11
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Ben B. Lindsey
 
 TWO AND TWO 
 MAKE FOUR
 
 TWO AND TWO 
 MAKE FOUR 
 
 BY 
 
 BIRD S. COLER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FRANK D. BEATTYS AND COMPANY 
 1912
 
 Copyright, 1912, by 
 BIRD S. COLER 
 
 THE DEVINNE PRESS
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 I Church and State 3 
 
 II What Things are of Caesar 15 
 
 III The Birth of the Papal State 39 
 
 IV The Middle Ages 60 
 
 V Gregory the "Politician" 82 
 
 VI Two French Philips 103 
 
 VII The Ghost of a Spanish King 125 
 
 VIII The Daggers that were not Blessed . . .153 
 
 IX The Purpose of the School 178 
 
 X Where They Blew the Light Out . ... 202 
 
 XI Socialism 216 
 
 XII The Nation under God 232
 
 PREFACE 
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 HOW did man -learn that two and two make 
 four? Did he discover it, or was he told? It 
 is an interesting question. Some very cele- 
 brated scientific students would insist upon a scheme 
 of life which identifies this knowledge that two and 
 two make four with a certain agitation of the con- 
 stituent atoms of the brain. These scientific students 
 are for the most part dead, now, it may be worthy of 
 note, and the celebrated scientists of the present day, 
 for the most part, have a different idea of the case. 
 
 But plain men can very well leave this question to 
 warring scientific schools. We know that two and 
 two make four. We have a constitutional difficulty in 
 assenting to any statement which depends upon the 
 supposition that two and two make five. In our busi- 
 ness a five-dollar obligation will not be satisfied with 
 a two-and-two settlement. This book is the applica- 
 tion of this very primitive logical principle to history 
 and science. It is the use, in the examination of his- 
 torical statements and scientific teachings, of the com- 
 mon sense that God has given us. 
 
 When we want a house built we hire a good builder, 
 but we do not accept the house, if it is a bad house, 
 
 [vii]
 
 PREFACE 
 
 just because the builder was a good builder. Neither 
 should we accept a historian's conclusions simply on 
 the ground that he is reputed to be a good historian, 
 nor a scientist's conclusions simply on the ground 
 that he is a good scientist. "Your researches may 
 have been extensive," we may say to both of them, 
 "but this matter of two and two is not a matter to be 
 upset. We do not know about those things you have 
 found under the microscope, Mr. Scientist, or those 
 things written on ancient parchments, Mr. Historian, 
 but we know that two and two make four." 
 
 The reader who follows me through these pages 
 will find some questions that are in the realm of his- 
 tory, some that are in the realm of sociology, some 
 that are in the realm of philosophy. He will find them 
 just as I found them in my study of the causes of an 
 obvious and unpleasant fact. The public schools in 
 this country are not making for righteousness. There 
 isn't an educator of any note in this country who 
 hasn't admitted this. The metropolis of this country 
 is thug-ridden. It has developed a new type of crimi- 
 nal, a conscienceless, fearless young brute who mur- 
 ders for hire, and recognizes no moral accountability 
 and no social obligation. "Gunmen" and murder- 
 procurers have had their activities exposed in court. 
 There is a similar state of affairs in Paris. Probably 
 it is a little worse there. This is "two." In Paris and 
 in New York there are godless public schools. In
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Paris atheism is a little more bold, a little more posi- 
 tive,, than in New York. This is also "two." 
 
 The relationship of the godless school to the grow- 
 ing viciousness among our people did not come to me 
 as a religious man. As a practical man, a public offi- 
 cer administering a municipal office, I was called upon 
 by my official duties to pass upon the expenditures of 
 public money for charitable purposes. I found, as a 
 matter of cold fact, that the mortality rate in state in- 
 stitutions for the care of the weak and helpless was 
 terribly high, while in similar institutions under the 
 care of religious bodies it was quite low. This inter- 
 ested me, and an inquiry resulted, which revealed the 
 truth that in the care of the helpless those who have 
 the service of God at heart are more efficient than 
 those who are mere servants of the state. If this were 
 true of foundling-asylums, why not of schools? Quite 
 by accident the obvious relationship between the god- 
 lessness of the public school and the poor moral and 
 mental character of its products forced itself on my 
 attention. The next step was to look for the cause of 
 the godlessness of the public school, and by the two- 
 and-two method I found this quite clearly in view. It 
 was a prejudice which came from two directions. Fol- 
 lowing it to its source, I found it ultimately political 
 in both directions, although from one it appeared in 
 the disguise of a religious and from the other in 
 the disguise of a philosophical prejudice. The preju-
 
 PREFACE 
 
 dice from the second direction was assuming a larger 
 importance because of the pseudo-philosophy back of 
 the political movement that embraced and developed 
 it. A study of this philosophy by the two-and-two 
 method discovered the vice at the heart of it. Its 
 operations in France furnished concrete examples. 
 There it had boldly attacked all religion. There and 
 here it had common characteristics ; there and here it 
 sneered at morality, bitterly assailed religion, and 
 sought to gain converts by divorcing religion from 
 education. That this is not an accidental but an 
 essential part of the movement is apparent. John 
 Spargo, American Socialist writer, in his "Socialism," 
 says: 
 
 "Whether the Socialist regime could tolerate the 
 existence of elementary schools other than its own. 
 such as privately conducted kindergartens and 
 schools, religious schools, and so on, is questionable. 
 Probably not. It would probably not content itself 
 with refusing to permit religious doctrines or ideas to 
 be taught in its schools, but would go further, and, as 
 the natural protector of the child, guard its independ- 
 ence of thought in later life as far as possible by for- 
 bidding religious teaching of any kind in schools for 
 children up to a certain age. Beyond that age, re- 
 ligious education, in all other than the public schools, 
 would be freely permitted. This restriction of re- 
 ligious education to the years of judgment and dis-
 
 PREFACE 
 
 cretion implies no hostility to religion on the part of 
 the state, but neutrality. Not the least important of 
 the rights of the child is the right to be protected 
 from influences which bias the mind and destroy the 
 possibilities of independent judgment in later life, or 
 make it attainable only as a result of bitter, needless, 
 tragic expression." 
 
 The result is an increase in illiteracy in France, and 
 a deterioration in the quality of education here, con- 
 sidering the matter from a secular standpoint ; and a 
 riot of murder and lawlessness in Paris and New 
 York, considering the moral aspect. In France and 
 here an emphasis upon eugenics is characteristic of 
 the movement. The beloved Darwinian theory of 
 "natural selection" is to be abandoned for a theory of 
 artificial selection. The result in France is an alarm- 
 ing fall in the birth-rate. Here it has not had time to 
 work out yet, but there are signs. The two-and-two 
 method would indicate a remarkable resemblance in 
 results between eugenics and what Colonel Roosevelt 
 calls "race suicide." I have heard of the marvellous 
 subtlety of the Jesuits, but they could, if they were all 
 their enemies conceive them to be, or accuse them of 
 being or having been, evolve no more efficacious 
 scheme for getting rid of Protestantism than the 
 preaching of eugenics among non-Catholics. A cen- 
 tury and a half of eugenics would leave the Catholics 
 in possession of the earth. 
 
 Cxi]
 
 PREFACE 
 
 And this brings me to the other aspect of this prej- 
 udice. Its study, by the two-and-two method, has 
 brought me face to face with a great church and the 
 facts of its history. They were of intense interest to 
 me because they were new to me. From conventional 
 history I had acquired the conventional Protestant 
 view of this church and its relations to civilization. 
 The two-and-two method gave me a new view-point. 
 I found that this church had been a defender of civil- 
 ization in the past, and was the defender of civilization 
 to-day. That was not conventional history, but it was 
 the truth, and as the truth I set it down. 
 
 I have said that a century and a half of eugenics 
 would leave the Catholic Church alone in the field. A 
 century and a half of the godless school would leave 
 the same church in complete possession of Christian- 
 ity; and such a school as Spargo says will be compul- 
 sory under Socialism would put that church to the 
 necessity, under which the early fathers labored, of re- 
 sorting again to the catacombs in order to protect the 
 faith from a hostile world. I have little respect for the 
 strength of faith of those members of my own creed 
 who fear the triumph of another church as a result of 
 religious teaching in the schools; and I have less re- 
 spect for their judgment, for it is plain to me that 
 Catholicism can stand up against a state-supported 
 educational system from which God is excluded, and 
 equally plain that Protestantism cannot, and that the
 
 PREFACE 
 
 result of the public policy so many Protestants now 
 blindly support will be a complete extinction of their 
 branch of Christianity and a division of the world of 
 opinion between Catholicism on the one hand and 
 atheism on the other. 
 
 C* M 
 Kill]
 
 TWO AND TWO 
 MAKE FOUR
 
 TWO AND TWO 
 MAKE FOUR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 IF you stand before a steam-boiler you will see a 
 small glass tube containing some water. The 
 water in the tube rises and falls. This is a gauge 
 the proportion of the water in the tube to the ca- 
 pacity of the tube is always the proportion of the 
 water in the boiler to the capacity of the boiler. You 
 cannot see the water in the boiler, but this is an un- 
 failing index, this gauge; never higher will the water 
 rise, visible, in the tube of glass, than it rises, invisible, 
 in the boiler. 
 
 What the glass tube is to the boiler, such is the 
 thing we call the government to the mass of our peo- 
 ple. It is one of the gauges of our national morality, 
 one of the many indices by which we may know what 
 is the average of morals in our people. There are 
 other indices commercial life is one. Never will gov- 
 ernment rise higher morally, nor will business moral- 
 ity make a higher mark, than the average morality 
 that we cannot see, nor otherwise measure, in this 
 huge mass of ninety million human beings. The law 
 of balance is perfect it is what we call the law of
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 averages, the law of compensating forces, the law of 
 the conservation of energy, the law- of gravity, the law 
 of harmonics. We have many names for it one, 
 which is comprehensive, is the Eternal Justice of God. 
 That is at the heart of it; that is why all these laws 
 that we meet in physics, in music, in chemistry, in 
 astronomy, in anything whatsoever, are in reality the 
 same law. Truth is true universally. 
 
 It is my idea, then and not mine alone but that of 
 many that a good citizen must be first a good man. 
 I do not mean a perfect man, any more than I mean a 
 perfect citizen ; human nature being what it is, we can 
 hope for neither. But I do mean a man with an 
 impulse in the right direction and the grace to be 
 ashamed of what things wrong he may do: with a 
 developed conscience. 
 
 I cannot conceive of a bad man being a good citizen. 
 By a bad man I mean, not a man who sins, even 
 though his sins be grave, but a man whose impulse is 
 toward sinning, whose conscience lies atrophied and 
 tongueless in his breast, who cannot be said to have 
 fallen before temptation because he never has stood 
 up before temptation. 
 
 It has been the experience of the human race that 
 mere intellectual culture does not vivify a conscience. 
 It must be inspired breathed into. And only God 
 can breathe life into it, as God only can breathe life 
 into anything that lives. Behind morals, therefore, 
 there must be inspiration. Behind the good man 
 there must be the idea of God. 
 
 It has been the expressed opinion of the most, and 
 the best, educators, and students of education, that
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 this thought of God should be instilled into the con- 
 sciousness of youth; that religious education should 
 be mingled with secular education, the one to animate 
 and make beneficial the other. So many are the stu- 
 dents of life who have declared non-religious educa- 
 tion a thing dangerous to the state that I shall not 
 name them here; enough of them for the purpose I 
 shall name elsewhere. 
 
 In this country we have laws making education 
 compulsory because we believe, and the fathers of the 
 Republic believed, that it is good for the state that all 
 its rulers should be intelligent. The compulsion lies 
 not only on the child to receive, but the parent to 
 furnish, and not only the parent but all adults; it 
 being the theory that an educated people is a state 
 benefit shared in by all the citizens. The state makes 
 itself the agent of the citizens in this matter, taking 
 from them a part of their income, as John Stuart Mill 
 points out, and, with the fund thus obtained, building 
 school-houses and hiring professional teachers. 
 
 The system, as it exists at present, is by no means 
 what was planned at the outset. The planning was 
 vague and meagre, sufficient unto the day and place ; 
 what we now have is something that has been shaped 
 and fashioned by developments of the intervening 
 years which were not thought of in the beginning. 
 One idea with regard to it, which had to do with other 
 things as well, found a place in our fundamental law, 
 and by a strange misconception, not of its purpose but 
 of its operation, it has come to operate inversely. The 
 idea was that public funds should not be used by one 
 creed, or religious denomination, to the prejudice of
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 any other; that there should be no discrimination 
 against any religion. Upon the perfectly sound 
 theory that a discrimination in favor of any religion 
 would be a discrimination against all other religions, 
 we have done a most unsound thing ; that is, we have 
 laid down an iron bar of discrimination against all 
 religion. The engine that we built to go has gone, but 
 instead of going forward it has gone backward. Our 
 state, that was not to discriminate against any man's 
 belief in God, has crushed out of its school system all 
 belief in God. 
 
 Our effort to be just was until recent years univer- 
 sally honest, and is still for the most part honest; and 
 this outcome is quite unexpected and perplexing. 
 Men at the head of our educational institutions who 
 have no desire for anything like this, who feel the evil 
 of it, for some years now have been puzzling their 
 brains in an effort to think some way out. They have 
 advanced many ideas : first, agreement of Protestant 
 sects upon form of religion to be taught; then agree- 
 ment of Protestant and Catholic divisions of Chris- 
 tianity; still later, agreement of Jewish and Christian 
 leaders. That has been going on for some years, but 
 instead of getting better the thing gets worse. We 
 are so many denominations; naturally, there can be 
 no agreement. Every step we take leads away from 
 the ideal, every change is one in the direction of an 
 absolute divorce of religion from education. How is 
 this to work out? Some men are trying to substitute 
 for the old religious inspiration something that will 
 check the spread of immorality. It is to be ethical 
 training they are going to teach ethics. But Dr. 
 
 C6]
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Andrew S. Draper, State Commissioner of Education 
 in New York, remarks dubiously, "If it is difficult to 
 separate religion from morals, it is dangerous to sepa- 
 rate ethics from morals." Dr. Draper is struggling 
 with this problem from his own standpoint What 
 are we going to do to make our present public-school 
 system efficacious morally? In his Religion, Morals, 
 Ethics, and the School, published by the New York 
 State Education Department in 191 1, he speaks of the 
 situation in France, where they have gone the full 
 length of the formula. Read what he has to say and 
 make what you can of it. Is it good? Is it bad? It is 
 hard to tell just what Dr. Draper's conclusion is on 
 the whole question. But it cannot be wholly good, 
 for he finds some "trouble" about it. "Political and 
 religious freedom have been enlarging their opportu- 
 nities under the French Republic," Dr. Draper says. 
 "In doing so they have been seeking education that is 
 not limited by the dogmatic teaching of a church. 
 And thus they have been pulling down a church with- 
 out reforming it or putting another in its place. It is 
 to be feared that this has been destroying faith alto- 
 gether. Instruction about the moral virtues without 
 faith and feeling may result in the superficial polite- 
 ness which is perhaps a little better than savagery, 
 more than in the sound character that is infinitely bet- 
 ter than either." 
 
 This is Dr. Draper's opinion with regard to it. 
 There are others who say baldly that it has resulted in 
 the savagery itself; we shall hear them later. 
 
 But what concerns us now is that our machinery 
 isn't working right; it isn't doing the thing we builded 
 
 C73
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 it to do. And it won't ever do it ; it will always get 
 worse and worse; and the more swiftly because there 
 is a new force at work which this machinery, working 
 backward, suits in every rod and wheel. What we in- 
 tended as a device for insuring religious liberty, 
 Socialism finds admirably adapted to its work of 
 crushing religion out of existence altogether, in order 
 that its political power shall grow out of its material- 
 istic philosophy. Under the skilful operation of its 
 Intellectuals our public-school system is producing a 
 generation of atheists. 
 
 Now comes the question, Are we wedded to the 
 machine or the ideal? Are we going to give each 
 church, as each man, equal opportunity to grow and 
 function, or are we going to make religion and indi- 
 vidual life mere state functions? 
 
 Some of our churches, seeing the trend of all this, 
 have taken steps of their own. The Roman Catholic 
 Church cannot longer see its children attending a god- 
 less public school, and it has built up its immense sys- 
 tem of parochial schools. The Lutheran Church is 
 doing the same thing in the Middle West ; the Hebrew 
 congregations are doing it more or less extensively; 
 other churches are doing it, here and there. All these 
 schools, furnishing secular education of as good a 
 quality, and often of better quality than the state fur- 
 nishes, are supported by private contributions. The 
 communicants of these churches have voluntarily as- 
 sumed a burden rather than risk the souls of their 
 little ones. All are taxed for the public schools, and 
 they are thus compelled to pay for a system of educa- 
 tion which they believe to be bad for the children who
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 receive it and bad for the state that furnishes it, as 
 well as the cost of the schools they themselves main- 
 tain. The believer in God and democracy is saying 
 to himself, "This American Republic, which I love 
 and would preserve, is taking a part of my income to 
 build up a huge campaign fund for a Politico-Philo- 
 sophical Party that hates it and would destroy it. Is 
 it right?" 
 
 It isn't right. It is in every aspect altogether 
 wrong. And what is more, the way to stop it is sim- 
 ple and obviously just. It is proposed to make the 
 education of each child, by whomsoever, the unit 
 basis for the expenditure of funds raised for school 
 purposes. It is proposed that if a church furnish edu- 
 cation sufficient to enable a child to pass a state 
 examination, then the state shall pay that church for 
 the work done, whether that church be Protestant or 
 Catholic or Hebrew. It is proposed to pay any non- 
 religious organization in the same way and upon the 
 same basis. 
 
 In these payments nothing whatever is to be al- 
 lowed for sectarian or proselytizing instruction. It is 
 merely, in the cases of churches, the hiring of God- 
 believing forces to do .secular work. It is allowing the 
 plain people to send their children to authoritative 
 moral schools if they so desire, by the state devoting 
 that part of their wages to the secular support of such 
 schools which they themselves would naturally em- 
 ploy for that purpose were not their revenue reduced 
 by state school taxation. It is allowing the parents to 
 bring up their children in the faith of their fathers 
 without compelling them to submit to double school 
 
 [93
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 taxation as a penalty for so doing. It is allowing the 
 parents to direct the use, under proper supervision, of 
 that portion of their earnings which is taken from 
 them by the state for educational purposes. It is 
 compulsory state education under the direction of the 
 parent as to that part of it which is moral. It is not 
 the forcing upon the children, against the will of the 
 parents, of state socialistic theories by teachers of 
 faiths other than their own, or of no faith at all. 
 
 This is the simple plan proposed for rounding out 
 the education of the youth of this country ; for check- 
 ing the spread of materialism and its dominance in 
 our public-school system. It is the only plan possible, 
 it seems to me, in a state whose mighty population is 
 divided into many creeds. It is unjust to no denomi- 
 nation ; it would give light and latitude for the growth 
 of all denominations. 
 
 Why, then, if this plan be simple and just, and its 
 object on all hands admittedly desirable nay, more 
 than that, necessary to the continuing righteousness 
 and strength of the state why is it not put in opera- 
 tion? Why do not those who admit that there must 
 be some moral element in education, who admit that 
 it is not there now, and seek in many places for some 
 method of putting it there why do not they give 
 their support to this plan, demanding of legislatures 
 that it be enacted into statutes, telling of it to the 
 people until the people unanimously write it into the 
 fundamental laws that are made at first hand and are 
 called constitutions? What stands in its way? 
 
 A fear. A fear that was born of a prejudice. A fear 
 that is strong because it is not a fear of the ignorant
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 and the thoughtless, but one that holds in its grip 
 men of culture, men who have read widely and 
 thought deeply. It prevails among these, not because 
 they have failed to look at the facts of history, but 
 because they have accepted a false theory as to the 
 meaning of those facts. It is not ignorance, it is a 
 wrong point of view. And the point of view was the 
 prejudice out of which this fear was born. 
 
 It is easier to name this fear than it is to define it; 
 easier to tell how it is called than what it is. It is 
 called "Church and State." If I ask one man, "What 
 is 'Church and State'?", he will answer, "The Spanish 
 Inquisition," and it may strike me that it is called, not 
 the Church Inquisition, but the Spanish Inquisition. 
 If I ask another he will answer, "St. Bartholomew," 
 and I wonder if the Guises were the Church or the. 
 State. I shall get many answers : "Temporal Sover- 
 eignty," "The Holy Roman Empire," "The Concor- 
 dat," "The excommunication of Philip Augustus" : all 
 ancient and modern instances of supposed Roman 
 Catholic ecclesiastical interference with temporal gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 None answers me with a reference to the union of 
 Church and State under Henry VIII of England, or 
 the German Electors, or under the Czars of Russia. It 
 is quite plain that we do not think of these instances 
 when we talk of "Church and State"; what we do 
 think of is a Roman Catholic alliance with the govern- 
 ing power. What we think to-day is precisely what 
 was thought in England three hundred and many 
 years ago, when it was reported that the Jesuits were 
 welcome guests in the palaces of the Stuarts. The
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 viewpoint has come down to us unchanged, and it 
 never occurs to us to challenge it, to question whether 
 it was right or wrong, to consider whether even, if it 
 was right then, it may not be utterly wrong now ; for 
 there have been changes the state does not now 
 mean what it meant when Louis XIV truly expressed 
 the thought of monarchs in his "L'Etat, c'est moi !" 
 
 What does the state mean here and now? It 
 means you and me. It means the government of the 
 people by the people. It means something that can- 
 not become subservient to any creed until there is 
 among the people a substantially unanimous ad- 
 herence to that creed. 
 
 Even if the church desired it. And does the church 
 desire it? Has the church ever desired it? It was to 
 the political advantage of rulers and parties some cen- 
 turies ago to give to the people the viewpoint that the 
 church did desire it. It was to their political interest 
 to picture a church constantly intriguing, constantly 
 reaching out for temporal power; and writers of 
 popular history were influenced in most cases, I be- 
 lieve, honestly and unconsciously by the national or 
 party viewpoint, and read into history a meaning that 
 it did not have of itself. Historians of the present day 
 are beginning to recognize the error of that viewpoint, 
 the fallacy of the earlier inferences, and to clear up 
 some of the confusing conceptions that have so long 
 clouded the vision of the English-speaking world. 
 Without extenuating the cruelty of St. Bartholo- 
 mew's bloody massacre, they have recognized it as 
 the punishment by a prince of seditious subjects, a 
 movement that was base and bloody and political.
 
 CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 Without palliating the cruelty of the Spanish Inquisi- 
 tion, they have recognized it in its cruellest aspect as 
 a national rather than a church institution ; something 
 that belonged to the Spanish character, and, follow- 
 ing upon the freeing of Spain from the yoke of the 
 infidel, was inspired more by personal and political 
 vengeance than by attachment to the church. It was 
 as easy for a politician in those days, using religion as 
 a mask, to have an opponent's head cut off, as for a 
 political boss in later days to use his leadership to 
 deprive an enemy of his livelihood. 
 
 They are recognizing the political significance of 
 the status of the papacy prior to the Reformation; 
 they are understanding that the interdict laid upon 
 Philip of France was the punishment of an individual 
 for a moral wrong, and could have had no effect what- 
 soever were it not for the assent of the French mon- 
 arch's subjects to its justice. 
 
 We do not have to wait upon the historians, how- 
 ever, for a reasonable view of the meaning of history. 
 If we are furnished with the facts, we can form our 
 own conclusions; we may be startled to find them, 
 when formed, far away from those we have been ac- 
 customed to accept as they have been handed down to 
 us. The facts, or enough of them to serve as a founda- 
 tion for proper conclusions, are easily obtained. We 
 need not seek for them in manuscripts that are ob- 
 scure as to meaning and difficult of access; we can 
 accept those which have been familiar to students of 
 popular history for generations. And, if we wipe 
 away all religious prejudices, all preconceptions of 
 what kind soever, and simply let our conclusions grow 
 
 [133
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 from the facts before us, we shall find those conclu- 
 sions within striking distance of the truth. The 
 change of viewpoint will give us a new vision. The 
 whole picture changes as the facts of history re- 
 arrange themselves, falling into their proper places 
 and perspective, and we are astonished to find how 
 well balanced, how symmetrical the whole is.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CAESAR 
 
 IT would be impossible in such a work as this to 
 treat the relationship of church and state ex- 
 haustively, to follow the thread through the 
 tangled skein from the beginning up to the present 
 hour. And it is not necessary. If we test a stream at 
 various points and find the water sweet at every point 
 tested, we can very safely assume that all the stream is 
 sweet. If, therefore, wherever we touch the history 
 of the church we find an insistence upon a certain pol- 
 icy, we may as safely assume that that policy was 
 fundamental in the church institution, in accord with 
 the spirit of the Redeemer when he talked to the 
 apostles. That insistence we do find, running through 
 entire ecclesiastical history. It breaks out at the very 
 beginning in the answer of Christ to the Pharisees: 
 there are things that belong to Caesar and things that 
 belong to God. There is a distinction between the 
 church and the state. The state has to do with the 
 comfort and convenience of man in this world; the 
 church has to do with his eternal salvation. The state 
 concerns itself with man in his social organization, 
 the church with his individual soul. The law of the 
 state rests justly upon the welfare of the community ; 
 the laws of the church upon the mandates of the 
 Creator. 
 This was a novel idea in the Roman world when 
 
 CIS]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 first Christianity attracted the attention of men. In 
 all the pagan world religion had been a function of the 
 state. The gods of Rome were officially the gods of 
 Rome. Their priests were government officials, the 
 Roman emperor was pontifex maximus of the Roman 
 religion. It had always been so in the world the 
 Romans knew. Deities were national; the Greeks 
 had their gods, and the Carthaginians. It was the 
 political aspect that first made Christianity odious in 
 the eyes of the Roman rulers. The offense of the 
 Christians was that they were obstinately disobedient 
 to the laws and disrespectful to the gods of Rome. 
 Their sin was sedition. That was why they were 
 hated, that was why they were persecuted. 
 
 In the days of the early Christians, and for genera- 
 tions before that, there was no spirit of religious 
 bigotry among the Romans. The masters of the 
 world were broad in their worship ; they admitted the 
 gods of all nations to their temples. But they were 
 intensely patriotic. They were devoted to the Roman 
 laws. And the offense of the Christians was not that 
 they worshiped a strange God, but that they refused 
 to bend before the Roman law. As yet the people of 
 Rome could not understand the distinction between 
 church and state; they were all one in the Roman 
 mind. 
 
 It took centuries to get the new idea into the mind 
 of the public. Indeed, there is doubt as to whether 
 the work has yet been done. But the idea has been al- 
 ways in the church. It taught it to the Romans them- 
 selves, to the slave and the freeman, the beggar in the 
 market-place, the tradesman in the bazaar, the smith
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF C^ffiSAR 
 
 in his forge, the soldier in the field. That was why, 
 toward the end of the pagan dispensation, Roman 
 generals found Christians among the bravest and 
 most faithful of their officers and legionaries. The 
 soldiers of Rome were attracted by the high courage 
 of the Christians; in the spirit of men and maidens 
 who could die smiling for a faith there was something 
 akin to their own dauntless spirit. 
 
 Indeed, long before Constantine the Christian faith 
 had won its place in the world. Constantine plucked 
 the ripened fruit. That was the reason the Roman 
 world became Christian in his day ; that was the rea- 
 son that within a single generation a proscribed and 
 treasonable faith became the faith of the Roman gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 The fruit had been ripening for more than three 
 centuries. The pagan gods had become too numerous 
 to be respectable. The human heart knew the differ- 
 ence between good things and bad things: a proof 
 more conclusive than many of the premises of so- 
 called scientific philosophy that good and evil are facts. 
 Under the gay worship of Saturn and Bacchus, and 
 the libidinous devotion to Venus, there was among the 
 pagan peoples a strong moral sense that made it diffi- 
 cult to adore such divinities. Greek and Roman had 
 felt this : the Greek because his intellectual nature de- 
 manded virtue and justice in a god as a matter of 
 logic ; and the Roman because he was at heart a sober, 
 continent being. In other words, before the revela- 
 tion came to either, the mind of the Greek and the 
 heart of the Roman knew what a God was like. They 
 had pieced together, after a fashion, the necessary
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 attributes of divinity until they had the outline of the 
 Portrait 
 
 They had got beyond the stage at which philosophy 
 hails worldly happiness as the sum of good. In the 
 upward march their philosophy had accepted the 
 necessity of suffering and sacrifice; had grasped the 
 truth that indulgence cannot be ennobling. Our 
 Rationalists, and particularly our Socialistic Rational- 
 ists, are going in the other direction; their trend is 
 toward that barbarism from which the old philosophy 
 was then emerging to meet the Truth. 
 
 In the East humanity groped with speculative 
 hands for something solid in a fluid universe; some- 
 thing fixed in a world of motion; something stable in 
 a world of change; something that would endure 
 while all else was disintegrating. The mind of the 
 Roman, less given to speculative exercises, still sought 
 something which would make men strong in body and 
 in soul. The message of the Christian apostles met 
 the need of both; it fulfilled the Greek's speculative 
 yearning ; it gave the food for soul and body that the 
 Roman demanded. And it gave more than either de- 
 manded. For the first time these peoples felt the glow 
 of a religion that was on fire. For the first time a liv- 
 ing force that was not of the earth touched them and 
 stiffened their moral muscles for the work that was to 
 be done. They were lifted up and driven forward ; high 
 courage emboldened their hearts and a divine efful- 
 gence lighted their minds. First in the hidden places 
 underneath the ground, then in private houses, and at 
 last in their own temples, they gathered in increasing 
 numbers to worship Jesus Christ
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF C^SAR 
 
 With a little thought and a little knowledge we can 
 get the spirit of that time and understand the senti- 
 ment of the pagan world with regard to the new faith. 
 It was known that it had been born in Judea, and the 
 first impression was that it was Jewish in its entirety. 
 Then there was some confusion because the recog- 
 nized leaders of the Jewish world became the most bit- 
 ter of its foes and the most cruel of its persecutors. 
 It found its first converts Gentile converts where 
 the need of justice is always the greatest : among the 
 poor and the lowly. The essential democracy of it 
 made it strong among the common people ; it was an 
 inspiring thought for the despised laborer and the 
 down-trodden slave that in the eye of God he was 
 the equal of emperor or master. We are all the 
 children of God, of whom he loveth one not more than 
 another. 
 
 Among the great and influential it was still re- 
 garded as not only a foreign, but a vulgar, supersti- 
 tion. The philosophers of the time, the men whose 
 comments give us the light we have on the thought 
 and manners of their day, were amazed, as was Pliny, 
 at the obstinacy of the new teachers in their refusal to 
 obey the Roman law with regard to the worship of 
 the Roman gods. 
 
 But little by little the Roman world was being won, 
 trusted slaves were telling their virtuous masters the 
 story of Bethlehem and Calvary, scholars were begin- 
 ning to read the letters of Paul, soldiers were hearing 
 around the camp-fire of the devotion and the courage 
 of the new sectaries. By channels multifarious and 
 devious the new faith was working its way in the
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Roman body politic. The rude hostility of the mob, 
 and the philosophic contempt of the wealthy and the 
 educated, were gradually being overcome. Men great 
 in the sanctity of their lives had been leaders of the 
 church from the first, but soon they became great also 
 in other respects great in courage, great in mental as 
 well as moral strength. No longer the Christians 
 worshiped underground. They began to build 
 churches on the surface, and the churches were 
 crowded. Their organization followed the Roman 
 eagles over the world ; there was the church in Rome, 
 the church in Asia, the church in Alexandria. Their 
 priests preached the gospel of Christ to the veteran 
 warriors who held the Caledonian wall in far-off 
 Britain, as well as to those who faced the Parthians in 
 the East and those others who watched the Germanic 
 barbarians in the long marches beyond the Rhine. 
 Great orators spoke from the Christian pulpits and 
 marched boldly into the courts of the Caesars to plead 
 the church's cause to the emperors themselves. The 
 cry of the mob was no longer, "To the lions!" "God 
 and the Mother of God !" became a well-known street 
 cry in Rome and the Roman dependencies. Persecu- 
 tions were periodical, not constant; in the periods of 
 non-molestation the church developed its organiza- 
 tion and builded its great temples. Half the popula- 
 tion of Alexandria filled the streets in protest against 
 the persecution of their bishop. 
 
 It has long been a matter of controversy as to 
 whether the conversion of Constantine was a real con- 
 version, or merely the far-sighted move of a consum- 
 mate politician. We Protestants have been wont to
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CESAR 
 
 upbraid our Catholic brethren for the honor in which 
 they have held the name of Constantine. It has been 
 charged that his glorification by the church was due 
 very largely to the material benefits he conferred upon 
 the bishops. Quite enthusiastically we have gone 
 about the work of showing him to be not a great 
 saint, but a great sinner. In the meantime we have 
 quite overlooked the fact that a considerable number 
 of us Protestants, who are not Mormons either, have 
 overlooked the peccadilloes of Henry VIII, because of 
 his services to the Protestant cause. What matters it 
 now, save perhaps to Constantine himself, whether he 
 was a great saint or a great sinner? He was probably 
 both; the sins and the virtues of his time were 
 extreme. 
 
 The truth, in all likelihood, is that Constantine was 
 influenced by both political and religious motives in 
 accepting the new faith. His inclination from child- 
 hood had been in that direction. Constantius, his 
 father, was a friend of the Christians, and the favorite 
 officers of that beloved general professed the new 
 faith. When he died and the British legions elevated 
 his son and invested him with the purple at York, 
 many of the sober, disciplined veterans who raised 
 him aloft and saluted him as Caesar were worshipers 
 of Christ. Looking across the wide reach of Roman 
 dominion, he could see dangers ahead, and the mind 
 of so shrewd a student of men, so able a politician, 
 could hardly overlook the advantage of an alliance 
 with a church whose organization threaded every part 
 of the Roman world, whose followers were among the 
 bravest and the best in every Roman legion. Side by
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 side with this was his temperamental inclination. His 
 was a great mind, and it revelled in the glory of the 
 Christian faith. His intellect and his heart were at- 
 tracted, his interest was engaged ; all things worked 
 together to make him a Christian. 
 
 But there had been bred in the bone the old Roman 
 tradition that the state was supreme; that the church 
 was its servant. The new conception maintained it- 
 self in his mind with difficulty ; his lips gave support 
 to it, but time and again the impulse to control the 
 organization of the church, to bend it to compliance 
 with his own will, manifested itself ; and this was re- 
 sponsible for the beginning of that long contest be- 
 tween church and state which has never ceased. This 
 was the occasion for the first conspicuous assertion 
 by the church of the doctrine that there are things 
 that are of Caesar and things that are of God ; that be- 
 tween the functions of the state and those of the 
 church there is a real distinction. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand the mental attitude 
 of the first of the Christian emperors. His father had 
 been a soldier of the old Roman type, strong in mind 
 and body and austere in habit and thought. The 
 Greeks were marble, the Romans granite, men. Con- 
 stantius had all the Roman's lofty and stern contempt 
 for the softer things of life ; the indulgences of the stay- 
 at-homes had no charm for the stalwart soldier of the 
 empire, whose business it was to keep unbroken the 
 outer line of the Roman domain. The traditions of 
 old Rome were dear to him, and the ideals to which he 
 held himself he set up for his son. For him the old 
 gods were respectable because they were the national
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CAESAR 
 
 gods; for him religion was part of the business of the 
 state. Indeed, the state he served was his whole life; 
 a glory greater than the national glory he could not 
 understand, a power greater than the civic power was 
 not conceivable. 
 
 Constantine grew up under his father's eye and 
 under his father's tutelage. He inherited the tradi- 
 tional conception of the supremacy of the state. It 
 was bred into his being, and it outcropped many times 
 in those later days when he had become the sole and 
 supreme ruler of the Roman world and the imperial 
 patron of the Christian church. In his repeated ex- 
 pressions that he was a priest of the church, that he 
 was its soldier and its guard, we can see the effort he 
 was making to bring his mind into consonance with 
 the doctrine of the church; but in his attempt to gov- 
 ern the bishops, in his letters upon matters of doctrine 
 to the warring African ecclesiastics, is observable the 
 old tradition, the hereditary temper, against which 
 the church made its early protest. Again and again 
 it was pointed out to the imperial convert that in mat- 
 ters of policy and organization his advice and assist- 
 ance were welcome and his commands enforceable; 
 but that in matters of doctrine he must abide by the 
 law as revealed. 
 
 Constantine's conversion was proclaimed on his 
 march from Gaul to Rome in the year 312. He was 
 then one of the three Caesars who governed the Ro- 
 man world. But a year before the last of the great 
 persecutions had been officially closed by an edict is- 
 sued in his name and that of his senior colleagues, 
 Galerius and Licinius. In fact, it had closed before 
 
 [23]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 that; there had not been for some years any attack 
 upon the Christians by the government, but neverthe- 
 less the Roman law was affirmatively a hostile law, 
 and the Christians lived in peace only because it was a 
 sleeping statute within twelve months of the public 
 announcement of the young emperor's conversion. It 
 is strange to read the name of Galerius at the foot of 
 the edict of toleration that killed the sleeping statute, 
 for it was Galerius who inspired the persecution of 
 Diocletian, and it was the same rude graduate of the 
 camp who sullenly yielded to the logic of the chang- 
 ing hour and was forced to acknowledge that the ob- 
 stinate adherents of the new faith could not be 
 brought back to the gods of old Rome: but, on the 
 other hand, had so far extended their influence that 
 continued persecution had no other significance than 
 the proscription of perhaps a majority of the Roman 
 people. Tormented by disease, perplexed by the ever- 
 increasing might of the religion he could neither 
 understand nor destroy, the beaten Roman bowed his 
 obstinate head to what he had come to recognize as 
 the inevitable, and in substance said what Julian was 
 to say later, "The Galilean has conquered." For the 
 strong arm that had been Rome's boast, the sword 
 that had been a staff that never failed her, were un- 
 availing against Christianity, and Galerius knew of 
 no other weapon. 
 
 Following upon the first edict of toleration came a 
 second, signed at Milan by the Christian Constantine 
 and the pagan Licinius, and the accelerated transition 
 from the old order to the new is illustrated in the 
 warmer tone of the Milan decree. No longer is it a 
 
 [24]
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CESAR 
 
 precarious privilege which the Christians are to enjoy, 
 but a free and unconditional right. 
 
 There was more than the edict itself might indicate. 
 A Christian emperor was now well on the road to su- 
 preme power in the state, and his zeal for the religion 
 he professed influenced in growing degree the policy 
 of the government. 
 
 The immediate effect upon the church organization 
 was profound. Hitherto the ecclesiastical office had 
 been one of labor and of danger. The bishop occupied 
 a perilous eminence ; his breast was the target of the 
 arrows of the enemies of the church. Upon his head 
 the state visited its punishment of the church. The 
 rewards of his office were not measured in the wealth 
 of the world. Now, there was a precipitous change : 
 no longer was there danger from the agencies of the 
 state, but, on the other hand, the whole power of the 
 state was exercised in the protection of the bishop. 
 No longer was he without influence in the civil tribu- 
 nals : his words were potent in the ears of the mighty 
 ones of earth. No longer was he the persecuted 
 priest, but a powerful prelate in whose anterooms 
 waited a constantly increasing crowd of clients, as the 
 greed and the ambition of the Roman world turned to 
 face the rising sun. The lustre of the pagan temples 
 was dimmed, the secular glory of the Christian church 
 grew constantly more effulgent. 
 
 Inevitably came the evils inseparable from such a 
 condition. The flood of worldly honor and material 
 wealth swept from their feet some of the churchmen, 
 and the episcopal office became vastly important from 
 a political standpoint. If the church were the road to 
 
 [25]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the affections of a prince whose favor was so produc- 
 tive of earthly riches, then be sure that those who 
 sought the riches of earth took the road that led 
 thereto. 
 
 Not always, then, did the bishops draw clearly the 
 line between what Constantine might legitimately do 
 and what he might not do. These old priests were 
 human, they were grateful to the prince who had left 
 the old national belief to bow his head before the true 
 God, and some of them turned to him for advice on 
 subjects which lay without his domain. But although 
 some of them did this, not all of them did, and the 
 church itself never conceded to him the right to pass 
 upon questions of doctrine. It was always the schis- 
 matic who appealed from the synod to the emperor; 
 the orthodox church held always to the unchanging 
 truth of the doctrine deposited with it. 
 
 Constantine understood this attitude of the church, 
 but his zeal to prevent strife among Christians upon 
 points which seemed to him immaterial, coupled with 
 the imperious temper, led him from time to time to 
 overstep the boundary line between his legitimate 
 sphere of influence and that of the church. "I am in a 
 sense a bishop," he said once, "but a bishop of the ex- 
 ternal." Again, when the Donatist schismatics ap- 
 pealed to him from the decision of the Synod of Aries, 
 he exclaimed : "They demand judgment of me of me 
 who await the judgment of Christ ! But I say the judg- 
 ment of priests ought to be regarded as if the Lord 
 himself sat in the tribunal. What, then, do these wicked 
 men, truly instruments of the devil, mean? They in- 
 stitute an appeal in this as in a purely civil case." 
 
