are transitory, and creeds succeed one another with a
periodicity determined by the law of continuous variation of human
thought. The intellectual epoch at which we have now arrived has for its
essential characteristic such a change--the abandonment of a
time-honoured but obsolete system, the acceptance of a new and living
one; and, in the incipient stages, opinion succeeding opinion in a
well-marked way, until at length, after a few centuries of fusion and
solution, there crystallized on the remnant of Roman power, as on a
nucleus, a definite form, which, slowly modifying itself into the
Papacy, served the purposes of Europe for more than a thousand years
throughout its age of Faith.

[Sidenote: Conduct of the Roman educated men at this period.]

In this abandonment, the personal conduct of the educated classes very
powerfully assisted. They outwardly conformed to the ceremonial of the
times, reserving their higher doctrines to themselves, as something
beyond vulgar comprehension. Considering themselves as an intellectual
aristocracy, they stood aloof, and, with an ill-concealed smile,
consented to the transparent folly around them. It had come to an evil
state when authors like Polybius and Strabo apologized to their compeers
for the traditions and legends they ostensibly accepted, on the ground
that it is inconvenient and needless to give popular offence, and that
those who are children in understanding must, like those who are
children in age, be kept in order by bugbears. It had come to an evil
state when the awful ceremonial of former times had degenerated into a
pageant, played off by an infidel priesthood and unbelieving
aristocracy; when oracles were becoming mute, because they could no
longer withstand the sly wit of the initiated; when the miracles of the
ancients were regarded as mere lies, and of contemporaries as feats of
legerdemain. It had come to an evil pass when even statesmen received it
as a maxim that when the people have advanced in intellectual culture to
a certain point, the sacerdotal class must either deceive them or
oppress them, if it means to keep its power.

[Sidenote: Religious condition of the intellectual classes in Rome.]

In Rome, at the time of Augustus, the intellectual
classes--philosophers and statesmen--had completely emerged from the
ancient modes of thought. To them, the national legends, so jealously
guarded by the populace, had become mere fictions. The miraculous
concep