the energies of most of the acutest minds in Europe, had to disappear, and the power of the Church to be enfeebled, before the civilisation of Europe could advance.
The further introduction of Greek literature, when the Turks drove the Greeks from Constantinople, the invention of printing, the expansion of commerce and navigation, and the weakening of Church-authority by the Reformation, opened the modern phase of the development of European civilisation. It is only for the last of these changes that a section of the clergy may plausibly claim our gratitude, and even here we must make reserves. The share of the laity in the Reformation was greater than the share of the clergy, and the aim of the Reformed clergy was by no means to free and stimulate the intelligence of Europe. They frowned on lay culture, and burned their opponents, as inhumanly as the Roman priests did. It was not until the growth of sects had further enfeebled ecclesiastical authority, and a large body of lay scholars had arisen, that Europe became civilised, even in a generous sense of the word. Then science and philosophy and history grew to the proportions which distinguish “modern times,” and a resolute social and humanitarian movement began to remove those appalling injustices of the industrial and political order which the clergy had witnessed in silence for more than a thousand years.
I repeat that this is not an eccentric view of