 [26]
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CESAR 
 
 This Donatist controversy was one of the first 
 political troubles that vexed the early church. Caeci- 
 lian had been elected bishop of Carthage, and his 
 enemies, of whom he seems to have had quite a num- 
 ber, conspired to oust him from the place. Their zeal 
 seems to have increased as the office became more im- 
 portant politically, and there was intervention on the 
 part of outside forces who deposed the bishop and 
 elected one Donatus in his place. Throughout the 
 Christian world this proceeding was regarded as il- 
 legal; on the question of the legitimacy of Caecilian 
 and his innocence of the charges brought against him 
 by the Donatists, the church authorities were all in 
 concord. This was proven when the Gallic bishops 
 concurred with the Roman pontiff in the Lateran 
 Council, convoked at the request of the emperor, who 
 explained in a letter to Pope Miltiades that his pur- 
 pose was to prevent a schism in the church. Its ruling 
 did not satisfy the Donatists, and in response to their 
 importunities the emperor had a second synod con- 
 voked the Synod of Aries. It assembled in 314 and 
 made short work of the Donatist case. Once more the 
 defeated party appealed from the ecclesiastical to the 
 civil power, and it was this appeal that drew from 
 Constantine the indignant exclamation quoted above. 
 But the habit of command was strong in his blood; 
 notwithstanding his Christian abhorrence of an ap- 
 peal to the secular power in ecclesiastical matters, he 
 did give a hearing to the pertinacious Donatists a 
 hearing which resulted in a civic confirmation of the 
 ecclesiastical decrees condemning the enemies of the 
 Carthaginian bishop. Although his decision was with 
 
 [27]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the orthodox, it is none the less true that he assumed 
 against the doctrine of the church the right of review. 
 
 If, in the first instance, the imperial power backed 
 up the orthodox church, however, it did not do so in 
 the second instance; that is, ultimately Constantine 
 was opposed to the church, although he may have 
 been and indeed the evidence is that he was uncon- 
 scious of that opposition. 
 
 Arius, a priest of Alexandria, began during the sec- 
 ond decade of the fourth century to preach a doctrine 
 upon which was based the first considerable division 
 in the Christian church. It was in effect that Christ 
 was not coordinate with God the Father, but was 
 merely the first-born of his creatures. This was de- 
 clared by the church a denial of the divinity of its 
 Founder, and Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, 
 took steps at once to silence the heretical expounder. 
 The eloquence of Arius, however, and the eagerness 
 of the public for novelty in an age of great and rapid 
 vicissitudes of belief, gave to the preacher of the new 
 doctrine a popular following not inconsiderable, and 
 he refused to retract at the command of his bishop. 
 Two bishops, Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of 
 Marmarica, took up cudgels for the disobedient priest 
 and defended his cause in the synod of the bishops of 
 Egypt and Libya, convoked by Alexander to consider 
 the case. This synod, held in Alexandria about 321, 
 condemned the doctrines of Arius and excommuni- 
 cated him and the two bishops who espoused his 
 cause. 
 
 Complaining that he was suffering from the per- 
 secution of his bishop, Arius fled to the eastern prov- 
 
 [28]
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF OZESAR 
 
 inces. Here he sought the protection of the favorites 
 of Licinius, the rival and the colleague of Constantine. 
 Among the converts he made was Eusebius, bishop of 
 Nicodemia and powerful in the court of the Eastern 
 emperor. The influence of Eusebius gave Arius a 
 welcome among the Eastern bishops, and he soon 
 numbered many of them among his supporters. Al- 
 ready there had broken out that disagreement be- 
 tween Constantine and Licinius which was to progress 
 so swiftly to a civil war ; and as the eastern and west- 
 ern sections of the empire took up arms for the politi- 
 cal contest, so did the Roman world divide on the 
 question raised by the preaching of Arius. The 
 bishops of the East held a synod in Bithynia, and sent 
 forth a request to "all the bishops" to hold commu- 
 nion with the Arians. Armed with the letter of his 
 friends of the East, Arius returned to Alexandria, but 
 the bishop of the African metropolis refused to re- 
 ceive him into the communion of the church. 
 
 Meanwhile the war had broken out and terminated, 
 and Constantine, victorious over Licinius, and now 
 supreme ruler of the whole Roman world, learned of 
 the division in the Alexandrian church. His preoccu- 
 pation in military affairs had prevented him either 
 from knowing or from understanding the point in 
 dispute, and, annoyed that the politically unified em- 
 pire should be ecclesiastically divided, he addressed a 
 letter to Alexander and to Arius, urging them to con- 
 ciliation since the cause of their quarrel was not of 
 importance, as he understood the matter. 
 
 But here was a question more serious by far than 
 the Donatist matter. The former controversy had
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 been mainly of church organization; this was doc- 
 trinal. Alexander refused to accede to the imperial 
 wish; there could be no communion with an Arian in 
 the orthodox church. One can imagine the surprise 
 of the emperor when word of this was brought to him. 
 It was one thing to advance the theory that the 
 church was free in matters of faith; it was quite an- 
 other thing for any subject to reject the plea of his 
 ruler. The Christian patron of the church and the 
 Roman ruler were brought face to face suddenly, like 
 the images in and before a mirror. But it was the 
 Christian theorist who was in the looking-glass; it 
 was the Roman ruler who stood in flesh and blood and 
 thought and felt. And it was in the breast of the Ro- 
 man emperor that there was born a very human and 
 altogether unchristian dislike of the Alexandrian 
 church, which was to have its consequences later. 
 
 The alert mind of Constantine doubtless ran over 
 the measures possible under the circumstances. He 
 could use violence, the old weapon of the state, against 
 Alexander, but this might mean warfare with the 
 church he had so recently joined and a reversal of the 
 whole policy which had elevated him to the greatest 
 of worldly eminences. He decided against that. He 
 must, even if his motives were wholly worldly and 
 selfish (and in strict justice to him let us admit that 
 they may have been indeed, in all probability were 
 unselfish and religious), find a means of accomplish- 
 ing his purpose without destroying the alliance be- 
 tween himself and the church, whose roots were 
 shooting deeper and deeper into the hearts of men. 
 He was surrounded by clerical counsellors, and their 
 
 [30]
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CJESAR 
 
 pleadings and his own desire to save the face in the 
 looking-glass ran together; he convoked a general 
 council of the bishops of Christendom to pass upon 
 the Arian doctrines and other matters suggested 
 largely by the ecclesiastics of the church in the East. 
 For it was in the East that contentions arose in great- 
 est measure ; it was the bishops of the Eastern church 
 who seemed to have yielded to the new influence in- 
 troduced by the change in the relationship of the state 
 toward the church; it was there that the courtier- 
 prelates clustered thickest and the reverence for 
 worldly power and the love of worldly emolument 
 were most strongly mingled with the ancient spirit of 
 the church. 
 
 It is significant of the rising influence of the East- 
 ern as distinguished from the Western church in the 
 court of the emperor that the first general council was 
 held in Nice in Bithynia. The letter in which the ruler 
 invited the bishops to assemble was full of expres- 
 sions of esteem for them and their sacred office. In 
 response to it there was an ecclesiastical migration 
 toward Nice from all parts of the extensive Roman 
 dominion. From the far provinces of the East and 
 West, along the military roads and across the blue 
 Mediterranean from the African provinces, came the 
 shepherds of the flocks. Men who lived and prayed 
 and preached in the remote parts of the empire, whose 
 flocks were made up of the barbarians but recently 
 conquered by the Roman legions, men whose fare was 
 simple and whose purses were empty, found them- 
 selves provided with transportation, guarded by the 
 soldiers of the empire, honored as princes by the state 
 
 CaO
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 which only a few years ago sought them out for mar- 
 tyrdom with the keen edge of its sword. Simple of 
 life and thought, they came hurrying toward Nice, 
 eager to see this great emperor who had bowed the 
 knee before the true God. May of 325 found them 
 assembling in the city of Nice. The system of corre- 
 spondence that had kept the church together had 
 made even the most remotely placed members of the 
 episcopate familiar with the names and actions of 
 their colleagues, but we can fancy the wonder with 
 which the bishops from the wilderness looked upon 
 the splendidly garbed courtiers who shepherded the 
 flocks near the heart of the empire. The emperor had 
 not yet arrived, the strangers were received and enter- 
 tained by the Oriental bishops ; there were preliminary 
 assemblages and private and public banquets; there 
 was animated discussion of the great questions soon 
 to come before the assembled council. The name of 
 Constantine was on every tongue; what was he like? 
 the strangers asked, and what he was like his fa- 
 miliars told them. Was it any wonder that the three 
 hundred and eighteen bishops held their great assem- 
 blage back in order that they might elucidate Chris- 
 tian truth in the very presence of the mighty champion 
 of the church? It was not that he had given them 
 security and many of them wealth: he had given 
 power and honor to the church, to the glorious faith 
 to which most of them had proven their devotion by 
 lives of privation and danger, and for which some of 
 them had joyously endured the torture and seen their 
 red blood flow. 
 
 When at last he came to Nice the council was sol- 
 
 13*1
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CAESAR 
 
 emnly opened. The bishops assembled, and Eusebius, 
 himself an Eastern bishop and a church historian, tells 
 us of the breathless silence in which they waited the 
 coming of the emperor. 
 
 Constantine himself neglected nothing which 
 might indicate his appreciation of the solemnity of the 
 occasion and the feeling of honor he held for the 
 church. He came, as that same ecclesiastical historian 
 described it, "like a messenger of God, clothed in 
 raiment which glittered as it were with rays of light; 
 reflecting the flowing radiance of a purple robe, and 
 adorned with the brilliant splendor of gold and 
 precious stones." His speech no less than his appear- 
 ance was likely to increase the favor in which the 
 Christian priesthood already held him. It was full of 
 devotion to the church, a division in which he re- 
 garded as more dangerous than any kind of war or 
 conflict. To prevent such division he had called them 
 together; ministers of God as they were and faithful 
 servants of Christ, the Lord and Saviour, the spirit of 
 peace and concord should prevail among them. He 
 was their fellow-servant of God ; he desired, above all 
 things, that all cause of disunion among God's ser- 
 vants should be removed. 
 
 During the debates that followed the opening 
 speech, Constantine carefully abstained from inter- 
 ference, except to counsel moderation in speech when 
 some of the disputants became too fiery. Frequently 
 an eager debater would turn with appeal to the splen- 
 did and mighty figure who sat among them, but the 
 emperor let the current of opinion flow on without at- 
 tempt to direct it. The conclusion he accepted with-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 out question. It was the codification of what was 
 Christian truth according to those most competent to 
 judge the Nicene Creed. Three hundred of the 
 bishops gave assent to that creed ; five only dissented. 
 Of these five three were of the Eastern church; two 
 were the old friends of Arius Theonas of Marmarica 
 and Secundus of Ptolemais, who had defended him in 
 the Alexandrian synod. 
 
 The council having determined the theological 
 question, Constantine used the civil power to banish 
 Arius and those who still adhered to his doctrine. He 
 wrote to the Alexandrian church declaring that all 
 should abandon the error of Arius. 
 
 The three Eastern bishops who had joined Theonas 
 and Secundus in dissent from the Nicene Creed, could 
 not, when the test came, bear to part with the offices 
 they held. They were too much in the habit of bend- 
 ing before the secular power, and they reluctantly, 
 and not very honestly, as future events were to show, 
 subscribed to the conclusion of the majority of their 
 colleagues. This reduced the number of dissenting 
 bishops to two. 
 
 Constantine celebrated the close of the council with 
 a great banquet, given to the bishops on the twentieth 
 anniversary of his elevation to the throne. He ex- 
 horted the bishops from whom he was about to part to 
 maintain peace in the church. Many believe it was at 
 this banquet that he described himself as being in one 
 sense a bishop: "You are bishops whose jurisdiction 
 is within the church: I also am a bishop, ordained 
 by God to overlook whatever is external to the 
 church."
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CJESAR 
 
 The Eastern bishops had been defeated in the coun- 
 cil, but they by no means abandoned their hope of 
 winning the mind of the emperor away from the or- 
 thodox church. They were not without powerful 
 allies close to the imperial presence; Eusebius of Nico- 
 media possessed great influence over Constantia, the 
 widow of Licinius and sister of Constantine. But a 
 few months after the Council of Nice he and Theognis 
 were charged with giving communion to the Arians, 
 and that banishment they had escaped by subscribing 
 to the creed was inflicted upon them. 
 
 Constantia exerted all the influence she possessed 
 to bring about their recall and to incline the mind of 
 the emperor toward the Arians. On her death-bed 
 she requested Constantine to take into his service a 
 priest who quickly won favor with him and who pre- 
 vailed upon him to reopen the case of Arius. Euse- 
 bius and Theognis were recalled about this time, and 
 by imperial edict their bishoprics were restored to 
 them. Before the emperor, Arius made a profession 
 of faith which Constantine accepted as in accordance 
 with the Nicene Creed, and Eusebius immediately 
 wrote to Athanasius, who had succeeded to the see of 
 Alexandria upon the death of Alexander, urging him 
 to restore Arius to the priesthood. But the profession 
 of Arius was by no means satisfactory to the Alexan- 
 drian bishop, and he flatly refused to admit Arius to 
 communion : refused not only when urged to do so by 
 Eusebius, but also when commanded to do so by Con- 
 stantine. And so for a second time the Christian 
 votary and the Roman ruler faced each other. This 
 time the situation was more serious; whereas Alexan- 
 
 CssU
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 der had rejected his counsel, Athanasius had boldly 
 disobeyed his command. 
 
 Under the influence of Eusebius, an influence which 
 had been growing ever stronger in Constantine's 
 court, orthodox bishops had been forcibly ousted by 
 the emperor from sees in the East, and Arians had 
 been appointed to succeed them. These new bishops 
 united now to destroy the Alexandrian prelate. 
 Charges were made against him which reached the 
 emperor finally. It is notable that the charge upon 
 which he acted was political altogether: Athanasius 
 was accused of threatening to stop the shipments of 
 corn from Alexandria. This meant the starvation of 
 the capital, which drew its supplies of food from the 
 Egyptian granaries, and the angry emperor banished 
 Athanasius as a fomenter of discord in the church and 
 an enemy of the state. 
 
 From that time on until the death of Constantine, 
 an odd condition existed in the empire. Professing 
 always his adherence to the Nicene Creed, Constan- 
 tine yielded more and more to the influences that op- 
 posed it. He still maintained a friendship with the 
 great lights of the orthodox church, but his policy 
 toward the church was shaped and bent by the subtle 
 bishop of Nicomedia, and by imperial edict priests 
 who believed in the Arian doctrine were raised to the 
 episcopate. The churchmen of the East became more 
 and more fawners upon the imperial power; they 
 planned to have Arius himself publicly and with splen- 
 did ceremony reinstated in the priestly office in the 
 great church of Constantinople. Only the death of 
 the arch-schismatic as the procession of his triumph-
 
 WHAT THINGS ARE OF CJESAR 
 
 ant supporters marched to the church prevented them 
 from carrying out this plan, and, by its effect upon the 
 mind of the emperor at that time and in that place, 
 checked for a while the Arian influence in the im- 
 perial court. It is said that as Constantine approached 
 his end his dislike of Athanasius began to yield under 
 the arguments of St. Anthony, but he died with the 
 chief bulwark of the orthodox church still in that 
 exile from which the second Constantine at last re- 
 called him. 
 
 Briefly, then, this is the story of the relationship of 
 Constantine to the Christian church. It was a tre- 
 mendous period ; its effect upon human history makes 
 it stand out monumentally, but it is very far back on 
 the road, and none too bright are the lights that glim- 
 mer fitfully upon it, illuminating it in spots. In such 
 lights as we have, however, there are some things 
 clearly discernible. We can see the influences of the 
 old conceptions still at work, the old order endeavor- 
 ing to maintain itself against the new. The national- 
 ity of religion was a habit of human thought, no less 
 of the pagan Greek than of the monotheistic Hebrew. 
 
 "The independence enjoyed by these communities," 
 says Ranke, "was not merely political : an independent 
 religion also had been established by each; the ideas 
 of God and of divine things had received a character 
 strictly local ; deities of the most diversified attributes 
 divided the worship of the world, and the law by 
 which their votaries were governed became insepar- 
 ably united with that of the state." It was, to use the 
 great German historian's own term, "an intimate 
 union of church and state." 
 
 C373
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 This conception carried itself into the Roman 
 scheme of government as the conquering city, binding 
 the conquered nations into her empire, gathered their 
 gods together and gave them place in her Pantheon; 
 it developed in its logical process until above the gods 
 of all the nations it set the deified emperor, exalting 
 above all the divinities the head of the Roman state. 
 
 It was this conception that Christianity had to 
 fight. The battle was easier for the church when the 
 state was hostile than when the state was friendly. 
 Dimly, but unmistakably, the lines of the conflict dis- 
 close themselves in the Constantine period. We see 
 the early divergence of the bishops of the East, who 
 fawned at the feet of the emperor, from those of the 
 West, who, with headquarters in abandoned Rome, 
 had to work out the future of the church far from the 
 seat of worldly power. The orthodox church was al- 
 ready insisting upon its spiritual freedom; the schis- 
 matics appealed from the ecclesiastical to the civil 
 power. Well may we close this chapter with the 
 words of Ranker "The emperor united church and 
 state: Christianity separated, before all things, that 
 which is Caesar's from that which belongs to God."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 R\CE prejudice is perhaps the strongest preju- 
 dice that human beings know. Its expres- 
 sion in mob action is merciless, murderous. 
 It feeds avidly and grows enormously on calumny. It 
 is permeated by an unshakable self-satisfaction that 
 makes it opaque : the light cannot penetrate it. 
 
 Race prejudice is a parasite of patriotism; an evil 
 growth on a good tree. The patriotism of the multi- 
 tude becomes race prejudice in the mob. Ignorance 
 fosters it ; under that black shadow, love of one's own 
 people is transmuted into passionate hatred of other 
 peoples. 
 
 In the early middle ages the seat of ecclesiastical 
 authority became a state. It is useless to deplore this 
 fact. Superficial reviewers, who are friends of re- 
 ligion, regret it as the cause of corruption in the church 
 organization and of division among the followers 
 of Christ; superficial reviewers, who are enemies of 
 religion, exploit it as irrefutable proof that the greed 
 of men, and not any divine inspiration, was the soul of 
 the ecclesiastical body. But the unbiased student will 
 marvel at the strange combinations of circumstances 
 from which there could be no other issue than the 
 clothing of the Christian church with political power, 
 and the student who holds the vast and sublime con- 
 ception of the mission and destiny of the church can- 
 
 [393
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 not escape conviction that the hand of God was 
 moving among the nations. For, as one assembles the 
 phantoms on the misty stage of the dark ages, and 
 notes the political life that was generated in the 
 dying body of the Roman Empire, as vermicular life 
 in the human cadaver, the conclusion is irresistible 
 that a measure of political power was absolutely nec- 
 essary to the continued existence of the church. Un- 
 der the idea of political supremacy, then and for 
 centuries theretofore prevalent in the minds of men, it 
 was impossible for the church to do its work while its 
 central authority was in real political subjection to a 
 secular sovereign. 
 
 While the Roman imperial organization, animated 
 to the end, although in lessening degree, by the an- 
 cient democratic principle that government exists 
 legitimately only for the welfare of all the people, held 
 sway over the world, there was no serious friction, 
 although the growing principle of autocracy had im- 
 pelled rulers from the time of Constantine the Great 
 to attempt the control and direction of ecclesiastical 
 affairs. Had not the autocratic principle fastened it- 
 self upon the Roman political system, it is doubtful if 
 there would ever have been any radical disagreement 
 between the civil power and the church; for the 
 church, by reason of its nature, could never have been 
 in conflict with the democratic principle. 
 
 But when the corrupted heart of the Roman system 
 could no longer send efficient impulses to its extremi- 
 ties, and the imperial power ceased to be a substance 
 and became a shadow less and less distinct on the 
 western world, it was necessary that some physical 
 
 C40]
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 bulwark should be erected for the protection of the 
 physical organization of the church, in order that the 
 human depository of divine truth might continue to 
 hold aloft for the illumination of the world the inex- 
 tinguishable spiritual light. 
 
 There were sequential offshoots of this fact that 
 were deplorable, beyond any doubt, but they were the 
 evils necessarily concomitant with the imperfection 
 of human nature; just as a tremendous effusion of 
 blood was a necessary concomitant of the beneficent 
 Revolution to which the world owes this Republic. 
 And one of the collateral effects of the political status 
 of the church was a factor making for race prejudice 
 in the religious development of the world. The con- 
 flict between the Teuton and the Latin, the distrust 
 of the stranger and the dislike of strange customs so 
 natural in man, grew up between the children of the 
 Roman civilization and the children of the forest bar- 
 barism which was conquered by and in turn con- 
 quered that civilization; and when there came a 
 division on doctrinal points, racial prejudices so en- 
 venomed the controversy that it became the policy 
 and the practice of Protestant princes to instil a 
 horror of the ancient church and its leaders in the 
 minds of their subjects. 
 
 To consider, calmly and without the prejudice that 
 has so long clouded the Protestant mind on the sub- 
 ject, the beginnings of the temporal sovereignty of 
 the popes shall be, therefore, the business of this brief 
 chapter. It is the common understanding that this 
 thing came about as a result of deliberation, as a con- 
 sequence of the ambition and political ability of de-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 signing priests. A little reflection will show how far 
 from the fact is this view of the subject; for the seed 
 of the thing was in the ancient organization of the 
 Church of Rome, a form of organization that existed 
 for centuries before the church was recognized by the 
 Roman state as anything but a criminal association 
 of the obstinate votaries of an incomprehensible 
 superstition. 
 
 The Church of Rome was democratic in the broad- 
 est sense. The bishop was elected by the communi- 
 cants. When, finally, the whole population of the 
 city of Rome became communicants, they became 
 electors also, and they continued to act as such until 
 mob violence made so great a scandal in the episcopal 
 elections that it was necessary to place the power of 
 selecting bishops in the hands of holy men; thereafter 
 the clergy alone were to exercise the right of election. 
 
 But for many centuries the old system prevailed; 
 for many centuries the Roman bishop was not only 
 the apostolic successor of St. Peter, but the chosen 
 man of the Roman people, their wisest and their saint- 
 liest man. Subject civilly to the emperor, he was yet 
 a sovereign spiritual before whom the emperor bowed 
 the knee. As the primate of Christendom, he enjoyed 
 the respect and affection of even those barbarian peo- 
 ples whose rising military strength was compressing 
 the empire. 
 
 Keeping in mind this unique position occupied by 
 the Roman bishop, let us consider the decline of the 
 civil power to which he owed allegiance. At about 
 the time that the proscription of the Christian church 
 ended and the coincidence is worthy of notice the
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 Roman emperors abandoned the ancient capital. Con- 
 stantine himself built his own capital, which was to 
 serve for many hundred years as the seat of the 
 Caesars. The city by the Tiber became of secondary 
 political importance; gradually it sank into the posi- 
 tion of a duchy or military division of the empire. 
 With his seat at Ravenna, an exarch, or vice-emperor, 
 governed it in common with the other military divi- 
 sions of Byzantine Italy. 
 
 The west and north of Europe had in the meantime 
 been lost to the empire. In northern Italy the Lom- 
 bard kings not only laughed at the Roman power, but 
 more and more stretched their own boundaries over 
 the Roman territory. Britain was a congeries of 
 microscopic kingdoms; France and Germany were 
 split up into principalities so numerous as to be con- 
 fusing. The strong sword of an ambitious soldier 
 carved out a state in a day, and the weak sword of his 
 son lost it in an hour. There was no international law 
 but the law of the strong hand. A man's kingdom 
 was what he could hold in his grip ; when his fingers 
 weakened the kingdom vanished. Territorial lines 
 flickered like the will-o'-the-wisp; to-day a town 
 yielded allegiance to one king, to-morrow to another. 
 
 There was no such thing in Europe then as an army 
 in the modern sense, or in the ancient Roman and 
 Greek sense. A king was a leader to whom a number 
 of feudal lords adhered, and his forces were the ser- 
 vants of his own household and those of his subject 
 lords. The feudal system had supplanted the old 
 Roman military system. 
 
 It is interesting to look back at the development of 
 
 C43H
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the feudal system. It was the natural consequence of 
 the system of delegated authority by which the Roman 
 emperors, when they had lost the martial vigor of their 
 predecessors, hoped to govern a vast domain without 
 personal trouble. Certain districts were handed over 
 to military leaders, or dukes, who were supposed to 
 govern them in lieu of the emperor. These dukes 
 parcelled out the districts among their officers, who 
 were supposed to pay them a certain tribute and 
 furnish them a certain number of men for military 
 purposes. Each lord was a captain, each duke was a 
 colonel, the emperor was of course the general; in- 
 deed, that is the meaning of the word emperor, just as 
 leader is the meaning of the word duke. 
 
 The dukes were only temporary officers at first, dur- 
 ing the period when the emperors personally knew the 
 confines of the empire; but as it became too laborious 
 for the luxury-loving successors 6f Constantine to 
 travel any distance from their palaces and slaves, and 
 not only the military roads fell into decay, but the 
 Roman laws lost their binding force, making such 
 travel difficult and dangerous, the Byzantine rulers 
 troubled themselves little about the remote provinces, 
 and each duke was left to his own devices and the 
 choice of his own successor. His captains, very 
 loosely bound to the remote imperial allegiance, were 
 intimately connected with the more immediate incar- 
 nation of power and authority in their local leader. 
 
 Meanwhile the old democratic theory of govern- 
 ment had been utterly lost. The imperial laws 
 troubled but little these nominal officers of the em- 
 pire, who now owed their real power to the soil rather 
 
 C443
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 than to the distant sovereign, and who knew the weak- 
 ness of the living authority behind the written statute. 
 Each leader was a law unto himself; sometimes he 
 freely bound himself to allegiance to a leader stronger 
 than himself, but it was an allegiance from which he 
 relieved himself whenever his own strength and in- 
 clination moved him. Sometimes, when conditions 
 made it convenient, a number of dukes would band 
 together and elect a leader whom they would call a 
 king ; or, as was more often the case, a king would be 
 elected by important families and lead them in war 
 against neighboring dukes. 
 
 From out the northern forests came the Lombards, 
 following the Goths, who had conquered and reigned 
 at Ravenna and had then been displaced. They were at 
 first less numerous, and therefore less powerful, than 
 the Goths. Under Alboin, their king, they seized the 
 northern part of Italy, and threatened but did not 
 annex the lower provinces, which still owed allegiance 
 to the Eastern emperor. Independent duchies, Bene- 
 ventum and Spoleto, also arose and joined with the 
 Lombard kings in threatening the dwindling Byzan- 
 tine power. Luitprand, a later king of the Lombards, 
 an enterprising and able chief, made extensive con- 
 quests, and his activity presaged a not distant sub- 
 jugation of Ravenna and Rome. Classis, the seaport 
 of Ravenna, was one of the cities that surrendered to 
 his arms. 
 
 While the ancient capital was thus threatened with 
 subjugation by barbarian forces, the interference of 
 the Byzantine emperor in religious matters brought 
 on a quarrel between the civil power and the church. 
 
 C45]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Leo the Iconoclast, backed by courtier-priests of the 
 Eastern church, questioned the spiritual superiority 
 of the Roman bishop, and the pope organized a resist- 
 ance to the imperial mandates with regard to the use 
 of images. He was supported by the neighboring 
 duchies, whose people sent the representatives of the 
 emperor to Constantinople and selected as their own 
 leaders men who sided with the Roman Church. The 
 exarch Paul, under orders from Constantinople, sent 
 troops to Rome to enforce his master's decrees, but 
 the Lombard troops hurried to the defense of the 
 pope, and the troops of the exarch retired. In Ra- 
 venna Paul found the imperial troops in a mutinous 
 spirit, threatening to proclaim the deposition of Leo 
 and to elect an emperor in his place. The people of 
 Ravenna were so angered at the attack upon the pon- 
 tiff that riots occurred, in one of which Paul was slain. 
 He was succeeded by Eutychius, who was the last of 
 the exarchs. 
 
 Eutychius at first thought to follow in the path of 
 Paul, but he soon found that he could not rely on his 
 troops in a warfare on the pope; he therefore made an 
 alliance with the Lombards, the object of which was 
 the complete subjection of the dukes of Beneventum 
 and Spoleto to Luitprand and the subjection of the 
 Roman pontiff to the Byzantine court. To Eutychius 
 it was soon apparent that the Lombard was much in- 
 terested in the first part of the programme, but not 
 particular with regard to the second. After Luit- 
 prand had received the submission of the two inde- 
 pendent dukes, he and they and the exarch went to 
 Rome to visit the pope. 
 
 C46]
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 There is a delightfully humorous flavor of modern 
 politics in the history of that visit and its effects. 
 Luitprand began diplomatically by overwhelming 
 the pope with gifts. If the civil governor of the 
 Romans, the duke, took part in the proceedings, as 
 undoubtedly he did, his part is not considered of suffi- 
 cient importance for historical record. It was the 
 Roman bishop who entertained the visitors, and it 
 was to the Roman bishop that Luitprand, who knew 
 the real power from its counterfeit, paid homage. It 
 did not take the kick of a mule, obviously, to indicate 
 to Eutychius what the exact conditions were, and how 
 little likely it was that his Catholic, if barbarian, ally 
 was going to use any force in bending the pope to 
 submission; for thereafter we find the exarch in quite 
 amicable relationship with the pope, acting quite as 
 the other dukes acted, and paying little attention to 
 the distant emperor. All the comfort Leo might take 
 from the fruits of Eutychius's expedition was an al- 
 liance of all three parties in Italy for the purpose of 
 capturing a pretender to the Byzantine throne whose 
 name was Tiberius. 
 
 But Luitprand soon found it convenient to war 
 again upon the emperor, and Eutychius, as the repre- 
 sentative of the emperor, suffered in consequence. 
 The Lombard king made himself master even of Ra- 
 venna, and the exarch fled to Venice for refuge, and 
 was reinstated in his duchy only through the inter- 
 vention of Pope Gregory III. 
 
 All through his reign, which was long and prosper- 
 ous, Luitprand was considerate of the rights and com- 
 fort of the pope and his people. He had for them a 
 
 [473
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 respect shared by the other Germanic and Gallic na- 
 tions, by whom they were known as "the peculiar 
 people of St. Peter and the church." Many times, at 
 the solicitation of the pope, the Lombard monarch re- 
 stored cities he had taken from the Roman and neigh- 
 boring duchies, and his only open attack on Rome 
 itself was due to the interference of the Romans in the 
 business of his kingdom. The powerful duchies of 
 Spoleto and Beneventum owed some allegiance to the 
 Lombard monarch, but they were inclined to strike 
 out for themselves. They had maintained what was 
 practically an independence under the predecessors of 
 Luitprand, but that king was not a man to brook in- 
 subordination, and he made his displeasure very plain 
 to the rebellious dukes. Trasimund, duke of Spoleto, a 
 proud and choleric soldier, braved the wrath of the 
 none too patient Luitprand ; and the Romans, perhaps 
 with the notion that two powerful free duchies might 
 act as a buffer between themselves and the enterpris- 
 ing barbarian warrior to the north, espoused his cause. 
 Luitprand swept down on Spoleto, and Trasimund 
 fled before the royal anger. He took refuge in Rome, 
 and the Romans refused to surrender him to the mon- 
 arch who followed swift upon his heels. Rebuffed by 
 the people who had so often been the beneficiaries of 
 his consideration, the Lombard king still refrained 
 from attacking the Holy City, but he did seize four 
 places in the northern part of the Roman division, and 
 his soldiers pillaged the land up to the very walls of 
 the city itself. Gregory III implored Luitprand to re- 
 turn the four towns, but the indignant Lombard 
 refused to do so, and the pope appealed for aid to 
 Charles Martel, the great king of the Franks.
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 This appeal, made in 739, was the first evidence of 
 a change in the attitude of the Romans toward the old 
 imperial system. Left to themselves in a hostile en- 
 vironment by a sovereign too weak to help them, they 
 had helped themselves for a long period of years. In 
 doing so they had made their agent not the impotent 
 vicar of the civil government, but the bishop whose 
 election made him their peculiar representative and 
 whose religious position gave him advantages as a 
 negotiator that none other could possess. But they 
 still clung to the traditional form of government, al- 
 though the real functions of government were other- 
 wise exercised; just as to-day the City of London 
 elects solemnly its lord mayor, a functionary without 
 any function in the government of the municipality. 
 They were Romans; the Byzantine emperor was the 
 head of the Roman Empire; the rest of the world was 
 barbarian. What there was of civilization they stood 
 for ; they sought to retain that distinction, and not to 
 become the political province of a barbarian chief. 
 
 But now it was becoming apparent to the pope that 
 the Byzantine hand was too weak to hold; that the 
 Holy City was certain to be overrun by the barba- 
 rians unless protected by one of the barbarian powers. 
 Reluctantly the Romans turned their faces from the 
 East and looked for succor to the West. The religious 
 sentiment was by no means an element in this reluc- 
 tance. Indeed, between Rome and Byzantium there 
 was division on religious matters, while the entire 
 West was doctrinally at one with the pope. 
 
 The nuncios of Gregory III were received cour- 
 teously at the court of the Prankish king, and Charles 
 in return sent an embassy to the pope. But the time
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 was not opportune for any hostile movement of the 
 Franks against the Lombards. Luitprand and 
 Charles were warm friends ; more than that, they were 
 military allies, the troops of the Lombard having 
 rushed to join the Frankish warriors against the Sara- 
 cens whose swords were gleaming in the fair fields of 
 Provence. Besides that, Charles was quite convinced 
 that while the Roman people might feel the wrath of 
 Luitprand for their unwarranted interference in af- 
 fairs that should not have concerned them, the head 
 of the church and his clergy need fear no violence at 
 the hands of the pious Lombard. 
 
 The Romans were left, therefore, to their own 
 devices, and for the hour these devices did not fail 
 them. With a flash of the ancient spirit and the an- 
 cient capacity, they armed and marched against the 
 invaders, took Spoleto, and reinstated Trasimund on 
 the ducal throne. 
 
 Luitprand, involved in numerous martial enter- 
 prises, took his time in preparation for the campaign 
 against Beneventum, Spoleto, and Rome, but the 
 whole peninsula was full of reports as to his purposes. 
 While his sword was suspended above the devoted 
 land, Pope Gregory died, following along the path to 
 eternity Leo the Iconoclast and Charles Martel. Pope 
 Zachary devoted the first days of his pontificate to 
 safeguarding the future of the imperial city. He 
 pointed out to his countrymen that the arms of the 
 two duchies and the Byzantine provinces could hardly 
 prevail over those of the mighty Lombard prince, to 
 whom, after all, the Romans owed a debt of gratitude 
 deeper than any they owed to his rebellious dukes.
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 The Romans accepted his counsel, and he went north 
 to make peace with the king. His train was entirely 
 ecclesiastical ; it was made up of the robed priests of 
 the church, and not of the armed soldiers of the em- 
 pire. Luitprand, always loath to make war on the 
 City of St. Peter, gladly accepted the Roman alliance 
 and promised not to molest the Roman duchy. The 
 troops of the exercitus Romanus joined him before 
 Spoleto, and Trasimund surrendered unconditionally. 
 
 The Lombard king more than kept his promise to 
 the pope. Not only did he restore to the Romans the 
 four towns he had taken from them, but in the follow- 
 ing year, when the Lombards invaded Ravenna and 
 Zachary went to plead with the king on behalf of his 
 neighbors, Luitprand good-naturedly gave up the 
 conquered territory and ceased to molest the Raven- 
 nese. 
 
 In these years the pope appears as the defender of 
 the imperial territory. Luitprand's successor, Rat- 
 chis, was as devoted to the See of St. Peter as the 
 great king himself had been; and had he continued on 
 the throne for long, there might have been a different 
 history of Europe. Leaving Rome and Ravenna un- 
 molested, he advanced against the imperial power at 
 Pentapolis and Perugia, and was actually engaged in 
 the siege of the latter place when Pope Zachary and 
 his ecclesiastical train marched into the Lombard 
 camp. Before the king the eloquent pope pleaded for 
 peace; and so deep was the impression made by the 
 pontiff on the mind of the Lombard chieftain that he 
 not only withdrew his troops from the walls of 
 Perugia, but took the crown from his brow and re-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 tired to a monastery to spend the remainder of his life 
 in penitential exercises. 
 
 And now there came to rule over the plains of Lom- 
 bardy a warrior given much less to piety and more to 
 predation than either Ratchis or Luitprand, a crafty, 
 ambitious leader who was convinced that the time 
 had come to end forever the Byzantine domination 
 over the Italian peninsula. Astolphus succeeded 
 Ratchis in 749, and immediately took possession of 
 Pentapolis and Ravenna. Under his ruthless heel the 
 exarchate came to its end, and from the exarchal palace 
 the Lombard king waved his sceptre over all of Italy 
 between the Po and the Adriatic. In 752 Zachary 
 died, and his successor, Stephen, found himself under 
 the threat of a Lombard invasion. He at once sent 
 ambassadors to his new and not desirable neighbor, 
 and by them and him a treaty was negotiated under 
 which Astolphus pledged himself to a peace of forty 
 years' duration. His pledge held good for less than 
 one-fortieth of the stipulated term, for in the autumn 
 of the same year his troops were on the march, and 
 halted only on the promise of a tribute of gold. The 
 invader announced, further, that it was his purpose to 
 cut Rome off from the empire and make the Holy City 
 one of his dependencies. 
 
 Gloomy tidings, indeed, were these for the Roman 
 people; to give up the glorious past; to lose that inde- 
 pendence they had enjoyed under the weakening im- 
 perial system ; to become vassals to strangers whose 
 dress was wild, whose beards and hair were uncouthly 
 shorn ; to pass from political unity with civilization to 
 political subordination to a barbaric power : all this it 
 
 C52]
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 meant to a people proud of their peculiar position as 
 citizens of a holy republic and heirs of the conquerors 
 of the world. There was no division among them on 
 this subject; the farmer and the tradesman shared 
 with the duke and the pope the horror of such a situ- 
 ation. 
 
 For years the Romans had been pleading with the 
 emperors to wake up to the dangers in the West, but 
 the somnolent powers at Constantinople could not be 
 awakened to the gravity of those dangers. At this 
 juncture they did indeed take some slight notice of 
 Pope Stephen's entreaties, and sent to Rome not 
 armed legions, but John the Silentiary with letters to 
 Astolphus and to the pope. The first was entreated 
 to restore the territories of the empire he had annexed 
 to his kingdom ; the second to do what he could for the 
 empire diplomatically. Stephen sent his brother Paul 
 to Astolphus with the Byzantine ambassador, but the 
 Lombard king was not much impressed by either the 
 emperor's or the pontiff's representative. He did 
 consent to send a messenger to Constantinople, but in 
 the absence of that messenger he employed his time 
 with incursions into the Roman duchy and the seizure 
 of a castle or two. 
 
 Meanwhile the Romans were in a state of panic. 
 With reason they expected little aid from the East, 
 and in their distress they thought more often of a pro- 
 tectorate by the Frankish monarch under which they 
 might continue to enjoy their independence. With 
 this in view, the pope began a secret correspondence 
 with Pepin, using as his messenger a peasant. He 
 asked the Frank for a bodyguard to see him safely 
 
 [533
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 through Lombardy, as he desired to visit France. 
 Pepin sent a Prankish bishop and the duke Auchtaire 
 to escort him from Italy, and these, on their arrival in 
 Rome, found John the Silentiary, who had returned 
 from the Eastern court. The Byzantine had brought 
 to Stephen a command of the emperor that he hold a 
 personal interview with Astolphus and induce him to 
 restore Ravenna to the empire. 
 
 Preceded by Auchtaire and escorted by his clerics 
 and a splendid military company, Stephen set out for 
 Pavia, the Lombard capital, to which Astolphus had 
 retired from Ravenna. This was in October, 753. On 
 the road the pontiff was met by a messenger from 
 Astolphus with an entreaty that the pope refrain from 
 any reference to the exarchy. It was an entreaty to 
 which the pope paid scant respect, his diplomatic 
 mission being to obtain the restoration of Ravenna. 
 All his eloquence was wasted, however, although he 
 was strongly backed by the imperial ambassador and 
 by the Prankish nobles who stood at his side. The 
 Lombard king would not concede an inch that he 
 held by right of conquest, nor would he give any 
 satisfactory guarantee with regard to his future pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 The pope had made his last effort for the integrity 
 of the Byzantine empire. It had demonstrated its 
 weakness, and it was beyond his power to uphold its 
 sovereignty longer against the rapacity of the Lom- 
 bard. His business now was the protection of the 
 "peculiar people" and their territory, and he went 
 about the business without loss of time. Sending 
 back to Rome the military escort, he proceeded, with
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 his clerical entourage and his Prankish attendants, to 
 the seat of the Prankish monarch. Pepin met him on 
 the road and treated him with great respect and affec- 
 tion. To him Stephen made his plea, setting before 
 him the state of Italy and the danger to the Roman 
 republic, and begging him to protect the patrimony 
 of Peter. 
 
 It was a plea that did not fall on deaf ears. The 
 Prankish king was horrified at the idea of an attack 
 by the Lombards on the headquarters of the Christian 
 faith; he besought Astolphus through numerous am- 
 bassadors to refrain from such hostile activity and to 
 refrain from the imposition of unaccustomed taxes. 
 But Astolphus was stubborn; the entreaties of his 
 Prankish neighbor did not move him, and Pepin 
 swiftly took to the sword to effect what the tongue 
 had been unable to bring about. At the head of his 
 Prankish chivalry, he crossed into Italy, met Astol- 
 phus on the road, routed him, and pursued him to 
 Pavia. Vanquished by the Western warriors, the 
 Lombard king was compelled to yield back Ravenna 
 and the other duchies, and Pepin sent the pope back 
 to Rome, where the people received their pontiff with 
 joyful acclamations. 
 
