a powerful sketch of the case of Lamennais, he shows how the extreme assertion of unlimited authority easily led by reaction to total loss of faith; and how the disparagement of human reason in the supposed interests of authority really undermines the foundation upon which all things human—that authority itself included—must necessarily rest. On the other side he draws a striking picture of the general attitude of Roman authority toward modern thought. He says, that in dealing with literature—
"the paramount consideration of Rome had been the fear of scandal. Historical investigations, if they offered perilous occasion to unprepared and unstable minds, were suppressed"—upon which he remarks that "the true limits of legitimate authority are one thing, and the area which authority may find it expedient to attempt to occupy, is another. The interests of the Church are not necessarily identical with those of the ecclesiastical government. One of the great instruments for preventing historical scrutiny had long been the Index of Prohibited Books, which was accordingly directed, not against falsehood only, but particularly against certain departments of truth. Through it an effort had been made to keep the knowledge of ecclesiastical history from the faithful, and to give currency to a fabulous and fictitious picture of the progress and action of the Church. The means would have been found quite inadequate to the end, if it had not been for the fact that, while society was absorbed by controversy, knowledge was only valued so far as it served a controversial purpose. Every party in those days virtually had its own prohibitive Index, to brand all inconvenient truths with the note of falsehood. No party cared for knowledge that could not be made available for argument."
This suppression of uncongenial fact was less possible in the German Universities, where the Roman Catholic
