ild up any edifice of intellectual self-satisfaction on
the ground that in theological matters we believe or disbelieve this
thing or that. If Ampere believed the doctrines of the Church of Rome,
which to us seem so incredible, if Faraday remained throughout his
brilliant intellectual career (certainly one of the most brilliant ever
lived through by a human being) a sincere member of the obscure sect of
the Sandemanians, we are not warranted in the conclusion that we are
intellectually their betters because our theology is more novel, or more
fashionable, or more in harmony with reason. Nor, on the other hand,
does our orthodoxy prove anything in favor of our mental force and
culture. Who, amongst the most orthodox writers, has a more forcible and
cultivated intellect than Sainte-Beuve?--who can better give us the tone
of perfect culture, with its love of justice, its thoroughness in
preparation, its superiority to all crudeness and violence? Anglican or
Romanist, dissenter or heretic, may be our master in the intellectual
sphere, from which no sincere and capable laborer is excluded, either by
his belief or by his unbelief.

LETTER VI.

TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC FRIEND WHO ACCUSED THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS OF A WANT
OF REVERENCE FOR AUTHORITY.

Necessity for treating affirmations as if they were doubtful--The
Papal Infallibility--The Infallibility of the Sacred
Scriptures--Opposition of method between Intellect and
Faith--The perfection of the intellectual life requires intellectual
methods--Inevitable action of the intellectual
forces.

It is very much the custom, in modern writing about liberty of thought,
to pass lightly over the central difficulty, which sooner or later will
have to be considered. The difficulty is this, that the freedom of the
intellectual life can never be secured except by treating as if they
were doubtful several affirmations which large masses of mankind hold to
be certainties as indisputable as the facts of science. One of the most
recently conspicuous of these affirmations is the infallibility of the
Pope of Rome. Nothing can be more certain in the opinion of immense
numbers of Roman Catholics than the infallible authority of the Supreme
Pontiff on all matters affecting doctrine. But then the matters
affecting doctrine include many subjects which come within the circle of
the sciences. History is one of those subjects which modern intellectual
criticism takes leave to study after i