 Astolphus hardly waited until Pepin was back over 
 the Alps before he laughed at his own promises and 
 prepared to revenge himself on Rome. The pillage of 
 the countryside by his outriders gave warning of the 
 attack in force, and Rome had some time to prepare a 
 defense against the three formidable columns of 
 bearded men-at-arms whose weapons flashed in the 
 sunshine outside her gates on New Year's morning of
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 756. All around the city the vengeful Lombard 
 wasted the fields and villages, and again and again his 
 charges threatened the very walls; but the Romans 
 hurled back his storming parties, priests and abbots, 
 with armor worn over their monastic robes, fighting 
 with the lay soldiery on the ramparts. Meanwhile the 
 pope smuggled his messengers by sea through the 
 Lombard lines, and his appeals reaching Pepin at last, 
 the king of the Franks and his terrible squadrons once 
 more advanced into Italy in their war harness. Astol- 
 phus raised the siege of Rome to front his far more 
 formidable foe. Step by step he was driven back un- 
 til, cornered at last in Pavia, he was beaten again into 
 submission. 
 
 Meanwhile some inkling of what was occurring in 
 the West had penetrated the minds of the powers at 
 Constantinople, and the victorious Pepin was met by 
 a Byzantine ambassador who entreated him to restore 
 Ravenna and the other duchies to the Eastern Empire. 
 But the Frankish king shook his head; for St. Peter 
 and the remission of his sins he had undertaken the 
 war, he said, and on the shrine of St. Peter he pro- 
 posed to lay the fruits of his victory. And he did as 
 he said. At the head of a military division, the abbot 
 Fulrad went with the Lombard commissioners from 
 city to city, gathering the keys and hostages, and all 
 these Fulrad took to Rome, depositing in the Confes- 
 sion of St. Peter the keys of the conquered cities to- 
 gether with the deed in which their conqueror made 
 them over to the apostle and his successors. 
 
 Thus was the State of the Church born. All the 
 circumstances of the time conspired to bring it about. 
 
 C56]
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 Under the protection of the Prankish monarch it was 
 placed by the grateful pope, who bestowed upon Pepin 
 the title of Patrician of the Romans. Other popes 
 extended its confines, and not many years went by 
 before there was revived the tradition of imperial pro- 
 tection, when Leo crowned Charlemagne emperor of 
 the Romans and the Western Empire arose on the 
 ruins of the Eastern. 
 
 This is a segment of the record of the progress of 
 the church: not its spiritual progress so much as its 
 temporal or material progress. What is it we see in 
 it, now that we examine it closely? And what is it 
 that others see? Draper, the Protestant historian, 
 sees the cunning machinations of a perfectly organ- 
 ized priesthood; the triumph of a selfish, corrupt, 
 superstitious, but marvellously subtle and politic 
 priestcraft. By no other hypothesis can he account 
 for the survival of the Roman Church by no other 
 hypothesis because the only alternative never sug- 
 gests itself to his unconsciously but completely 
 prejudiced mind. 
 
 Macaulay sees in a still greater segment something 
 he cannot quite understand, but which compels, as he 
 admits, his reluctant admiration. He accounts for it 
 on the theory that "the polity of the Church of Rome 
 is the very masterpiece of human wisdom." He speaks 
 of the "forty generations of statesmen" whose experi- 
 ence gave perfection to that polity. But what made 
 these popes statesmen? Many of them, before the 
 time of which we treat, and after, were simple-minded 
 religious enthusiasts, mortifying their flesh with 
 haircloth shirts under the splendid pontifical vest- 
 
 Isil
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 ments they wore. Many of them were the children of 
 peasants and tradesmen who had graduated up 
 through the priesthood to the primacy of the church. 
 Was there really something else something Ma- 
 caulay could not see because of the traditions that had 
 come down to him and the environment that affected 
 even his enlightened mind? 
 
 What is there to see really, if we look at these 
 things just as we look at political events of a more im- 
 mediate past the Spanish-American War, for in- 
 stance, or the present seizure of Tripoli by the Italian 
 government? Is there priestcraft reaching out for 
 power? Or is there the picture of a world over which 
 the system of law had broken down, an empire whose 
 dead members, having sloughed off, became pos- 
 sessed of a new, fierce life and turned to rend the body 
 from which natural decay had dissevered them? And 
 in the midst of the bloody chaos is the human organi- 
 zation that holds the living light of a divine faith, and 
 that turns this way and that, pleads and protests, 
 gives blows and blessings, in a day-to-day struggle 
 against the extinction of that light in the warring 
 tides of ignorance and blood. And out of it all there 
 comes the only thing that could come if darkness 
 were not to swallow the world, as the Indians believe 
 it does when the ecliptic shadow falls across the hills 
 and valleys: a human state supporting the spiritual 
 church, as the dark tower of rock supports the shining 
 beam whose glory streams out over the troubled 
 waters. 
 
 It was a state to vex sovereigns whose inclinations, 
 otherwise unchecked by any law, were called to ac-
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE PAPAL STATE 
 
 countability here. It was a state against which they 
 could rouse the race prejudice when religious con- 
 straint chafed their licentious spirits. It was some- 
 thing that was bound to have some of the corruption 
 without which no human government has ever been, 
 and to be open to attack therefor, and to a fierce ar- 
 raignment in which a pinch of truth might be used to 
 flavor an ocean of falsehood. 
 
 C593
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 THE mind that is accustomed to the contem- 
 plation of society's present form of political 
 organization finds itself vexed by a study of 
 the middle ages. We may say that now we deal in 
 world politics with solids: Bosnia and Herzegovina 
 may be severed from the Turkish Empire and become 
 part of the Austrian, Tripolitania may be annexed to 
 the Italian dominion, independent sovereignty may 
 be ended in the Dutch republics of southern Africa to 
 make them part of the British Empire, the Philippine 
 Islands may be wrested from Spain and attached, 
 more or less securely, to the American Union, but it is 
 always a movement of pieces of things; it is like a 
 breaking off and a sticking together of rigid sub- 
 stances. Unlike it altogether are the political changes 
 of the middle ages. States seemed fluid then, or so 
 slightly solidified that with amazing frequency and 
 facility they were liquefied and disintegrated. There 
 was a lack of stability; there was no fixity of terri- 
 torial lines; Europe showed a kaleidoscopic political 
 face. It was a huge, grotesque, magic countenance 
 with changeable features, like one of its characteristic 
 gargoyles whose nose wouldn't stay where it be- 
 longed. The Western emperor was not always of the 
 same nationality, as had been for so long the case with 
 the Romans and with the Greeks ; sometimes he was a
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Frank, sometimes a German, sometimes an Italian, 
 sometimes a Lombard duke. A king might be vassal 
 to a lesser lord or an ecclesiastical dignitary with re- 
 gard to some of his provinces, or, it might be, only 
 some of his castles, while with regard to the rest of 
 his domain he owed allegiance to none. Law is to-day 
 dependent ultimately upon force, but in those days it 
 was more frankly and intimately dependent. A ruler 
 was less likely to ask himself, "Have I a legal right?" 
 than "Have I enough lances?" A vassal was more 
 likely to ask, "May I safely rebel?" than "Must I 
 legally obey?" Then further to obscure national 
 lines came the crusades, the development of chivalry, 
 the birth and growth of monastic military orders like 
 the Templars and the Hospitallers, that spread a net- 
 work of iron over all the nations of Christendom, ex- 
 citing the fear and the jealousy of kings. 
 
 Yet underneath all this there was a uniform basis ; 
 throughout this strange society there was a universal 
 influence, behind all this lawlessness there was law. 
 The legal principle of the feudal constitution was 
 that accountability was due to the source of power. 
 It is the political legal principle to-day. The only 
 difference is that the feudal lord never thought of the 
 ultimate source, but only of the immediate source. If 
 he held his fief from a duke, then it was to the duke he 
 owed allegiance. If a pope bestowed a duchy on a 
 Farnese, then were all the heirs and successors of that 
 Farnese bound to render feudal service to the succes- 
 sors of that pope. If a king gave a province or a castle 
 to a brave lance, then from that lance to that king, 
 and from the successors of that lance to the successors
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 of that king, was homage due. Nobody then thought 
 of the people as the source of power least of all the 
 people themselves. 
 
 That was the principle of the political law of Europe 
 in the middle ages, often violated but always recog- 
 nized. Around that principle grew up a system of 
 common law, and that system was animated and 
 informed by the comprehensive influence of Christen- 
 dom. Behind it was the coercive power of an unrec- 
 ognized but potent public opinion which, united 
 upon no other thing, was focalized upon the beneficial 
 effect of a common religion. For this was the one 
 thing that dignified the toiler of that age his con- 
 sciousness that he was a member of the church of God 
 in common with all the toilers of all the Christian 
 nations, and that between his helplessness and the 
 absolute power of his lord that church interposed its 
 moral code. It was the only institution in that day 
 that opened its doors to him; every other path of ad- 
 vancement was barred to the lowly save that which 
 led to St. Peter's chair, for peasant priests there were 
 many and peasant popes were not infrequent. It was 
 the only institution that made a place for the great 
 mass; it was the visible and palpable embodiment of 
 justice to a people who gave little thought to abstrac- 
 tions but hungered for material signs. 
 
 It is remarkable that in all the struggles between 
 the church and the state in the middle ages, there is 
 always something which concerns the rights of the 
 common people. We can, for the present, leave to 
 theologians the correctness of Boniface VIII's posi- 
 tion in his long struggle with Philip the Fair of 
 
 C62]
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 France, but we will note among the causes for com- 
 plaint urged by the pope against the king was the de- 
 basement of the coinage and the subsequent suffering 
 of the common people. We read the long complaint of 
 a German emperor against a pope with whom he was 
 in conflict, and his reproach, "by the doing of which 
 you have gained the applause of the vulgar." We see 
 widows appealing to the church for justice against the 
 rapacity of rulers; we see the abandoned and impris- 
 oned wife of Philip Augustus appealing to the church 
 against her royal husband ; we see the wife of the im- 
 prisoned Richard of England urging the church to 
 strike with the spiritual sword the faithless German 
 emperor who had imprisoned her husband. Through- 
 out Europe the confidence in the readiness of the 
 church to defend the weak who had no other de- 
 fender then was universal. And not only the peas- 
 ant and the widow turned to the church in their 
 distress: barons and princes and kings and emperors 
 did likewise. Under the protection of St. Peter, the 
 king about to embark on a crusade would leave his 
 kingdom; against the ruthless power of a stronger 
 neighbor a wronged duke would make complaint to 
 the primate of the church. If two kings were at war 
 and the arbitrament of the sword was unsatisfactory, 
 the pope became the arbitrator, the justice of whose 
 decree was assumed in advance. 
 
 The precedent of the coronation of Charlemagne as 
 emperor of the West made it law that the pope should 
 confirm the election of an emperor whose first duty 
 was the protection of the church. The conferring of 
 many of the estates of the church upon temporal 
 
 [633
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 rulers as fiefs of the church gave the pope by the law 
 of the time a sovereignty that was political as well as 
 spiritual over such estates. The voluntary assumption 
 of feudal obligations by the rulers of other states 
 made them, also, subject to the pope in a political way. 
 
 Meanwhile Christianity was working upon the 
 moral constitution of the men who made up the world 
 of the middle ages. It gave a noble tendency to the 
 military enthusiasm of the day by teaching that gen- 
 tleness was the obligation of the strong. It means 
 something that then there came into English the title 
 "gentle-man," applied, paradoxically, to those whose 
 rude trade was war ; every Romance language had an 
 equivalent for that title. Knighthood received its sense 
 of obligation from the church; at the altar of the 
 Prince of Peace the youthful soldier prayed at the 
 threshold of his career, clad in his robe of spotless 
 white to symbolize the purity of his devotion; to the 
 cause of Christ and his church he consecrated his vir- 
 gin sword ; to the succor of the weak and the defense 
 of the widow and the orphan he pledged his lance by 
 the oaths that the church prescribed. He must be 
 brave and tender and truthful, he must keep his honor 
 untarnished. 
 
 And these were the days of the torture-chamber! 
 These were the days of private and public wars innu- 
 merable ! These were the days when human life was 
 held cheap not only by those who sought to take it, 
 but often by those who parted with it laughingly. 
 
 At first blush we find it strange that the crimes re- 
 corded could have been so common in the days when 
 devotion was so intense, when there was so passionate 
 
 C64]
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 an idealism in the world. But it is not so strange. If 
 there was one characteristic of the age, it seems to me 
 that it was the utter lack of self-restraint. The power 
 of self-constraint was intense; men would dare and do 
 anything for an ideal, but it was another matter to 
 refrain from doing. We read of Henry II of England 
 chewing his lips until his mouth was covered with a 
 bloody froth in his rage against Thomas a Becket. 
 Frederick Barbarossa beat his head against the wall 
 when unable to execute his whim, and wished that he, 
 like Saladin, had no pope to vex him. Philip the Fair 
 of France was not satisfied with the death of his papal 
 enemy, but must drag him back from the grave to 
 have him tried on monstrous charges which dead lips 
 could not deny. 
 
 Possibly the best illustration of that devotion which 
 found outlet in violent expression, but could not en- 
 dure self-repression, is the letter the landgrave Philip 
 of Hesse wrote to Melahchthon and the leaders of 
 German Protestantism whose sanction to a divorce 
 from his wife he begged. He made no charges against 
 the lady at all. It was not difficult for him to establish 
 his devotion to the cause of the Reformation had he 
 not given the last proof on many a sanguinary battle- 
 field of his willingness to die for it? but to live in 
 fidelity to his marriage vows for more than a week at 
 a time, for religion or anything else whatsoever, was 
 simply impossible, so, please, he wanted a divorce. And 
 the Protestant landgrave is only one of several such 
 examples which may be summoned from the ghostly 
 halls of history. Many a gallant Christian leader in 
 earlier days, when there was no Protestant cause,
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 found it far more to his liking to fight for religion than 
 to live according to her precepts. Nearly all the causes 
 of quarrel between historical personages and the pope 
 had this element. The Catholic Philip Augustus and 
 the Protestant Henry VIII if Henry can truly be 
 called a Protestant found most irksome the matri- 
 monial regulations of that church which one so vigor- 
 ously defended with his sword and the other with his 
 pen. The valiant soldiers of the Cross who joyfully 
 undertook the hardships of distant travel and the 
 perils of war with a savage heathen foe, knelt in hu- 
 mility and devotion to receive the Substance of the 
 Lord from the hands of the priest on the morning of 
 battle, and then abandoned themselves to a blood-lust 
 that spared nothing human. 
 
 It is a marvellous age, an amazing time ! We who 
 live in the security of civilized life, who carefully pro- 
 tect ourselves from every evil against which science 
 has devised a safeguard, whose faith is shallow and 
 whose dread of death is deep, find it hard to under- 
 stand the men of that age so long gone by. They were 
 gay. The oppressed villein laughed in his miserable 
 bare hut; the outlaw laughed in Sherwood Forest 
 while his minstrel sang to him in humorous descrip- 
 tion of the gibbet on which he was likely to end his 
 mortal days ; the rude baron, in his stone halls, drank 
 deep and laughed loud ; the parish priest was cheery 
 and merry. It was in those days that England was 
 called "Merrie England." It was in those days that 
 the troubadours laughed at everything in their gay ir- 
 reverence, behind which there was perhaps a deeper 
 reverence than we know. 
 
 C66]
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 They were brave. If, in their superstition, ghostly 
 things had terrors for them, actual death had none. 
 They endured physical pain with a wonderful spirit: 
 how it makes the heart beat to recall the one hundred 
 and thirty knights of the condemned Temple Order 
 who went to the fire in splendid procession, each look- 
 ing upon death in its most frightful aspect with calm, 
 contemptuous eyes, professing, as the flames wrapped 
 his body round, his simple faith in the church whose 
 priest had condemned him, and protesting the inno- 
 cence of his great order! I sometimes think that it 
 was more because of the heroic temper of the men of 
 that age than because of their cruelty that the torture 
 became a part of the judicial process. To-day simple 
 death is sufficient to inspire fear in the mind of man; 
 then something more terrifying than death had to be 
 employed. 
 
 They were violently virtuous. Their penances 
 were real ; not the mere recitation of prayers, not the 
 simple mental humiliation satisfied the penitent an 
 emperor of Germany stands for three bitter days in 
 the snow at the gate of a church, shivering in the bit- 
 ter blast, to gain the pardon of the offended priest of 
 God. Thousands leave their castles and their fertile 
 fields, their servants and their families, to go on foot, 
 by roads infested with robber bands, through coun- 
 tries strange in speech and custom, and at last in 
 creed, penniless and in poor garb, in order to gain the 
 forgiveness of God. 
 
 But if violently virtuous, they are also violently evil 
 in all things they are violent. The rage of Sciarra 
 Colonna drives his mailed fist at the triple-crowned 
 
 [67]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 head of the venerable vicar of Christ; the rude clutch 
 of William de Nogaret plucks the primate of Christen- 
 dom from the throne of Peter and hurls the aged but 
 indomitable prelate, feeble in body because of his 
 eighty-six years, but strong in mind and spirit still, 
 among the hired banditti who did the will of Philip of 
 France at Anagni. 
 
 What thought a ruler then of the rights of subjects? 
 Who among the kings and dukes cared a snap of his 
 fingers for abstract right and wrong where his pas- 
 sions were engaged ? What was the state ? Was it an 
 organization for the public good? Who dreamed, in 
 state affairs, of the public good? What were the 
 political questions of the day? The amours of a king. 
 The question of the marriage of his son or his daugh- 
 ter. The divorce of his wife. The support of his mis- 
 tress. The assassination of his rival. The extortion 
 of money from his people. The robbery of his neigh- 
 bors. Adultery, murder, robbery these were the 
 political questions of the middle ages ; these were the 
 matters upon which monarchs claimed independence 
 of the popes. 
 
 And what was the state? Was it not what Louis 
 XIV declared it to be in his famous "L'Etat c'est 
 moi"? Government was personal, national welfare 
 meant the aggrandizement of the monarch, the feed- 
 ing fat of his hunger for wealth and power and glory. 
 The King of France called himself "France," and ad- 
 dressed his brother monarch as "England." When a 
 German ruler said, "We are dealing with Aragon," 
 what he meant, and what everybody knew he meant, 
 was that he was dealing with Ferdinand. Rulers 
 called themselves "we." 
 
 C68]
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 What would have been the result if these rulers, 
 each intent upon his own satisfaction, had imposed 
 always their own whims upon those subject to them? 
 What would have fallen upon the world if the abso- 
 lute freedom from responsibility they craved had been 
 freely granted them? What if there had been noth- 
 ing to oppose their selfish violence; no force in all 
 Europe to say them nay? If you consider what they 
 were and what they knew, how strong were their 
 bodies, how fearless their spirit, how fierce their pride, 
 how headlong and ruthless their violence, what pic- 
 ture does your mind reflect of a world left to their 
 mercies? 
 
 Against this violence, this fierce and passionate self- 
 assertion, stood the philosophy and the teaching of 
 the church. Against the idea of the irresponsibility of 
 kings stood the church doctrine of the accountability 
 of all human creatures, kings and subjects, princes 
 and peasants, for their moral conduct. Again and 
 again the prelates of the church declared, when none 
 else was so bold as to declare it, that he was no king 
 who ruled unjustly and wickedly, but a tyrant. The 
 passion of the day was war: the church preached 
 peace among the Christian nations. The selfishness 
 of power demanded slavery : the church preached that 
 no Christian should be a chattel. The church set its 
 ban upon trial by ordeal. It preached self-restraint, 
 and its servants banded themselves into societies 
 where self-restraint might be practised as an example 
 and an expiation. With a rigid moral code that was 
 practical and precise in detail it checked the licentious- 
 ness of the age, and I use the word licentiousness in 
 the most comprehensive sense.
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 In the collision of the two psychological forces, the 
 savage and the civilized, the licentious and the lawful, 
 occurred those things which have shocked historical 
 precisians who fail to perceive the vast difference be- 
 tween writing a law and getting men to live by it. 
 The church's moral power was backed by physical 
 power. The very passionate objective expression of 
 the age that made the control of temporal rulers diffi- 
 cult, furnished material weapons for the pope. If 
 there was a de Nogaret, with a heart of fierce hate, to 
 pull the pope down, there were thousands of proud 
 warriors ready and eager with as fierce a devotion to 
 exalt him. Colonna's mercenaries thrust the aged 
 Boniface into prison; the armed peasantry stormed 
 the prison walls to set him free. The savage Roman 
 barons drove the pope from Rome, and the Norman 
 warriors fiercely put the Romans to the sword in re- 
 storing the pontiff to his seat. 
 
 Here on two sides, then, were there directing and 
 compelling forces of the same nature bearing in upon 
 the rebellious inclinations of temporal powers. The 
 Christian peoples, including the lower as well as the 
 upper orders, and even the kings themselves when 
 their desires were not opposed and their selfish pas- 
 sions not engaged, made the law of the church their 
 law. It had been so from the age of Theodosius, the 
 moral precepts of the church had been written into 
 the imperial statutes. More and more it became so in 
 western Europe naturally, necessarily. To whom 
 did all these people of the West look for inspiration 
 and moral law? Was it not the church? How could 
 it have been possible for a generation so headlong in 
 
 C703
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 its devotion to form a system of laws that was not, in 
 all that then seemed to them virtuous and just, based 
 upon and in perfect harmony with the precepts of that 
 institution that men even those who fought it be- 
 lieved to be of divine inspiration and divine authority? 
 "Men then believed their form of faith," says John W. 
 Draper, and no more bitter critic of the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church ever wrote, "with the same clearness, the 
 same intensity, with which they believed their own 
 existence or the actual presence of things upon which 
 they cast their eyes. The doctrines of the church 
 were to them no mere inconsequential affair, but an 
 absolute, an actual reality, a living and a fearful 
 thing." And such men, so believing, were bound un- 
 der the laws of human nature to make the civil rein- 
 force the ecclesiastical law. So we find that not only 
 infractions of the moral code, as it is to-day univer- 
 sally understood, but violations of the church law 
 were prohibited by the civil statutes. The law of the 
 empire as well as the law of the church made heresy a 
 crime ; the church punished it with the spiritual sword, 
 the civil government with the stake and the gibbet. 
 Rulers deemed it dangerous to the state that heresy 
 should spread among the people : they left the deter- 
 mination of what was heresy to the theologians, but 
 the punishment they took into their own hands. The 
 only punishment the church ever inflicted on John 
 Huss was spiritual : his doctrines were declared to be 
 heretical, and he was stripped of his vestments and 
 degraded from the priestly office. His execution, for 
 a crime against the civil law, was the act of the emperor. 
 These were the words in which the Council of Con-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 stance dismissed his case: "Since Holy Church has 
 nothing more to perform in the case of John Huss, 
 this Holy Synod of Constance decrees that he be de- 
 livered to the secular judgment and the secular 
 power." 
 
 Professor Draper and many other historians have 
 laid upon the shoulders of the church all the atrocities 
 of the time, but historical research confirms what 
 common sense would conclude, that an institution de- 
 pending for general recognition of its divine character 
 upon an ideal could not have been steeped in crimes 
 that even that violent age abhorred. In such research, 
 according to the editors of the Cambridge Modern 
 History, "the honest student finds himself continually 
 deserted, retarded, misled by the classics of historical 
 literature, and has to hew his own way through 
 multitudinous transaction periodicals and official pub- 
 lications in order to reach the truth." The same au- 
 thorities state that "the long conspiracy against the 
 revelation of the truth has gradually given way." I 
 think they are wrong in assuming it to be a con- 
 spiracy. No doubt many a historian wrote atrocious 
 falsehoods as facts, not because he conspired against 
 the truth, but because he believed his falsehoods to be 
 facts. He depended on what "everybody knows." My 
 theory with regard to it is this : Throughout Europe, 
 and especially among the common people, there was 
 the same idea with regard to persons in official life 
 that prevails among Americans to-day. Superstition 
 was prevalent; men believed in speaking heads, in 
 witches, in a hundred other absurdities. Among the 
 superstitious peoples, and particularly those of north- 
 
 C7O
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ern Europe, all sorts of stories passed current stories 
 of kings and knights and bishops and popes. The ac- 
 cusations that an emperor in his wrath would hurl at 
 a pontiff sifted down to the peasantry in every exag- 
 gerated form and became a part of the inn-yard gossip 
 in many a distant province. Often, changed marvel- 
 lously in the telling, they persisted long after the em- 
 peror and the pontiff had forgotten them indeed, 
 long after emperor and pontiff had appeared at the bar 
 of a Higher Judge and generation passed them on to 
 generation. We have evidence in America of a Maine 
 farmer who for nearly ninety years voted for Andrew 
 Jackson for President. 
 
 All this tavern gossip, all the countryside scandals, 
 the first preachers of the Reformation gathered to- 
 gether, adding it to the abuses acknowledged to exist 
 in the organization of the church. The plots of Boc- 
 caccio's lewd jokes, the subject of the jongleur's ir- 
 reverent ballads these were seriously put forward as 
 proven facts, and a not too inquisitive Protestant ad- 
 vocacy so accepted them. And so they came down to 
 the Protestant writers of conventional history, and 
 from them they came down to us. Draper, for instance, 
 lays the blame of the sack of Constantinople by the 
 crusaders on the church, although quoting Pope Inno- 
 cent's indignant protest against the enormities of that 
 pillage. The church is held up as responsible for the 
 cruelties even of those Christian princes with whom 
 she was constantly in trouble because of her refusal to 
 remain silent in the face of their public offenses against 
 the moral law. The soldiers she employed were often 
 cruel: the soldiers of that excessive age were nearly 
 
 C73]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 always cruel. They liked to smite with the sword, and 
 they found it comfortable to believe that they might 
 smite without scruple when they smote an enemy of 
 Christ. A bias in favor of our own frailties is not so 
 rare in this age that we should not expect to find it in 
 other ages. There are men to-day who can pray and 
 prey at the same time; is it odd that such existed in 
 the earlier generations? The false conscience is not 
 peculiar to this day of the world. But it was no more 
 encouraged by the Christian church, as far as the rec- 
 ord runs, in the middle ages than it is to-day. But 
 because soldiers were cruel, why should the church, 
 whose constant preaching was in favor of mercy, be 
 held responsible? Does common sense to-day hold 
 responsible for the ferocious conduct alleged of the 
 soldiers of the Italian king in Tripoli, the Pope of 
 Rome, simply because the king is a Christian king and 
 he has appealed to the old crusading sentiment of 
 Europe by announcing his purpose of "planting the 
 Cross in Tripoli"? 
 
 We have said that there were two forces of the same 
 nature bearing in upon the law-making civil powers. 
 One such force was public opinion. The people of 
 that time willed it that the law of the church should be 
 their law. Why did they so will it? Let Professor 
 Draper answer a prejudice in favor of the church 
 will never be alleged of him. After indicting and con- 
 victing of every crime imaginable a long succession of 
 the pontiffs, laying at their doors impurity, licentious- 
 ness, blood-guilt, simony, blasphemy, and atheism, he 
 concludes a chapter on "The European Age of Faith" 
 thus:
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 "But there is another, a very different aspect, under 
 which we must regard this church. Enveloped as it 
 was with the many evils of the time, the truly Chris- 
 tian principle which was at its basis perpetually vin- 
 dicated its power, giving rise to numberless blessings 
 in spite of the degradation and wickedness of man. As 
 I have elsewhere remarked : 'The civil law exerted an 
 exterior power in human relations; Christianity pro- 
 duced an interior and moral change. The idea of an 
 ultimate accountability for personal deeds, of which 
 the old Europeans had an indistinct perception, be- 
 came intense and precise. The sentiment of universal 
 charity was exemplified, not only in individual acts 
 the remembrance of which soon passes away, but in 
 the more permanent institution of establishments for 
 the relief of affliction, the spread of knowledge, the 
 propagation of truth. Of the great ecclesiastics, many 
 had risen from the humblest ranks of society, and 
 these men, true to their democratic instincts, were often 
 found to be the inflexible supporters of right against 
 might. Eventually coming to be the depositaries of 
 the knowledge that then existed, they opposed intel- 
 lect to brute force, in many instances successfully, and 
 by example of the organization of the church, which 
 was essentially republican, they showed how repre- 
 sentative systems may be introduced into the state. 
 Nor was it over communities and states that the 
 church displayed her chief power. Never in the world 
 before was there such a system. From her central 
 seat at Rome, her all-seeing eye, like that of Provi- 
 dence itself, could equally take in a hemisphere at a 
 glance or examine the private life of any individual.
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their 
 palaces and relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. 
 In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too in- 
 significant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by 
 her solemnities, every one received his name at the 
 altar ; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled 
 at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of 
 his life at her confessionals, and punished his faults by 
 her penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her 
 servants sought him out, teaching him by her exqui- 
 site litanies and prayers to place his reliance on God, 
 or strengthening him for the trials of life by the exam- 
 ple of the holy and the just. Her prayers had an 
 efficacy to give repose to the souls of his dead. When, 
 even to his friends, his lifeless body had become an 
 offense, in the name of God she received it into her 
 consecrated ground, and under her shadow he rested 
 till the great reckoning-day. From little better than 
 a slave she raised his wife to be his equal, and, forbid- 
 ding him to have more than one, met her recompense 
 for those noble deeds in a friend at every fireside. Dis- 
 countenancing all impure love, she put around that 
 fireside the children of one mother, and made that 
 mother little less than sacred in their eyes. In ages of 
 lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step above 
 savages, she vindicated the inviolability of her pre- 
 cincts against the hand of power, and made her tem- 
 ples a refuge and a sanctuary for the despairing and 
 oppressed. Truly, she was the shadow of a great rock 
 in many a weary land !' " 
 
 We can readily see how in this age, when nations 
 are sharply defined and their populations, nationally 
 
 C763
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 united, are denominationally divided in countless 
 Christian and non-Christian religious and anti-re- 
 ligious organizations, it is utterly impracticable to 
 make the laws of any one church the laws of a state. 
 But in the time of which Draper speaks, and under the 
 conditions he describes, can common sense conceive 
 of any other possibility than the insistence of the peo- 
 ple upon civil laws in consonance with the precise 
 precepts of such an institution? Surely in a day when 
 enlightened opinion is all on the side of the correct- 
 ness of the democratic principle of government, it will 
 not be held that the nations of Christendom had not 
 then the right to demand such laws as they desired, 
 nor in the face of the testimony of such fierce Protes- 
 tants as Draper can it be said that their desire for the 
 laws of the church was unwise. They say that the 
 pragmatic philosophy, the philosophy that judges by 
 results, is the philosophy of modern America. Judged 
 by even that philosophy, was the impregnation of civil 
 law with religious precept in the middle ages correct 
 in principle? Again let Draper tell us. "Europe had 
 made a vast step during its Age of Faith," he says in 
 his Intellectual Development of Europe. "Sponta- 
 neously, it had grown through its youth; and the 
 Italians, who had furnished it with many of its ideas, 
 had furnished it also with many of its forms of life. 
 In that respect justice has still to be done them. When 
 Rome broke away from her connections with Con- 
 stantinople, a cloud of more than Cimmerian darkness 
 overshadowed Europe. It was occupied by wander- 
 ing savages. Six hundred years organized it into 
 families, neighborhoods, cities. Those centuries found 
 
 [773
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 it full of bondmen ; they left it without a slave. They 
 found it a scene of violence, rapine, lust; they left it 
 the abode of God-fearing men. Where there had been 
 trackless forests there were innumerable steeples glit- 
 tering in the sun; where there had been bloody chief- 
 tains, drinking out of their enemies' skulls, there were 
 grave ecclesiasts fathoming the depths of free-will, 
 predestination, election. Investing the clergy with a 
 mysterious superiority, the Church asserted the 
 equality of the laity, from the king to the beggar, be- 
 fore God. It disregarded wealth and birth and opened 
 a career for all." 
 
 Truly, the world to-day might well wish for a new 
 Age of Faith! 
 
 The other force of which I have spoken was the in- 
 ternational law of the day. The common consent of 
 nations gave the pope a position among the princes 
 such as the lovers of peace are now trying to establish 
 for the Hague Tribunal. Kings made appeal to him, 
 and the legality of his decree was universally recog- 
 nized. In the light of this simple fact there is noth- 
 ing astonishing in the bulls which are held up as proof 
 of the hunger of the papacy for temporal power. To 
 say, as historians have said, that the church divided 
 the world between Spain and Portugal gives such an 
 impression as that, surely; but how the impression 
 fades in the mind when we examine the bulls them- 
 selves and the circumstances in which they were is- 
 sued, when we know that the two kings of those two 
 estates appealed to the pope, not for territory, but for 
 an arbitration of certain counterclaims between them. 
 Then these bulls appear to us as merely the judgment 
 
 C78]
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 of an arbitrator called on to pass on the merits of a 
 controversy, intended to prevent conflict between two 
 great exploring powers over territories they might 
 discover, and not over lands already occupied, the 
 rights of whose princes are expressly asserted in the 
 bull. 
 
 I have tried briefly to picture the age, its thought, 
 its custom, its law. Judging it upon such facts as are 
 readily accessible, upon the testimony of Protestant 
 as well as Catholic historians, and in the light of ordi- 
 nary common sense, it seems to me that church law 
 was civil law because the people of the time wanted it 
 so to be ; that the political activities of the popes were 
 due to their peculiar position in the world of that day, 
 and to the wish of the rulers themselves ; that volun- 
 tary devotion gave them material power as well as spi- 
 ritual authority ; and finally that the personal character 
 of government made the acts of government for the 
 most part the moral acts of individuals for which they 
 as individuals were accountable to God, whose vicar 
 they believed the Bishop of Rome to be. As I have 
 said, the political acts of the time were very often just 
 plain adultery, murder, and robbery, and surely such 
 things come within the sphere of the spiritual author- 
 ity. It may be true that in that violent hour, when 
 kings dealt out rude blows with the mailed fist to 
 the very person of the pontiff, and thousands of 
 swords were ready to write that pontiff's decrees in 
 letters of blood upon the domain of his enemy, the ec- 
 clesiastical may have at times infringed upon the 
 domain of the civil power. But if the pope over- 
 stepped the limit, the secular ruler overstrode it ; the 
 
 C79]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 whole history of the time seems an effort on the part 
 of sovereigns to subject religion to their interests, 
 to make it international in its influence with respect to 
 their neighbors, but strictly national with respect to 
 dependence upon and control by themselves. What is 
 all the battle about investitures? Is it not the strug- 
 gle of the church to free itself from the enforced 
 nomination of its episcopal dignitaries by the kings 
 and emperors? In these days and in this country we 
 well know the meaning of patronage. The word itself 
 comes from those times and those countries : the kings 
 made the episcopal offices of the church the patronage 
 of the crown. The effect of their policy, which the 
 church always resisted, was to make the bishops less 
 priests than princes, less servants of the church than 
 ministers of the king. What was the object of Philip 
 the Fair? Was it not to make a church universal in 
 its influence, but French in its inspiration and alle- 
 giance ; to turn to his own earthly account the powers 
 that should be exercised, as they had been delegated, 
 only for the kingdom of God? 
 
 The hour has long gone by. The world is not the 
 same world ; the state is not now, nor can it ever again 
 be, in its political significance, some single soul using 
 a nation as his footstool. We have looked back to that 
 time when we are given to believe there was a per- 
 nicious union of church and state. We haven't found 
 what there was pernicious; nay, more, we haven't 
 found any state. None, surely, that corresponds to 
 the meaning state has to us in this generation. 
 
 Will there ever be such an hour again? Will that 
 knighthood ever again ride in iron harness the lonely
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 marches, from castle to castle, from walled town to 
 walled town? When it does, and when among the 
 nations of the earth, or in any one of them, there is the 
 uniformity of religious belief that then bound Chris- 
 tendom in a common faith, instead of the diversity 
 that now sunders it into countless creeds, perhaps 
 those who dread a union of church and state may have 
 a cause for such dread. But not until then.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 TRUTH is irrepressible. No matter what may 
 be the prejudice of the man who knows it, he 
 cannot suppress it in his breast. It will break 
 through, fighting for place with the falsehoods his 
 venom may invent or his prejudice project. And com- 
 mon sense is capable generally of recognizing the 
 truth and the falsehood, if common sense be allowed 
 full play and be not blinded by preconceptions. That 
 is our safety in this age. Not all of us have the time 
 to search out the hidden original documents in which 
 the editors of the Cambridge Modern History and other 
 historians say the truth lies; indeed, such can be the 
 task of only a few, so that the mind of the world must 
 be influenced by the popular histories. But a little 
 practical common sense, such as we exercise with re- 
 gard to business affairs, will protect us against many 
 errors. The occupations of my own life have excluded 
 such an engrossing search as would make me know 
 the details of life in remote ages; but with what my 
 common sense can make of such materials as conven- 
 tional history furnishes, I have been able to reach 
 conclusions which later have been confirmed by the 
 views of men of profound scholarship. In another 
 place I advanced, for instance, a theory with regard to 
 the effect of medieval tavern gossip upon the minds 
 of Protestant advocates and historians. Imagine my 
 
 C82]
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 surprise to find my view of the matter confirmed by 
 no less an authority than Martin Luther. "In the 
 taverns" wrote Luther, "people vied with one an- 
 other in relating amusing anecdotes about the ava- 
 rice of priests. The keys, the power of the popes, etc., 
 were there also ridiculed." How much of what has 
 colored our minds with respect to the Catholic Church 
 comes from such a source; how much of it rolled 
 originally off the thick tongue of the bar-room wit? 
 For example, that story of the female pope which, 
 Macaulay says in his essay on Gladstone's Church and 
 State, "has been disproved by the strict researches of 
 modern criticism," although, as he informs us in the 
 same sentence, it was "once believed throughout all 
 Europe." I have heard it often from good members 
 of Protestant churches who accepted it as established 
 historical fact, and who had never noticed the ten 
 words in which Macaulay announced its falsity. Yet 
 their common sense would have branded the story as 
 falsehood if a prejudice colored by many another 
 similar tale had not hampered its operations. Another 
 widely circulated myth that affects the Protestant 
 mind is the story of the pope who excommunicated a 
 comet. The story originated very naturally. A great 
 comet, sweeping into our field of vision as it made the 
 huge circuit of its celestial orbit, alarmed the peoples 
 of Europe, and they had recourse to prayer for preser- 
 vation from a menace no human power could resist. 
 The world hasn't changed so much, in so far as fun- 
 damental human nature is concerned ; the last visit of 
 the Halley comet, and the vagueness of scientific 
 opinion with regard to the possibility of a collision in 
 
 C83]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the wide reaches of space, caused much the same hys- 
 teria in our own generation. The pope, by public 
 prayer, endeavored to soothe the frightened people. 
 The comet flashed through the sky and went its way ; 
 the hysteria found relief in laughter. Now it is quite 
 likely that at that very time thousands of ignorant 
 peasants in the remoter parts of Europe believed that 
 the pope had excommunicated the comet. The humor 
 of the thing appealed to some; others took the story 
 quite seriously: it was their mental tribute to the 
 power and courage of the vicar of Christ. The popes 
 had hurled their curses at mighty kings and proud 
 emperors: to the mind of the ignorant serf, why 
 should he falter before the flaming devil who domi- 
 nated the sky? And so our historians have gone 
 again for their facts, not to the written record, but to 
 the folk-lore of an ignorant peasantry. A future gen- 
 eration may laugh at us, as we laugh at the genera- 
 tions gone by, when historians, after reading the files 
 of our newspapers of the spring of 1910, write down 
 that science predicted a collision of the earth and the 
 comet and the annihilation of the human race by a 
 whisk of its radiant tail ; and that all the world giggled 
 at the learned astronomers on the morning of the 
 nineteenth of May because those wonderful gentle- 
 men had lost the tail of the comet and, like little Bo- 
 Peep, didn't know where to find it. 
 
 I find some passages in history that ring true to 
 me ; my common sense accepts the evidence adduced ; 
 I find analogies in the life of the world of to-day, in the 
 facts of common human experience. And the man 
 for whom I am writing this, the man in the street, who 
 
 C84]
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 has no more time than have I perhaps even less to 
 devote to original research, can exercise his own rea- 
 soning faculties in the same way. He need not fear 
 that it is presumption on his part to question the con- 
 clusions of a great historian; a little reflection will 
 convince him that there is no perfect and complete 
 record of any time; the historian has had to fill up 
 gaps, to presume the relationship of isolated in- 
 stances; and his presumption, in all probability, took 
 the form of his preconceptions. And lest philosoph- 
 ical authority be needed to encourage the timid, I have 
 found such authority in Herbert Spencer, who says: 
 "Judging whether another proves his position is a 
 widely different thing from proving your own. To 
 establish a general law requires an extensive know- 
 ledge of the phenomena to be generalized; to decide 
 whether an alleged general law has been established 
 by the evidence assigned merely requires an adequate 
 reasoning faculty." 
 
