t therefore lay
the blame on marriage, or suppose that the institution of property on
the whole does more harm than good. I do not doubt that down in that
feudal system somewhere lie the roots of some of the finest qualities in
the European peoples.

So much for the temporal side of the matter; and the spiritual was not
very unlike it. As no one lived independently, in our modern sense of
the word, so no one thought independently. The minds of men were looked
after by a Church which, for a long time also, did, I suppose, very
largely fulfil the purpose for which it was intended. It kept alive and
active the belief that the world was created and governed by a just
Being, who hated sins and crimes, and steadily punished such things. It
taught men that they had immortal souls, and that this little bit of
life was an entirely insignificant portion of their real existence. It
taught these truths, indeed, along with a great deal which we now
consider to have been a mistake--a great many theories of earthly things
which have since passed away, and special opinions clothed in outward
forms and ritual observances which we here, most of us at least, do not
think essential for our soul's safety. But mistakes like these are
hurtful only when persisted in in the face of fuller truth, after truth
has been discovered. Only a very foolish man would now uphold the
Ptolemaic astronomy. But the Ptolemaic astronomy, when first invented,
was based on real if incomplete observations, and formed a groundwork
without which further progress in that science would have been probably
impossible. The theories and ceremonials of the Catholic Church suited
well with an age in which little was known and much was imagined: when
superstition was active and science was not yet born. When I am told
here or anywhere that the Middle Ages were times of mere spiritual
darkness and priestly oppression, with the other usual formulas, I say,
as I said before, if the Catholic Church, for those many centuries that
it reigned supreme over all men's consciences, was no better than the
thing which we see in the generation which immediately preceded the
Reformation, it could not have existed at all. You might as well argue
that the old fading tree could never have been green and young.
Institutions do not live on lies. They either live by the truth and
usefulness which there is in them, or they do not live at all.

So things went on for several hundred years. There w