as a whole, I
behold within it the active forces of life at work from the first. The
human intellect is no passive instrument, merely being filled by the
reception of faith, but a living organism, feeling a void in it for
faith when it has it not, and eagerly receiving and digesting it when it
comes. Forthwith it begins a process of development, explaining,
proving, modifying, enlarging, in all the various ways that suit the
multiplicity of man's nature. This process is observable in all times
and places, as the inevitable outcome of civilization. Barbarous nations
do not reason, but receive their religion as an outer cloak; as they
stagnate in all things else, so also in their creeds. Witness the Turks.
Intellectually, morally, religiously, they are the same as they were six
hundred years ago; and unless overthrown from the outside, they will
probably so remain to the end of time. No heresy has arisen amongst
them; no progress in civilization is to be marked; no change even in
decline; for power is relative, and the Moslem empire is weak now only
in comparison with the vigorous young empires of the West. But the
action of civilization is different. Under its influence States are in
constant movement, changing from day to day. The change may be good in
this detail, and bad in that; it may on the whole be for the good, or it
may on the whole be for evil. But what I say is the distinct mark of
civilization, as contrasted with barbarism, is emphatically and simply
change; change, in the natural order, is its law. For the intellect is
alive and vigorous, seizing on everything within its scope, shaping it
by its individual bent, and, hemmed as it is by walls of sense,
naturally rushing into error on every side. These are effects of private
judgment, and they are not less to be seen in the whole Catholic world,
from its beginning until, to-day, than anywhere else; but Catholics have
had a safeguard against the rebellious and suicidal excesses of fallen
reason, and this safeguard is the infallibility of the Church.

The meaning and scope of that infallibility has been given in words
fitter than mine. Viewing the nature of things on the whole, and then
taking it for granted that God has made a revelation, and intended it to
be set up and maintained alongside of and within a civilization anxious
to get rid of it, what more reasonable to be expected than that an
infallible abiding authority should be His human instrument. It is a