 I have digressed. What I started to say was 
 that even those historians who wrote of the Catholic 
 Church with a Protestant or an infidel prejudice, have 
 been compelled by the very logic of the results of their 
 researches to set down facts altogether at variance 
 from their conclusions. How can we believe, for ex- 
 ample, that an institution so evil as Draper declares 
 the church to be could have been productive of results 
 so remarkably good as those he describes? Evil 
 cause and good effect. The upas-tree bearing the 
 apples of life. The motives and deeds of the devil, 
 and the consequences we should expect from the work 
 of God.
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 And now we come to Voltaire and find in him con- 
 firmation of the theory that many of our prejudices 
 against the Catholic Church are in their genesis 
 purely political. I am about to write of the conflict 
 between the popes and the German emperors, and 
 Voltaire furnishes me with this introduction : 
 
 "Nobody knew what the empire was. There were 
 no laws in Europe. Neither the right of birth nor the 
 right of election was acknowledged: Europe was a 
 chaos in which the strongest raised themselves on the 
 ruin of the weak, to be afterward in their turn over- 
 thrown. The whole history of the time is only that of 
 some barbarian captains, who disputed with the 
 bishops the privilege of ruling over imbecile serfs. 
 There was no longer an empire, either by law or in 
 fact. The Romans who had confided themselves to 
 Charlemagne by acclamation would not acknowledge 
 bastards strangers who were scarcely masters of a 
 fragment of Germany. It was an odd sort of a Roman 
 Empire. The Germanic body styled itself the Holy 
 Roman Empire, whilst in reality it was neither holy, 
 nor Roman, nor an empire. It appears evident that 
 the great design of Frederick II was to establish in 
 Italy the throne of the new Caesars, and it is quite cer- 
 tain, at least, that he desired to reign over Italy with 
 unlimited and undivided sway. This was the hidden 
 root of all his quarrels with the popes: he employed by 
 turns craft and violence, and the Holy See combated 
 him with the same arms. The Guelphs, those par- 
 tisans of the papacy, but still more the friends of lib- 
 erty, always balanced the power of the Ghibellines, 
 partisans of the empire. The object of the difference 
 
 [86]
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 between Frederick and the Holy See never was re- 
 ligion." 
 
 The autocratic principle had taken from the people 
 of the various sees the right of episcopal selection, 
 and this right rulers exercised quite without regard 
 for the confirmatory rights of the popes. The viola- 
 tion of the last-named right, upon which the church 
 always insisted, was at first not general, but it became 
 so before the time when Hildebrand, having four 
 times put away from him the tiara in order to act as 
 adviser to predecessors, was at last installed in the 
 chair of St. Peter as Gregory VII. We can imagine 
 what the result might be with this office in the hands 
 of ignorant political chiefs, with its dignity and its 
 power regarded as political spoil, with its occupant 
 dependent upon the favor of the reigning ruler. We 
 can understand the prominence of simony, the sale of 
 ecclesiastical offices, in the criminal records of the age. 
 
 On the other hand, the brutality and intellectual 
 darkness of the time had not spared Rome. The city 
 barons were not less cruel, not less corrupt, than the 
 barbarian captains who surrounded them. Between 
 the Roman aristocracy and the clerical body there 
 was a never-ending feud which involved the papacy 
 because of the fact that the pope was the temporal as 
 well as the spiritual ruler. For more than a century 
 upon which the enlightenment of to-day must look 
 with horror, the saints of the church wept bitter tears 
 over scandals of Rome. It must not be taken for 
 granted that all the popes were bad in that sad period ; 
 many of them vindicated their right to the high office 
 by holiness of life. But in history the scandals take up 
 
 87]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 far more space than the record of virtuous deeds, and 
 the iniquity of a Benedict IX receives more atten- 
 tion than the piety and wisdom of Victor II. The 
 church turned for protection from the Roman chiefs 
 to the Germanic, but the lust of power was the same 
 in the Germanic as in the Roman breast; the German 
 emperor, no less than the Roman aristocrat, looked on 
 the papacy as a means of political advancement. For 
 some little time while Sylvester II sat in St. Peter's 
 chair and his pious protector, the German emperor 
 Otto, held his court in the Imperial City, there was 
 peace among the Romans and some reflection of its 
 ancient splendor in the city of the Caesars; but even 
 then the clergy, under the leadership of Hildebrand, 
 were planning the freedom of the papacy from po- 
 litical control as the first step in its protection from 
 future scandals. 
 
 It is the boast of the Catholic Church that it passed 
 through these troubled times with its doctrine uncon- 
 taminated. My understanding of its contention is 
 that even the most vicious of the popes was restrained 
 from doctrinal aberration by the divine essence of the 
 ecclesiastical institution; that through corrupt human 
 channels the supernatural stream flowed on untainted, 
 just as the pure moonlight is unpolluted by the mire 
 on which it rests. It is a mistake to think it denies or 
 even seeks to conceal the evil conduct of some of the 
 pontiffs : I have before me a perfectly frank history of 
 those times, written by a Roman Catholic doctor of 
 divinity and bearing the imprimatur of his church. 
 
 But the times were coming to an end. Monks like 
 Peter Damian, priests like Hildebrand, the pious men
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 of Christendom for even then there were piety and 
 purity in the body of the church were gathering to- 
 gether to protect it against the evil results of political 
 domination. The foes they had to face might well 
 daunt men of a less lofty courage and purpose. In 
 Rome was a corrupt aristocracy, bent upon recover- 
 ing the control of the papacy from the German power, 
 not in order that it might be purified, but in order that 
 it might be made to minister to their pleasure and 
 profit. In Germany were warrior kings of vaulting 
 ambition and unbridled passions, supported by a po- 
 litical clergy who had disregarded the ancient canon- 
 ical rule of celibacy and lived scandalous lives. Along 
 the coast were the Saracen ships threatening the 
 Italian towns. If, as conventional history asserts, it 
 was a political purpose that animated these priests, 
 strange was the political wisdom that could foresee a 
 victory over a combination such as this. The cunning 
 priestcraft of pagan lands ever sought the support of 
 power; but this amazing priestcraft defied human 
 power, pitting itself recklessly against a brutal em- 
 pire, an intrenched aristocracy, a corrupted clerical 
 force of great numerical strength; against men of 
 power and what they loved ; against not only the po- 
 litical strength, but the long-established evils that 
 had all the force and tenacity of common custom; 
 against the fashion of the day. Has the world ever 
 seen cunning like this? "Forty generations of states- 
 men," says Macaulay. What remarkable statesman- 
 ship! 
 
 The Roman chiefs were the first to feel the rigor of 
 the reform, and they took characteristic measures to 
 
 [893
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 combat it. Stephen IX, although they had elected 
 him, had disappointed them; they had him poisoned 
 as he travelled in Tuscany. Immediately they called 
 an election and placed Benedict X on the papal throne. 
 But the clergy took no part in the election; they de- 
 nounced it as illegal and in violation of the oath the 
 Romans had taken when Stephen IX set out on his 
 journey, that they would elect no pope until Hilde- 
 brand was among them, in the event of Stephen's 
 death, which he seems to have expected. Aided by a 
 noble of the Trastevere Leo, the son of a converted 
 Jew they fled from Rome and gathered around 
 Hildebrand. He at once assembled a conclave which 
 elected Nicholas II, who was installed in St. Peter's 
 chair on January 24, 1059; Benedict X having de- 
 parted hurriedly upon the approach of Leo's men-at- 
 arms. Hildebrand overcame the objection of the 
 German emperor to the election of Nicholas, and 
 when the Romans rebelled and again elevated Bene- 
 dict, he called upon the Normans who were establish- 
 ing themselves on the coast, and with the help of 
 those remarkable warriors subdued the city aristoc- 
 racy and ejected the pretender to the pontificate. 
 Then came that great council at which Hildebrand 
 freed the church. It made the rule that the right of 
 the election of the pope should lie in the hands of the 
 cardinal bishops. 
 
 Hildebrand knew very well what that meant. He 
 knew the interests that would be antagonized, and 
 against those interests he sought to protect the 
 church. He found his weapons for the material con- 
 flict in the Norman settlements of the south. In
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 those formidable warriors he found the simplicity and 
 devotion he needed, and he took advantage of the 
 feudal law of the times to make them vassals of the 
 church. In the Council of Melfi, on August 23, 1059, 
 the church bestowed on the Norman chiefs, Richard 
 and Robert Guiscard, the principality of Capua and 
 the duchy of Apuleia and Calabria, and in return the 
 two captains took the oath of military service. 
 
 Throughout the years that followed the German 
 emperors exercised the powers of confirmation which 
 the council had reserved to them, and when, in 1073, 
 the clergy insisted upon elevating to the pontificate 
 the son of the Tuscan carpenter who had already done 
 so much toward its regeneration, it is a strange letter 
 that Hildebrand sends to the emperor Henry IV. He 
 hopes his election will be set aside, and he candidly in- 
 forms the emperor that if chosen as pope he will call 
 him to account for the scandal of his conduct. Strange 
 politician is this ! 
 
 Once in the papal chair, he "addressed himself to 
 tear out every vestige of simony and concubinage 
 with a remorseless hand," as Draper puts it. The 
 pious countess Beatrice and her daughter Matilda 
 ruled Tuscany, and Gregory wrote to them, urging 
 them to hold no communion with bishops who had 
 bought their offices. His legates went into Germany, 
 deposing bishops whose dignities had been purchased 
 from the emperor. Henry sold the see of Milan to 
 Godfrey, but the stern pope put down the king's 
 bishop from his seat. In Rome justice is done to the 
 brutal and vicious lords, and they seek alliance with 
 the German. One of them, at the instigation of the 
 
 91]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 emperor, breaks into the Church of St. Mary, followed 
 by a band of bravos, on Christmas night, and the 
 pontiff is torn from the altar, wounded, and carried a 
 prisoner to the castle of the Cenci. Throughout the 
 city the alarm runs sacrilege has been done ; the be- 
 loved pontiff is in the hands of his enemies ! Bells are 
 rung from the churches, the tradesmen, the laborers, 
 the great population of Rome, throng the streets. 
 Cencis finds a shrieking multitude swirling around his 
 castle; his men-at-arms are as nothing against this 
 furious horde ; they bring ladders and scale the walls ; 
 they put the bravos to the blade and storm through 
 the captured stronghold until they find the wounded 
 but undismayed pope. The conspirators flee from 
 Rome. 
 
 And now Henry gathers around him the political 
 bishops of Germany, and at Worms he assembles a 
 council before whom he lays charges against Gregory. 
 His ecclesiastical henchmen do his will; they pass a 
 decree declaring the pope deposed. Their decree the 
 emperor sends to Gregory with a letter full of abuse. 
 In Rome the pope assembles the Later an Council, and 
 against the emperor he launches the curse of the 
 church. The German monarch is laid under an inter- 
 dict : Christians are bound no longer by their oath of 
 allegiance to him; no longer is he king, but tyrant, 
 and the "power to bind and loose" has been exercised 
 to free them from subjection to a wicked sovereign. 
 
 And now Henry was to learn how well Hildebrand 
 had done his work in all the preceding years. The 
 priests of Gregory went throughout Germany, pub- 
 lishing the papal decree. The people shrank away 
 
 [923
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 from an accursed king, and many of the princes seized 
 the opportunity to wreak private vengeance for 
 wrongs long suffered. A council of the electors was 
 held and Rudolph of Swabia chosen in Henry's place 
 by the princes. 
 
 In terror of the rising storm, Henry sought a recon- 
 ciliation with the possessor of so terrible a power. In 
 midwinter he crossed the Alps and sought out Greg- 
 ory in Canossa. But the mere promise of peace would 
 not satisfy the pope. Henry must give evidence of 
 penance for his sins. There was the snow-covered 
 and wind-swept portal of the church, there should the 
 proud king humble himself, fasting and praying in the 
 cold, before he might be reconciled with the church 
 he had outraged. And when his ordeal was over and 
 the aged pontiff celebrated the mass at which Henry 
 was to be admitted to communion, Gregory lifted the 
 chalice and called upon God to strike him dead as he 
 stood if he were guilty of the charges the monarch 
 had made against him, and dared the guilty king to 
 do as he had done. Henry shrank back. 
 
 But he had accomplished his purpose, no matter 
 how bitter a humiliation it had cost him. The inter- 
 dict was lifted, he was free, his vassals would come 
 again to his call. He gathered them round him and 
 took the field against Rudolph, who was wounded in 
 battle and died of his wounds. Henry soon felt him- 
 self strong enough to gratify his hatred of Gregory, 
 who had never conferred upon him the imperial 
 crown. He summoned a council of clerical enemies 
 of the pope, and had Gilbert, the excommunicated 
 bishop of Ravenna, proclaimed as pope. With his 
 
 C933
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 army he marched on Rome in 1081. The countess 
 Matilda and Beatrice, her mother, gave his troops 
 battle, but he managed to take Rome in 1084. The 
 Roman aristocrats made his entrance easy and wel- 
 comed him joyfully, hoping for a return of the old 
 times and the regime of a pope under whom licentious 
 conduct and rapine would not be severely punished. 
 Gregory, who had solemnly excommunicated Henry, 
 shut himself up in the Castle of St. Angelo. The mar- 
 tial countess of Tuscany, in her efforts to relieve him, 
 inflicted severe reverses on the imperial troops in 
 Lombardy, but it remained for the Norman captain, 
 Robert Guiscard, to rescue the pontiff from the hands 
 of his adversaries. Although well advanced on a 
 career of conquest in the Byzantine dominions, Guis- 
 card never hesitated when he heard of the pope's 
 perilous situation. He hastened with all speed back to 
 Italy, and his knights were soon sweeping down upon 
 the imperial forces at Rome. Alarmed at the ap- 
 proach of this terrible antagonist, Henry withdrew his 
 troops ; but the Roman aristocrats could not willingly 
 relinquish their hope of a period of license, and they 
 denied the Normans entry to the city. Robert 
 stormed the walls and put them to the sword. Fear- 
 ing to leave the pope in Rome, he took him with him 
 to the abbey of Monte Cassino, and later to Salerno. 
 In that city, in 1088, died this strange politician) whose 
 last words were : "I have loved justice and hated wick- 
 edness, and therefore I die in exile." . Statesman? 
 Draper calls the works of Machiavelli "the purest ex- 
 ample we possess of physical statesmanship." Count 
 de Maistre describes them as a treatise on "How shall 
 
 C943
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 assassins outwit one another?" Then Gregory's 
 statesmanship was not physical statesmanship. "I 
 have loved justice and hated wickedness": there is 
 nothing like that in Machiavelli. 
 
 Again I look at a period of church history and see 
 only what is there to be seen. It isn't design, it isn't 
 cunning, it isn't priestcraft. It is simply this : Hilde- 
 brand's endeavors in behalf of a free and pure Chris- 
 tianity ran counter to the pleasure of Henry, who 
 wished to sell bishoprics, and, with a brutal and ig- 
 norant autocrat's fierce anger at anything that dared 
 to call him to account for sins that shocked the world, 
 he tried to beat down what he could not control. 
 
 Rapidly I shall pass over the events of the period 
 intervening between the reign of Henry IV and the 
 time of that Frederick of whom Voltaire speaks. In 
 that period succeeding emperors had attacked the 
 papacy in an effort to make the church political. In 
 that period a Henry had helped the Duke of Austria 
 rob and imprison the returning crusader, Richard the 
 Lion-hearted, and had been called to account by the 
 pope, under whose protection were all crusaders on 
 the roads to and from the Holy Land. In that period 
 Henry VI had fought for the ancient power of the 
 emperors over the bishoprics and had lost, dying 
 reconciled to the church. In that period Frederick 
 Barbarossa had boasted, "I am the lord of the world," 
 and "The will of the ruler is law," only to admit, after 
 a short conflict, that there was a higher law and to 
 spend the remainder of his glorious reign in peace 
 with the church. 
 
 And now came the second relentless foe of the 
 
 C95H
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 popes, the able, crafty, infidel Lord of the Sicilies, who 
 dreamed of an empire of vast extent subject to his des- 
 potic sceptre alone, who had as little patience with op- 
 position as Napoleon was to exhibit in later times, 
 and, like Napoleon, saw in the papacy little more than 
 an instrument to be used to cement his power. Fred- 
 erick II was not, like many of his predecessors, a mere 
 ignorant freebooter with an imperial title. Little of 
 his time was spent in Germany ; his youth and most 
 of his manhood he passed in the more enlightened 
 cities of Italy. The son of Henry VI, he had been 
 protected after his father's death by the very power 
 he was soon to assail. As an orphan child he had 
 been safeguarded from the Emperor Otto by Pope In- 
 nocent III. He was instructed in all the arts and the 
 science of the day. Heir to the kingdom of Sicily, he 
 passed his youth in conversation with learned men. 
 As he grew into manhood he showed a predilection for 
 Mohammedan associates and Jewish and Moslem 
 instructors. "To his many other accomplishments," 
 Draper says, "he added the speaking of Arabic as 
 fluently as a Saracen. He delighted in the society of 
 Mohammedan ladies, who thronged his court. His 
 enemies asserted that his chastity was not improved 
 by association with these miscreant beauties. The 
 Jewish and Mohammedan physicians and philoso- 
 phers taught him to sneer at the pretensions of the 
 church. From such ridicule it is but a short step to 
 the breaking off of authority. At this time the Span- 
 ish Mohammedans had become widely affected with 
 irreligion; their greatest philosophers were infidel in 
 their own infidelity." 
 
 C96]
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 This was not an influence likely to incline the policy 
 of Henry in accord with the spirit of the militant 
 Christendom of the day. For the crusades had been 
 preached by Peter the Hermit and Walter the 
 Penniless Europe had been roused to rescue the tomb 
 of the Saviour from the hand of the unbeliever. Urban 
 II and Innocent III had, by virtue of their office, taken 
 the lead in the Christian movement. Frederick knew 
 well the spirit of the time, and, while not in sympathy 
 with it, did not hesitate to use it. He was well aware 
 that no one not believed to be heart and soul in the 
 project of the reclamation of the Holy Land could at- 
 tain to the imperial dignity, and he was prodigal of 
 promises. His first promise was to give the kingdom 
 of Sicily to his son as a kingdom distinct from Ger- 
 many, for Sicily was a fief of the church and its po- 
 litical union with Germany would complicate the 
 relationships of the Pontifical State. He took up the 
 Cross, and declared himself among the most enthu- 
 siastic of the soldiers of the faith. His tardiness in 
 setting forth against the infidel and in keeping his 
 promise with regard to the Sicilian succession after 
 he had received the German monarchical crown, em- 
 bittered the last days of Innocent III, his guardian; 
 but he made such professions of future conduct to 
 Honor ius III, and was so emphatic in his promise to 
 begin a campaign against the paynim immediately, 
 that that pontiff gave him the imperial crown at Rome 
 on November 22, 1220. 
 
 It must be remembered that the law of the time 
 made the emperor, primarily, the soldier of the 
 church. That was the law of the creation of the West- 
 
 C97]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 ern Empire. The knighthood of Europe looked to the 
 pope to give it in the emperor a leader in the Holy 
 War. Damietta, for which the Christians had paid a 
 bitter price in blood, was taken from them in 1219, 
 and upon its fall there came from the masters of the 
 crusading orders who held the Christian frontier, and 
 from the patriarch of Jerusalem, letters of reproach 
 to the pope for his failure to send the emperor to their 
 relief. Honorius, grieved by the loss to the cause, 
 wrote to Frederick in 1221 reminding the emperor of 
 his promises. Frederick, who was very busy extend- 
 ing his own dominions, even to the prejudice of the 
 States of the Church, replied with fresh promises. 
 His marriage to Yolande de Lusignan, daughter of 
 the King of Jerusalem, gave the pope a fleeting hope, 
 but Frederick extinguished it by applying to his 
 father-in-law to get him excused from crusade service 
 until he had subdued the Lombards. At last the pope 
 sent to Frederick two cardinals who were directed to 
 bring the matter to an issue, and at San Germano in 
 July, 1225, Frederick signed a solemn undertaking to 
 embark in the crusade within two years; swearing 
 that if he fulfilled not his promise he should be driven 
 from the communion of the church, and that his per- 
 son and his dominions should, by a just judgment, be 
 at the disposition of the pope. 
 
 Honorius died in 1227, and Gregory IX succeeded 
 him in St. Peter's chair. It is quite likely that the new 
 pope entertained little hope of any real activity on 
 Frederick's part, although the emperor seemed to 
 yield at last to the threat of excommunication and 
 marched toward southern Italy. The vigorous Greg- 
 
 [98]
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 ory had assembled a fine army of crusaders, and it 
 looked as if at last the hopes of Christendom might be 
 realized. But Frederick had no real design of attack- 
 ing his Mohammedan friends; three days after his 
 departure he was back again in Italy, to the bitter dis- 
 appointment of the pope. The splendid body of sol- 
 diery melted away and Frederick retired to take the 
 baths at Pozzuoli. 
 
 The period of probation fixed by Frederick himself 
 came to a close, and the pope pronounced his excom- 
 munication in September, 1227. Frederick scoffed at 
 the action of the pope, and published attacks upon the 
 character of Gregory. In all the empire he played the 
 freebooter, robbing the crusading orders, and main- 
 taining his dissolute court crowded with Saracen 
 women and infidel preachers. In 1228 Gregory held a 
 synod in Rome and repeated the excommunication. 
 The adherents of Frederick among the Roman aris- 
 tocracy raised a revolt in the city and drove the pope 
 from his palace. Meanwhile Frederick at last started 
 for the Holy Land, on what he was pleased to call his 
 crusade. 
 
 It was an odd crusade. "The Christian camp," 
 Draper declares, "was thronged with infidel dele- 
 gates: some came to discuss philosophical questions, 
 some were bearers of presents. Elephants and a bevy 
 of dancing girls were courteously sent by the sultan 
 to his friend, who, it is said, was not insensible to the 
 witcheries of these Oriental beauties. He wore a 
 Saracen dress. In his privacy he did not hesitate to 
 say, 'I came not here to deliver the Holy City, but to 
 maintain my estimation among the Franks.' ' 
 
 C993
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Indeed, he did more than that. In the Moham- 
 medan atmosphere he frankly explained that the pope 
 could not have done other than excommunicate him, 
 unless he desired to lay himself open to the mockery 
 and revilings of the Christian peoples. In order to 
 show his love for the Sultan of Babylon, he presented 
 him with the consecrated sword he had taken from 
 the altar of St. Peter. No passage of arms occurred 
 in this remarkable expedition ; not a drop of blood was 
 spent, not a lance splintered save in courtesy. The 
 sultan was willing the emperor, his good friend, 
 should have Jerusalem, the elephants, the dancing 
 girls anything his heart might desire; and the Chris- 
 tian champion, not to be outdone in generosity, turned 
 the temple of Solomon over to the Mohammedan cus- 
 tody, and bound himself by oath to resist any attack 
 which might be made upon the sultan by Christian 
 swords. It was a treaty worthy of the enlightened 
 monarch under whose protection, if not from whose 
 hand, the book Di Tribus Impostoribus was given to 
 the world. 
 
 Meanwhile, Duke Rainaldo, Frederick's loyal vas- 
 sal, was invading the Papal States, and was checked 
 only by the arms of John of Brienne, one of the vassals 
 of the church. This attack that of a vassal on his 
 sovereign led the pope to absolve the subjects of 
 Frederick in Sicily from their allegiance. 
 
 After his return to Italy, Frederick found it conve- 
 nient to be reconciled to the church, and he made 
 promises of reform and restitution at San Germano 
 and visited Gregory at Anagni. His letters at that 
 time are full of his admiration for the amiability and
 
 GREGORY THE "POLITICIAN" 
 
 goodness of the pontiff. But the freebooter instinct 
 and the spirit of domination were too strong in the 
 Sicilian; he began to rob the Templars and the Hos- 
 pitallers who were not among his supporters. The 
 pope reproached him, and he again sought the latter's 
 help when his son Henry, who had been crowned king 
 of Germany, revolted against him. Henry deposed 
 and in prison, however, he was free once more, and his 
 Saracens robbed churches while he tyrannized over 
 Sicily and oppressed the Lombards. Travellers in his 
 dominions were not safe; they were taken by his Mos- 
 lem swordsmen, thrown into prison, and held for 
 ransom. These infidel warriors were allowed free 
 pillage of a church at Lucera. He had always jeered 
 at the popes, laughing at the religious ceremonies, and 
 meriting the reproach of Gregory, "Out of the sea a 
 beast is risen whose name is written all over, 'Blas- 
 phemy.' ' In 1239, when he was at the height of his 
 power, Gregory renewed the excommunication. 
 
 Judged by any system of politics the human world 
 has ever known, what amazing politicians are these of 
 the church? Never is it the weak and the humble they 
 strike with the spiritual sword ; always the strong and 
 the proud. A veritable hurricane of fire Gregory in- 
 voked by his sentence. Frederick rages with his Sara- 
 cens up and down Italy. He writes to his son that, 
 despite the fair offers of the pope, he will bring mat- 
 ters to issue with the sword, will humble the high 
 priest and so treat him that never again will he dare 
 open his mouth against the emperor. A fugitive from 
 the infidel warriors of the Christian emperor, the aged 
 and troubled Gregory dies at last in 1241, and in
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 coarse jest the enlightened monarch informs Europe 
 of the fact. Another of the papal politicians of con- 
 ventional history has obtained his reward: he has 
 peace. 
 
 But still Frederick ravages the Estates of the 
 Church, still he clings to the cardinals he has taken 
 prisoners from the highroads of the empire, until the 
 French king's threats cause him to release those who 
 were subject to that monarch, and Celestine IV's 
 short pontificate is followed by the reign of Pope In- 
 nocent IV. Innocent endeavored to bring about 
 peace, but the emperor declared that he must have 
 forgiveness of his sins before he would show proof of 
 repentance, that he would hold his ecclesiastical cap- 
 tives until he received absolution. So Innocent was 
 compelled to give up hope and to flee from Rome and 
 into France ; and there, at the Council of Lyons, Fred- 
 erick was tried on charges of heresy, sacrilege, im- 
 morality, perjury, and blasphemy. The anathema of 
 the church was hurled at him by those fugitive but 
 fearless priests. They inverted the torches, quenched 
 the burning flax. "So may he be extinguished !" they 
 said. And after recounting his deeds, Draper says, 
 "Forsaken and alone, he died."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 THE law of nations that gave the pope the right 
 to protect the person and property of a crusa- 
 der in the kingdom of any Christian prince 
 whatsoever was thoroughly understood by the 
 princes of the middle ages, and none made protest 
 against it, although some violated it. It grew out of 
 the necessities of the time. If there was to be any 
 united action of Christian warriors against the infidel 
 and political wisdom no less than religious zeal 
 pointed out the desirability of such Christian concert 
 some warder there must be to protect the holdings 
 of the absent lord. They didn't trust their neighbors 
 much in that freebooter age. They did trust the pope. 
 Knightly honor was a fine, high-sounding thing, but 
 papal justice was considered a safer dependence. 
 Thus the papacy became the great court of equity of 
 Christendom, to which the injured turned naturally 
 and promptly for redress. Its competence was never 
 questioned then, although its decrees might be evaded 
 and at times disobeyed. 
 
 It was by no means a light or a safe function to ex- 
 ercise, this of bending to justice the proud and un- 
 bridled monarchs of young Europe. The naked hand 
 that was stretched forth to take the loot from the 
 iron-gloved fist of a robber prince, took the chance of 
 being crushed. The priest, who wore but the frail
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 vestments of his office, ran the risk of being bruised 
 among the jostling warriors in their harness of steel. 
 Yet the courage of that great court seems to have sus- 
 tained it always. Time and again popes rushed on 
 what seemed like certain destruction, leaving the issue 
 to God. The annals are full of their expressions of 
 human despair not for themselves, but for the church, 
 and yet there must have been underneath that despair 
 a faith in their cause that was sublime ; for in the face 
 of the calamities their human vision foresaw, they 
 pressed on to the end in the course they had adopted. 
 
 If it was priestcraft, it was a craft such as no priest- 
 hood elsewhere has ever exhibited. If it was political 
 wisdom, it transcended the wisdom of human poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 It was from the exercise of his judicial function in 
 the case of Richard of England that Pope Celestine 
 turned to admonish the powerful warrior Philip Au- 
 gustus, crusader and Christian king of France. A 
 man just humanly wise would not have sought this 
 additional trouble, for Celestine had difficulties 
 enough. Richard that same Richard who is the idol 
 of English chivalry, the Lion-heart of romance was 
 taken a prisoner on his way home from Palestine by 
 Leopold, duke of Austria, who held him fof ransom. 
 Henry, the German emperor, was implicated in this 
 bit of brigandage, and the wife of Richard appealed to 
 the pope against both of them. Immediately the pope 
 demanded from the duke and the emperor the release 
 of the royal crusader. Leopold insisted on his ran- 
 som, and was excommunicated. Richard, free now, 
 appealed to the pope to have the money restored to 
 
 [104 ]
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 him, and the pope again summoned to the bar of jus- 
 tice the great emperor. 
 
 While this controversy was on, and the pope was 
 deep in the work of enforcing justice, Philip Augustus 
 of France fell in love with a beautiful girl who is 
 known in history as Agnes of Meran. There was an 
 obstacle in the path of his heart's desire : he had a liv- 
 ing wife. Some time before he had married the sister 
 of King Canute II of Denmark, Ingeburge, a fair, 
 high-spirited, and virtuous princess. Ingeburge was 
 the fifth cousin of Isabella, the first wife of Philip, and 
 this relationship served for a pretext upon which a 
 synod of political bishops granted the king a divorce. 
 Ingeburge's angry protest resulted in her imprison- 
 ment, and she laid her complaint before the pope 
 through the ambassadors of her brother, the Danish 
 monarch. 
 
 Celestine, as a preliminary, set aside the decree of 
 the Synod of Compiegne and sent his own legates to 
 France to examine into the merits of the king's case. 
 At the same time he warned Philip against marrying 
 again, but his admonition the king disregarded; his 
 nuptials with the fair Agnes were solemnized, and 
 Ingeburge was imprisoned and treated with greater 
 harshness than before. 
 
 Celestine died, and Innocent III ascended to the 
 throne of the popes. In its order there came before 
 Innocent this case of the King of France, and in Sep- 
 tember of the year 1198 the pope sent a letter to the 
 king by the hand of Cardinal Petrus. In this letter 
 the pope protests the reluctance with which he takes 
 any action against France, but declares that his stern
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 duty obliges him to take all means to turn Philip from 
 the path of sin, particularly as his example is encour- 
 aging lesser princes to break their marriage vows. 
 Philip remained obdurate, and Petrus, in pursuance 
 of his commission, convoked the Council of Dijon, 
 where was discussed the interdict under which it was 
 proposed to lay France. The king appeared before 
 the council and pleaded for time for reflection, and it 
 was granted to him. But Philip could not bear the 
 separation from Agnes, and at length Petrus sum- 
 moned the Council of Vienne and pronounced the in- 
 terdict, in the name of the pope, on January 14, 1200. 
 
 The anger of the king was raging. He cursed the 
 pope ; he declared he would become a Mohammedan ; 
 he banished the bishops who had attended the council, 
 and laid a heavy hand on the priests in whose silent 
 churches no mass was said. 
 
 But the pope remained firm; the land lay under the 
 interdict; the priests of the church gave no sacrament; 
 and the king's anger gave place to distress. He as- 
 sured the pope of his submission, and Innocent sent a 
 kinsman of the monarch to France to lift the inter- 
 dict. The churches were opened, the mass was 
 celebrated, all the functions of religion were again 
 exercised, to the great joy of the people. For seven 
 months the pall had rested on France. 
 
 The pope made arrangements for the Synod of Sois- 
 sons, and bade Ingeburge and her brother forward 
 their witnesses. The council convened, and the case 
 came for trial before it. But Philip anticipated the 
 verdict; he admitted the claim of Ingeburge, and 
 promised to restore her to her proper place as queen.
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 He complained bitterly to Pope Innocent, however, 
 and this was Innocent's reply : that he could not de- 
 viate from the right path and offend the Heavenly 
 King for the sake of an earthly one. Still Philip sought 
 for a long period to have the divorce case reopened; 
 even after the death of Agnes he could not forgive her 
 rival. The pope did declare the two children of Agnes 
 legitimate, on the ground that she had married Philip 
 in good faith after the publication of the decree of the 
 Synod of Compiegne; but in 1212 he wrote to Philip 
 saying that the divorce the monarch sought could not 
 be granted, and urging the king to cease his impor- 
 tunities. Philip then took Ingeburge into his palace, 
 and his will, which was published after his death, is 
 full of praise of her virtue and devotion. 
 
 This is an incident in history which Professor 
 Draper calls an interference with the civil affairs of 
 France upon the "pretext" of composing a matrimo- 
 nial difficulty. Before passing on from this to the 
 greater struggle of a century later, from Philip the 
 Great to Philip the Fair, let us give sufficient consid- 
 eration to one phase of it. When the king wanted his 
 marriage annulled, he appealed to the ecclesiastical 
 court. It was Philip who brought the matter before 
 the church ; it was Philip who assembled the Synod of 
 Compiegne; the initiative was all with Philip. If he 
 was angered at the determination of the judge, he was 
 no more than has been many another unsuccessful 
 litigant. 
 
 I always think the story of the great battle between 
 Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII should be 
 read backward : that the conduct of the king cannot be
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 well understood if we do not at the outset enlighten 
 our understanding with what followed the death of 
 Boniface. The reader of history will recall that within 
 a year of the death of this pope a French pope as- 
 cended the throne of St. Peter and transferred his 
 residence from Rome to Avignon in France, and that 
 for seventy years thereafter Avignon was the seat of 
 the papacy. It is a period known in the history of the 
 church as the "Seventy Years' Captivity." A passion 
 for a fair face and an imperious impatience of check 
 and bridle are at the base of the controversy of Philip 
 Augustus with the church, but it is a different matter 
 with Philip the Fair. Policy moves him; a cold and 
 calculating political design, shrewdly composed by 
 crafty lawyers, holds his course to its prescription 
 throughout. At the end of that design was the sub- 
 jugation of the papacy, its administration under 
 French influence and for the benefit of the French 
 monarch. It was a lawyers' battle, for if Flotte and 
 de Nogaret, the king's advisers, were bold and skil- 
 ful, their opponent was himself a master jurist. Bene- 
 detto Gaetani, who became Pope Boniface VIII, had 
 been educated in the famous University of Paris, and 
 had mastered canon law at Bologna. Prior to his 
 elevation to the supreme office he had been an active 
 servant of the church in many lands. He had visited 
 England and Germany, and in 1290, when Philip the 
 Fair was a young man, Cardinal Gaetani was papal 
 legate in France. In July, 1294, Celestine V was 
 elected pope. He was a pious hermit, eighty years 
 old, and he soon found that the burdens of the high 
 office were beyond his strength. In December he
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 voluntarily took the heavy triple crown from his own 
 brows and laid it down. His abdication was followed 
 by the election of Cardinal Gaetani. It was upon this 
 point that the lawyers of Philip's court were to seize 
 later. 
 
 Boniface had the same great ambition that had ani- 
 mated his predecessors : he hoped fervently for a suc- 
 cessful crusade. To that end he shaped all his efforts : 
 he busied himself in preparation; he planned the or- 
 ganization of a mighty Christian host; he gathered 
 gold for the war-chest of the faithful. As this subject 
 of the collection of treasure furnishes one of the 
 points of dispute with Philip, and as the impression 
 one gets from conventional history is that the greed 
 of the papacy drained Europe of its wealth, it is well 
 to devote a thought to it. To read the common his- 
 tories is to acquire the belief that every pope desired 
 to enrich himself and his relatives, and to that end he 
 laid heavy taxes on all the Christian world. It is only 
 by accident that the thought of another use for all the 
 funds accumulated by the church may be stirred by 
 reading of the beggar relieved at the monastery gate, 
 of the great hospitals erected for the relief of the poor 
 and the afflicted, of the schools and institutions of 
 learning, of the mighty efforts put forth for the recla- 
 mation of the Holy Land. Ranke gives shape to the 
 thought when he is discussing papal finances in the 
 fifteenth century. 
 
 "There has doubtless been justice," he says, "in the 
 complaints raised against the exactions of Rome dur- 
 ing the fifteenth century ; but it is true also that of the 
 proceeds a small part only passed into the hands of the
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 popes. Pius II enjoyed the obedience of all Europe, 
 yet he once suffered so extreme a dearth of money 
 that he was forced to restrict himself and his house- 
 hold to one meal a day." 
 
 Boniface found the political condition of Europe 
 anything but favorable to his plans with regard to the 
 East. There was war everywhere; the greed and 
 jealousy of the Christian monarchs filled the whole 
 land with outrage and battle. The Estates of the 
 Church were used by the monarchs to furnish their 
 war-chests, and, following the example of their sover- 
 eigns, the nobility entered with enthusiasm into the 
 congenial labor of pillaging churches and monas- 
 teries. The ambition of Philip the Fair alarmed Ed- 
 ward I of England and King Adolphus of Germany, 
 who joined their forces and did battle against France. 
 It was to compose these difficulties that the pope ad- 
 dressed himself, and he had an obvious and legitimate 
 object in view the pacification of Christendom and 
 the proposed war on the infidels. He succeeded at 
 last in persuading the Englishman and the German to 
 accept his mediation, but while negotiations were in 
 progress Philip again set the torch to the thatch by 
 violently taking prisoners the Count of Flanders and 
 his wife and daughter, the last named the betrothed of 
 the English king. At the same time he made an al- 
 liance with the Scottish monarch and again assailed 
 England. 
 
 Meanwhile from all the war-swept lands, but par- 
 ticularly from France, arose the complaints of the 
 ecclesiastical authorities with regard to the heavy tax 
 laid upon them by the kings. In France the raising of
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 funds from the churches had been turned over to 
 royal officers, who did not neglect the opportunity of 
 lining their own pockets with the spoil of the church. 
 These complaints reached Boniface about the same 
 time that the Count of Flanders appealed to him 
 against the forcible detention of his daughter in the 
 hands of the French king. Boniface sent the Bishop 
 of Mieux to investigate, and then, after a consultation 
 with the cardinals, issued the bull known as Clericis 
 laicos. That was in 1296, and the bull prohibited, on 
 pain of excommunication, the taxation of ecclesias- 
 tical property without the consent of the pope. If 
 such a prohibition strikes us as odd, we should re- 
 member that we live in the twentieth century, and 
 that this was in the thirteenth; that the recognized 
 common law is not now what it then was; and even 
 to-day no nation taxes the property of another nation. 
 
 Philip did not question the legality of that bull, but 
 he took measures of reprisal. He uttered a decree for- 
 bidding foreigners to engage in commerce in France 
 and prohibiting the exportation of treasure. This 
 prohibition was a blow at the donations for the cru- 
 sades. 
 
 The bull Ineffabilis, which the pope sent to Philip 
 on September 25, 1296, declared that his former pro- 
 nouncement was but the crystallization of well-recog- 
 nized canon law, designed to prevent the abuse of 
 power by the royal officers and not to affect bona-fide 
 contributions to the royal treasury. Neither did it 
 affect any tribute due under the feudal obligation. 
 The pope declared it was far from his intention to 
 cripple the government, that he would rather have the
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 clergy sell the jewels from the altars than expose the 
 kingdom to danger; but, on the other hand and here 
 is expressed the strange expectation of these poli- 
 ticians of the church he was ready to suffer persecu- 
 tion, exile, and death for the liberty of the church. 
 That was what they looked forward to when they 
 raised up the Cross before the eyes of powerful 
 princes : not the altitude of power and latitude of do- 
 minion with which human statesmanship concerns 
 itself, but persecution and exile and death. 
 
 Philip had gained victories in the field, and for a 
 time he assumed a more peaceful attitude toward the 
 pope. He sent a deputation to Rome, and the pope 
 modified his bull so as to exempt from the taxation 
 prohibition cases of necessity, the king to judge of the 
 necessity. On his side, the king revoked his orders 
 prohibiting the exportation of jewels and precious 
 metals. The canonization of Louis IX, the grand- 
 father of Philip, occurring at this time, added to the 
 good feeling between France and Rome. This happy 
 condition lasted until Boniface was called upon to 
 arbitrate between France and England. The de- 
 cision of the arbitrator did not please Philip; and 
 although the French king submitted, he and his nobles 
 began to enrich themselves at the expense of the 
 churches. Philip seized the estate of the Bishop of 
 Maguelonne, and took over for the royal treasury the 
 funds bequeathed by Cardinal John of St. Cecilia to 
 the charities. Other nobles made free with church 
 property whenever convenient: Count Robert took 
 with the sword the town of the Bishop of Cambray. 
 Meanwhile the French court was a refuge for the re-
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 bellious Colonnas, who vented their spite against 
 Boniface in the most amazing aspersions of his char- 
 acter and conduct. 
 
 It was to this court that Boniface sent Bernard de 
 Saisset, Bishop of Pamiers, early in 1301, with a plea 
 to Philip to allow the church tithes to be used for the 
 great crusade. A rude reception the papal nuncio 
 found in France. He was made a prisoner, despoiled 
 of his property, and his servants were cast into cells 
 and put to the torture in order to extract from them 
 confessions upon which Peter Flotte might base a 
 charge of conspiracy against the throne. Before a 
 court assembled by Philip the bishop was haled, 
 Flotte confronting him with his accusation of high 
 treason and the depositions of the servants on the 
 rack. The papal nuncio contented himself with a 
 denial of the competency of the court, and he was con- 
 victed and placed in the custody of the Archbishop of 
 Narbonne. 
 
 This was bitter news for the aged pontiff, beset on 
 one side by the German monarch and threatened now 
 with the vengeance of an angry French king. On 
 December 5, 1301, he prepared a bull demanding the 
 possessions and the person of his messenger from 
 Philip. This was the famous bull that the critics of 
 the papacy have held up as a shining example of the 
 arrogance and far-reaching temporal aggressiveness 
 of the church. It takes its title from its opening 
 words, "Ausculta, fili carissimi" "Listen, dearest 
 son," the aged pope says to the king, to whose notice 
 he then brings all the ills the church has suffered : the 
 attacks upon travellers on their way to and from
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Rome; the oppression of the church of Lyons, which 
 was not in the kingdom of France : all the sins of the 
 monarch, among them the debasement of the coinage 
 which had caused so much suffering among his sub- 
 jects. "God has set us, however unworthy, over kings 
 and kingdoms," he said. 
 
