past is at least
equally unreliable. If the power of the Catholic Church had been
suddenly removed from the Europe of the fourteenth century, the
consequence would have been a moral anarchy difficult to conceive; but
in our own day the real regulator of morality is not the Church, but
public opinion, in the formation of which the Church has a share, but
only a share. It would therefore be unsafe to conclude that the
weakening of ecclesiastical authority must of necessity, in the future,
be followed by moral anarchy, since it is possible, and even probable,
that the other great influences upon public opinion may gain strength as
this declines. And in point of fact we have already lived long enough
to witness a remarkable decline of ecclesiastical authority, which is
proved by the avowed independence of scientific writers and thinkers,
and by the open opposition of almost all the European Governments. The
secular power resists the ecclesiastical in Germany and Spain. In France
it establishes a form of government which the Church detests. In Ireland
it disestablishes and disendows a hierarchy. In Switzerland it resists
the whole power of the Papacy. In Italy it seizes the sacred territory
and plants itself within the very walls of Rome. And yet the time which
has witnessed this unprecedented self-assertion of the laity has
witnessed a positive increase in the morality of public sentiment,
especially in the love of justice and the willingness to hear truth,
even when truth is not altogether agreeable to the listener, and in the
respect paid by opponents to able and sincere men, merely for their
ability and sincerity. This love of justice, this patient and tolerant
hearing of new truth, in which our age immeasurably exceeds all the ages
that have preceded it, are the direct results of the scientific spirit,
and are not only in themselves eminently moral, but conducive to moral
health generally. And this advancement may be observed in countries
which were least supposed to be capable of it. Even the French, of whose
immorality we have heard so much, have a public opinion which is
gradually gaining a salutary strength, an increasing dislike for
barbarity and injustice, and a more earnest desire that no citizen,
except by his own fault, should be excluded from the benefits of
civilization. The throne which has lately fallen was undermined by the
currents of this public opinion before it sank in military disaster.
"Aussi me conte