Christianity exists in the world as a law of Love and of Truth. It is love and truth that inspire those two factors of modern civilization—science and democracy. That we may make it Christian we have welcomed them, seeking to make them our own, without reserve, without fear, without excessive concern for the past.
But science and democracy, if they are to move forward securely, must submit to the control of criticism which is based, not on the force of authority, but on the value of things objectively established. From this point of view, their acceptance and the task of assimilating them demand of the Church many sacrifices. We know well how the Church, succeeding in Rome to the world-wide dominion which the Emperors abandoned to it, inheriting their authority and fusing it with that of the new races, inaugurated in the Pontificate an authority of its own by which it might reign supreme over all civil powers,