 Philip had his spies in the consistory, and they 
 brought advance information of the nature and phra- 
 seology of the bull. The words quoted above made 
 their suggestion to the political instinct of Peter 
 Flotte, and the scene was set for the great coup of 
 Philip when Jacques de Norman arrived at court with 
 the pope's message. Philip had granted audience to 
 Jacques, who was Archbishop of Narbonne, and, 
 seated on his throne in his great hall, with his fiery 
 nobles around him, he awaited the stately prelate, 
 who advanced with the document in his hand. Sud- 
 denly from the circle of courtiers sprang forth the 
 Count of Artois, cousin of Philip and famed as a free- 
 booter throughout the realm of France. With a rude 
 hand he tore from the astonished archbishop the great 
 roll and flung it among the blazing logs in the chim- 
 ney-place. De Norman's angry protest was still in the 
 air when the count placed in the king's hand the docu- 
 ment known in history as "the short document." 
 Flotte had made good use of the advance information ; 
 the paper the king now held contained some of the 
 expressions of the original bull, but its principal dec- 
 laration was that God had set the pope above the king 
 in matters spiritual and temporal. The archbishop's 
 denunciation of the forgery, his indignant declaration 
 that the bull had contained nothing with regard to
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 temporal matters, went unheeded; throughout the 
 kingdom was published "the short document" and the 
 king's letter in reply, a letter whose style was sus- 
 piciously similar to that of the counterfeited bull. 
 
 By every means that clever politicians could con- 
 trive the patriotism of France was inflamed, the cry of 
 "papal aggression" rang from one end to the other of 
 Philip's wide dominions. The people were told that 
 the nation was in danger, that the Italians were to 
 rule them by order of the pope. Not only that, but by 
 order of a false pope, a pope illegally elected and not 
 entitled to supremacy even in ecclesiastical matters. 
 
 Philip proclaimed himself the leader of the national 
 movement; the defender of France against Italian 
 aggression. On April 10, 1302, he assembled the Par- 
 liament of the Three Estates, before whom Flotte 
 made an eloquent and impassioned speech, denounc- 
 ing the papal aggression in temporal matters. Philip 
 appealed to the delegates to stand by him "as their 
 friend and as their king." The robber nobles, to whom 
 the pillage of church property was a most attractive 
 prospect, in a very hysteria of loyalty resolved to 
 stand by the king; and the popular deputies, overawed 
 by the fierce warriors of the superior order, and led by 
 all the wild clamor to believe that the squadrons of the 
 pope were already riding over the borders of France, 
 did not demur. The clergy asked time to deliberate, 
 but the nobles and political agents went among them 
 with threats, and they at last signed the letters the 
 king desired. Even then, it was "with bitter tears," 
 as they said, that they addressed their remonstrance 
 to the pope, refusing to obey his summons to a coun-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 cil in Rome because they had been forbidden by the 
 king to go to the Eternal City. The bull Ausculta flli 
 had commanded the clergy to attend the council in 
 Rome in order that they might there discuss the mat- 
 ters in controversy between their pope and their king. 
 
 Philip could now boast that all France was behind 
 him in his opposition to Boniface. The nobles had 
 addressed a letter to the cardinals, complaining of the 
 pope, and intimating that they would undertake a 
 general crusade should the College of Cardinals 
 "bring matters to a termination" in accordance with 
 the king's desire. The cardinals replied with indigna- 
 tion that the bull had been discussed in consistory 
 and approved by them, and that it contained no such 
 temporal pretensions as those against which com- 
 plaint was made. Boniface's answer to the bishops 
 contains a similar denial; he accuses Flotte of origi- 
 nating the intrigue, as he terms it. 
 
 Pressing now his assault upon Boniface, Philip 
 sent his envoys and some of his clergy to a consistory 
 held in August, 1302, over which the Cardinal Bishop 
 of Porte presided. That dignitary gave little comfort 
 to the French king's representatives. In his speech to 
 the consistory he denied the authenticity of "the short 
 document." 
 
 "If prelates are called to Rome to deliberate," he 
 said, turning upon the French envoys, "it is not the 
 opponents of the king, but his special confidants, who 
 are summoned ; and not to the end of the world, but to 
 Rome." 
 
 There was found in the Church of St. Victor in 
 Paris a codex of the address of Boniface, and al-
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 though it is doubtful if it truly represents what the 
 pope said, it probably contains much of his speech. 
 Boniface bitterly attacked Flotte, the Count of Artois, 
 and the Count of St. Pol. Flotte, he declared, had 
 falsified his bull by representing the pope as having 
 declared that the king must hold France as a fief from 
 him. 
 
 "It is forty years," the pontiff protests, "since we 
 mastered jurisprudence, and we know that God or- 
 dains there shall be two powers: who, then, can or 
 dare believe that such a foolish sentiment came from 
 us? We declare that we do not desire to trespass on 
 the king's jurisdiction in anything. But neither the 
 king nor any other Christian can deny that in matters 
 of sin he is subject to us." 
 
 He has not only not sought to deprive the king of 
 any prerogative, but, in so far as it was lawful for him 
 to do so, he has forborne to interfere in ecclesiastical 
 affairs within the kingdom. He consented to the 
 appointment of the prebends to the Church of Paris 
 by the king, stipulating only that the appointees be 
 "masters of theology, or doctors of law, or other 
 learned persons, and not nephews and relations of this 
 and that person"; but the king had appointed only 
 "worthless favorites." 
 
 "Let the cardinals decide between us," the pontiff 
 proposed. "Send some upright nobles to Rome the 
 Duke of Burgundy or the Count of Brittany, or such 
 like who can tell me in what I have erred and whom 
 I have troubled." 
 
 But Philip had no intention of trusting his cause to 
 a tribunal not under his own thumb. His agents con-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 tinue to clamor in France against the Italian aggres- 
 sion, his nobles oppress such ecclesiastics as are faithful 
 to the church, and the roads are not safe for pil- 
 grims on their way to Rome. In that city in October, 
 1302, Boniface promulgates at the great synod two 
 bulls. The first pronounces excommunication against 
 any one, of whatever degree, who molests travellers 
 to or from the seat of the Holy See. The second was 
 the celebrated bull Unam sanctam, which was an ar- 
 gument of the principle of the power of popes to judge 
 princes in the administration of their states in so far 
 as the church was affected thereby. It was simply a 
 statement of the canon and the public law of Europe 
 at that time, and the principle it stated was by no 
 means that states were subject to the church, but that 
 princes no less than subjects were accountable for 
 their conduct to God. As the pope was the vicar of 
 Christ, it followed that every human being was sub- 
 ject to the pope. As there can be no question as to the 
 ability of Boniface as a lawyer, it may be taken for 
 granted that what he stated was good law at that 
 time. It was absolutely conclusive against those who 
 admitted his major premise that the pope was the 
 vicar of God, and not Philip or one of his advisers ever 
 held to the contrary. The modern who reads it must 
 keep in mind the personal character of government in 
 that day, and the distinction between states and 
 princes in the administration of their states, which is by 
 no means a hair-fine distinction. Can there be any 
 doubt that the public officer of to-day, mayor or gov- 
 ernor or president, who is dishonest, or oppressive, or 
 unjust in the administration of his office, violates the
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 precepts of his religion, Catholic or Protestant, and is 
 individually responsible to God? Does any church 
 claiming divine authority hold less to-day in this re- 
 gard than did Boniface VIII in the much misrepre- 
 sented bull Unam sanctam? 
 
 Death deprived Philip of two of his boldest support- 
 ers. His cousin, the Count of Artois, and Peter Flotte 
 were gone, but at his side was a counsellor less skilful 
 but more malignant than Flotte had been. William 
 de Nogaret, keeper of the seals and friend of the Co- 
 lonnas, became all-powerful at the French court. 
 Philip had made an answer to the pope's complaint in 
 which he had laid the blame for some of his actions 
 upon the shoulders of officers who had exceeded their 
 authority, and had calmly ignored other causes of 
 complaint. He made a vague and general promise of 
 reform, but the pope could see in it no real intention 
 of a change of policy. 
 
 In March, 1303, another of the spectacular incidents 
 of the controversy interested the court. De Nogaret 
 publicly challenged the king to protect Holy Church 
 against Boniface, "the interloper, false pope, thief, 
 robber, heretic, simonist," and to convoke a general 
 council for his deposition. Philip assembled thirty of 
 his political prelates, who heard on June 13, 1303, the 
 charges that had been prepared. The Lord of Veze- 
 nobre, du Plessis, opened the attack. He laid at the 
 door of Boniface every abomination the fertile mind 
 of the day could imagine. He appealed to Philip to 
 insist upon a general council for the trial of so great a 
 criminal. Other nobles followed in the same strain, 
 and then Philip promised that he would try to have a
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 general council convened. He appealed, he said, to 
 the future general council and the future true 1 pope. 
 
 A petition, drawn in the spirit of this convention, 
 was circulated for signature. The king's servants had 
 some difficulty in getting it signed. The Abbot of 
 Citeaux was thrown into prison for refusing to write 
 his name to it. The Abbots of Cluny and Premontre 
 also suffered incarceration for the same cause, and the 
 Dominican monks of Montpellier were driven out of 
 the kingdom, because they refused to lend their names 
 to Philip's accusations. The king undertook to jus- 
 tify himself in the face of the world by letters he sent 
 to the princes of Europe. 
 
 Meanwhile Boniface held a consistory at Anagni, 
 and in the presence of the cardinals solemnly swore 
 that the charges against him were false. He took 
 over the French benefices and announced the prepara- 
 tion of the bull of excommunication against Philip. 
 For, contrary to the impression one gets from con- 
 ventional history, Philip had not been excommuni- 
 cated by name. As one of those who had molested 
 travellers and despoiled church property, he had 
 fallen under the ban pronounced against such offend- 
 ers in general, but he had not been pointed out by the 
 voice of the church as one cut off and accursed. 
 
 This the court resolved to prevent, by violence if 
 necessary. The Colonnas were kept well advised by 
 their spies of what was passing in Anagni, and de 
 Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna, with a huge treasure- 
 chest, hurried into Italy. They gathered together 
 some rebellious lords of the Papal States, and hired a 
 band of those banditti whose swords were always on
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 the market for any purpose whatever. With a force 
 of these formidable free companions at his back, de 
 Nogaret appeared before the walls of Anagni on Sep- 
 tember 7, 1303. Treachery opened the gates to him, 
 and his mercenaries poured into the town. The papal 
 guard was beaten back; the household of the pope 
 fled. De Nogaret's followers pillaged the palace, de- 
 stroying the archives and thus blotting out docu- 
 ments which might have thrown much light upon this 
 controversy. 
 
 The wild uproar in the palace apprised Boniface 
 that his enemies were under his roof, but there was no 
 fear in the heart of the aged pontiff. "Open the doors 
 of my apartments," he imperiously ordered those who 
 still gathered around him, "for I will suffer martyr- 
 dom for the church of God! As I am taken, like 
 Christ, by treachery, I will die as pope !" 
 
 He clothed his body with the majestic vestments 
 of his office ; he set upon his own brow, wrinkled with 
 thought and trouble, the towering triple crown. 
 Proudly straightening the back that eighty-six years 
 had bowed down, he ascended the throne of Peter, and 
 there he sat with calm eyes regarding the crowd of 
 men in steel coats and with bloody swords who 
 streamed into his audience-chamber. By his side 
 were two of the princes of the church who had re- 
 mained with him, the Cardinals Nicholas Boccasin 
 and Peter d'Espagne. Before that splendid and ven- 
 erable figure the rude soldiers shrank back, and, with 
 eyes that never faltered, Boniface saw de Nogaret and 
 Sciarra Colonna push to the front, a naked blade in 
 the hand of the Italian. Colonna leaped up the step 
 
 3
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 and drew back his mailed fist to strike, but de Nogaret 
 pulled down his arm. The servant of the French king 
 had insults to heap upon this old man whose tranquil 
 eyes regarded him with so deep a pity. From his 
 breast he drew the accusation of the Assembly of 
 Paris, and in a loud tone he read it. Finding the pope 
 still silent when he had concluded, his anger surged 
 up to his brain and he cried out: 
 
 "I will have you taken to Lyons in chains to be tried 
 by a general council and deposed !" 
 
 Then for the first time Boniface spoke. 
 
 "Here is my head and here is my neck!" he an- 
 swered in the rich, firm voice that had made him 
 noted among the preachers of the church. "For the 
 liberty of the church I will submit, as Catholic, as 
 lawful pope, and as vicar of Jesus Christ, to be con- 
 demned by the paterini; for I desire martyrdom for 
 faith in Christ and his church !" 
 
 The rage of de Nogaret blazed out in an impreca- 
 tion, and he grasped the pontiff and tore him from his 
 seat. As Boniface staggered at the foot of his 
 throne, Colonna struck him. Cries of "Malefactor !" 
 "Cursed malefactor!" rose from the soldiers, who, 
 steeled as they were against pity, were horrified at the 
 violence offered to the venerable head of the faith. 
 But Colonna and de Nogaret sternly silenced the mal- 
 contents and drove the pope to the castle of a noble in 
 the town, who had sought his own advantage by en- 
 tering into a league with the French. There an at- 
 tempt was made to starve the pope into an agreement 
 to abdicate, but neither blows nor privation could 
 shake the spirit of that old man. He bore his ordeal
 
 TWO FRENCH PHILIPS 
 
 with weakening bodily but unimpaired spiritual 
 strength. 
 
 De Nogaret had hoped to return to France with the 
 pope's abdication, but he was doomed to disappoint- 
 ment. The horrified townspeople, who had been 
 awed by the military strength of de Nogaret's follow- 
 ing, began to murmur, and the sense of outrage em- 
 boldened them. There were little assemblages in the 
 smithy, in the shop of the barber, in front of the doors 
 of the substantial citizens; the tradesmen in the mar- 
 ket-place glowered at the swaggering free companions 
 in their iron headpieces. It needed but a leader to 
 gather these together, and the leader was found in 
 Cardinal del Fiesco. Three days after the attack upon 
 Boniface the cry of "Long live the pope ! Death to the 
 traitors!" resounded in the quiet streets of Anagni, 
 and de Nogaret and his band found themselves furi- 
 ously assailed by a mob of townspeople headed by the 
 cardinal. Despite their discipline, they were driven 
 outside the walls. The pope was released. He called 
 a consistory at once, and his first words were a procla- 
 mation of pardon to those who had subjected him to 
 so much pain and indignity. 
 
 Meanwhile the Colonnas had gathered partisans 
 and were besieging Anagni. The news of the attack 
 spread over the country, and in Rome the Orsini, 
 hereditary enemies of the Colonnas, prepared to take 
 partisan advantage of the situation. Gathering their 
 men-at-arms, they rode with all speed to Anagni and 
 relieved the town. They brought Boniface back with 
 them to Rome. But the privations to which he had 
 been subjected were too much for the frame of so old
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 a man : thirty-five days only he survived the outrage 
 of Anagni. 
 
 Benedict XI reigned only six months, but it was suf- 
 ficient for him to express his horror over the attack 
 upon the person of his predecessor. There followed 
 him in the papal chair Clement V, the first of a long 
 succession of French popes. Philip now believed he 
 had won the long fight; henceforth the popes were to 
 dwell at Avignon. But hatred of the pontiff who had 
 so long defied him, or perhaps a desire for the vindica- 
 tion in the eyes of the world which the condemnation 
 of that pope's memory might give him, urged him to 
 importune Clement to call a council for the trial of the 
 old charges. At last Clement yielded so far that he 
 convened the general council. But there the artificial- 
 ity of Philip's case became so apparent, and so many 
 of the learned and saintly fathers of the church came 
 forward to defend Boniface's memory, that the 
 French politicians considered it expedient to divert 
 public attention by sensational charges made against 
 the Knights Templars. The pope insisted on some 
 disposition of the case of Boniface, although Philip 
 desired simply to have it dropped. Finally, however, 
 there appeared before the council three knights in 
 armor, and before the bar of that ecclesiastical court 
 they threw down their gauntlets, while the herald 
 proclaimed their readiness to defend with their bodies 
 the holiness of life of Boniface. None appeared to 
 gainsay them. Thus they settled the case according 
 to the custom of those days. 
 
 124:1
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 THREE citizens of the American Republic have 
 just been elevated by ordination of Pope Pius 
 X to a rank that had its origin in the Roman 
 catacombs. They have entered the senate of their 
 church, which was organized under the direction of 
 that Hildebrand who afterward became Pope Gregory 
 VII. Having left the modern cities of Boston and New 
 York the Boston and New York we know, that are 
 alive with the fullness of the spirit of this age ; having 
 crossed the Atlantic in great vessels propelled by 
 steam-power; having flashed messages to friends 
 from mid-ocean by means of a modern miracle, the 
 wireless telegraph; having traversed that ancient 
 Gaul, in which St. Boniface preached, in cars drawn 
 by steam-locomotives; having ridden in automobiles 
 through the streets of the city of the Caesars, they 
 kneel before the altar of the great Church of St. Peter, 
 whose foundations were laid, four decades before 
 Columbus sailed from Palos, upon the last resting- 
 place of that Peter who was Prince of the Apostles of 
 Jesus Christ! 
 
 Incidents such as this realize history for us; they 
 are the living, tangible bonds between us and the dis- 
 tant past; they connect the things which are familiar, 
 visible, intimate, with the things that are strange,
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 ghostly, and remote; they are to a doubting genera- 
 tion as were the wounds of the Saviour which the 
 doubting Thomas must touch with his own hands. 
 
 They help us to invest with flesh and blood and vi- 
 talize with spirit the figures that history presents to us. 
 They make it easier for us to form a mental picture of 
 the Julius II with whom Michelangelo talked of this 
 very dome beneath which Pius X and the American 
 cardinals kneel to-day. We see the flashing eyes of the 
 master sculptor as he urges his mighty project upon 
 the pope: "Think, your Holiness, of this vast dome, 
 this replica of the ancient Roman Pantheon, elevated 
 upon great columns to typify the elevation of our holy 
 faith over that paganism which once found its home in 
 the Pantheon; think of so majestic a structure in 
 which all that is noble and beautiful shall find expres- 
 sion, its base comprehending the world beneath it, its 
 foundations on the grave of the martyred Peter, and 
 its apex lifted high in glorification of the Son of God !" 
 We can better understand the enthusiasm of the great 
 soldier-pope, the impatience with which he had torn 
 down the ancient basilica in order that so vast a proj- 
 ect should not be hampered for lack of room; the op- 
 position of some of the cardinals who represented the 
 love the medieval world had for the old church with 
 all its great memories. These things come nearer to 
 us; they are clearer to our sight because of the cere- 
 monies whereby Cardinals Farley, Falconio, and 
 O'Connell have just been inducted into the senate of 
 their ancient church. 
 
 Julius II came to the throne of Peter when the war- 
 like spirit of Europe was changing in its character. It 
 
 CMC 3
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 was more fierce and cruel than ever it had been, but it 
 was no longer devotional. The church still cherished 
 the design of reclaiming the Holy Land, but the 
 princes were interested in nothing but territorial ex- 
 tension and political power. The old fluid condition 
 of European politics was passing away; states were 
 solidifying, national boundaries growing more defi- 
 nite. No man can play a great part in any age without 
 being influenced by the spirit of that age, and Julius 
 II, when he received the Ring of the Fisherman, had a 
 great part to play. The personal immorality of Alex- 
 ander VI, the cruelty and rapacity of Caesar Borgia, 
 had not only weakened the moral prestige of the 
 papacy, but had ruined the Papal States. Everywhere 
 there was rebellion, everywhere in the domain of the 
 church there was lack of respect for law. Free com- 
 panions plundered the cities, and nobles and their 
 henchmen robbed and murdered on the public roads. 
 Proud vassals laughed at the enfeebled papacy, and 
 tyrannized over the common people. The north of 
 Italy had been lost to the States of the Church, the 
 German power shadowed all Italy. 
 
 Without a clear understanding of all this, and of the 
 thoughts and motives of the princes of Europe, we 
 cannot understand how political conditions influenced 
 the thought and literature of the Reformation and the 
 attitude of Protestant peoples toward the church from 
 which they had separated. It was never the theolog- 
 ical consideration that embittered Catholic against 
 Protestant and Protestant against Catholic; it was 
 ever the breath of secular politics that fanned the 
 flame of hatred and blackened history for three cen-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 turies with the most remarkable falsehoods. A di- 
 vision on points of doctrine there might have been, 
 otherwise; but it would never have left us with 
 prejudices so blind that our every thought of the com- 
 monest problems must be made insane by the hatred 
 we have for fellow-Christians. 
 
 We do not have to go in this day to Catholic his- 
 torians for proof that this is so. A reading of our own 
 accepted historians shows it so clearly that it is 
 strange that every one who reads them does not see it 
 instantly. The Great Schism was due to the interfer- 
 ence of the temporal rulers with ecclesiastical affairs. 
 That interference left a Catholic world with two 
 claimants to the papacy, and a wide-spread doubt as 
 to which had the right on his side. It was settled at 
 the Council of Constance, but in the meantime it had 
 been made the tool of politics. By confusing the peo- 
 ple it had allowed the princes to shift from side to 
 side, as suited them, without fear of such conse- 
 quences as would follow in the days when, despite the 
 election of antipopes, there was no doubt among the 
 people as to the identity of the true pope. Ranke 
 points this out. "It was long at the option of each 
 prince," he says, "to attach himself to one pope or the 
 other, as might best suit his political interests" 
 
 And the princes were only seeking some such pre- 
 text. Remember, it was the day of personal govern- 
 ment, of absolutism in politics, the day when the favor 
 or disfavor of a prince meant life or death to a subject ! 
 The "civil power," of which we hear so much, didn't 
 mean a "government of the people, by the people, 
 for the people"; it meant a Henry, or a Conrad, or a 
 
 [128:1
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 Philip, or a Louis, who might happen to be born a 
 king. They were robbing one another whenever op- 
 portunity offered, and the people all the time; they 
 were indulging every passion without scruple and 
 without check "the king could do no wrong." 
 Where was the bar at which he could be arraigned, 
 where was the judge to try him? There was only one 
 such to pass upon his moral guilt, and he went as far 
 as he dared to defy and oppress that. No wonder that, 
 as the Protestant historian we have quoted says, "The 
 civil power would no longer endure the presence of 
 any higher authority." No wonder that the popes 
 themselves looked to the material sword to protect 
 them against so conscienceless a band of tyrants as 
 then cursed Europe. 
 
 "I had once thought," exclaimed a speaker at the 
 Council of Basel, "that the secular power should be 
 wholly separate from that of the church; but I have 
 now learned that virtue without force is but slightly 
 respected, and that the pope, without the patrimony 
 of the church, would be the mere servant of kings and 
 princes !" 
 
 Indeed, the princes had done much toward impair- 
 ing the moral value of the church. They had made 
 the great bishoprics crown patronage; it was a poor 
 monarch who did not have a vassal prelate riding in 
 mail among his men-at-arms, and a profligate arch- 
 bishop of his own appointment making jest of holy 
 things at his court, while a hired substitute performed 
 his pastoral duties. 
 
 Into such a world came Pope Julius II to talk to 
 such princes in the only language for which they had
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 any respect. He was not a young man when he 
 ascended the chair of St. Peter and received the tem- 
 poral crown of the Papal States with the spiritual 
 crown of the Bishop of Rome, but he undertook the 
 warfare for the pacification and reclamation of the 
 patrimony of the church with the zeal and strength 
 and skill of a spirit upon which the passing years 
 seemed to have no effect. The boasting nobles of 
 Italy first felt his power; he cleared the roads of rob- 
 bers, peasant and noble alike. The bandit business 
 became unprofitable and extremely dangerous. 
 Everywhere in the tyrant-ridden States of the Church 
 the armed priest appeared as a liberator, and the peo- 
 ple thereafter rejoiced in just and benignant govern- 
 ment. It was by the sword that Julius regained many 
 of the alienated provinces of the papacy, but it was by 
 bonds of affectionate loyalty that he bound them into 
 a political unit which secular princes learned to dread. 
 He had begun his career of conquest by calling the 
 Swiss to his aid ; he needed no foreign soldiery when 
 once the people learned of the beneficence and justice 
 of his government. "Time was," Machiavelli writes, 
 "when no baron was so insignificant but that he might 
 venture to brave the papal power : now it is regarded 
 with respect even by a king of France." 
 
 But he not only consolidated and strengthened 
 the Papal States, and reclaimed from the Venetians 
 those cities they had seized: he freed all Italy from 
 the shadow of foreign domination. Before the sword 
 of this soldier-priest, who in his old age would lead his 
 knights across the bloody field and into the breach of 
 a battered wall, the German invaders were driven into
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 their own boundaries and the German power was 
 humiliated by the loss of northern Italy. 
 
 The consequences of this were tremendous. The 
 national pride of Germany had been hurt by a pope; 
 one of the despised Latin race had broken the warlike 
 Teuton's power. All the bitterness of a war between 
 races found expression in calumnies of the pope and 
 the Italians. It was reported throughout Germany 
 that Rome was full of evil things, that the papacy was 
 being used to humiliate and dismember the empire. 
 
 To me it seems that Julius II would have had the 
 praise of the world had he been but one of the two 
 things he was. He was splendid as a patriot; as a 
 soldier he had no superior among the generals of the 
 day; as a prince he was just and wise. On the other 
 hand, his devotion was pure and his piety profound, 
 his mind was enlightened, and the budding flower of 
 the Renaissance which was to burst into full bloom in 
 the reign of Leo X was sympathetically nurtured by 
 Julius. As a pope he was admirable; as a prince he 
 was admirable : but as pope and prince, he sowed po- 
 litical prejudice deep in the breast of Germany. 
 
 Less than ever after the day of Julius were the 
 princes of Europe disposed to bear the check of 
 the papal influence. He had planted in their mind the 
 suggestion that a pope might arise with the spirit of a 
 Caesar and the temper of a Julius, with a vast project 
 of consolidating politically a great Christian state, 
 and little did they relish such a notion. "It was now 
 the time," says Ranke, "when the European kingdoms 
 were finally consolidating their forces after long 
 struggles. The papacy, interfering in all things and
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 seeking to dominate all, came very soon to be re- 
 garded in a political point of view; the temporal princes 
 now began to put forth higher claims than they had 
 done hitherto." 
 
 But it was not only that their spirit of licentious- 
 ness was chafed: another consideration was making 
 itself felt. Kings and nobles fought, monks worked. 
 The result is simple in economics. The long wars had 
 impoverished the princes ; there was not much profit 
 now even in robbing one another, and the wealthy 
 cities had strong walls and paid soldiers to make their 
 despoliation difficult and dangerous. On the other 
 hand, the church properties were rich and unpro- 
 tected. The "thirsting eye of enterprise" rested long- 
 ingly on them. During the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries there were many instances of the appropria- 
 tion of the funds and property of religious by the 
 secular powers. Sometimes it was done under the 
 color of royal proclamation, sometimes it was simple 
 pillage. Sometimes it was accomplished through the 
 agency of political bishops. 
 
 The political control of ecclesiastical appointments, 
 against which Gregory VII had fought, had had its 
 effect. The clergy were in a great measure demoral- 
 ized. The court favorites who held the great church 
 benefices by imposition of the kings lived dissolute 
 lives, and the lower clergy in quite considerable num- 
 ber followed the bad example of their superiors. The 
 moral relaxation invaded monasteries, and there is on 
 record a report of that Cardinal Caraffa, who was 
 afterward Pope Paul IV, to Pope Clement, who had 
 sent him to visit the monasteries, in which the cardi-
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 nal indignantly describes the evil state to which poli- 
 tics had reduced children of the church. 
 
 How strange in ears that have heard so much of 
 papal exactions are the words of Ranke, occurring 
 time and again, with regard to the part thereof that 
 really went to the church! 
 
 "Participation in ecclesiastical revenues and the 
 right of promotion to church benefices and offices was 
 that which the civil power more especially desired," is 
 one of his illuminating phrases. And he gives us in- 
 stances. In Spain, King Emanuel calmly takes to him- 
 self one-tenth of the property of the church. Henry 
 VII of England assumed the right of nominating 
 bishops, and "appropriated" one-half of the "first 
 fruits" (church tithes). And as to Henry VIII, thus 
 was he "defending the faith," as Ranke tells it : "Be- 
 fore Protestantism had even been thought of by the 
 English sovereign, he had already proceeded to a 
 merciless confiscation of the numerous monasteries." 
 Truly, it was the open season for monasteries. 
 
 But now we come to a passage of the greatest sig- 
 nificance, because it treats of a period and a place and 
 a project within the youth, the vicinity, and the pur- 
 view of the great leader of the Reformation. 
 
 "In 1500," Ranke says, "the [German] imperial 
 government accorded one-third only of the sums pro- 
 duced by indulgences to the papal legates, appropriating 
 the remaining two-thirds" 
 
 Here may we well pause, for it was the charge of 
 the sale of indulgences that more than anything else 
 contributed to the popular success of the Reforma- 
 tion. Princes had their own reasons, doctrinal points 
 
 [1333
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 might interest the controversial humanists, but to the 
 peasantry of Europe "justification by faith" meant 
 nothing: such subtleties were not for them. The 
 thing that hurt the Catholic Church was the charge 
 that her priests were selling the mercy of God for 
 gold. Melanchthon and his confreres might learn- 
 edly draft a confession of faith, but it was Luther who 
 knew how to catch the popular ear and stir the popu- 
 lar indignation. 
 
 What, then, is an indulgence? 
 
 "An indulgence," says the Rev. Charles Coppens, 
 a Jesuit, "is a remission of the temporal punishment 
 due to sin after the guilt has been remitted. That such 
 punishment may remain after the pardon of a sin, is 
 taught clearly in Holy Scripture, where we read that 
 Nathan said to David : 'The Lord hath taken away thy 
 sin: nevertheless, the child that is born of thee shall 
 die* (2 Kings xiii, 13, 14). Now Christ commissions 
 St. Peter, saying, 'Whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
 earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven' (Matt, xvi, 19). 
 Hence the popes, as successors of St. Peter, claim the 
 power of granting the remission of whatever can keep 
 us out of heaven; both the guilt, by absolution, and 
 the penalty of sin, by indulgences: provided all be 
 done so as to promote the glory of God and the good 
 of souls." 
 
 But how could indulgences "produce" money, to 
 use Ranke's term? 
 
 The great Church of St. Peter was now under way ; 
 Julius had thrown himself into the project with char- 
 acteristic enthusiasm, in Rome the dreams of Bra- 
 bante and Michelangelo were being crystallized. The 
 
 CI34H
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 whole church was to participate in the creation of this 
 magnificent pile. Those who had means were to con- 
 tribute money, those who had none were to pray for 
 the success of the enterprise. As the monks had in 
 past generations gone through Europe preaching the 
 crusades, so now they went among the people preach- 
 ing the construction of Christendom's mighty altar. 
 Whoever in any way contributed to so desirable an 
 object did a good deed, and as a reward for that deed 
 received an indulgence. The instructions of the popes 
 were clear enough : the indulgence was to be granted 
 to him who, having made a good confession and re- 
 ceived absolution, should give to the fund for St. 
 Peter's; or, if he had no means, should pray for the 
 fortunate progress of the enterprise. 
 
 If, then, the greedy civil authorities were "appro- 
 priating" two-thirds of the contributions made for 
 holy purposes, it may be conjectured that corruption 
 would enter into the system. That it did so is quite 
 evident from a study of Catholic authorities. The 
 Jesuit writer whom I have quoted already says : 
 
 "Did any great abuse occur in connection with the 
 indulgence preached by Tetzel and his companions? 
 Yes. What we now call 'graft' was a pretty common 
 abuse in Luther's time. It was perhaps almost as bad 
 then as it is to-day. But it was a much greater scan- 
 dal then than it is now, because many persons guilty 
 of it were churchmen, and not merely city or state 
 officials. The crime of simony that is, selling sacred 
 things for money or its equivalent has often been a 
 plague of the church. It has done a great amount of 
 harm by getting unworthy men into sacred offices.
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Then these unworthy bishops or cardinals disgraced 
 their holy religion and caused those very scandals 
 which Luther gave as a pretext for his reform. For 
 instance, Albert, the archbishop of Mayence at the 
 time we speak of, had become archbishop by simony; 
 and when the indulgence of St. Peter's Church was 
 preached, he strove to have one-third of the money 
 collected in his province turned into his own pocket 
 to reimburse him for the sum he had spent to get his 
 office." 
 
 It was in 1500 that Germany took two-thirds of the 
 funds raised for the erection of St. Peter's Church. 
 Only seventeen years, and Luther will be preaching 
 those tremendous Lenten sermons in Wittenberg. 
 Three years, and Julius II will be pope. Maximilian I 
 is emperor of Germany, Louis XII king of France, 
 and the great Ferdinand has just driven the Moors 
 out of Spain and reigns on the Iberian peninsula. In 
 England Henry VII is on the throne; John II rules 
 Denmark and Sweden. It was a period of strange psy- 
 chological uneasiness; mighty impulses were stirring 
 everywhere. The adventurous mind of Europe was 
 reaching out over the world. Columbus had discov- 
 ered the western continent beyond the Atlantic ; sol- 
 diers and missionaries were already at work in the 
 new lands, the former searching for treasure and the 
 latter for souls. 
 
 In Rome St. Peter's was rising like the body of the 
 Renaissance. What was the Rome of the time? 
 Ranke says of it that it was a splendid city, indeed. 
 "Here," he says, "the mechanic found employment, 
 the artist honor, and safety was assured to all."
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 Julius II effected many changes: it was a different 
 community from that in which Caesar Borgia had 
 swaggered with his tiger strength and tiger spirit, his 
 sword and dagger and poison, so short a time before. 
 A wise and just government, a market for the wares 
 and a field for the talent of every man, security for his 
 person and property and encouragement for his ge- 
 nius such a city Pope Leo X received from the hands 
 of his warlike predecessor. 
 
 John de' Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 
 boyhood friend of Ariosto, a brave soldier under 
 Julius before he was ordained a priest, a courtly, 
 learned, gracious man such was the new pope. 
 Ranke says he was full of kindness and ready sym- 
 pathies. One ambassador writes home to his sovereign 
 that Leo is "a good man, avoiding disorders" ; another 
 says in his despatches, "He is a scholar and a lover of 
 learning; a good priest, if he enjoys life." His elec- 
 tion could not but increase the prestige of the Holy 
 City. Men of science and artists flocked there, sure 
 of the patronage of this enlightened pope. He was 
 passionately fond of music, and the poets and com- 
 posers of the day found no prince as generous as the 
 head of the church. 
 
 Meanwhile, as even monarchs must die, there are 
 new names in the royal directory of Europe. Henry 
 VIII has ascended the English throne. Maximilian 
 still rules the German empire, but in a short year he is 
 to give place to the great emperor Charles V of the 
 house of Austria, whose sceptre is to be supreme in 
 Austria, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and 
 Naples, conquest and fortunate marriages having
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 brought all these crowns to one head. The chivalrous 
 Francis I is on the throne of France, in Denmark and 
 Sweden there rules a butcher and tyrant, Christian II, 
 who rids himself of his Swedish enemies by hav- 
 ing them slain at a banquet, an incident execrated in 
 Swedish history under the title of "The Bloody Bath." 
 Gustavus Vasa is preparing to free Sweden from his 
 thrall. One of the great lords of the German Empire 
 is the elector Frederick of Saxony, the patron and 
 friend of a daring and eloquent Augustinian monk, 
 Martin Luther. 
 
 Enterprising gentlemen are these princes, all of 
 them. Not a single royal breast in Europe but holds 
 a boundless ambition. Not a single monarch of the 
 lot who is not proud, imperious, impatient of check. 
 Among them a Julius II might hold his own politi- 
 cally, but not a Leo X. 
 
 In spite of his birth and training, I doubt if Leo 
 understood the political spirit of his age. The learn- 
 ing and the art, what illuminated the mind and stirred 
 the love of beauty these he knew well; but the 
 coarser emotions and impulses that moved the powers 
 remote from Rome were not within the circumfer- 
 ence of his knowledge. He was learned in the direc- 
 tion of his tastes, and his tastes were not for practical 
 politics. Even to the day of his death he was blind to 
 the significance of the Lutheran movement he 
 thought it but a mere monkish quarrel in Ger- 
 many between the Augustinian and the Dominican 
 orders. 
 
 But what Leo failed to see the ambitious princes did 
 not fail to see. "Throughout the whole period of
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 time that we are contemplating," Ranke declares, 
 "there was no assistance so much desired by the tem- 
 poral sovereigns in their disputes with the popes as 
 that of a spiritual opposition to their decrees. . . . The 
 mere fact that so fearless a foe to the popedom had 
 made his appearance, the very existence of such a 
 phenomenon, was highly significant, and imparted to 
 the person of the reformer a decided political impor- 
 tance. It was thus that Maximilian, the German em- 
 peror, considered it; nor would he permit injury of 
 any kind to be offered to this monk ; he caused him to 
 be specially recommended to the Elector of Saxony 
 'there might come a time when he would be needed' 
 and from that moment the influence of Luther in- 
 creased day by day." 
 
 "The time when he would be needed" came, indeed ; 
 but Maximilian was dead : it was his successor Charles 
 V who was to turn to political account the great re- 
 former, although many a prince outside Germany and 
 in Germany employed for his own purposes then and 
 afterward the movement the doctor of Wittenberg 
 shaped and launched. Leo devoted his life mainly to 
 the encouragement of art and letters and the construc- 
 tion of St. Peter's. Political matters seem to have 
 been a bother of which he rid himself with as little 
 trouble as possible. He did drive the French out of 
 Italy when his Swiss defeated the forces of Louis XII 
 at Novara, but when the high-spirited Francis I swept 
 back across the Alps and worsted the Swiss on the 
 field of Marignano in 1515, the pope hastened to meet 
 him at Bologna and to make that peace which gave to 
 the French monarch the duchies of Parma and Pla-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 centia, and, what was more important, renewed the 
 right of the nomination of French bishops. Toward 
 the close of his pontificate Leo again took measures 
 against the French, and it was in the midst of the 
 celebration of the victory of the papal forces that a 
 mortal sickness struck him down. 
 
 Meanwhile Luther's fierce protest against glaring 
 abuses was rousing the German states. While the 
 humanists hailed him gladly as a champion of in- 
 tellectual freedom, and the churches in which he 
 preached were crowded with the common people, who 
 were thrilled by the thunderous eloquence which was 
 in so great a degree his gift, the princes and nobles 
 were taking advantage of the public opinion he 
 created to divert to their own coffers the funds that 
 had formerly gone to the church, and to add to their 
 own domains the broad acres it had acquired. The 
 nobility, and many priests and bishops, tasted abso- 
 lute freedom and found it sweet: numbers of the 
 Teutonic Knights followed the advice Luther gave 
 them in his letter to the grand master of their monas- 
 tic order, and took wives and church property at the 
 same time. Where Luther's personal influence was 
 felt, where that attribute which the phraseology of 
 our day calls personal magnetism could exert its in- 
 definable but mighty influence, there can be no doubt 
 that the peasantry were also affected; but it is very 
 doubtful if the Reformation made much progress at 
 this time except among the princes, nobles, and 
 schoolmen. 
 
 Macaulay says that its fiftieth year saw Protestant- 
 ism at high tide, but it is plain that he was considering
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 only its political extension, the area covered by those 
 states in which it controlled the ruling powers. My 
 own opinion is that its actual numerical strength 
 among the common people was greater at a later pe- 
 riod. Much has been said of the influence of the 
 printing-press in stimulating the revolt, of the influ- 
 ence of that hurricane of pamphlets which the reform- 
 ers let loose upon Europe; but it must be remembered 
 that the illiterate were then the great majority, upon 
 whom the printing-press could not have much influ- 
 ence. It was example and coercion that did the work 
 in the lower ranks, the example of pastors to whom 
 the people were accustomed to look for spiritual guid- 
 ance, and the pressure of the secular powers whom 
 they were accustomed to see enforcing the observance 
 of religion. 
 
 Macaulay is right, however, with regard to the po- 
 litical power of the Protestant movement. The spoil 
 of the church had created a new interest, and that in- 
 terest was in the ruling class. It was that influence 
 that now gave to Protestantism a very considerable 
 political power. Charles V, although he never pro- 
 fessed other than the Catholic faith, did not hesitate 
 to use the conditions created by the Reformation 
 as a club in his political complications with the 
 Roman State. After the death of Leo, the cardinals 
 elected as pope a bishop of the Netherlands who was 
 famed all over Christendom for his intense piety and 
 personal purity of life. His brief pontificate was sad- 
 dened by the political difficulties of the Roman State 
 and the successes of the Turkish arms. In France, 
 Francis I was preparing to descend again upon Italy,
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 and the Crescent achieved bloody triumphs at Bel- 
 grade and Rhodes. In the shadow of the coming 
 storm he ended his days. 
 
 Giulio de' Medici, a nephew of Leo X, succeeded 
 Adrian as pope. He assumed the name of Clement 
 VII, and it was about his mitred head that the storm 
 broke in all its fury. Although he had been a warm 
 friend of Charles V, the plans of the latter with regard 
 to the extension of the imperial power over Italy soon 
 grieved the heart of the pontiff. Italy was filled with 
 the Spanish forces of the emperor, and the Spanish 
 pride was then at its height: they were arrogant war- 
 riors, indeed, who represented the imperial power to 
 the exasperated Italians. Venice was becoming alarmed 
 at the proximity of a too powerful and enterprising 
 neighbor ; everywhere the Italian princes were resent- 
 ful of the oppression under which they lay. With the 
 murmuring princes Clement entered into an under- 
 standing ; the dream of a free Italy took possession of 
 the Italian mind. General Pescara, the Italian-born 
 Spaniard who commanded the forces of Charles, was 
 approached, but he scornfully rejected the Italian ad- 
 vances and informed the emperor of the plans being 
 matured. The revolt of Milan gave confirmation to 
 his tidings, the imperial troops were driven back, 
 Venice and Rome announced their combination, and 
 from foreign states jealous of the power of Charles 
 came promises of assistance. England, Switzerland, 
 and France were to send their soldiers to the succor of 
 Italy. Italian hope grew high and bright; it was be- 
 lieved that even without the aid of the friendly powers 
 the object of the movement would be achieved; the
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 reign of a second Julius was everywhere expected. 
 Giberto expresses the feeling in Rome. "This war," 
 he says, "is to decide whether Italy shall be free." 
 
