times. Sceptical arguments in favour of moderation about religion are the only conclusive ones.

If it should be supposed that moderation would render controversy uninteresting or ineffective, it should be remembered that there is a confusion in common thought and language between brutality and efficiency. There is a notion that the severest, the most effectual contest is that in which the greatest amount of bodily injury is done by the side which wins to the side which loses; but this is not the case. When you want a fair and full trial of strength, elaborate precautions are taken to make the test real and to let the best man win. If prizefighters were allowed to give foul blows and hit or kick a man when he is down, they would hurt each other much more than they do, but their relative strength and endurance would be far less effectually tested. So with religions; what is wanted is not peace, but fair play.

De Maistre somewhere says that the persecution which the Church had suffered from the syllogism was infinitely worse than all that racks and crosses could inflict; and the remark, though odd, is perfectly true. Modern religious struggles -conducted by discussion, by legislation, by social intolerance—are to the religious persecutions of earlier times what modern war is to ancient war. Ancient war meant to the defeated at best death, at worst slavery, exile, and personal degradation. Modern war is far more effective, though the pro

cedure is infinitely less brutal and degrading. Either the German or the French army in 1870-1 would have crushed the hordes which fought at Châlons or Tours as a steam-engine cracks a nut. The French armies were just as effectually defeated and disabled by the Germans as if the prisoners had been sold for slaves.

Civil war,

It is the same with controversy. legal persecution, the Inquisition, with all their train of horrors, form a far less searching and effective conflict than that intellectual warfare from which no institution, no family, no individual man is free when discussion is free from legal punishment. Argument, ridicule, the expression of contempt for cherished feelings, the exposure of cherished fallacies, chilled or wounded affection, injury to prospects public or private, have their terrors as well as more material weapons and more definite wounds. The result of such a warfare is that the weaker opinion —the less robust and deeply seated feeling—is rooted out to the last fibre, the place where it grew being seared as with a hot iron; whereas the prison, the stake, and the sword only strike it down, and leave it to grow again in better circumstances. A blow bruises, and discolours for a time. Nitrate of silver does not bruise, but it changes the colour of the whole body for its whole life. It is impossible to draw any definite line at which the sensation of pressure becomes painful. It may be a touch just It may inflict the

sufficient to attract attention.

most agonising pain in many different ways. It is the same with respect to the pain occasioned by treating a man's opinions as false. The disagreement may be pleasant, it may be of trifling importance, it may cause intense pain, and this may be of many different kinds, the immediate causes of which are very various. Every mode of differing from a man which causes him pain infringes his liberty of thought to some extent. It makes it artificially painful for him to think in a certain way, and so violates Mr. Mill's canon about liberty, unless it is done for self-protection, which is seldom the case. Mr. Mill's doctrines about liberty of opinion and discussion appear to me to be a kind of Quakerism. They are like teaching that all revenge whatever, even in its mildest form, is wrong, because revenge carried to an extreme is destructive of society.

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CHAPTER III.

ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWER.

In the last chapter I more than once had to refer to the question of the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal power, or the spiritual and temporal order. It plays so large a part in discussions on this subject, that it will be worth while to examine it with some degree of attention.

I think it would not be unfair to state the common view upon the subject somewhat as follows:Life may be divided be divided into two provinces, the temporal and the spiritual. In the temporal province are included all common affairs-war, commerce, inheritance; all that relates to a man's body and goods. Thought, feeling, opinion, religion, and the like form the spiritual province. These two provinces have usually been placed under separate governments. Kings, parliaments, lawyers, soldiers bear rule in the one; some sort of priests bear rule in the other. The recognition of this distinction and the practice of attaching great importance to it is one

of the curious bonds of union between Positivists and Roman Catholics. It is also one of the favourite commonplaces of a large number of French political writers, and in particular it is the very foundation of the theories of Liberal Catholics, of those who try to reconcile the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church with modern notions about liberty.

If I understand them rightly, the Ultramontane party do not adopt this view, but take what to me at least appears a far more rational one. It might, I think, be expressed as follows:-The spiritual and temporal power differ not in the province which they rule, but in the sanctions by which they rule it. Spiritual power means the power of the keys; power to open and shut; power in heaven, purgatory, and hell; possibly in some cases power to interfere in a supernatural manner with the common course of nature. Temporal power means power to deal with life and limb, goods, liberty, and reputation-all the hopes and fears of this visible world. Each of these may be so used as to affect both opinions and actions. A man may be excommunicated or may be imprisoned, either for theft or for heresy. The two powers exercise a concurrent jurisdiction over men's conduct. In a healthy state of things they ought to act in the same direction. In an unhealthy state of things, they will come into collision, and when they do so the stronger of the two forces will overcome the other. They proceed to say that the penalties which the spiritual