s inextinguishable, though
it was utterly foreign to Christianity. [Sidenote: Causes of the
ecclesiastical opposition.] It was fastened by imperial violence on the
nations, and made its appearance, with unabated force, at intervals of
ages. The same evil instinct which tore Hypatia piecemeal in the church
at Alexandria brought Galileo into the custody of the familiars of the
holy office at Rome. The necessary consequence of this upholding
ignorance by force was the emergence of ideas successively more and more
depraved. [Sidenote: Degraded state of Italy.] Whoever will ingenuously
compare the religious state of Italy in the fourteenth century with its
state in the fourth--that is, the recent Italian with the old
Roman--will find that among the illiterate classes nothing whatever had
been accomplished. There were no elevated thoughts of holy things. From
practical devotion God had altogether disappeared; the Saviour had been
supplanted by the blessed Virgin; and she herself--such was the
increasing degradation--had been abandoned for the ignoble worship of
apotheosized men, who, under the designation of saints, had engrossed
all the votaries. There had been a rapid descent to the last degree of
more than African abasement in bleeding statues and winking pictures.

[Sidenote: Rise of a new social system.] In Europe there had been
incorporated old forms of worship and old festivals with Christian ones;
the local gods and goddesses had been replaced by saints; for
deification canonization had been substituted. There had been produced a
civilization, the character of which was its extraordinary intolerance.
A man could not be suspected of doubting the popular belief without risk
to his goods, his body, or his life. As a necessary consequence, there
could be no great lawgivers, no philosophers, no poets. Society was
pervaded by a systematic hypocrisy. This tyranny over others sometimes
led to strange results. It caused the Jews to discover the art of making
wealth invisible by bills of exchange and other such like means, so that
money might be imperceptibly but instantaneously moved.

[Sidenote: Influence of that new system,] Thus, after the dying out of
Greek science, there followed, among the new populations, an
intellectual immobility, which soon became the centre of a vast number
of growing interests quickly and firmly crystallizing round it. For them
it was essential that there should be no change--no advance. In the
mi