 Meanwhile the princes of Germany are meeting at 
 Spires. Ferdinand, duke of Austria, presides in the 
 emperor's stead. Feeling against the pope runs high, 
 the princes take advantage of it to bring forward the 
 religious issue. Saxony, Hesse, and other principali- 
 ties declare for Protestantism. In behalf of the em- 
 peror, Ferdinand signs a resolution decreeing that 
 each prince shall decide for himself what the faith of 
 his subjects shall be. Joyfully now the princes repay 
 the imperial power; they give to Charles the troops 
 and supplies he needs. Alva was afterward to let his 
 Catholicity temper the rigor of warfare against a 
 pope, but it was no such leader that Charles V sent 
 forth against Clement VII. In November, 1526, 
 George Frundberg crossed the Alps with a host of 
 Lutheran lanzknechts who were to take their pay 
 where they might find it, and the threat on Frund- 
 berg's lips was that when he got to Rome he would 
 hang the pope. 
 
 The Italian resistance was but a mist the fiery hur- 
 ricane blew away. Frundberg's progress through 
 Italy was a series of easy successes. The promised aid 
 from foreign sources was withheld, and only five hun- 
 dred armed men awaited the charge of the fierce in- 
 vaders outside the gates of the Holy City. Frundberg 
 was stricken and helpless a furious rage at some of 
 his mutinous subordinates had burst a blood-vessel in 
 his brain and Bourbon led the Germans. The little 
 band of defenders was overwhelmed in the first rush- 
 
 CI433
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 ing charge of the Lutheran squadrons, who now 
 pressed on to assail the poorly manned walls. With 
 his foot on a scaling-ladder, Bourbon received his 
 death- wound, and the leaderless horde, whose pay was 
 to be the spoil of the richest city in the world, swept 
 on to unchecked pillage in the great depository of all 
 that was most splendid in art and most valuable in 
 gold and gems. Treasure of incalculable worth fell 
 into the hands of those rude invaders : the splendor of 
 the Eternal City was submerged that day in an inun- 
 dation from whose effects it took centuries to emerge. 
 Thus died Pope Clement's dream of a free Italy bul- 
 warking an unhampered church; thus did a German 
 emperor use for his own purposes the physical force 
 of the Reformation. 
 
 The physical church lay now in the mailed hand of a 
 secular prince. Clement had stood siege in his castle 
 awhile, but at last had surrendered to the emperor; 
 and Charles rejoiced, as Philip the Fair of France had 
 once rejoiced, in the prospect of shaping ecclesiastical 
 policy to his personal ends. Clement was under no 
 illusions, he felt the power and divined the purpose, 
 and he resisted with all his strength the pressure 
 Charles brought to bear on him to call a general coun- 
 cil which under the circumstances must be wholly at 
 the mercy of the victorious prince. Charles, on his 
 side, was willing to make some concessions, particu- 
 larly as they harmonized with his worldly policy. The 
 Reformation had been used, but now the church was 
 to be used ; and if it was to be the instrument of im- 
 perial power why, the stronger its influence the 
 more effective an instrument would it make. Simul- 
 
 [1443
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 taneously, the peace with the pope was proclaimed 
 and the outlawry of Luther decreed. Many thought- 
 ful historians doubt the sincerity of Charles with re- 
 gard to this last decree of the Diet of Worms. It is 
 true that no effort was made by the imperial gov- 
 ernment to seek out Luther while the latter was 
 concealed by powerful political friends whose under- 
 standing with Charles was excellent. The pope was 
 informed that Luther was dead, and the report, gain- 
 ing general circulation, reached the Germans in the 
 form of an accusation of assassination against the 
 agents of Rome. 
 
 Meanwhile the perplexities of Clement were driv- 
 ing him into an alliance with Francis, the old enemy 
 of his house. The French king, while adhering to the 
 old religion, was deep in combinations with the po- 
 litical powers of the new. He hoped to make them his 
 instruments in holding the house of Austria in check, 
 and with his concurrence the formidable Protestant 
 leader, the landgrave Philip of Hesse, restored his 
 duchy to the Duke of Wittenberg, whom Ferdinand 
 of Austria had dispossessed. The duke promptly 
 made Wittenberg Protestant, and Ferdinand as 
 promptly surrendered his claim to it and made an 
 alliance with the landgrave, much to the chagrin of 
 the French monarch. 
 
 The powers of the North, no less than those of the 
 South, found the religious movement of value. Gus- 
 tavus Vasa drove the tyrant Christian out of Sweden 
 and used the royal power his successful rebellion gave 
 him to seize the church lands and church treasures 
 and introduce Lutheranism as the state religion, so
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 that his possession thereof might be considered 
 proper and legitimate. The bloody-minded Christian 
 did no less : he laid his hand on ecclesiastical property 
 and made the new religion the state religion of Den- 
 mark with the bayonets of foreign mercenaries. 
 Henry VIII of England, refused a divorce by Pope- 
 Clement, decreed a separation of the English church 
 from that of Rome and constituted an ecclesiastical 
 tribunal which would legitimize his union with fair 
 Anne Boleyn. The Palatinate followed the example 
 of other German principalities and embraced the 
 teachings of Luther. 
 
 Everywhere the change in creed was accompanied 
 by the pillage of church properties. A new and easy 
 road to wealth had been opened to an impoverished 
 aristocracy, and they trod it joyfully. 
 
 If the common people thought the ruling class had 
 any idea of the extension of the right of private judg- 
 ment below the aristocratic order and beyond doubt 
 there were places where they did so believe they 
 were soon to suffer a bloody disillusionment. The 
 resolution of the Diet of Spires permitted each prince 
 to determine the religious complexion of his province : 
 it was by no means intended that each peasant and 
 burgher should think for himself. The political power 
 of the day could endure neither authority above nor 
 freedom below ; for if the peasants could take from the 
 nobles what the nobles took from the church, where 
 would the profit be? Thomas Munzer, the Lutheran 
 pastor of Zwickau, found that private judgment had 
 its social limitations, indeed : Luther himself cried out 
 for the extermination of the revolting serfs whom
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 Miinzer led in that merciless struggle written red in 
 history as the Peasants' War; and when the last 
 stronghold of the rebels had been taken and John of 
 Leyden, the strange king of that strange kingdom, 
 was in the hands of the Protestant powers, John and 
 his associates in that Protestant movement were 
 "killed with hot pincers" with full Protestant ap- 
 proval. Nor was it alone their own German nobles 
 who thus sternly repressed the right of private judg- 
 ment when those not of their order sought to exercise 
 it. Wherever they went, the Protestant secular power 
 killed them with cruelty: Henry VIII in England 
 burned at the stake ten of the unfortunate Anabap- 
 tists. 
 
 Princes were guided with regard to religion al- 
 most entirely by political considerations, and these 
 often of the most personal and selfish nature. Philip 
 II of Spain was an ardent Catholic monarch. Why? 
 Hilaire Belloc points out that Spain was the only coun- 
 try of Europe where Protestantism was absolutely 
 unknown, and he attributes this fact to the other fact 
 that when the Reformation came Spain still had a 
 throbbing memory of its tremendous struggle to ex- 
 pel the Moors. It could still feel the tingle of hand- 
 grips with the Mohammedan; the old war-cries, 
 "Jesu!" and "Maria!" for Spain, and "Allah il Allah!" 
 for the Moors, still echoed over fields of national 
 glory. The conflict had blended Catholic enthusiasm 
 with the national spirit of the people. What chance 
 would a monarch of an Austrian house have had with 
 a martial people whose religion was indistinguish- 
 able from their patriotism, had he set his face against
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 that religion? Charles V knew well what he was 
 doing when he sent the German troops to war against 
 the pope and left his splendid Spanish soldiers unem- 
 ployed in that great enterprise. 
 
 In every land politics made use of religion. Philip 
 found it convenient in Spain to be a Catholic cham- 
 pion. In England Henry had seized the church ma- 
 chinery to make it serve his headlong passion, but the 
 passion and the means whereby he gratified it com- 
 bined to produce political consequences of the gravest 
 importance. It was not without difficulty that he and 
 the school of politicians whose fortunes were based 
 upon the service of his pleasures overthrew the old 
 form of worship : Hallam tells us that foreign soldiers 
 had to be employed to force the Protestant faith on 
 the people of England. It was upon the death of 
 Henry, however, that the matter took on a more 
 definite political form. He had left three children 
 the princess Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon ; 
 the princess Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn; and 
 Prince Edward, the son of Jane Seymour. Two of 
 these, Elizabeth and Edward, the Catholic subjects 
 considered illegitimate. But the band of courtiers and 
 politicians who had enriched themselves at the ex- 
 pense of the ancient church had the most pressing 
 reasons for keeping Mary from the throne; their 
 wealth and even their personal safety depended upon 
 the Protestant succession. Gathering around Lord 
 Somerset, the brother of Jane Seymour and the uncle 
 of her son, they elevated Edward VI to the throne. 
 Against them the Catholic faction united, their hopes 
 centred upon the princess Mary. They were ready
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 when the boy king died, and before Elizabeth could be 
 proclaimed, Mary had unfurled her banner and, sup- 
 ported by the Catholic leaders and a popular army, 
 had taken her crown. And now the Protestant fac- 
 tion, out of court favor, organized its forces and 
 planned for the elevation of Elizabeth. Joyfully they 
 hailed her accession, enthusiastically they prepared 
 to avenge themselves on their political foes. There 
 seemed at first some little difficulty with the queen 
 herself: her hatred of married priests, and other predi- 
 lections not in accord with the Protestant spirit, indi- 
 cate that she was not at heart a very cordial lover of 
 the new religion, and it is doubtful if she would have 
 served the purpose of the Protestant faction could she 
 have made peace with Rome on her own terms. She 
 demanded of the pope an acknowledgment of her 
 legitimacy. Her right to the crown depended on that, 
 and, when it was refused to her, the political necessi- 
 ties of her case compelled her to accept the leadership 
 of the Protestant party. 
 
 But now that party had become the national party. 
 Elizabeth's illegitimacy presumed the succession to 
 lie in Mary, queen of Scotland and allied by marriage 
 and by blood to France. The national spirit had 
 borne with some irritation the influence of the Span- 
 iard Philip as the husband of the late queen Mary, and 
 it was not inclined to have any but an English mon- 
 arch. Thus came the patriotism of England to rein- 
 force that faction whose interest lay in the Protestant 
 succession. 
 
 And nothing was left undone to strengthen the 
 combination; every effort was made to create a public
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 abhorrence of Rome. The wildest calumnies were 
 preached, the baldest forgeries perpetrated; sedu- 
 lously did the politicians labor until there was created 
 that spirit of hatred which could endure no beauty and 
 no joy because these things were held to be Romish 
 and therefore abhorrent. The Catholic politicians 
 fought as bitterly to offset this agitation, but in vain; 
 the circumstances of the time conspired to make their 
 task impossible. Philip of Spain, who disliked the 
 English as much as they disliked him, meditated the 
 conquest of the insular kingdom. The people rallied 
 to the support of the Protestant leaders, whose for- 
 tunes were now the fortunes of England. They were 
 assured that the proposed invasion was due to the 
 machinations of Rome. Now while it is true that the 
 pope hailed with joy a project which would, if success- 
 ful, restore England to the church, it is true also that 
 Philip had personal and political motives which would 
 have stirred him if there had been no religious con- 
 sideration at all. No more haughty monarch wore a 
 crown, and there had been insults while he was in 
 England that left old scores to settle. Then there 
 were Drake and those bold marauders who made 
 piracy the calling of an English gentleman at the ex- 
 pense of Spanish commerce. How bitter must have 
 been the irritation of a proud and mighty prince 
 whose treasure-ships were plundered and sunk in the 
 very seas that Spanish enterprise had opened to the 
 navigators of the world! The tongue we speak has 
 carried down to us an admiration for those bold toll- 
 takers of the wave, but in Spain at that time they were 
 regarded as plain thieves and murderers, and the in- 
 
 150!]
 
 THE GHOST OF A SPANISH KING 
 
 sular kingdom that sent them forth as a nest of pirates 
 no more respectable than the states of the Barbary 
 coast. Europe shared the impression of them held by 
 Spain; Ranke speaks of them as the "bold corsairs" 
 who gathered in to defend their island home when the 
 Armada threatened it. 
 
 But although the Protestant party had gained a 
 great advantage, there was still a powerful Catholic 
 party whose traditions and machinery were later to 
 pass into the Jacobite party, as in this Republic the 
 machinery and traditions of the old Whig party 
 passed into the Republican party; and the bitterness 
 of the political struggle between the two generated a 
 bitter prejudice which has been bequeathed to our 
 country and our generation. It was necessary for the 
 dominant faction to keep the "raw head and bloody 
 bones" ever before the eyes of the people in order to 
 insure their devotion to the "Protestant succession." 
 When America was settled the battle was still on. 
 French and Spanish America and English and Dutch 
 America still had to fight it out. 
 
 But long before the Revolution the fight had ended ; 
 only the prejudice remained. The devotion of Cath- 
 olic Maryland to the patriot cause, and the help of 
 Catholic France, mitigated but did not eradicate it. 
 Succeeding events have "softened" it, but it still re- 
 mains. Although the storms of four centuries ago 
 destroyed and dispersed "the Invincible Armada" in 
 distant seas, the dread of it and the hate of it control 
 the school policy of America to-day. The political 
 rancor of the fifteenth century has power still to com- 
 pel a nation believing in God and democracy to turn
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 its youth over to materialism and Socialism. Between 
 us and our best interests as a state rises the ghost of a 
 Spanish king who died in 1598, and we cannot see 
 through it
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 MEYERBEER'S grand opera, "The Hugue- 
 nots," has an intensely dramatic scene. It 
 pictures the Cardinal of Lorraine blessing 
 the French daggers that were to do the bloody work 
 of St. Bartholomew's Day. That scene, one of the 
 most impressive in the brilliant opera, has had much 
 to do with the quite general Protestant belief that the 
 Catholic Church instigated, and through its agents 
 carried out, the slaughter of Protestants in France 
 that was begun in Paris on August 24, 1572. 
 
 From what historical authority, from what in the 
 form of record or tradition, did Scribe, who wrote the 
 libretto of "The Huguenots," take the inspiration for 
 this great stage picture? No historian of that time, 
 Protestant or Catholic, made mention of any such 
 occurrence. The written record is that at the time of 
 the massacre, and for some time before and some time 
 after, the Cardinal of Lorraine was far from France : 
 he was in Rome attending a conclave of cardinals as- 
 sembled for the election of a pope. Whence, then, did 
 Scribe get the idea of this scene? From the literature 
 of the theatre, from another stage production, the 
 frankly admitted invention of the Revolutionary poet 
 Chenier, came this terrific arraignment that has ex- 
 cited the honest horror of millions who believe it to 
 be based upon the facts of history. The play was 
 
 t
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 "Charles IX," presented for the first time in Paris in 
 1798, at which time Chenier published a "Dedicatory 
 Address to the French People," containing this expla- 
 nation : 
 
 "At the time of the massacre the Cardinal of Lor- 
 raine was in Rome. I do not think it is right to change 
 history; but I think it is allowable, in an historical 
 tragedy, to invent certain incidents, provided the 
 privilege be used with moderation." 
 
 But the explanation is not read now, and, except by 
 students of history, has been little read at any time ; 
 while deep in the souls of men has been printed the 
 picture of the Catholic cardinal blessing the blades for 
 the day of blood, and in their ears have rung his 
 words : 
 
 "A humble and docile son of the immortal church, 
 and made a priest of the living God by her hands, I 
 am able to interpret the divine decrees. If your souls 
 are filled with a burning zeal to devote themselves to 
 the interests of Heaven, if you bring to murder re- 
 ligious hearts, you will accomplish a tremendous task. 
 Serve well the God of nations, all of whose blessings 
 I now shower upon you! Know that in heaven God 
 now breaks the chain of your iniquities: by the God 
 who inspires me, I declare the forgiveness of what- 
 ever crimes you have ever committed. When the 
 church impressed on my soul her ineffaceable mark, 
 she forbade me to shed even the most guilty blood: 
 but I shall follow in your path, and in the name of the 
 avenging God I shall direct your blows. Warriors, 
 whom divine Providence is about to lead; ministers of 
 justice, chosen by his prudence; it is now time to ac-
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 complish the eternal decrees. Bathe yourselves holily 
 in the blood of the wicked !" 
 
 These words were never uttered by the great 
 prelate of the house of Guise; there was no blessing 
 of the daggers. In France, as elsewhere, the so-called 
 "wars of religion" were caused by politics by the 
 selfish and corrupt politics of kingcraft, that were the 
 same essentially as the politics of the Tweed Ring in 
 New York City, and of other corrupt political cabals 
 in other cities only too familiar to modern American 
 thought. More than once, in the article dealing with 
 the Huguenots, is this expressly stated by the Ameri- 
 can Cyclopaedia, published in 1869, and edited by 
 George Ripley and Charles A. Dana. 
 
 "The Reformation, which was far from being en- 
 tirely religious even in Germany," says this work, 
 "was much more the result of secular and local causes 
 in France." And again, "It was during the reign of 
 Henry II that the Huguenots gathered such strength 
 as to entertain hopes of becoming the dominant po- 
 litical party." 
 
 Indeed, the political powers of France were at that 
 time more than half Protestant; the younger branch 
 of the reigning house of Bourbon was wholly so. It 
 was in the masses of the population that Catholicity 
 kept a predominating strength; the same peasant sen- 
 timent that later was to bar the popular and victorious 
 Henry of Navarre from the throne until he bowed the 
 knee in the Catholic Church made it the part of po- 
 litical wisdom for Francis I to adhere to the old 
 church, at war though he might be with the Papal 
 States and allied, as he was, with the Protestant pow-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 era outside his own kingdom. In the day of Francis, 
 no court in Europe was as gay as that of his sister, the 
 famous Margaret of Navarre. Around her was a 
 revelling, witty, and anything but devout society : her 
 ladies blushed and giggled over those tales of light 
 love in which the keen but unclean mind of Boccaccio 
 delighted; and the butt of every ribald joke was the 
 monk or the sacraments of the church. From the first 
 the sympathy of the vivacious Margaret went out to 
 the assailants of the church. Her court became their 
 refuge. Farel, who did so much to establish the 
 Genevan state on the basis of the new theology, was 
 one of her favorites; to her fled John Calvin when 
 Cop's preaching in the Sorbonne of the sermon he 
 wrote made flight from Paris the part of prudence for 
 preacher and author. Here were brought up Jeanne 
 d'Albret, the mother of Henry IV, and the Bourbons 
 of the younger branch Antoine, afterward a Navar- 
 rese king, and Louis, the Prince of Conde, soon to be 
 the gallant military chieftain of the Protestant fac- 
 tion. These younger Bourbons could not but despise 
 the physically and mentally weak children of Cathe- 
 rine de' Medici, who stood between them and the 
 throne of France; they ever entertained the hope of 
 gaining that mighty sceptre, and they bore a deadly 
 hatred toward the Guises, whose matrimonial alliance 
 with the older branch was productive of an influence 
 in the government of the realm of which those bold 
 and enterprising politicians took full measure of ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 In the reign of Henry II, the husband of Catherine 
 de' Medici, this political force was gathering head. It 
 
 CI563
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 found a ready ally in the queen, who was thoroughly 
 in sympathy with the Rabelaisian humor of the court, 
 in so far as it turned the church to ridicule, and was 
 eager to get the Guises out of the way in order that 
 she might sway, through the weakness of her son 
 Francis, the government of France. For this beauti- 
 ful and remarkable Florentine had but one passion, 
 and that was for power. A fastidiousness or a politi- 
 cal prudence kept her personally chaste, but she was 
 quite willing to turn the moral lapses even of husband 
 and son to the service of her cold policy; she shrank 
 from no bloodshed if she conceived it to be in line 
 with her purpose. She probably held all religion in 
 contempt; it was more the novelty of the Lutheran 
 creed than any feeling of sympathy with it, I think, 
 that caused her to enliven her meals with Protestant 
 sermons, as Santa Croce, the papal nuncio, com- 
 plained in his reports. 
 
 Nor is it reasonable to think that this woman had 
 any friendship for the younger branch of her hus- 
 band's family, or any intention of allowing that 
 branch to gain a decided ascendancy. The common 
 sentiment that brought them together was their con- 
 tempt for Catherine's sons, and their fear and hatred 
 of the house of Guise. Frangois, the head of that 
 ducal family, was famous as a captain throughout 
 Europe; to him and to his brother, the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, their niece Mary, wife of Francis II, turned 
 for advice and protection. The young king's passion 
 for the beautiful Stuart, who was later to reign so 
 unhappily in Scotland and to lay her lovely head at 
 the last on the block in England because of too plau- 
 
 CIS73
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 sible a claim to the throne of that kingdom, maddened 
 Catherine, who found her influence nullified by that of 
 the valiant Frangois. Of that politician she deter- 
 mined to rid herself by a bold stroke, for which the 
 strength and inclination of the younger Bourbons 
 promised to furnish the means. It was planned by 
 Catherine, by the King of Navarre, the Prince de 
 Conde, and the great Protestant lord Coligny, to cap- 
 ture and imprison the young king, slay the Duke of 
 Guise, and establish for the government of France a 
 regency council of Huguenot powers under the leader- 
 ship of the queen mother. 
 
 This was the conspiracy of Amboise. Its exposure 
 put all the cards in the hands of the Guises the 
 duke Frangois and Lorraine were more than ever the 
 protectors and advisers of the monarch, and Cathe- 
 rine, without scruple, abandoned her Protestant allies 
 and professed a sudden and excessive detestation of 
 heretics and as sudden and remarkable a devotion to 
 the house of Guise. The duke did not press his advan- 
 tage to the utmost; he was quite content that Francis 
 should know who the conspirators had been without 
 subjecting them to punishment. Conde he did humili- 
 ate by compelling him to look on without protest 
 while his own partisans were paying in blood the price 
 that Conde himself should have paid for that treason. 
 
 By this time the faith of the French Protestants 
 had been organized by Calvin, and already there was 
 bitterness between those who followed the French 
 doctor and those who accepted the Lutheran Confes- 
 sion of Augsburg. The princes of Navarre were the 
 political heads of the Calvinist movement, and the 
 
 CI58]
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 Guises sought to weaken them by causing the tolera- 
 tion in France of Lutheran Protestantism. Bloody 
 commotions in the Protestant ranks followed, and 
 these disturbances of the peace of the kingdom did 
 not increase the reputation of the Huguenots among 
 the masses of Frenchmen. Conde was at the forefront 
 of every armed uprising; he was arrested at Orleans, 
 charged with high treason, and would undoubtedly 
 have lost his head had it not been for the sudden 
 death of Francis and the elevation to the throne of his 
 brother, Charles IX. 
 
 For the moment Catherine's prospects brightened : 
 no longer was Mary Stuart's white hand on the 
 sceptre, no longer did her proud uncles exercise 
 through her a dominating influence over the court. 
 The first move of the new king was to pardon the foes 
 of the house of Guise. Conde was no sooner free than 
 he took the field at the head of his faction, and carried 
 on open war until the Duke of Guise defeated him on 
 the field of Drieux and took him prisoner. 
 
 Soon, however, was the great duke to pay the price 
 of princely politics in those times. While he was con- 
 ducting the siege of Orleans he was treacherously 
 shot by a partisan of Admiral Coligny, and his family 
 and the nation at large laid the blame of his assassina- 
 tion on the shoulders of the Protestant leader. His 
 son, Henry of Lorraine, who was to take his place at 
 the head of the house, saw him fall, and over his body 
 swore an oath of vengeance against the admiral an 
 oath which he lost no opportunity of fulfilling. 
 
 The wavering policy of Charles, who swung like a 
 pendulum back and forth, now inclining toward the
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Guises and now toward the Huguenots, favored at 
 this time the Protestant leaders. His edict of Am- 
 boise freed the imprisoned Conde, who took imme- 
 diate advantage of his freedom to raise his banner 
 once more and claim the throne. His mints printed 
 coins bearing his effigy with the inscription, "Louis 
 XIII, First Christian King of France." He very 
 nearly succeeded in capturing the king and queen at 
 Mieux, but the royal forces overcame him at St. Denis, 
 and once more he was a prisoner. The peace of Long- 
 jumeau gave him his last opportunity to rebel; he 
 fought with great bravery at Jarnac, and was shot by 
 an officer of the Duke of Anjou. 
 
 Meanwhile the war went on and the Huguenots 
 called to their aid German and English fellow-reli- 
 gionists, while the Guises began to receive support 
 from Philip of Spain, who was hopeful of gaining 
 France through their influence. Young Guise, who 
 had received his baptism of fire in the war against the 
 Turks in Hungary in his seventeenth year, pursued 
 his vendetta relentlessly at Jarnac and Moncontour 
 his sword was reddened, and the great Coligny had to 
 yield to his bitterest enemy at Poitiers. When Charles 
 made the peace of St. Germain, Henry had to abandon 
 public war for private vengeance, and the growing in- 
 fluence of the gallant Coligny with King Charles, 
 the agreement that the two branches of the reigning 
 house should be united by the marriage of Marguerite 
 of Valois, sister of the king, to Henry of Navarre, the 
 gallant son of Jeanne d'Albret, foreshadowed not 
 only the ruin of the Guises but the relegation of the 
 ambitious queen mother. Bitter, indeed, were the
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 hatreds that poisoned the atmosphere of the French 
 court in August of 1572, when a strange society as- 
 sembled in Paris. Charles was for the time all for his 
 new friends; he called Coligny, whose grave courtesy 
 and noble bearing made a deep impression upon him, 
 his father. Henry of Guise beheld with hot anger in 
 his heart the elevation in esteem and influence of the 
 man he believed to be responsible for his father's as- 
 sassination. Catherine, shoved to one side by the new 
 favorites, who hardly tried to dissemble their con- 
 tempt for the king and their not unjustified suspicion 
 of those who surrounded him, took counsel with 
 Prince Henry, later to be the King of Poland and still 
 later Henry III of France, and between them was 
 hatched the plot for the killing of Coligny. It was 
 through young Guise they worked. Catherine's plan, 
 according to the conjectures of many historians, was 
 to have Guise commit the crime and then have him 
 beheaded for it ; thus at one stroke ridding herself of 
 her two principal rivals. The conspiracy missed fire ; 
 Guise's bravo wounded but did not kill Coligny, and 
 Charles IX was highly incensed at the attempt upon 
 the life of his new favorite. Catherine was now truly 
 alarmed ; the Protestant nobles were in bitter and re- 
 bellious mood and kept their hands on their swords in 
 the royal halls, and Charles averted his face from her. 
 To save herself she and her allies forced themselves 
 into the presence of her son and alarmed him with the 
 charge of a Huguenot conspiracy aimed at his throne 
 and life. The bearing of the Huguenot leaders and 
 their record lent color to the tale, the unsteady mind . 
 of the monarch was filled with terror, and he gave his
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 consent to what he called "the execution" of the lead- 
 ders of the conspiracy. And young Guise was selected 
 as the instrument of justice Guise, whose heart was 
 panting for Coligny's blood, whose future fortune de- 
 pended on the suppression of the Huguenot power! 
 He had made his preparations, he was ready. St. 
 Bartholomew's Day blotched redly the history of 
 France. 
 
 How many died? The estimates vary. De Thou 
 says 30,000; La Popeliniere, 20,000; Masson, 10,000; 
 Lingard, 1,500. The author of the Huguenot mar- 
 tyrology gives an estimate of 30,000, but when he 
 gives the figures by the cities and towns where out- 
 breaks occurred they total 15,168, and when he at- 
 tempts a roll of the martyrs of St. Bartholomew's 
 Day, he brings forth the names of 768. 
 
 And now what part did the church play in all this? 
 The story that flew through Protestant Europe was 
 that the Catholic Church instigated it; that from 
 Rome came the impulse; that the massacre was long 
 in preparation, the marriage but a lure to gather to- 
 gether the heretics; that upon its consummation the 
 pope ordered a Te Deum sung in celebration. But the 
 record is all against this; there is the report of Sal- 
 viati, the papal nuncio, written in cipher to the cardi- 
 nal secretary of state, giving the details of Catherine's 
 intrigue, and the request of the cardinal secretary for 
 all the information that could be obtained. It is a 
 plain story, such as any diplomatic agent might send 
 to his distant government; there is nothing of jubila- 
 tion in it, nothing to indicate that religion had the 
 slightest part in it. There are the memoirs of Mar- 
 
 [162:3
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 garet, Charles's sister, and the statement of the Duke 
 of Anjou, his brother, to his physician, all to the effect 
 that the plot was of sudden conception and due to the 
 growing ascendancy of Coligny and the fear enter- 
 tained by Catherine and others of the consequences of 
 such an ascendancy. The Te Deum story has long 
 had its simple explanation. Rome was celebrating the 
 great victory of Lepanto over the Turks, and in the 
 midst of the celebration came the version of St. Bar- 
 tholomew which Catherine's prudence invented; it 
 was merely that the king had escaped assassination at 
 the hands of heretics, and that Conde and Navarre 
 had abandoned the Protestant cause and accepted the 
 ancient church. For that was the Te Deum chanted 
 in Rome : the escape of a Catholic king and the acces- 
 sion of two powerful princes. Catherine's courier had 
 beaten the courier of Salviati in the race from Paris to 
 St. Peter's. 
 
 No sensible man need be informed of the danger of 
 letting loose a mob. The report that the rebel Hugue- 
 nots had treacherously attacked the king went 
 through France, and those who are always willing to 
 profit by disorder joyfully took advantage of the op- 
 portunity. There is plenty of contemporary Protes- 
 tant evidence to the effect that even Guise, when 
 Coligny and the leaders had fallen, rode through 
 Paris, checking the murderous spirit to which he him- 
 self had given rein; that everywhere respectable Cath- 
 olics sheltered the hunted Protestants from the mob. 
 The Catholic bishop of Lisieux opened the cathedral 
 doors to the refugees, and throughout France monas- 
 teries and convents afforded them shelter. Twice 
 
 [1633
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the Protestant forces had massacred the Catholics of 
 Nimes, but not a single Protestant was molested in 
 that city. Catholic France, no less than Protestant 
 Europe, was horrified at the effusion of blood: but 
 Catholic France knew it was the result of a political 
 intrigue; Protestant Europe charged it up to religious 
 persecution. 
 
 And this is the final cipher despatch which Salviati, 
 the nuncio, sent to Rome : 
 
 "Time will show whether there be any truth in all 
 the other accounts which you may have read of the 
 wounding and death of the admiral, that differ from 
 what I wrote to you. The queen regent, having grown 
 jealous of him, came to a resolution a few days before, 
 and caused the arquebuse to be discharged at him 
 without the knowledge of the king, but with the par- 
 ticipation of the Duke of Anjou, of the Duchess of 
 Nemours, and of her son, the Duke of Guise. Had he 
 died immediately, no one else would have perished. 
 But he did not die, and they began to expect some 
 great evil ; wherefore, closeting themselves in consul- 
 tation with the king, they determined to throw shame 
 aside, and to cause him [Coligny] to be assassinated 
 with the others; a determination which was carried 
 into execution that very night." 
 
 The house of Guise was again in the ascendant 
 and it was to maintain this ascendancy for many 
 a year of bloody strife in France. Henry, its head, 
 now known as Le Balafre because of a scar that a 
 wound had left upon his face, cemented its power by 
 his military achievements and by the formation in 
 1576 four years after St. Bartholomew of the Cath-
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 olic League. Charles IX was dead- some say he died 
 of remorse, and some say he died of consumption 
 and Henry III had come back from Poland to take the 
 crown of France. The massacre of 1572, in which he 
 played a more effective part than did Charles, never 
 weighed uncomfortably upon his conscience after his 
 accession to the throne. He resented the power of 
 Balafre and his house, and soon there was an open 
 rupture and France became the theatre of the so- 
 called "War of the Three Henrys." There had grown 
 up at Guise's side his younger brother Mayenne, a 
 warrior of the same type, and, with the League de- 
 voted to them, these two brothers were more than a 
 match for Henry of France and Henry of Navarre. 
 Having defeated an army of Germans sent into 
 France to aid the enemies of the League, Guise en- 
 tered Paris boldly and the whole population rose for 
 him on the "Day of the Barricades." The king was 
 beleaguered in the Louvre; the city was in the 
 hands of his great vassal. Guise's followers would 
 have proclaimed him king but he waved the crown 
 from him. 
 
 The States General were convoked, and at their 
 stormy sessions Balafre demanded the royal appoint- 
 ment as high constable and general of the kingdom. 
 It was quite evident that the Parliament was in his 
 favor, and the king resolved on the Machiavellian ex- 
 pedient. Guise was treacherously slain by his order 
 in the council-room, and the same day the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine was murdered in prison. 
 
 But there was still a survivor of that lion brood: 
 Mayenne escaped the king's assassins, and Henry was
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 forced to seek safety in the camp of the King of Na- 
 varre. The Leaguers and the Huguenots again 
 clashed with varying fortune, and at last the camp of 
 the two kings was pitched outside the gates of Paris, 
 which was held by the Duke of Mayenne. In the 
 camp Henry acknowledged Navarre as his heir, but 
 informed him that he would never occupy the throne 
 until he became a Catholic. That this information 
 was not despised by the Navarrese, when Henry III 
 was assassinated and his right by birth to the crown 
 unquestioned, is shown in his correspondence with the 
 popes. In these negotiations also is the evidence of 
 the political nature of these wars. The possibility of 
 a reconciliation between Henry IV and the church 
 enraged Philip II, and his agents at Rome and in 
 France indulged in violent attacks on Pope Sixtus for 
 entering into negotiations with Henry. Cardinal 
 Cajetan, the Spaniard who was papal legate to the 
 League, was so active in his opposition to the legiti- 
 mate heir that the pope wrote to him, threatening him 
 with severe penalties if he did not cease to act as the 
 legate of Philip II and remember that it was the pope 
 he represented in France. Mayenne, striving valiantly 
 still against destiny, wrote to the pope, asking for 
 men and arms, and begging him to support the 
 League not only against Henry but against Philip, 
 who was now no more desirous of a complete victory 
 for the Leaguers than of a determinative triumph by 
 Navarre. But France was weary of strife, and 
 Henry's attachment to Protestantism was not strong. 
 The king embraced the ancient faith, and France ac- 
 cepted the king ; and the Huguenots thereupon ceased
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 to be a considerable force in the political affairs of 
 France. 
 
 Here again we find the political influences, the in- 
 trigues of princes, lighting the fires of bigotry to serve 
 the purposes of politics. The politicians of a later day 
 have other shibboleths, but similar methods. They 
 generate hatred as the drivers of a locomotive gener- 
 ate steam; it is the force they need to accomplish their 
 purpose. How long was the bitterness of the Civil 
 War kept alive here, after the death of Lincoln, the 
 forgiver, by cheap politicians who found profit to 
 themselves in the waving of "the bloody shirt"? Have 
 the demagogues of to-day forgotten the art isn't the 
 fomentation of class hatred the main occupation of 
 more than half the ambitious and conscienceless self- 
 glorifiers who so largely figure and loudly sound in 
 the public life of our day? The form is changed, but 
 not the substance. Ballots have to a large extent 
 taken the place of blades, and an admixture of many 
 creeds in the voting population has made the old shib- 
 boleths inconvenient for the vote-catchers; but they 
 still generate hate, they still seek spoil through de- 
 struction. It is a very old business, this of making 
 profit out of the public. It doesn't belong to the mod- 
 erns of America alone ; every land and every age has 
 had it: it was in the Greek cities and in the Roman 
 Republic, it was in the Italian life and the German life 
 of the middle ages, it was in the Catholic League in 
 France and the "Protestant Boys" of England. 
 
 Politics put its impress on the Reformation by the 
 nationalization of the churches. Henry VIII defined 
 the Church of England. The Lords of the Covenant
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 defined the Church of Scotland. And these names did 
 not signify merely the location of the particular part 
 of a universal church, as did the terms "the Church of 
 Alexandria" and "the Church of Rome" among the 
 early Christians. They meant churches with pecu- 
 liarities of rite and dogma; the geographical limita- 
 tion of a divine revelation. Even among the Germanic 
 and Scandinavian states, where the acceptance of the 
 Lutheran form preserved a surface uniformity of 
 ritual and creed, there were national modifications in- 
 separable from a complete ecclesiastical subserviency 
 to the national ruler. 
 
 It may be true that the right of private judgment 
 emerged from the Reformation, but it was a terrible 
 gauntlet it had to run before it emerged. Burned and 
 bloodied it was by Protestant no less than by Catholic 
 hands. Draper quotes a Venetian envoy's report to 
 the effect that in the Netherlands and in Friesland 
 30,000 suffered death for Anabaptist opinions. The 
 "Six Articles" of Henry VIII are still known in Eng- 
 lish history as "the Bloody Six," the name bestowed 
 upon them by the Tudor king's Catholic subjects ; and 
 his daughter Mary is still remembered by the name 
 "Bloody Mary," which the Protestant subjects of her 
 time bestowed upon her. John Calvin could still bring 
 to the .slow fire Michael Servetus, who preached a 
 Protestantism differing from his own only as his own 
 differed from that of Luther and Melanchthon. 
 
 And we have let politicians tell us these were the 
 fruits of religious controversy ! We have accepted it 
 as true that they and many another bloody deed that 
 all the persecution and all the cruelty were caused
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 by religion. And it isn't true. Not a single instance 
 of so-called religious persecution that I have exam- 
 ined did not have a sufficient political reason. There 
 was Catholic hatred in Ireland for the Protestants 
 because of the massacres by Elizabeth's Protestant 
 soldiery. Spenser, the English poet,, who accom- 
 panied that soldiery, tells what was done : "In a short 
 space there was none almost [of the Catholics] left; 
 and a most populous and pleasant country was sud- 
 denly void of man and beast." Was this wholesale 
 slaughter due to Elizabeth's zeal for the right of pri- 
 vate interpretation? Spenser answers our question; 
 he tells us he got, as his share, 3000 acres of the con- 
 fiscated land of the slain Irish. The Scottish lords 
 committed murder in the very presence of their Cath- 
 olic queen. Was it in protest against "the sale of in- 
 dulgences" ? 
 
 Henry VIII's "Six Articles" what real care had 
 he for them? But he was a king, no subject might 
 gainsay him; it was f or. lese-majeste, for daring even 
 to disagree with what he did not himself believe but 
 said they must believe, that by the stake and the axe 
 they died by whom his religious decrees were called 
 "the Bloody Six." 
 
 And Mary was the very centre of a bitter political 
 battle around her a band of politicians seeking ven- 
 geance for the wrongs of the previous reigns, at her 
 side a weathercock theologian, loyal to any faith that 
 might be the fashion. Against her were the politi- 
 cians who had been turned out of power at her acces- 
 sion. Even then she checked the persecutors until 
 actual rebellions on the part of the Protestant faction 
 
 1693
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 endangered her throne: not until Wyatt's abortive 
 revolt were her partisans permitted to punish her 
 political enemies. 
 
 The Servetus affair? Calvin was fighting the 
 Libertines the party which had that name in Ger- 
 many and in Geneva fighting them for political 
 power with the aid of Frenchmen who flocked into 
 Geneva, and his political enemies endeavored to make 
 use of Servetus against him. It was for that Servetus 
 died. 
 
 No matter how pure the spirit of any of the re- 
 ligious movements of those days, politics placed its 
 cruel hand upon them, seized them, directed them to 
 ends altogether irreligious. This is what a Protestant 
 churchman thinks of it : 
 
 "Where Protestantism was an idea only, as in 
 France or Italy," says Bishop Stubbs, "it was crushed 
 out by the Inquisition; where, in conjunction with 
 political power and sustained by ecclesiastical confis- 
 cation, it became a physical force, there it was lasting. 
 It is not a pleasant view to take of the doctrinal 
 change to see that where the movements toward it 
 were pure and unworldly it failed ; where it was sec- 
 onded by territorial greed and political animosity it 
 succeeded. . . . The instruments by which it was 
 accomplished were despotic monarchs, unprincipled 
 ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, and venal, slavish 
 parliaments." 
 
