re liberal religious and political
institutions.

But there remain further parallelisms to which we have not yet adverted:
that, namely, between the processes by which these respective changes
have been wrought out; and that between the several states of
heterogeneous opinion to which they have led. Some centuries ago there
was uniformity of belief--religious, political, and educational. All men
were Romanists, all were Monarchists, all were disciples of Aristotle;
and no one thought of calling in question that grammar-school routine
under which all were brought up. The same agency has in each case
replaced this uniformity by a constantly-increasing diversity. That
tendency towards assertion of the individuality, which, after
contributing to produce the great Protestant movement, has since gone on
to produce an ever-increasing number of sects--that tendency which
initiated political parties, and out of the two primary ones has, in
these modern days, evolved a multiplicity to which every year adds--that
tendency which led to the Baconian rebellion against the schools, and
has since originated here and abroad, sundry new systems of thought--is
a tendency which, in education also, has caused divisions and the
accumulation of methods. As external consequences of the same internal
change, these processes have necessarily been more or less simultaneous.
The decline of authority, whether papal, philosophic, kingly, or
tutorial, is essentially one phenomenon; in each of its aspects a
leaning towards free action is seen alike in the working out of the
change itself, and in the new forms of theory and practice to which the
change has given birth.

While many will regret this multiplication of schemes of juvenile
culture, the catholic observer will discern in it a means of ensuring
the final establishment of a rational system. Whatever may be thought of
theological dissent, it is clear that dissent in education results in
facilitating inquiry by the division in labour. Were we in possession of
the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial;
but the true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous
independent seekers carrying out their researches in different
directions, constitute a better agency for finding it than any that
could be devised. Each of them struck by some new thought which probably
contains more or less of basis in facts--each of them zealous on behalf
of his plan, fertile in expedient