germ, in
which, by no analysis or dissection, you can discover the lineaments of
the future plant. To know what it really is, or involves, you must plant
it in the minds of men, and let it grow. Hence the mediaeval Church was
strong in its weakness, and it was its very victories over the temporal
power that were its greatest danger. It became corrupt and lost its hold
upon the minds of men, just when it seemed to have established its right
to an absolute supremacy. Comte, following De Maistre, attaches great
importance to the position of the Popes as arbiters between the
Sovereigns and nations of mediaeval Europe. But he forgets that, in
claiming and maintaining this position the Popes were distinctly ceasing
to be a spiritual power, if it be the function of a spiritual power to
inculcate principles rather than to use them to solve present
difficulties. A power interfering in this way with the immediate
struggle of interests, could not but be invaded by the passions they
excite, and it was the more certain to be corrupted by these passions,
because it conceived them to be evil, and pretended altogether to
renounce them. The mediaeval authority of the Church might have its
value, as an anticipation of the peaceful federation of the nations
under one supreme Government, but it was at the same time the first
step towards the erasing of the distinction between the temporal and the
spiritual power.

The truth seems to be that the distinction, of secular and spiritual
powers, except in the sense already indicated, is essentially
irrational, and that the attempt to realise it in practice must involve,
as it did involve in the Middle Ages, a continual internecine struggle.
To set up two regularly constituted powers face to face with each other,
one claiming man's allegiance in the name of his spiritual, and the
other in the name of his temporal, interests, is to organize anarchy. So
long as man's body and soul are inseparable, it will be impossible to
divide the world between Caesar and God; for in one point of view all is
Caesar's, and in another all is God's. In the Middle Ages the conflict of
two despotisms was necessary to the growth of freedom; but, when
government ceases to be despotic, the need for such division of power
passes away. The relative separation between the speculative and the
practical classes--between the scientific and moral teachers of mankind,
on the one hand, and the statesmen or administrators who hav