 In closing this chapter, we may look back with 
 some profit, I think, upon those which have preceded 
 it, and give form to the conclusions they all justify. 
 We have endeavored to deal with those incidents in 
 
 [1703
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 the history of the Catholic Church which have been 
 most productive of prejudice and which have revealed 
 the interplay of internal and external influences the 
 relationships of church and state. Throughout all of 
 them there is manifest a continuous conflict; on one 
 side secular politics, on the other a religious aspira- 
 tion for freedom of action. Sometimes on the part of 
 the churchmen there are means employed which 
 shock our sense of right; but always on the part of the 
 opposing secular powers are such means employed. 
 If we look back over the history of the church organi- 
 zation we see sometimes a misuse of power, some- 
 times a human ambition, sometimes shocking lapses 
 from virtue on the part of high ecclesiastics. But if 
 we look back over the history of secular politics, how 
 utterly foul and cruel and murderous is the retro- 
 spect? What has secular politics to offer of good that 
 was not impressed upon it by the church; what has 
 the church to show of bad that was not due to the 
 operations of secular politics? The tendency of the 
 religious principle in the worst of times has been ex- 
 alting and civilizing ; the tendency of the other prin- 
 ciple has been ever debasing and brutalizing. And 
 to-day, when the politicians of the new school, when 
 the special pleaders for an atheist school and an 
 atheist age, turn to church history for illustrations of 
 the injustice of the church and its evil effect upon 
 social organization, they abstain from calling atten- 
 tion to the history of the thing they propose to substi- 
 tute for religion in the life of men. They say that in 
 past ages popes were bad, but dare they say that in 
 the past ages worldly human government was not a
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 thousand times more evil than the worst of the bad 
 popes? Patrick Henry said the light of experience 
 was the only lamp we had, but he meant the light of 
 all experience, I think, not the light of a carefully 
 selected part of experience. 
 
 The whole object of what I have written will be lost 
 if this small work is considered as anything in the 
 nature of Catholic apologetics. That church has her 
 own apologists far more learned and far more elo- 
 quent. But that church has not a mere man of busi- 
 ness apart from her own communion and therefore not 
 predisposed in her favor, and it is the conclusion of 
 such a man after a study of some historical events that 
 I wish to set down here. It is quite possible to differ 
 with the Catholic Church upon points of doctrine 
 without accepting as true every fable that political 
 animosity has invented to discredit it. We shall all be 
 better Protestants, I think, for being fair. It is by no 
 means necessary to my Methodism or another's Pres- 
 byterianism that we shall believe there was a Pope 
 Joan, when there was not a Pope Joan; that we shall 
 believe a religious spirit was responsible for St. Bar- 
 tholomew's massacre when the real impelling force 
 was secular and political. Nor need a man be now 
 unduly excited over the right of Henry VIII to a di- 
 vorce, or the question of Tudor or Stuart on the Eng- 
 lish throne, to be a devout and righteous member of 
 the Church of England. Those old questions have 
 hardened into history; they are no longer questions, 
 they are facts. Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor 
 have gone to God, who has judged between them, 
 doubtless; the Guises and the younger Bourbons
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 and the older, too have long since been laid in 
 sepulchre; Philip II is of less real importance than lit- 
 tle Johnnie Jones who is playing outside the window. 
 Let them all go ; we have problems enough of our own 
 without clinging to those we can never solve because 
 the Lord in his own way solved them long before we 
 were born. Let us not forget the past, but let us look 
 at the past as we look at the present: let us bury its 
 prejudices with its dead ; its political animosities with 
 its politicians. The Church of God is made up of 
 human beings; its inspiration and authority are di- 
 vine. And humanity has been weak even in the Church 
 of God, but immeasurably weaker outside it. That is 
 the lesson of the history of the church and the states 
 with which it has held a relationship. 
 
 Finally, is it reasonable to suppose that a church 
 which has had experiences so unfortunate with state 
 connections, should still desire them? In Italy there 
 is still a desire for a restoration of the ancient political 
 right of sovereignty ; but the desire of Pius X is sim- 
 ply the desire of Zachary and his immediate succes- 
 sors in the days of Luitprand and Pepin, of Gregory 
 in the days of the Germanic Empire, and Boniface in 
 the days of Philip the Fair a desire for a political 
 shelter for a free church. The concordats, the con- 
 cessions, the secular nomination for, or confirmation 
 of, episcopal appointments: these are what "church 
 and state" mean to the Catholic Church, and these 
 things that church has hated historically and hates 
 to-day. They are passing, and the church is glad. No 
 more may a cardinal in conclave act as a vetoing 
 agent of his political sovereign; the present pontiff
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 has set his face and his word against the last faint 
 shadow of secular interference. He has taken advan- 
 tage of the public opinion of the twentieth century to 
 reassert an ancient right fought for by his predeces- 
 sors against oppressive external influences since that 
 remote hour in which Constantine gave official recog- 
 nition to the Christian church. 
 
 It has been charged against the Catholic Church 
 that it shuts its eyes always to the changes in the 
 world of men that come with the running generations, 
 but this also is a misconception. No change has ever 
 come over the world in all the long term of the pon- 
 tifical succession which she has not adapted to her 
 purpose. When they speak of an unchanging church 
 it is of the doctrine they speak, of the deposit of truth 
 which she boasts of carrying unchanged through all 
 the vicissitudes of the troubled centuries. It is not the 
 attitude of the church organization toward secular 
 society. That attitude has ever been a changing one ; 
 it has conformed ever to the conditions of human life 
 with which it had to deal; it fitted the catacombs, it 
 fitted the court of the Caesars, it fitted the Church 
 State, it fitted the enlarged world that the enterprise 
 of Columbus and Magellan and Da Gama gave to the 
 activities of mankind; it fitted feudalism and mon- 
 archism and democracy each in its turn. 
 
 That is why Macaulay could write in 1840, long 
 after the Reformation, but not so long after the 
 French Revolution : 
 
 "The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere an- 
 tique, but full of life and useful vigor. The Catholic 
 Church is still sending forth to the farthest end of the
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in 
 Kent with Augustine, and still confronting kings with 
 the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. . . . 
 Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term 
 of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the 
 commencement of all the governments and of all the 
 ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the 
 world; and we feel no assurance that she is not 
 destined to see the end of them all. She was great 
 and respected before the Saxon had set foot on 
 Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when 
 Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when 
 idols were still worshiped in the temples of Mecca. 
 And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when 
 some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst 
 of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of 
 London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 
 
 Three score and ten years of crowded human his- 
 tory, of most marvellous material achievement, of 
 tremendous political vicissitude and immeasurable 
 extensions of the field of knowledge in the realm of 
 physical science ; three score and ten such momentous 
 years have contributed their amazing dynamics to the 
 onward march of mankind, and is there yet any sign 
 of diminishing power in this ancient church? Is she 
 not fitting herself to the swiftly moving procession 
 with all her ancient facility, and from each rapidly 
 forming condition drawing an increase of power? 
 Not that she veers with every shift of the breeze or 
 bends her head to every ripple on the surface of the 
 sea. Her pontiffs and priests have suffered in person, 
 her ancient estates have been stripped from her these
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 have been incidents of her progress ; but in the large 
 view the church herself has prospered, has ever kept 
 her course. And as Macaulay found her flourishing 
 seventy years ago, despite conditions the world con- 
 ceived to be adverse, so we find her to-day flourishing 
 in the freedom of our American Republic and rejoicing 
 greatly in the separation of church and state. Time 
 and again, in his sermons to his own people and in his 
 published works, Cardinal Gibbons has expressed the 
 complete satisfaction of his church with the condi- 
 tions which the wisdom of the fathers of the Republic 
 provided for our American people. Listen to a prelate 
 of the Catholic Church on this point! This is what 
 Archbishop Blenk of New Orleans said in a sermon 
 preached during the exercises in celebration of Car- 
 dinal Gibbons's golden jubilee and published in the 
 New York Sun of October 11,1911: 
 
 "Religion here is untrammelled, thanks to our 
 separation of church and state; and whatever the 
 future may bring, we would desire no change here in 
 the relations of church and state. That is one lesson 
 surely taught us by European history, and bitterly 
 driven home by the events of our day. No meddling 
 official has a veto power over our preaching. No 
 bureaucrat, more or less hostile to religion, draws up 
 the list of names from which our bishops are chosen. 
 The Holy Father's counsel or legislative acts need no 
 indorsement of potentates before they may cross our 
 borders. Our pastors are supported by the love and 
 generosity of believing congregations, and not by the 
 stipends of a government. . . . Separation here is a 
 real separation, not spoliation, not conspiracy to
 
 THE DAGGERS THAT WERE NOT BLESSED 
 
 lessen the church's influence, nor restriction upon her 
 liberty of action and liberty of teaching, nor tyran- 
 nical denial of the ministrations of religion to those 
 who leave home to serve their country in army and 
 navy. It means perfect freedom for church and state, 
 each in its own sphere ; but here, as there has been no 
 divorce, there is no legacy of bitterness. On the 
 friendliest of terms, neither has any desire for a closer 
 union. The church here knows it can better do its 
 work apart; it is freer and therefore more powerful, 
 and, being unpaid by the state, and independent, it 
 can uphold law and order without giving to any one 
 an excuse to suspect its motives." 
 
 If in the brief and incomplete study of the past that 
 has occupied these chapters, I have shown that what 
 we have regarded here as religious prejudice is based 
 very largely upon falsehood, and is the daughter less 
 of doctrinal disagreement than of the corrupt politics 
 of long ago; that the Catholic Church less than any 
 other church, perhaps, desires a union of church and 
 state; that, in any event, under modern conditions 
 such a union is utterly impossible if I have shown 
 these things, then I may close this branch of my work 
 and proceed to the consideration of the problem with 
 which it is most concerned.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 WHAT is Education? What is its purpose? 
 Why are there so many school-houses, so 
 many teachers, why so vast an expenditure 
 in money, so extensive and complicate an organiza- 
 tion, devoted to teaching the child? There never was 
 an age that did not know education; never a tribe, 
 savage or civilized, a part of whose social life did not 
 consist of the systematic training of the young. 
 
 I have just read a book by Paul Monroe, Ph.D., who 
 was professor of the History of Education at Colum- 
 bia. It is entitled A Brief Course in the History of 
 Education. In this book Professor Monroe traces the 
 story of educational effort from primitive times to the 
 present day, through all its varying fashions. He re- 
 cords the different theories men have held with regard 
 to it, the mutations of form and content, the peculiar- 
 ities of the succeeding schools. He elucidates the 
 views of the authorities on the subject whose views 
 are of record. They are varied enough. They were 
 pagans, Christians, Catholics, Protestants, atheists; 
 they were nominalists and realists, sense-realists and 
 naturalists, formalists, humanists, and social-realists; 
 Aristotelians, Schoolmen, Ciceronians; they were con- 
 servatives and radicals, Lutherans and Jesuits, eccle- 
 siastics and Encyclopedists. In everything but one 
 have they differed. There is one point upon which
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 they all centred. From the early Hebrews and Greeks 
 to the recognized modern authorities, there is a thread 
 of agreement that holds a true course. There is one 
 straight-edge that can be laid down upon the history 
 of education from the beginning to now, and it will 
 touch every great teacher from Plato to Pestalozzi, 
 from Moses to Dr. Eliot. Differ as they may and do 
 as to method, they all hold that the purpose of educa- 
 tion is to make a good man. By whatever path, Virtue 
 is the goal. By whatever method, the end is Right- 
 eousness. In all the long record there is no note of 
 dissent upon this; in every system advanced every- 
 thing else is secondary to the development of the 
 moral character. 
 
 Before going back to the ancient thought on this 
 subject it may be well to consider such primitive cus- 
 toms as savage life still extant, or but recently ex- 
 tinct, can exemplify. They give us some light; they 
 show the same underlying purpose, the same all-per- 
 vasive principle. Fundamentally their conception of 
 education is what ours is : it has its utilitarian side and 
 its moral complement. The savage tribes teach their 
 boys to hunt and fish, to fashion implements of war and 
 chase, to build shelters and make clothing, just as we 
 teach ours to read and write and figure, and in some 
 cases to use their hands and brains in mechanical 
 work. The savage lad is taught to take a living from 
 his environment; the child of civilization, to earn a 
 living in his. But this is not all : even among the sav- 
 age tribes is the dim perception of a further need. The 
 soul has its necessities; a man must be something 
 more than strong and skilful in war and chase in order
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 to be a useful member of the tribe. Human nature is 
 nowhere without some moral idea, and the savage in- 
 stinctively feels the need of inspiration : he must learn 
 to endure without flinching, to fight without fearing, 
 to reverence the old, to worship the spirits his fathers 
 worshiped. Therefore the schooling of the youth, the 
 exercises attendant upon his initiation into the adult 
 tribal society, are conducted by the priesthood around 
 the totem-pole. The groping of the unenlightened 
 mind toward the truth; the natural phenomena per- 
 sonified in sun-gods and air-gods and wood-gods and 
 river-gods, which are the symbols through which the 
 dark, uncultured soul strives to express its vague but 
 ever-present conception of a Creative Controlling 
 Power these are the things that affect his education. 
 Far from civilization, where the intellect hardly 
 throbs, where there has been no revelation and is no 
 light, some mysterious power weds these two things 
 the secular education and the religious aspiration. 
 The affinitive quality asserts itself with the force of a 
 natural law. This education, Mr. Monroe says, has a 
 moral value. It is not enough that the lad shall be a 
 useful member of his tribe : he is "taught to be a good 
 member of the tribe." 
 
 We shall pass over the educational system of the 
 ancient Hebrews, whose public schools of which 
 they had many before the time of Christ- were in- 
 formed, as was all their social life, by the spirit of 
 their revealed religion, and see what the historian 
 finds among the ancient Greeks. Here there was no 
 revealed religion, no authoritative moral code. They 
 had had to form their own religion, as did the savage
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 tribes; but their keen minds had approximated the 
 truth, their greater thinkers had reasoned a God from 
 the natural evidences of His Being. Unaided, their 
 logic had postulated a Supreme Intelligence morally 
 perfect. But that was their logic at its best. The 
 Greek mind of a lower order might in the vague Zeus 
 mistily perceive the outlines of God, but it naturally 
 thought of supernatural power in terms of its highly 
 developed aesthetic sense : its familiar deities were the 
 personifications of Power and Speed and Beauty 
 with these it peopled its heaven. Consequently there 
 was an indistinct and indirect moral impulse, which 
 did indeed predominate as an educational motive, but 
 which lacked the compelling force of an authoritative 
 moral commandment. It is for this reason that Mr. 
 Monroe regards the Greek educational period as of 
 great interest to modern American students. These 
 are the words in which he points out the resemblance 
 of educational conditions here and now to educational 
 conditions there and then : 
 
 "Since the aim of education, as limited in the work 
 of the American schools of to-day, must eliminate the 
 religious element, it can find no higher purpose than 
 that of determining for each individual the things in 
 this life that are best worth living for." 
 
 In passing may I call attention to the two words I 
 have italicized and their connotation that our educa- 
 tion is a limited and an inferior education? They are 
 valuable as an unconscious expression of the thought 
 of an expert. 
 
 A limited and an inferior educational system the 
 ancient Greeks had then, although they recognized
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the need of something better and were seeking for it 
 ever. Aristotle declared the aim of education to be 
 goodness. There were two kinds of goodness, he 
 thought, goodness of intellect and goodness of char- 
 acter, and with regard to the latter he said: "Virtue 
 does not consist in the mere knowledge of the good, 
 but in the functioning of this knowledge." Socrates 
 and Plato held the same thought with regard to the 
 purpose of education : it must always be moral. And 
 the Greeks, reaching out for some moral staff on 
 which to lean, adopted various expedients: they 
 taught youths to emulate the virtues of their elders, 
 of the great men of the state; they provided the stu- 
 dent with an "inspirer" whose name suggests his 
 office. But, lacking the authoritative moral code, 
 what was the result? How did their system, in which 
 Mr. Monroe sees so great a resemblance to our own, 
 work? This is his conclusion: "The ethical motive 
 among the masses of the people was not sufficiently 
 developed to prevent the toleration of many customs 
 abhorrent to modern times." He tells us what these 
 customs were the debasement of women, the ex- 
 posure of undesirable children so that they might 
 perish, the enslavement of nine-tenths of the popula- 
 tion these were some;- and one is startled when he 
 thinks of what we have already upon us in the wave 
 of women politicians, professors of eugenics and pro- 
 moters of Socialism startled at the evidence of simi- 
 lar causes and similar effects. But it stops not there, 
 it goes further, and again we find modern develop- 
 ments keeping step with the ancient developments: 
 "Moreover, the Greek versatility bordered on the in-
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 sincere, even the dishonest, while their light-hearted- 
 ness often became frivolity and licentiousness." 
 
 Possibly when Professor Monroe wrote his book 
 the influence behind the secularization which he notes 
 was not as clearly defined as it has since become, for 
 he does not seem to consider that the pure socialism 
 of the Spartan system had that particular interest for 
 American educators which he found in the uninspired 
 ethics of Grecian education elsewhere. Let me here 
 remark, in order that the argumentative thread of 
 this chapter shall remain unbroken, that even in Lace- 
 daemon the purpose of education was moral. It was 
 even more disciplinary in its motive and its operation 
 than the monastic schools of the dark ages, there was 
 a compelling force of the most direct and intimate 
 nature behind its every precept. From the day the 
 Spartan was born until the day he died, external in- 
 fluences channelled his life, his path was sharply de- 
 fined. 
 
 "This resulted," Monroe says, "in the most perfect 
 example of a socialistic state, and the most extreme 
 case of government control of education, with em- 
 phasis upon the educational functions of various social 
 institutions. In fact, society itself became a school in 
 which every adult member was expected to partici- 
 pate, as an important duty of citizenship, in the edu- 
 cation of the young Spartan." 
 
 It may be pointed out, however, that the socialistic 
 system of the Spartans was something that was 
 forced on them; that it was considered as a means of 
 defense against hostile tribes by whom the state was 
 surrounded ; that its motive was military and its dis- 
 
 183:1
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 cipline therefore strict. The idea of the Spartan 
 statesman was not to make happier the lot of the in- 
 dividual, to increase his material wealth and minister 
 to his material comfort, but to make him a good sol- 
 dier; and therefore a moral code, a strict, abstemious, 
 laborious life, was necessary to the very purpose of 
 the institution. This consideration has a bearing of 
 the utmost weight upon the question Mr. Monroe 
 asks and answers. He says their experience furnishes 
 an affirmative answer to the question, Can morals be 
 taught? Does it? The question is very interesting; 
 it has been raised by the teachers of the ethical culture 
 school ; it is the principle of Dr. Eliot's theories with 
 regard to education. Let us see, then, what it all 
 amounted to ultimately. It cannot be denied that it 
 kept the Lacedaemonians physically strong and na- 
 tionally powerful for many years, but does it follow 
 that it would do the same to-day for Americans? 
 Would it have stood up in Sparta for any time at all 
 had not hostile spears glistened on every frontier so 
 that relaxation would have meant destruction to the 
 state? Even then, would it have held together, had it 
 not been for the fact that there was no private life, 
 that every man lived day and night in the public view 
 and according to a schedule prescribed by a strict and 
 ever vigilant government? The Spartan might sin 
 but he could not sin in secret, nor could he sin against 
 the code established without the certainty of swift 
 and severe punishment. But even with all this, what 
 was the fruit of the tree, what was the effect of their 
 system upon the moral character of this strange 
 people? 
 
 [1843
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 "It must be admitted, however," Monroe says, 
 "that while the Spartans' moral training conserved 
 certain elemental virtues, its effects morally as well as 
 physically had a certain hardening, even brutalizing, 
 tendency." 
 
 So that is what it all ends in. That is the best an- 
 cient history can do in the way of an affirmative an- 
 swer to the question, Can morals be taught? 
 
 The Roman people, the most wonderful of all the 
 ancients, did not deviate from the line of moral pur- 
 pose in their educational work. Sober, strong, prac- 
 tical people, less acute mentally but of a nobler order 
 morally than the Greeks whose civilization they bor- 
 rowed, they taught sobriety and reverence to their 
 young; they held two sublime conceptions justice 
 and duty. In them more than in any other of the un- 
 enlightened peoples who flourished before the dawn 
 of Christianity, a natural morality was developed. 
 They were very practical men, their morality was for 
 every-day use, they endeavored to make justice and 
 duty less abstractions than rules of living. They 
 were utilitarians, but utilitarians of the highest order, 
 and they had developed a natural code of moral laws 
 which received supernatural authority when Chris- 
 tianity came to make light what had been dark in the 
 ways of men. 
 
 There will hardly be any question as to the purpose 
 of the Christian schools. The fathers of the church 
 might differ as to whether the learning of the pagan 
 world was conducive to a virtuous character, but that 
 a virtuous character was the end of all educational 
 effort was never doubted. It was not questioned by 
 
 [1853
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the scholastics, who endeavored to bring back some 
 of the ancient culture, by the humanists, by the stu- 
 dents of the dawn years of the second millennium, in 
 whose hearts throbbed the first faint pulses of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 Education took on a new form and color, but the 
 old motive persisted. The new intellectual period had 
 begun with the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne 
 was the first of the great Western patrons of learning ; 
 his founder of schools, Alcuin, was an abbot of the 
 Christian church. St. Boniface, who founded schools 
 throughout Gaul and Germany, was another high ec- 
 clesiastic. For centuries yet the only teachers were to 
 be priests ; but even when the lay schools began to be 
 more numerous, there was no departure from the old 
 basic idea, the precepts of religion were still the chief 
 part of the curriculum. Vittorio da Feltra, who es- 
 tablished his famous school at Mantua in the closing 
 years of the fourteenth century, is called the first of 
 the modern schoolmasters. He declared that in his 
 system, "above all, moral and Christian influences 
 were strongly emphasized." Nor did the intellectual 
 ferment of the Reformation make any change in this 
 central idea. The humanists had never entertained 
 the suggestion that there could be other than a moral 
 purpose in education. Erasmus, the greatest of them, 
 held that "the moral purpose in education should ever 
 be emphasized, and a study of religious literature and 
 religious services should be a part of all training." 
 Nor were the Protestant leaders of different thought. 
 Imagine the amazement with which Luther would 
 have listened to a suggestion that religion be divorced
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 from education; think of Melanchthon, or Calvin, 
 dreaming of such a possibility as a godless school! 
 
 John Milton the Puritan, the great poet, prescribes, 
 among the subjects of study, "moral training, history, 
 theology, church history." Comenius declared, "The 
 ultimate end of man is beyond this life. . . . This life 
 is but the preparation for eternity." 
 
 John Locke, the philosopher, adds this to the 
 chorus : " 'Tis Virtue then, direct Virtue, which is the 
 hard and valuable part to be aimed at in education, 
 and not a forward pertness and any little arts of shift- 
 ing." 
 
 And so the centuries roll on, and they have only one 
 voice on this matter. The Encyclopedists take pos- 
 session of the fashionable thought of France, and 
 Rousseau writes his great work on education Emile. 
 "Now," says he, "his education is to be strictly moral 
 and religious." This is the Rousseau who wrote The 
 Social Contract, who even more than Voltaire "made 
 the Revolution" in the thought of Napoleon and 
 others. From Rousseau the thread leads to Pesta- 
 lozzi, who brings us to modern thought and modern 
 method. "In Europe," deplores Pestalozzi, "the cul- 
 ture of the people has become vain babbling, as fatal 
 to faith as to true knowledge; an instruction of mere 
 words which contain a little dreaming and show, 
 which cannot give us the calm wisdom of faith and 
 love, but on the contrary leads us to unbelief and 
 superstition. . . ." Herbart says, "The one and 
 whole work of education may be summed up in the 
 concept morality." And Froebel speaks to us next; 
 in his Education of Man he says, "All things have come 
 
 187:1
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 from the Divine Unit, from God, and have their origin 
 in the Divine Unity alone." And this is Huxley's 
 description of an educated man: "... The servant 
 of a tender conscience who has learned to love all 
 beauty in nature or art, to hate all vileness, and to 
 respect others as himself." Less clear in expression, 
 but of the same thought, is Professor James when he 
 says education is "the organization of acquired habits 
 of action such as will fit the individual to his physical 
 and social environment" ; and Professor Home says, 
 "Education is the superior adjustment of a physically 
 and mentally developed conscious human being to his 
 intellectual, emotional, and volitional environment." 
 This last is merely the slang of the specialist for what 
 an old Irishwoman better expressed when she said, 
 "I'm sending Mickey to school to make a good man 
 of him." 
 
 I might go on quoting indefinitely, but it is needless. 
 Even the Nationalists, the Socialists, the Ferrerists, I 
 take it, believe that the main and important purpose 
 of schooling is to develop the moral character. The 
 experience of humanity from the earliest times has 
 taught but one lesson on this point: the moral results 
 are the touchstone of the system if a school does not 
 make its pupils better men, then it is a failure. Leaving 
 out of the question altogether the religious concep- 
 tion of man's creation and destiny, looking to human 
 experience only, we find that the moral life is the only 
 social safeguard; a prosperous and happy immoral 
 people is inconceivable. States have stood up against 
 external hostile influences, have persisted through 
 material poverty, have survived even ignorance, but 
 
 C 188;]
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 their morality has always been the very fibre of them, 
 its decadence is always the forerunner of political dis- 
 aster. 
 
 It is worth while noting the effect of the moral ob- 
 jective in education upon its utilitarian efficacy. And 
 when we meet this question we uncover one of the 
 paradoxes of human experience. Wherever the moral 
 purpose of education is emphasized, the utilitarian 
 purpose is well served; wherever the utilitarian pur- 
 pose is emphasized neither is well served. Not to 
 teach mathematics, but to teach morality, is the best 
 way to make mathematicians. That is the way it has 
 worked out. Take the monastic schools of the "dark 
 ages." First let us make plain what we mean by the 
 "dark ages." The name has been applied, strangely 
 enough, to that period in history when there began to 
 be a diffusion of light. The Greek civilization was 
 luminous, it is true, but the light shone like a single 
 star in a black sky. The diameter of civilization was 
 short, indeed. The circle of light comprehended but 
 a few square miles of the earth's surface lying around 
 the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Beyond 
 that small circumference were vast black wilder- 
 nesses. Toward the Orient was the faint afterglow 
 of prehistoric civilizations Africa lay to the south, 
 in a night that has persisted unto this generation. 
 America was in the deepest shadow, relieved only by 
 a glimmer, perhaps, where the Aztecs, or the Toltecs, 
 or the sun-worshiping Incas were lighting their feeble 
 intellectual lamps. In Europe, save for that patch on 
 the Mediterranean shore, the sons of Japhet walked 
 in gloom. Nor was the Greek civilization of any
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 depth. When it was purely Greek and at its brightest, 
 it was but a surface glow. One-tenth of the Greeks 
 were enlightened and free, nine-tenths of them the 
 most abject and ignorant of slaves. The extension 
 of that civilization to Rome deepened it slightly, but 
 it became less brilliant as it was diffused over a larger 
 area. To some extent the enterprise and valor of the 
 Romans spread it north and west, but it gave only a 
 faint radiance then its pristine brilliancy was gone 
 forever. 
 
 The illumination of the world was a task demand- 
 ing a purer and a stronger light, and Christianity 
 furnished the torch. And when the glow of this 
 strange supernatural light began to struggle with the 
 darkness of the world, then began what are known as 
 the "dark ages." It was not that they were darker 
 than those which had gone before; it was the begin- 
 ning of a consciousness on the part of the more en- 
 lightened of the fact that they were so dark. The wall 
 between civilization and barbarism was broken down 
 and the darkness of the world mingled with the light 
 that had been confined to a few, but was to shine 
 henceforth for all men. It was the beginning of a vast 
 struggle between intellectual night and intellectual 
 day. And little by little the light won its way and the 
 shadows receded, little by little the civilizing influ- 
 ence spread, deepening the purposes and ennobling 
 the lives of men. Little by little the arts and sciences 
 regained what was lost, and more also, not in the nar- 
 row theatre of the past, but all over the wide world. 
 
 And how was this accomplished? By teaching the 
 arts and the sciences? No; by teaching the worship
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 of God. What did the work? Was it done by great 
 universities, supported by such endowments as the Car- 
 negie Fund, presided over by men who gave their 
 whole lives to the study of natural sciences and secu- 
 lar literatures? No. It was the monk that modern 
 culture so despises who did the work. It was the 
 monk, preparing men for the next world, who made 
 men fit to live in this. It was the monk who kept in 
 his cells the treasures of ancient literature that would 
 have been lost otherwise, and reproduced them in the 
 scriptorium of the monastery. It was the monk who 
 taught the peasant the agricultural arts and impressed 
 upon the nobles the dignity of labor by putting his 
 own hands to the plow hands that were consecrated 
 to the service of God. 
 
 Our popular histories leave us with the impression 
 that for ten centuries at least the world stood still. 
 Before that there were some centuries of retrogres- 
 sion; after it, in the fifteenth century, there was a 
 sudden leap forward. Civilization, having slept, 
 dreaming horrid dreams, through a long black night, 
 leaped to its feet, wide-eyed and full of life; of a sud- 
 den, the light broke on the world like a new day 
 radiantly beautiful. It is thrilling, but it isn't true. 
 There were scientists between the fifth century and 
 Leonardo da Vinci; there were schools, even common 
 primary schools, wherever there was Christianity, 
 from the days of Constantine. The early fathers of 
 the church were men of culture and great intellectual 
 power. As logicians and rhetoricians they were not 
 inferior to the best of the pagan civilization; in phi- 
 losophy they do not stand out because they did not
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 have to create philosophical systems, they merely 
 preached the revealed truths. That was the great 
 task of their time, and they did it well. Plato set 
 himself to create a philosophy, and he did it well. 
 Archimedes was a great mechanic. Augustine was a 
 great missionary. The Renaissance was not the flash 
 of light that we have been trained to think it. It was 
 only a stage in the development of civilization. That 
 development had been going on all the time. Back in 
 the ninth century, there had been common schools 
 under Christian control in the provinces over which 
 Christianity was exercising its civilizing influence; 
 they existed in Ireland, they existed in France, they 
 existed in Germany. 
 
 The church had had its popes who were school- 
 teachers and scientists. One of them in the tenth 
 century had invented an abacus for the study of 
 geometry. Another, according to the old records, 
 was teaching astronomy and geography by means of 
 terrestrial globes. 
 
 Oh, yes, a great many people did think the world 
 was flat; and there was a great deal of ignorance 
 there is to-day. The mass of men then didn't know 
 any more about the shape of the earth than the mass 
 of men now know about the history of those ages. But 
 they were learning, just as we are learning. The 
 strictly religious monastic schools were teaching 
 them little by little, as the human race is always 
 taught; teaching them with the purpose of saving 
 their souls from perdition, and with the effect of deep- 
 ening and widening steadily the circle of secular 
 knowledge.
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 That is the work that religion was doing for the 
 human race for its secular interest, I mean, not its 
 spiritual salvation. Prejudice would teach us other- 
 wise, but prejudice is blind. 
 
 "The one-sided and superficial literature of the 'En- 
 lightenment/ " says Frederick William Foerster, "is 
 raked for all possible instances of abuses, for all the 
 degenerate and barbarous symptoms that have 
 marked the history of the church in Europe. The eye 
 of the searcher, like that of a nerve specialist, is on the 
 qui vive for the abnormalities of human life. All these 
 abuses and exaggerations are represented as the es- 
 sential content of what was in reality a rich and mag- 
 nificent development of civilization. And all this is 
 done with such absolute lack of appreciation that the 
 reader is forced to say to himself: Well, a man who 
 wants to look at matters in that way, who in the long 
 development of Christian civilization can see nothing 
 but mental derangement and delirium, who thinks 
 that the unapproachable masterpieces of medieval ar- 
 chitecture, the rich harvest reaped in all arts and 
 crafts, the incomparable spirit of sacrifice, the living, 
 breathing literature, the deep and sincere holiday joy- 
 fulness of those times, who thinks that all this has no 
 inner connection with the living, all-embracing, all- 
 penetrating spiritual power of the Christian church, 
 that it is no testimony to her civilizing creative energy 
 well, let him think so, if he will. Such a man will 
 do no harm, for he stands too far away from the main- 
 springs of life to exercise any very deep influence 
 whatsoever. Books written in this spirit are read 
 and forgotten. To drag abuses to light is an easy 
 
 [1933
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 task anywhere in history, and especially in those pe- 
 riods when institutions with really sublime ideas and 
 far-seeing plans have undertaken the task of recreat- 
 ing degenerated civilizations, since such institutions 
 must look for success to the cooperation of just those 
 human powers which they intend to elevate and edu- 
 cate. Imagine 'evolutionary' ethics endeavoring to 
 civilize the disorganized and unorganized masses 
 which the migration of nations offered to the educa- 
 tors of the early middle ages !" 
 
 This is from the pen of a man regarded for years in 
 Europe as perhaps the greatest living teacher. He 
 was for years the foremost among the champions of 
 "ethical culture" ; his father was devoted to the cause 
 of non-religious ethical education ; his own education 
 was conducted on that line, and he grew into man- 
 hood an enthusiast for freedom of thought from "re- 
 ligious shackles," and the development of man's 
 moral nature according to the rationalist formula. He 
 has been the editor of the newspaper organ of the 
 International Ethical Culture Society and the inter- 
 national secretary of that society. 
 
 Mr. Foerster, too, has an answer to the question, 
 Can morals be taught? His answer is more to the 
 point than is that furnished by the experience of the 
 Spartans, for it deals with the teaching of morals in 
 modern conditions of life. He lives to-day, he is the 
 most modern of moderns. He knows the ethical 
 culture theory and practice from alpha to omega ; he 
 has been through all that. This is his career, briefly 
 sketched: His father, William Foerster, an astron- 
 omer of note and a privy councillor at one time to the
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 German emperor, was among those intellectual Ger- 
 mans who were leaders in the rationalist movement 
 and who regarded revealed religion as of no further 
 value to humanity. The theory of ethical culture, of 
 supplying the moral need the abolition of religion had 
 created, made a strong appeal to him, and on the 
 model of the Society for Ethical Culture founded in 
 New York in 1876 by Dr. Felix Adler, he founded an 
 ethical culture society in Berlin. In the spirit and 
 according to the rule of the new cult William Foerster 
 educated his son Frederick, who was born in Berlin 
 in 1869. No religious influence played any part in the 
 training of the younger Foerster, who partook of his 
 father's enthusiasm for ethical culture. Frederick 
 was so ardent, indeed, in the cause that he resolved to 
 make character-training his life-work. It was char- 
 acteristic of him that he recognized the educational 
 value of the study of human life itself. After obtain- 
 ing his degree of doctor of philosophy from the 
 University of Freiburg in 1893, he spent two years 
 journeying among the poor in Germany, England, 
 and America, studying at first hand and with his own 
 eyes the conditions he hoped to ameliorate if not 
 remedy by the magic of a rational cultivation of na- 
 tural morality. In 1895 he became the editor of 
 Ethische Kultur, the official organ of the German 
 ethical culture movement; and so brilliant was his 
 work, so ardent his spirit, so truly did he typify the 
 movement at its best, that the first International 
 Ethical Culture Congress, held in Zurich the follow- 
 ing year, created the office of international secretary 
 and elected Foerster its first incumbent. No finer se- 
 
 [1953
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 lection could have been made. Young, strong, pro- 
 found, sincere, he was an ideal champion of the cause. 
 He was ready to give proof of the sincerity of the faith 
 that was in him, and he did give it an article of his 
 on the Kaiser and the Social Democracy was con- 
 demned as treasonable, and its author offered the 
 choice between retraction and imprisonment. He 
 suffered the imprisonment. Since 1896 his home has 
 been in Zurich and his principal work has been the 
 teaching of ethics in the public schools of that city, 
 although he is also a lecturer at the University of 
 Zurich. 
 
 This is the character of the man, this his training 
 and experience, who has found that ethical culture 
 must be alive or it will not work ; that the conscience 
 of man is not a physical organ, but a part of his soul. 
 For a little more than a year it has been realized on 
 both sides that his path and that of the society of 
 which he was a leader for seventeen years are diver- 
 gent instead of coincident or parallel, and that the 
 distance between them is widening rapidly. 
 
 "My one-time persuasions," he says, "were the re- 
 sult, not merely of my consistently irreligious educa- 
 tion, but likewise of the bookworm enlightenment 
 that our universities offer to the young man of to-day 
 an enlightenment that keeps him a stranger to real 
 life, that allows no deep insight into the shadows of 
 modern society. At one time I was a very earnest 
 free-thinker, and endeavored to follow the system to 
 its deepest conclusions. But just the earnestness of 
 my endeavors led me to bid adieu to free thought. . . . 
 Instinctively I felt it my duty to remodel my views by
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 contact with real life. So I interrupted my academ- 
 ical studies soon after receiving the degree of doctor, 
 devoted myself for two years to the study of the labor 
 problem and youthful delinquents, gave myself to 
 practical personal care of the poor, made journeys to 
 other lands to study the same problems, and finally, in 
 Zurich, began the practical work in the formation of 
 character. The insight thus gained into real life, into 
 the concrete problems of the living man, is the real 
 cause of my inner transformation. I began to see 
 Christianity with other eyes. Christianity, until then, 
 had seemed to be a foreign, antiquated element of life 
 now I saw that I had been a stranger to life, a dead 
 man. 'When the dead rise!' And I am fully per- 
 suaded that this same method of living observation 
 of life and self would bring many of my contempo- 
 raries to the views which I to-day uphold. Nor could 
 they rest satisfied with the shallow, diluted Christian- 
 ity of modern academic culture, but would be drawn 
 by the concrete knowledge of what is human all too 
 human to understand anew and revere anew the 
 superhuman grandeur of Christ." 
 
 Dr. Foerster has had the usual experience of a 
 rationalist who uses his reason instead of setting it on 
 a shrine and swinging a censer before it : the reason- 
 worshipers announced sadly that he was "ultramon- 
 tane," "orthodox," "Catholic." It was too bad, some- 
 thing like his being mentally deranged. That is the 
 habit of rationalists ; a convenient habit it is, too, be- 
 cause you do not have to answer one who is "ultra- 
 montane," or "orthodox," or "Catholic," any more 
 than you would have to answer one who is mentally
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 deranged ; you just announce the fact and let it go at 
 that. But there is a new mental atmosphere in Ger- 
 many they do have new mental atmospheres over 
 there every once in a while and in the case of Dr. 
 Foerster it doesn't go at that. In the first place, Dr. 
 Foerster isn't "ultramontane," and he isn't "Catholic," 
 and he is regarded quite generally in German educa- 
 tional circles as the deepest student and most success- 
 ful practitioner of character cultivation now living. 
 Consequently the German world, or rather the Ger- 
 manic world, that listened to "ethical culture" because 
 he preached it, is eager for his new message, and 
 rationalism is quite put out about it. To those here 
 who hesitate to adopt a just, common-sense plan of 
 restoring religion to its proper place in the training 
 of the young because of an unrecognized, but for that 
 reason all the more powerful, prejudice against the 
 Catholic Church, the defense of his recent views by 
 this non-Catholic German scholar should be inter- 
 esting. 
 
 "Especially emphatic has been the protest," he 
 says, "against the 'Catholic' tone of the book, and not 
 a few have stamped the author as a 'strictly orthodox 
 Catholic.' The whole proceeding is a proof of the 
 narrow-mindedness with which, in the present clash 
 of sects and parties, the majority of men open a book 
 that does justice to their opponent, or even affirms 
 that much may and should be learned from an oppo- 
 nent who enjoys the advantage of centuries of experi- 
 ence in the field that is in question. These years have 
 furnished me with many instances of the incredible 
 prejudices with which so many 'unprejudiced' schol-
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 ars regard the Catholic Church. It is for them an 
 unquestioned dogma that every position which she 
 defends is nonsense, disease, superstition. They can- 
 not grasp the idea of a really unprejudiced observer 
 arriving by impartial research and earnest meditation 
 at the conclusion that certain educational ideas of the 
 Roman Church are the unavoidable consequences of 
 any science of life and soul that penetrates below the 
 surface. Such a concession on the part of a non- 
 Catholic is simply unallowable. Truth ceases where 
 Catholicism begins. To find truth beyond that line is 
 to forfeit one's title in the aristocracy of science. That 
 is the 'prescribed route' of modern radicalism, and 
 woe to the man who leaves the beaten path! What 
 does it matter that scientific earnestness and honest 
 conviction force him to do so? He is stigmatized with 
 the fatal epithet of 'ultramontane' and thus made 
 harmless. I ask my honorable opponents to keep one 
 fact clearly before their eyes : the truth and indispen- 
 sability of an idea or method for culture and civiliza- 
 tion do not become null and non-existent just because 
 that idea is upheld by the Roman Catholic Church. Or 
 is it so absolutely impossible to conceive that this 
 church, during the centuries which she has been en- 
 gaged in caring for souls, has discovered one and the 
 other essential truth of pedagogy and civilization, 
 truths that must be admitted even from a non-Cath- 
 olic standpoint as soon as the searcher digs into the 
 psychological and ethical depths of the problem in 
 question?" 
 
 Two facts stand out, then. First, the human mind 
 of all ages agrees that the purpose of education must
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 be moral. Second, the highest authority on ethical 
 culture declares that ethical culture is insufficient. 
 
 "I know very well," he says, "how far 'purely 
 human' inspiration will lead the world of youth. . . . 
 I understand what a severe blow it must be to those 
 who would replace religion by ethics when my convic- 
 tions force me to oppose them with all my energy, 
 when I assert that just my thorough-going efforts in 
 purely ethical instruction have convinced me that 
 such instruction is insufficient yea, that the ethical 
 appeal, in order to become deeper, is forced by its 
 own inner psychology to become religious; that the 
 natural disposition to good must be impregnated, 
 clarified, fortified by superhuman ideals before it can 
 cope successfully with the inborn tendencies to evil." 
 
 On the i sth day of July, 1787, the Confederate 
 Congress, consisting of the delegates of the United 
 States of America appointed by each State under the 
 Articles of Confederation, passed what was known as 
 the Northwest Ordinance for the government of the 
 territory of the United States northwest of the River 
 Ohio. By the authority vested in them, and for the 
 purpose, as they expressed it, of "extending the fun- 
 damental principles of civil and religious liberty 
 which formed the basis whereon these republics, their 
 laws and constitutions, are erected," they did ordain, 
 as follows : 
 
 "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary 
 to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
 schools and the means of education shall be encour- 
 aged." (Art. 3.) 
 
