tion is only an intermediate stage; and,
as the intellectual decomposition of Protestantism keeps going on, that
transitional condition will lead to a higher and nobler state--the hope
of philosophy in all past ages of the world--a social state in which
there shall be unfettered freedom for thought. Toleration, except
when extorted by fear, can only come from those who are capable of
entertaining and respecting other opinions than their own. It can
therefore only come from philosophy. History teaches us only too plainly
that fanaticism is stimulated by religion, and neutralized or eradicated
by philosophy.

TOLERATION. The avowed object of the Reformation was, to remove from
Christianity the pagan ideas and pagan rites engrafted upon it by
Constantine and his successors, in their attempt to reconcile the Roman
Empire to it. The Protestants designed to bring it back to its primitive
purity; and hence, while restoring the ancient doctrines, they cast out
of it all such practices as the adoration of the Virgin Mary and
the invocation of saints. The Virgin Mary, we are assured by the
Evangelists, had accepted the duties of married life, and borne to her
husband several children. In the prevailing idolatry, she had ceased to
be regarded as the carpenter's wife; she had become the queen of heaven,
and the mother of God.

DA VINCI. The science of the Arabians followed the invading track of
their literature, which had come into Christendom by two routes--the
south of France, and Sicily. Favored by the exile of the popes to
Avignon, and by the Great Schism, it made good its foothold in Upper
Italy. The Aristotelian or Inductive philosophy, clad in the Saracenic
costume that Averroes had given it, made many secret and not a few open
friends. It found many minds eager to receive and able to appreciate
it. Among these were Leonardo da Vinci, who proclaimed the fundamental
principle that experiment and observation are the only reliable
foundations of reasoning in science, that experiment is the only
trustworthy interpreter of Nature, and is essential to the ascertainment
of laws. He showed that the action of two perpendicular forces upon a
point is the same as that denoted by the diagonal of a rectangle, of
which they represent the sides. From this the passage to the proposition
of oblique forces was very easy. This proposition was rediscovered by
Stevinus, a century later, and applied by him to the explanation of the
mechanical p