y by united action that
we can prevail. The bravest mob of independent fighters has little
chance against a handful of disciplined soldiers, and the Church is
perfectly logical in seeing her chief danger in the Encyclopaedia's
systematised marshalling of scattered truths. As long as the attacks on
her authority were isolated, and as it were sporadic, she had little to
fear even from the assaults of genius; but the most ordinary intellect
may find a use and become a power in the ranks of an organised
opposition. Seneca tells us the slaves in ancient Rome were at one time
so numerous that the government prohibited their wearing a distinctive
dress lest they should learn their strength and discover that the city
was in their power; and the Church knows that when the countless spirits
she has enslaved without subduing have once learned their number and
efficiency they will hold her doctrines at their mercy.--The Church
again," he continued, "has proved her astuteness in making faith the
gift of grace and not the result of reason. By so doing she placed
herself in a position which was well-nigh impregnable till the school of
Newton substituted observation for intuition and his followers showed
with increasing clearness the inability of the human mind to apprehend
anything outside the range of experience. The ultimate claim of the
Church rests on the hypothesis of an intuitive faculty in man. Disprove
the existence of this faculty, and reason must remain the supreme test
of truth. Against reason the fabric of theological doctrine cannot long
hold out, and the Church's doctrinal authority once shaken, men will no
longer fear to test by ordinary rules the practical results of her
teaching. We have not joined the great army of truth to waste our time
in vain disputations over metaphysical subtleties. Our aim is, by
freeing the mind of man from superstition to relieve him from the
practical abuses it entails. As it is impossible to examine any fiscal
or industrial problem without discovering that the chief obstacle to
improvement lies in the Church's countless privileges and exemptions, so
in every department of human activity we find some inveterate wrong
taking shelter under the claim of a divinely-revealed authority. This
claim demolished, the stagnant current of human progress will soon burst
its barriers and set with a mighty rush toward the wide ocean of truth
and freedom..."

That general belief in the perfectibility of ma