decay of the system, while the temporal powers were fighting against the spiritual, and the national clergies against the papacy; and we see in it the origin of the appeal to free inquiry which characterizes Protestantism, the first general phase of the revolutionary philosophy. THE PROVISIONAL PHILOSOPHY. 143 The scholars who supported the authority of kings against the popes, and the national Churches which resisted the decisions of Rome, could not but claim for themselves a right of inquiry, urged more and more systematically, and unavoidably extended to all individuals and all questions, till, by a mental and social necessity, it brought on the destruction of the Catholic discipline first, then of the hierarchy, and, finally, of the dogma. As for this character of the provisional The provisional philosophy, it is determined by the nature of philosophy. its function. Popular sense has given its character in its title of Protestantism, which applies to the whole revolutionary philosophy, though commonly confined to the first state of the doctrine. In fact, this philosophy has, from the rise of primitive Lutheranism up to the deism of the last century, without excepting the systematic atheism which is its extreme phase, been nothing more, historically speaking, than a growing and increasingly methodical protest against the intellectual bases of the old social order, extended, in virtue of its absolute character, to all genuine organization whatever. Serious as are the perils attending this negative spirit, the great necessary renovation could not take place without it. In all preceding times the destruction of each form could be subordinated by the human mind to the institution of a new form, which had some perceived character and purpose; but now a total renovation was needed,—a mental as well as social renovation,-more thorough than the experience of mankind can elsewhere show. As the critical operation was necessary before the new elements were ready, the ancient order had to be broken up, while the future remained wholly unsettled; and in such a case there was nothing for it but giving an absolute character to critical principles; for, if any conditions had been regularly imposed on the negative rights which they proclaimed, such conditions must have been derived from the very system proposed to be destroyed (no other social system being then in view), and thus the whole work would have been a mere abortion. The critical dogmas concerned in the process I shall notice hereafter, more or less explicitly; meantime, I have so exhibited the grounds of the hostility and defiance |