5 68
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
cally oblivious of applied history. The broad and suffi- cient realm of fact is divided by a scientific frontier from the outer \vorld of interested argument. Beyond the frontier he has no cognisance, and neither aspires to in- flame passions nor to compose the great eirenikon. Those who approach \vith love or hatred are to go empty away; if indeed he does not try by turns to fill them both. He seeks his object not by standing aloof, as if the name that perplexed Polyphemus \vas the proper name for historiarn;, but by running successively on opposing lines. He con- ceives that civilised Europe owes its preservation to the radiant centre of religious po\ver" at Rome, and is grateful to Innocent II I. for the vigour \vith \vhich he recognised that force was the only cure for the pestiferous opinions of misguided zealots. One of his authorities is the in- quisitor Bernardus Guidonis, and there is no writer \vhÇ)m, in various shapes, he quotes so often. But when Guidonis says that Dolcino and Margarita suffered þer j'uditiu1n ecclesie, Mr. Lea is careful to vindicate the clergy from the blame of their sufferings. From a distinction \vhich he dra\vs between despotism and its abuse, and from a phrase, disparaging to elections, about rivers that cannot rise above the level of their source, it \vould appear that Mr. Lea is not under com- pulsion to that rigid liberalism which, by repressing the time-test and applying the main rules of morality all round, converts history into a frightful monument of sin. Yet, in the wake of passages \vhich push the praises of authority to the verge of irony, dire denunciations follow. When the author looks back upon his labours, he discerns cC a scene of almost unrelieved blackness." He avers that "the deliberate burning alive of a human being simply for difference of belief, is an atrocity," and speaks of a " fiendish legislation," "an infernal curiosity," a " seemingly causeless ferocity \vhich appears to persecute for the mere pleasure of persecuting." The Inquisition is "energetic only in evil"; it is "a standing mockery of justice, per- haps the most iniquitous that the arbitrary cruelty of man has ever devised."
