CHAPTER XII
Before proceeding to summarise the information regarding monastic life which is dispersed through the preceding chapters, and to make it the basis of an opinion, it will be well to supplement and enlarge it as much as possible. For, however interesting the facts may be in themselves, they would throw little light on the general question of monasticism if it could be thought that they were merely illustrative of the condition of one particular order, and still less if they were said to be the outcome of the abnormal circumstances in which one small branch of that order chances to find itself. Nothing is more fatal to the solidity of an opinion than the narrowness of its empirical basis; and no fault is more frequently committed by English writers on the Church of Rome than that of hasty and undue generalisation. The Roman Church in England is unimportant; it is neither more nor less than a large and active mission in an ‘heretical’ land. Hence many writers fail to correct the insularity of their experience, and thus have not a due sense of the real proportions of sects