 These delegates were those to whom we appro- 
 
 [200]]
 
 THE PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 priately refer as the Fathers of the Nation. They 
 were making the fundamental law for a new territory. 
 They were expressing fundamental ideas. It is plain 
 that they regarded "schools and the means of educa- 
 tion" as places and instruments for the instruction of 
 the young in "religion, morality and knowledge." 
 Moreover, they gave enduring recognition to their 
 belief that not only did education, properly consid- 
 ered, include instruction in religion, morality and 
 knowledge, but that these three purposes or ends of 
 instruction were "necessary to good government," 
 and, being necessary to good government, should be 
 recognized, provided for and encouraged as essentials 
 of government, if it were to be good government. 
 
 There could be no clearer proof than this that the 
 conception of education and morality as combined 
 and interdependent factors was fundamental in this 
 government and informed our constitution. With 
 the help of this illuminating statute we may with cer- 
 tainty define the precise meaning of those subsequent 
 constitutional provisions of the Federal Government 
 and the various States which have been wrenched 
 from their original purpose. They were a simple 
 prohibition framed in the interests of justice, and in- 
 tended to preclude the possibility of the use of public 
 funds for proselyting purposes by any one church. 
 Not religion, but discrimination against religion, was 
 what the Fathers of the Republic feared.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 THE destruction of religion in a nation must 
 carry with it what has been in all times and 
 among all nations a part of religion. Morality 
 has been always the content of religion; and this is 
 not surprising, because morality is truth and religion 
 is truth, and truth is true in all directions. So you 
 cannot say to a man : "It is true that virtue is a real 
 thing, but it is not true that God is a real thing." "If 
 there is no God/' the man will say back to you, "then 
 what is virtue?" And you will be put to it for an an- 
 swer. Never in the history of the world has there 
 been a definition of virtue comprehensible by any con- 
 siderable number of human beings which was not 
 predicated upon the existence of a God. Never in the 
 world has there been a law behind which was not a 
 force. Never in physics or logic has there been an 
 effect without a precedent cause. 
 
 It is a law of motion that the initial impetus will 
 always hold in a moving body ; matter in progression 
 may be deflected from its course by the intervention 
 of other forces, but the impulse imparted at the begin- 
 ning will incline eternally toward the original direc- 
 tion. The initial impulse of Socialism was material- 
 istic. It was projected in that line. Efforts have been 
 made by politicians here and elsewhere, but particu- 
 larly here, to change its direction, but these efforts 
 
 [202]
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 have always been futile because the impulse was 
 stronger than the politicians. Christian ministers 
 have tried to draw Socialism into coincidence with 
 Christianity, but the result has been invariably that 
 they have been drawn away from Christianity. Their 
 little disclaimers have been drowned in the great ma- 
 terialistic chorus of the movement. The economic 
 philosophy builded upon "the materialistic concep- 
 tion of history" cannot be wrenched from that foun- 
 dation. You may find here and there a Socialist who 
 protests that Socialism does not clash with the family 
 ideal, but you will have to seek him among thousands 
 of writers and speakers who frankly denounce mar- 
 riage as a bourgeois arrangement altogether incom- 
 patible with economic freedom and quite incapable of 
 surviving capitalism. The Socialist who tries to 
 reconcile his economic creed and his religion will be 
 found to have so modified his religious beliefs in the 
 process of assimilation as to make such a reconcilia- 
 tion possible only at the expense of his religion. It is 
 never his Socialism that is strained; it is always his 
 belief in a personal Creator and Ruler of the universe. 
 Among the most paraded of the so-called Christian 
 Socialists is the Rev. George D. Lunn, mayor of the 
 city of Schenectady. Dr. Lunn has vigorously as- 
 serted many times that they are unfair who assert 
 that Socialism undermines religion. He made such a 
 declaration in a debate at Hartford, Connecticut, 
 when I was his opponent; but with questions and quo- 
 tations I was able to force from him the admission 
 that if compelled to choose between religion and 
 Socialism, he would choose Socialism. What kind is 
 
 [203]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 the Christianity of a Christian minister who admits 
 his willingness to relinquish what must be infinite and 
 eternal truth in order that he may retain what he him- 
 self describes as a mere economic programme? If 
 Christian be an adjective of any meaning at all, then 
 Dr. Lunn is not a Christian Socialist, for no man, 
 knowing what Christianity is, and what Socialism is, 
 can be both. It does not answer the argument to say 
 that there are many kinds of Christians. There is no 
 kind of Christian who is an atheist. There can be no 
 kind of Christian who believes in the "materialistic 
 conception of history." Catholic and Protestant may 
 differ as to the meaning of some things Christ said, 
 but between them there can be no difference of opin- 
 ion as to what he meant when he said he was the Son 
 of God. Catholic and Protestant believe what Christ 
 said that is what makes both of them Christians 
 but no man who does not believe what Christ said has 
 any right to be called a Christian. Having ceased to 
 believe, he has ceased to be a Christian; he has be- 
 come a mere Socialist bell-wether. 
 
 Virtue can be understood only in terms of religion. 
 Granted that there is a God, and the conception of cer- 
 tain things in violation of his law being evil and cer- 
 tain other things in harmony with his law being 
 virtuous becomes a necessary consequence. But you 
 cannot destroy a belief in God and retain your concep- 
 tion of morality any more than you can hang your hat 
 on a hook if there be no hook. 
 
 It is often pointed out that some atheists live vir- 
 tuous lives. But that is sorry evidence. Men are not 
 all alike temperamentally. Some have an inclination 
 
 [204]
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 toward one vice, some toward another; some find 
 pleasure in the mere fact that there is less danger in 
 abstinence than in indulgence. But when temptation 
 comes to the atheist, he has no rational ground for 
 resistance. If it be in the form of a fair face, how 
 easily can he convince himself that matrimony, or 
 whatever obstacle may intervene, is but a mere conven- 
 tional superstition a convention to bend before which 
 is unworthy a bold modern spirit living in an age that 
 has outgrown its intellectual swaddling-clothes ! 
 
 The believer in God may sin and human nature, 
 being weak, does sin but he knows he sins, and 
 knows that his religion has no sympathy for such 
 euphemisms as "soul-mates" and "affinities." The 
 law of God is the law of God to obey it may be hard, 
 but to obey it is not impossible. 
 
 The destruction of religion in a nation must carry 
 with it, then, all the fruits of religion. You can't 
 grow apples without a tree. But a vast attempt to 
 destroy religion may have a secondary consequence: 
 it may produce reaction. I think this is just what we 
 are beholding in the French nation. It was in France 
 that infidelity became a philosophy first. It was Vol- 
 tairism and Encyclopedism that found political ex- 
 pression in the French Revolution. It went the mad 
 length of its tether, through blood and bombast, to 
 the length of exalting a poor painted girl of the streets 
 and worshiping her. Poor tinselled hysteric they 
 called her the Goddess of Reason, but the world will 
 laugh at her for generations as the Goddess of Ra- 
 tionalism ! 
 
 Then came the reaction Robespierre's Supreme 
 
 205]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Being festival, then constitutionalism, then absolu- 
 tism extreme to extreme ! So run things in France. 
 
 Socialism has had a try in Paris. Men still living 
 remember the Commune. True, it wasn't a fair trial ; 
 even if it had been a decent system, it couldn't have 
 done much under the circumstances. So the Com- 
 mune didn't do much or go far the murder of some 
 nuns and priests was its most notable accomplishment 
 before MacMahon's guns blasted it out. 
 
 But of later years Socialism has had a fairer chance. 
 It did get a foothold among the people, particularly 
 in the cities. It elected deputies from the depart- 
 ments numerously, so that it gained control of the 
 governing chamber. It made its spokesmen premiers ; 
 it seized the French schools; it confiscated the 
 churches ; it had its mad way, and passed resolutions 
 denying the existence of God. This is what Socialism 
 meant in France ; this is what it did. There is an im- 
 pression in America that the separation of church and 
 state in France meant what the same term means to 
 us. Protestant America accepted what was done as 
 the expropriation of the Roman Catholic Church 
 from public benefices. Protestant writers who were 
 on the scene have striven in vain to show how false is 
 this idea. Protestant ministers in France know bet- 
 ter what Socialism has done than do those of America, 
 and from Protestant no less than Catholic sources in 
 France has come the indignant protest against what 
 there appears in its true light that of an attack, not 
 on Catholicity alone, but upon belief in God. 
 
 Mr. Vance Thompson, Protestant journalist, long 
 resident in Paris, long-time lover and student and in-
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 terpreter of France, wrote these words for Every- 
 body's Magazine in 1907: 
 
 "... By a vote of nearly three to one the repre- 
 sentatives of the French nation turned out the light in 
 heaven. It was a prodigious event. Two thousand 
 years a star stood over Bethlehem. 'We have put out 
 that star forever !' cried the orator. He was Viviani, 
 a desperate lawyer, politician, journalist, a Socialist 
 who had fought his way to power with the ruthless 
 courage of a medieval bravo. Having been personally 
 informed of the non-existence of God, he announced 
 the fact simply and frankly : 'Aye, there was a decep- 
 tive light in heaven, but we have put it out forever !' 
 By 'we* he meant the brawling cohort grouped at the 
 left of the chamber the cohort of Socialistic Greeds. 
 ... By 'we' Viviani meant all the Voices and Appe- 
 tites round the swill-trough of the state. . . . When 
 the French chamber passes a new law it orders it 
 printed on huge posters and posted up all over France 
 at every street corner, in every hamlet, on wayside 
 barns and fences. I have forgotten which Juarez 
 rose and demanded that Viviani's speech should be 
 placarded over France ; but by a vote of nearly three 
 to one the order was made. And for weeks after 
 even to this day the walls and boardings proclaimed 
 the interesting fact that the French Assembly had de- 
 creed the non-existence of God and turned out the 
 light that shone once upon a time overhead. . . . 
 The only worship they have is that of the trough ; im- 
 mediately after banishing God from heaven (by a 
 vote of nearly three to one) they decided (by a nearly 
 unanimous vote) to double their own salaries. Thus, 
 
 [207]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 having disposed of the necessary preliminaries, the 
 Chamber of Deputies went on about the business of 
 passing laws for the confiscation of what property it 
 had not yet taken from the church." 
 
 This is the evidence of one Protestant authority. It 
 was written early in 1907; it was published in the 
 March number of Everybody's of that year. Two 
 years later a series of articles on France and the 
 "Separation Law" appeared in the Boston Traveller. 
 They were written by Mr. Alvan F. Sanborn, who is 
 described by the Traveller as "a Protestant in religion, 
 a native of Massachusetts, who has devoted all his life 
 to the study of social problems, and whose book, 
 Paris and the Social Revolution, is accepted as being 
 the last word on the description of the social forces at 
 work in the French capital." 
 
 Because Mr. Sanborn's articles would occupy more 
 space than this little work can afford, I shall merely 
 take from them paragraphs here and there. The fol- 
 lowing is the first that arrests my attention : 
 
 "A former principal of an American normal school, 
 who had made a life study of the educational methods 
 of his own and foreign countries, told me in 1897 or 
 1898 that a certain Dominican school, not a hundred 
 leagues from Paris, was the best boys' school he had 
 ever seen. So convinced was he of its superiority that, 
 stern Protestant though he was, he confided his 
 grandson to it for a couple of years. He never saw 
 cause to regret his action. The worthy man, who is 
 dead now, would be uneasy in his grave if he knew 
 that this very school had been closed by an order of 
 the state." 
 
 [208]
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 Here is the second paragraph of my selection : 
 
 "Illiteracy is increasing in France at a surprising 
 
 rate in consequence of the closing of the schools of the 
 
 religious orders, which the state is unable to replace, 
 
 and will be unable to replace for a long while to 
 
 come." 
 
 Mr. Sanborn bases this assertion upon a statistical 
 table issued by the Minister of War. In 1905 there 
 were 321,000 conscripts. In 1907 there were 314,000 
 conscripts. The decrease in the number of conscripts 
 is two per cent. In 1905 the number of absolute il- 
 literates recruited was 10,644. I* 1 I 97 it was 11,062. 
 The increase is nearly four per cent. Mr. Sanborn 
 points out that prior to 1906 the rate of illiteracy had 
 been diminishing; that after 1906 it increased; and 
 that it was in 1906 that the French army began to 
 recruit from the boys who were at school when the 
 war on religious education broke out. 
 
 I shall pass over what Mr. Sanborn has to say rela- 
 tive to the "laicization" of the hospital and charitable 
 institutions, and quote him with reference to the sup- 
 pression of the industrial schools : 
 
 "The World's Fair of 1900," he says, "furnished 
 even more convincing proof of the importance of the 
 part played by the church in providing manual and 
 industrial training. The jury which passed judgment 
 on the institutions for the development of the work- 
 ing-people [a jury of which, by the v/ay, Jane Addams 
 of Hull House was the American member] awarded 
 the greater part of the prizes to Catholic institutions. 
 The member of the jury to whom fell the labor of 
 preparing its report said, among other things: 'The 
 
 [209]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 jury made just as pressing appeals to lay as to the 
 religious societies. It did its utmost to enlist the 
 cooperation of both the unsectarian and the sectarian 
 enterprises, and its surprise was great to discover the 
 zeal of the Catholics and the indifference of the laity. 
 We have no need to seek the cause of the abstention 
 of some and the enthusiasm of others. Our task con- 
 sists solely of judging freely the exhibits which have 
 been presented for our examination, and it is my 
 duty, after ridding myself of every political and re- 
 ligious preoccupation and influence, to give the im- 
 pression made upon me by the exhibits sent to the 
 Palace of Social Economy and to the Catholic Pavil- 
 ion at Vincennes. In the conflict with the sufferings 
 of the people, it is the Catholics who have been the 
 leaders of the vanguard. The ameliorations we owe 
 them have been inspired by sentiments of humanity to 
 which only a narrow sectarianism can refuse to do 
 justice. We may hold opinions quite different from 
 those of the promoters of all the works which are the 
 subject of this report regarding the interpretation of 
 the religion of charity and love whose treasure of 
 compassion Christ spread over the world, but there is 
 not a person of good faith who does not recognize the 
 beneficent virtue of their institutions and the extent 
 of their influence. 
 
 "Barely a year," Mr. Sanborn continues, "after this 
 brilliant demonstration at the Paris Exposition of the 
 tremendous value of the church schools in the training 
 of industrial workers, came the attempt to suppress 
 them by the law against the congregations. The 
 broad-minded and ordinarily gentle president of the
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 jury referred to above, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, was 
 roused to indignation and exclaimed : 'What societies 
 exhibited most in this class; what enterprises were the 
 most rewarded and God knows that the jury named 
 by M. Millerand was in no wise tainted with clerical- 
 ism? The exhibits which were the most numerous, 
 the exhibits which obtained the first prizes or the gold 
 medals, were mainly religious and especially Catholic 
 exhibits. The greatest number of prizes given to in- 
 stitutions for the improvement of the working-people 
 were given, willy-nilly, by a lay jury to Christian un- 
 dertakings, to the very societies, to the very congrega- 
 tions accused of fomenting ignorance in the people; 
 and it is to these associations, inspired by evangelical 
 charity, that the spirit of intolerance and sectarianism 
 pretends to refuse the liberty and even the right to 
 exist, as if they were immoral and anti-social insti- 
 tutions!'" 
 
 Mr. Sanborn's fifth article opens with this para- 
 graph : 
 
 "The withdrawal of religious instruction from the 
 public schools, and the closing of the schools of the 
 religious orders, have been followed by an appalling 
 increase in crime, particularly juvenile crime. The at- 
 tempt to substitute the teaching of morals for the 
 teaching of religion is a failure." 
 
 Mr. Sanborn says the chairman of the committee on 
 judiciary reform "recently reported" this was in 
 1909 "an increase of eighty per cent, since 1901 in 
 the total number of crimes in the country." He 
 quotes this from Dr. Gustave Lebon, scientist and 
 sociologist: "Criminality has augmented in propor-
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 tions that are veritably terrifying : thirty per cent, for 
 the murders, while the sum for the criminality has 
 doubled in five years." Remember that this is in 1909 
 the school-boy of 1901, when the law against the 
 church schools was promulgated, is now from sixteen 
 to twenty-three years of age. "The average age of 
 criminals," says Mr. Sanborn, "is getting to be 
 younger and younger. More than sixty per cent, of 
 the inmates of the 'maisons centrales' are under 
 twenty-nine years of age. Many of the bands of 
 'Apaches' consist of boys of from fourteen to seven- 
 teen, and their chiefs are often not more than nineteen 
 or twenty." 
 
 Readers of newspapers will consider that matters in 
 France have not improved much since Mr. Sanborn 
 wrote the paragraphs just quoted. Twice or three 
 times a week the newspapers contain despatches rela- 
 tive to the reign of terror from "Apaches" in the 
 French capital. The following table is from an article 
 on the automobile bandits of Paris, published in the 
 New York Sun of April 14, 1912 : 
 
 CRIMES COMMITTED BY PARIS MOTOR- 
 CAR BANDITS. 
 
 Nov. 27, 1911. Chatelet-en-Brie. 
 
 Chauffeur murdered and automobile stolen. 
 Dec. 14, 1911. Boulogne-sur-Seine. 
 
 Automobile of M. Norman stolen. 
 Dec. 21, 1911. Paris. 
 
 Attempt to murder Caby, bank messenger, in the Rue 
 
 Ordener.
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 Jan. 31, 1912. Paris. 
 
 Bank messenger named Gouy-Paillet robbed of $30,000. 
 Jan. 31, 1912. Les Aubrais, near Orleans. 
 
 Freight station robbed ; two men wounded. 
 Jan. 31,1912. Angerville. 
 
 Revolver battle with burglars in which a policeman was 
 
 killed and his murderer committed suicide. 
 
 Feb. 27, 1912. St. Mande. 
 
 M. Buisson's automobile stolen. 
 Feb. 27, 1912. Paris. 
 
 Policeman Gamier shot in the Rue du Havre in trying to 
 stop auto containing bandits. 
 
 Feb. 29, 1912. Pontoise. 
 
 Attempt to rob the office of a notary named Tuitant. 
 Mar. 20, 1912. Chaton. 
 
 Attempt to rob automobile garage. 
 Mar. 25, 1912. Montgeron. 
 
 Chauffeur named Nathille murdered on the road by men 
 
 who stole the automobile. 
 
 Mar. 25, 1912. Chantilly. 
 
 Societe Generate' s bank robbed; two clerks killed; 
 $10,000 stolen. 
 
 As we consider the number and character of these 
 crimes of violence, we cannot exclude from our minds 
 a not dissimilar situation in New York. Here, too, 
 we have had secularization of the schools. Here, too, 
 we have developed a class of young criminals who 
 possess nerve and cunning and utter contempt for 
 human life and all law, human and divine. Our police 
 arrest youths in the commission of burglary and find 
 them students in a Brooklyn college of medicine. 
 Bank messengers and jewellers are robbed in the very 
 heart of the Borough of Manhattan by automobile
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 bandits. The streets of New York are hardly more 
 safe in broad daylight than were the heaths of Eng- 
 land when vizored gentlemen rode them up and down 
 after nightfall, a century and a half ago. Is there not 
 food for reflection in the analogy? Will those who 
 stand for the secularized school in the name of prog- 
 ress stop to think and ask themselves if this be prog- 
 ress? 
 
 To return to France, where Socialism blew out the 
 lights of heaven, and Mr. Sanborn, who writes from 
 the darkened nation. "It must not be supposed," he 
 says, "that only the Catholics were troubled by this on- 
 slaught. The French Protestants saw so clearly that 
 the suppression of the religious orders was directed 
 less against the Catholic religion than against the 
 Christian idea itself, that several of their writers and 
 scholars, among them Auguste Sabatier, dean of the 
 Faculty of Protestant Theology at Paris, issued a 
 protest against the passage of the law. The Protes- 
 tant Wilfred Monod published a sort of catalogue of 
 the acts of intolerance, bigotry, sacrilege, vulgarity, 
 and violence of which the free-thinkers had been 
 guilty, which was a more terrible indictment than any 
 Catholic, probably, has drawn up against them. Even 
 a Protestant pastor away off in the heart of the 
 Cevennes was impelled to cry out : 'I am a Protestant, 
 but I am a Christian before I am a Protestant!' 
 Pastor Charles Wagner, well known in America as 
 the author of The Simple Life, wrote to a prominent 
 defender of the law: 'According to you, free thought 
 is merely anti-clerical and is not anti-religious. This 
 assertion is too violently contradicted by the facts to
 
 WHERE THEY BLEW THE LIGHT OUT 
 
 be maintainable except as a declaration of an ideal. 
 The anti-religious spirit is so emphasized in the va- 
 rious public demonstrations of free thought at which 
 we assist that morality itself is attacked, in the name 
 of intellectual independence, as a symptom of clerical- 
 ism. The formula, "Neither God nor master," which 
 repudiates, as masters, conscience and the moral law 
 itself, and the coarse rhymes that are shrieked with 
 ostentation, permit us no illusion regarding the point 
 at issue/ ' 
 
 They have had secularization of the schools in 
 France. We are having it here. They have had a 
 wave of Socialism in France. We are having it here. 
 Similar causes will have, everywhere and forever, 
 similar effects. 
 
 But there is a new note in France; there is a sign of 
 the inevitable reaction. Within half a year there has 
 been a revival of the old French spirit of patriotism. 
 The Red Socialists, seemingly in full career, have met 
 a wave of national sentiment that grows with every 
 hour, and is filling the Socialist politicians with con- 
 fusion and dismay. 
 
 One of the last of Mr. Sanborn's articles was 
 headed, "The French Still a Religious People." It 
 prophesied a reaction. There are signs that it is at 
 hand. The high tide of Socialism in France has been 
 reached. The ebb has set in. 
 
 [215]
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 THE mind that is not strong shuns mental 
 labor. Reasoning is difficult: it is as weari- 
 some for the intellectually weak to follow 
 truth from premise to premise as it is for the physi- 
 cally weak to attain a distant goal step by step. The 
 latter want to jump at the goal, the former at the con- 
 clusion. This is the cause of Socialism's strength and 
 its weakness politically. The pull of truth, that is like 
 the pull of gravitation, is upon it; as it swells in vol- 
 ume and gathers political strength, it verges more 
 and more from the wild unreason of its founders and 
 toward the sobriety and sense of the facts of life. 
 There is hope in this, but not for Socialism. When, as 
 a political movement in this or any other country, it 
 has become a formidable contestant for the control of 
 the government, it will have abandoned its interna- 
 tional character, its materialistic philosophy, its eco- 
 nomic vagaries. The substance of much of these it has 
 already relinquished, although it clings tenaciously 
 to the terms in which they were once expressed. 
 It is interesting to follow the unfolding process, to 
 watch each successive explication as it sheds like de- 
 caying husks the outer coverings that were for a time 
 regarded as the movement itself, revealing with each 
 such divestment a new vesture resembling more 
 nearly than its predecessor the silk hat and frock-coat
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 of ordinary humdrum political partisanship. The 
 early Utopians had their little day and were driven 
 out as mad dreamers by the "scientists" of the move- 
 ment. History laughs at the expulsion because mad 
 dreamers have successfully maintained cooperative 
 commonwealths, but "scientists" never have been 
 able to do so. The "scientists" builded their philos- 
 ophy upon what they assumed to be Darwin's destruc- 
 tion of belief in revealed religion. Therefore the 
 "materialistic conception of history"; therefore the 
 hatred of religion as a device of the capitalist to op- 
 press the proletarian; therefore the solidarity and 
 class consciousness of the wage-earners ; therefore the 
 hatred of patriotism and its symbols and the devotion 
 to internationalism and its symbols; therefore the re- 
 duction of all values to terms of labor power, and the 
 reduction of all labor to terms of physical pressure. 
 God was gone, everything was due to matter ; there- 
 fore everything must be materially possessed and ma- 
 terially enjoyed. Over this phantasmagoria of false 
 conclusions still gleamed the light of the Utopian 
 dream. It attracted the oppressed and the generous- 
 hearted but weak-minded ; led them like a will-o'-the- 
 wisp into the wilderness. From it issued the smell of 
 death for to the materialist life is but a process of 
 death, and death another form of life and this at- 
 tracted the atheists. The materialist philosophy of it 
 removed the moral check to material passions and 
 suggested irresponsibility for their indulgence, and 
 there flocked to it the licentious, hopeful of a society 
 in which they could "live their life" and be unashamed 
 of what kind of a life it was. God, patriotism, mat- 
 
 [217;]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 rimony none of these had a place in "scientific" so- 
 cialism. 
 
 But the Socialistic party, when it began to deal 
 practically with facts, became parties, and these par- 
 ties are each day and hour becoming less Socialistic. 
 Your modern Socialist teacher has abandoned "the 
 materialistic conception of history" by gradations, the 
 first of which was "the economic interpretation of 
 history." Spargo's construction of Marx and Engels 
 would hardly be recognized by these "scientists," I 
 am afraid. The politicians of the movement say it 
 isn't necessary to be an atheist any longer. As they 
 interpret Marx's teachings in a fashion that would 
 have shocked Marx, so they now assume "evolution" 
 to mean something of which Darwin never dreamed. 
 They are getting chary of the religious issue ; they are 
 less stressful with regard to the Spartan system of 
 dealing with children. We are still to have matri- 
 mony, although there is still the suggestion that it is 
 going to be an easy kind of matrimony. Class con- 
 sciousness, by modern gloss, means that we are all 
 conscious that we belong to the same class. Inter- 
 nationalism or political solidarity is gone; the decla- 
 ration that the American Socialist party is of a piece 
 with the world movement no longer appears in the 
 American Socialist platform. At the last national 
 convention the international principle went to smash 
 on the question of Chinese immigration. The Mon- 
 golian proletariat is shut out of the world move- 
 ment. 
 
 These modifications of Socialism, which the very 
 laws of political development constrained upon it, ren- 
 
 [218]
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 der it less dangerous as a political movement. Every 
 movement of a political nature must approximate the 
 real laws of development as it approaches a real con- 
 tact with such laws. A man may make the maddest 
 speeches with respect to the methods of operating a 
 steam-engine, and may have the most delightful theo- 
 ries as to the mechanical marvels possible with respect 
 to such operation, but when he gets down to running 
 a real steam-engine he must run it the way it was 
 made to run, and the value of his plans will depend 
 altogether upon their coincidence with the mechan- 
 ical facts. Consequently, the economic dangers of 
 Socialism are not as real as might be supposed. They 
 may do some temporary damage, but they can have 
 no permanent place in human history and in social 
 organization. Because, however, these political dan- 
 gers are not real, the moral dangers must not be con- 
 sidered as negligible. Everything that makes for a 
 diffusion of the sense of obligation, that divests the 
 individual of his accountability and seeks to spread 
 that accountability over the whole of society, loosens 
 the moral system and opens the way to a moral deca- 
 dence which no nation has ever been able to survive. 
 Some political leaders of Socialism to-day may teach 
 a certain nebulous doctrine which they conceive to 
 be Christianity, but those who join the movement 
 are given for study the books and pamphlets of 
 extreme radicals whose teachings, doctrinal and 
 moral, are opposed to every tenet that even the 
 broadest interpretation will allow to be Christian. 
 The Christian who adopts Socialism as a political or 
 economic plan of amelioration finds himself in close
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 association with pseudo-philosophers who are even 
 more concerned in overturning the laws of Heaven 
 than in subverting the laws of men. It is all very well 
 for the Rev. Dr. Lunn to say that the literature of 
 atheism can do no harm. The fact is that it can and 
 does do harm. The fact is that it can and does per- 
 vert the minds of men who are easily turned from 
 faith in religious tenets taught them in childhood to a 
 wild license and irresponsibility that weaken them 
 morally as individuals, and politically as citizens of a 
 republic. 
 
 Socialism represents in society at large a certain 
 confluence of aberrant thought. If we can conceive 
 of living thought in the form of an effluent from the 
 brains of millions of individual thinkers, we can visu- 
 alize the various currents in the living intellectual sea. 
 Some of those currents represent the sane thought of 
 mankind. Others represent the thought that swerves 
 from the standard of sanity and is contributed by 
 minds differing more or less from the normal mind of 
 man. There have been millions of these currents and 
 eddies in the intellectual history of the human race. 
 They have existed in every age. They have been dis- 
 tinguished generally by the significant terminative 
 "ism." Common, healthy minds have always looked 
 with suspicion upon an "ism." Before Marx and 
 Engels the "isms" were very numerous. Social para- 
 noia divided itself into countless little intellectual 
 kinks. Since Marx and Engels these little individual 
 "isms," in accordance with the law of a psychological 
 principle of gravity, have been attracted toward the 
 greatest and latest of all the "isms" of history. For 
 
 [220]
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 the first time in all the world of time, insanity has 
 been systematized, organized, and utilized as a po- 
 litical dynamic. 
 
 It is a characteristic of paranoia that the mind so 
 afflicted is capable of ratiocination. It isn't in deduc- 
 tion that the paranoiac goes astray. It is always his 
 premises that are inaccurately framed. Socialist 
 literature presents a startling analogy here. It has 
 dazzled a great many men with its logic. Its prem- 
 ises, however, are always found to be illusory. It is 
 this quality that has given the new "ism" its astonish- 
 ing vogue in the colleges and universities. The pro- 
 portion of university thought that differs from the 
 normal takes naturally and eagerly to Socialism. 
 Man's limited knowledge compels him to start all his 
 reasoning processes with an assumption of some kind. 
 He must assume some undemonstrated, and quite 
 possibly undemonstrable, hypothesis to be true. Na- 
 ture seems to provide those who are sane with an 
 instinct which guards them against serious error. It 
 is the lack of this instinct that makes the "Intellec- 
 tual" paranoiac. Consequently, the recently fashion- 
 able theories which were the exigents of the science 
 of half a century ago have been unquestioningly ac- 
 cepted as a philosophical basis by the so-called "Intel- 
 lectuals" of our universities. These theories, which 
 took the form of monism, or a belief in the universal- 
 ity of matter in this universe of ours, very naturally 
 led to the political and economic philosophical for- 
 mula which has become more and more prominent 
 within the last years as Socialism. No student of the 
 subject can read without complete bewilderment the
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 various and contradictory definitions of Socialism 
 which are given to the public by the Intellectuals of 
 the movement. According to Bax, it means the cast- 
 ing of religion into the limbo of outused superstitions. 
 According to Washington Gladden, it means the 
 strengthening of the religious spirit and the putting 
 into practice of ideals that have hitherto existed no- 
 where but in religion. According to Spargo in one 
 paragraph, it is not hostile but friendly to religion. 
 According to Spargo in another paragraph, its friend- 
 liness will consist in taking children from their moth- 
 ers and having them educated by the state, without 
 the slightest suggestion of religion, until they reach 
 an age when their minds are capable of understanding 
 what theology is and what effect upon it the conclu- 
 sions drawn from physical phenomena must neces- 
 sarily have. According to Hillquit and Benson, it 
 conserves the family, which capitalism has destroyed. 
 According to Bebel, the family is a development of 
 the capitalist system, and can no more survive capital 
 than can poverty. 
 
 No two exponents of Socialism to-day agree as to 
 what it means in their written works. Each of them 
 has his own view, colored by his temperamental pecu- 
 liarities, his desires, his affections, and his hatreds. 
 Each of them takes the original formulation of Marx 
 and Engels and bends it to suit his own inclination 
 and purpose. It is only when each of them is studied, 
 when each of them is analyzed, when each of them is 
 probed to the bottom of his thought, that there is 
 found in both of them the common attribute of all 
 "Intellectual" Socialists, which is a materialistic con- 
 
 C222]
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 ception of history and belief in the absolute deter- 
 minative power of the economics of human life. 
 
 What is the basic idea of Socialistic philosophy? It 
 is that society is an organism. The idea is that it is an 
 organism, just as man is an organism. Man is a com- 
 posite of smaller organisms. He is a collection of 
 cells. Society is a composite of human organisms. It 
 is a collection of men and women. That is the idea. 
 The individual isn't responsible : it is the social organ- 
 ism that errs. If an individual commits a crime, it is 
 his social environment that is at fault. Having set up 
 this hypothesis, Socialist philosophy goes on to the 
 question of reforming the social organism. It has 
 lost interest in the individual. 
 
 Now let us examine this in the light of common ex- 
 perience and common sense. Let us get out of the 
 mist of "economic determinism" and "materialistic in- 
 terpretations," and other obscurities and ambiguities, 
 and into the clear light of homely human every-day 
 experience. Let us consider one huge difference be- 
 tween the social organism and the human organism 
 which Socialism seems to have overlooked. In the 
 human organism the sum thinks of its factors : in the 
 social organism the factors think of the sum. Man 
 thinks of himself as a psychological entity. Your 
 brain-cells and heart-cells and stomach-cells do not 
 think of you: you think of them. You realize that 
 they are all parts of you. Your individual, complete 
 consciousness and will combine them all. There is no 
 class consciousness in your make-up, unless rheuma- 
 tism be class consciousness in your legs. In you there 
 is unity. But society! What is social consciousness? 
 
 [223 ^
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Where is it? How does it function? Try to think 
 this out for yourself. Is there any such thing? You 
 may answer that society acts in the laws. It doesn't, 
 and you know it doesn't. It is always some individual 
 mind acting, and other minds agreeing. Who makes 
 the laws? The legislature. A man draws a bill and 
 his associates agree to it. Then it becomes a law. 
 One individual, or more than one, want this or these 
 changes made, and each change represents an indi- 
 vidual will. Who interprets the law? An individual 
 judge. Who passes upon the evidence? Twelve in- 
 dividual jurors, each with his individual brain and 
 will. The individual human organism that thinks is 
 always the thing that is conscious. It thinks about 
 what it contains on one side, and what contains it on 
 the other. A man's cells do not think about him : he 
 thinks about them. Society doesn't think about men : 
 men think about society. The individual is a concrete 
 thing ; society, an abstraction. An individual can do 
 wrong, or do right; what society does is only what 
 many individuals do. Therefore there is no respon- 
 sibility in society, but there is responsibility in each 
 human soul. 
 
 It would be impossible, within the brief confines of 
 this chapter, to deal with each of the absurdities of 
 Socialism. A few of them, however, may be briefly 
 treated. 
 
 Socialism distinguishes between use values and ex- 
 change values. The fact that a thing created ministers 
 to the satisfaction or necessity of its possessor gives it 
 a use value. Socialism says air has a use value but no 
 exchange value : a use value because all men need it to 
 
 C224U
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 live, but no exchange value because there is so much 
 of it that each man can get it for nothing. This is a 
 favorite Socialist illustration. Air, they say, is not a 
 commodity. A commodity must have an exchange 
 value. It is exchange value that makes profit possible. 
 And it is profit that is evil. We might pause here to 
 ask if the use value is not simply a product of the So- 
 cialist term-factory. Why call it a value at all? It is 
 not measurable, and a value, in the sense in which 
 Socialists use the term value, must be measurable. 
 When they use the term exchange value they mean a 
 value measurable in the medium of exchange. A sheik 
 of the desert has fifty camels. Two or three of them 
 can have a use value. The rest are the measure of his 
 wealth. A Hebrew patriarch has flocks of sheep. A 
 few of them have a use value. The rest are the meas- 
 ure of his wealth. The sheik, by the surplus above the 
 camels he can ride, and the patriarch, by the surplus 
 above the sheep he can eat or shear, has the power to 
 purchase other things he may desire. So was Ibrahim 
 of the sandy plains a capitalist; so was David, the son 
 of Jesse, a capitalist; so is every human being to-day 
 who possesses a thing which others desire, and which 
 he does not require to live, a capitalist. 
 
 Value is what men will pay for a thing they need or 
 desire. Economically it is governed by the utility of 
 the commodity in relation to its difficulty of attain- 
 ment. Diamonds, which cannot be eaten,, and the 
 sight of which awakens a pleasurable sensation in not 
 all human beings, have a value greater than food, 
 without which no man can live. This is because food 
 is easier to procure. A singer can command a salary 
 
 225;]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 of many thousands of dollars an hour, while a maker 
 of clothes must labor for a few cents an hour. This is 
 because the song of the singer is more intensely ap- 
 preciated and less readily procurable. Is the inequal- 
 ity the injustice Socialists call it that pays a 
 pittance for the hard toil of the mill-worker and a for- 
 tune for the few hours of the singer a thing of mere 
 laws? No. Then how are you to cure it by laws? 
 Is there compulsion now upon society to pay a large 
 wage to one kind of worker and a small wage to an- 
 other? No. Then how are you going to relieve a 
 compulsion that does not exist? The impulse is in 
 human nature. It is in the souls of individuals. It is 
 of the very essence of the human make-up. 
 
 This question of values is one of the pet themes of 
 the Socialist economist. Huge volumes have been 
 devoted to proving that labor is entitled to all the 
 value that labor creates. That is a good mouth- 
 filling phrase which rolls fluently from the tongue 
 of the soap-box orator and catches the interest 
 and the sympathy of the man who toils. But to 
 the toiler it has a meaning far different from that 
 laboriously explained in Socialist writings. Although 
 the soap-box Socialist does not mention it, the "Intel- 
 lectual" insists that Marx and his associates did not 
 mean that every shoemaker was entitled to the value 
 of all the shoes he could make. "Social labor" is what 
 Marx meant. "Social labor" is what becomes value 
 when embodied in a useful or desirable article. And 
 the "social labor" that enters into the shirt you 
 bought is not the labor of the mill-hands who worked 
 the machinery by which it was woven, nor the labor 
 
 O6]
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 of the sweatshop worker who sewed it, nor that of the 
 cutter who cut it, nor that of the buttonmaker; but is 
 vastly more than all these. It reaches out to embrace 
 the cotton-grower and his laborers, and the builder 
 who builded the mill, and the brick-maker who made 
 the brick, and the machinist who assembled the looms 
 and the spinning machinery, and the mechanics who 
 made the parts, and the railroad hands that aided in 
 transportation, and so on infinitely in every direction, 
 to the mother who bore all these and their mothers 
 before them. "Social labor" is a symbol for an in- 
 finity. It is immeasurable. But this symbol equals 
 value, they insist. Well, let it be so. How, then, by 
 the statement, or even the proof, of this does Social- 
 ism help the toiler? The question is not one of con- 
 glomeration but of distribution. It is not to prove 
 that an infinite number of immeasurable contributial 
 values constitute a measured value that is impor- 
 tant: it is the fair distribution of a measured value 
 among the men who contributed their labor to the 
 creation of the product. That is what will help the 
 world. That is what humanity needs. What good 
 does it do to prove that labor multiplied by x made a 
 watch? The value of the watch is what men will pay 
 for it. It may be twenty dollars or one hundred dol- 
 lars. The problem is the distribution of that sum 
 justly, x equals y will not do. It is not x with whom 
 you are dealing ; it is a certain John Jones who has a 
 mouth of his own to fill, and a wife and children, all of 
 whom have likewise mouths to fill. And John Jones 
 cannot be fed on the symbols of unknown quantities. 
 He cannot live on algebraic terms any more than you 
 
 [227]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 can put a five-dollar bill in the pocket of an algebraic 
 term. John Jones must get a definite measurable frac- 
 tion of the measured value of that watch. He can eat 
 a fifth or a tenth of a loaf of bread, but he cannot eat 
 a square root. He can live in half or one-tenth of a 
 
 house, but not in *. Toilers, this huge humbug has 
 
 y 
 
 nothing for you. You ask for bread, and it gives you 
 a quadratic equation. 
 
 The pendulum of nonsense having swung to one 
 extreme, it now goes to the other. Mr. Allan Benson 
 writes a series of articles on Socialism for Pearson's 
 Magazine. Perhaps Mr. Hillquit and Mr. Spargo 
 would not admit that they represent Socialist teach- 
 ing at all. But they do catch votes. For Mr. Benson 
 does not deal in #'s and y's. He finds it just as easy to 
 substitute the word "dollars" for the algebraic sym- 
 bols. There is an advantage in this, for the man in 
 the street knows what a dollar is. And there is no 
 disadvantage, for as long as Mr. Benson is dealing 
 with the word "dollars," and not with real dollars, it is 
 just as easy to perform interesting feats of legerde- 
 main. So Mr. Benson, instead of talking of "social 
 labor," announces cheerfully that under the coopera- 
 tive commonwealth every worker is to get the equiv- 
 alent of $5000 a year. That has a pleasant sound. 
 Every man who earns less than $5000 a year will surely 
 vote for that. There are ninety million people in the 
 United States. I have not the census reports at hand, 
 but shall make a liberal allowance for children (who 
 are to be cared for by the state, and are probably to 
 get less than $5000 a year) and reduce the number of
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 $5oooa-year individuals to 45,000,000. At $5000 a 
 year the American payroll would total $225,000,000,- 
 ooo. Only two hundred and twenty-five billions of 
 dollars. Such is the "stuff that dreams are made of." 
 Such is the stuff, also, that Socialist votes are made of. 
 Common ownership of productive machinery seems 
 to be a solid in the fluidity of Socialism. It looks like 
 something you can get hold of. Let us see. Handle 
 it gently, for it isn't very far from the fluid state. 
 What does it mean? What is "productive machin- 
 ery" ? We have the word of some modern American 
 Socialists Mr. Spargo, Mr. Hillquit, and Dr. Lunn 
 among them that it is not a spade, or a saw, or a 
 hammer, or a seamstress's domestic sewing-machine. 
 It is machinery such as is used in manufacture by the 
 manufacturing corporations. We are not going to 
 take his saw from the carpenter, nor his hammer from 
 the blacksmith. We are going into the Steel-trust 
 mill to take its huge equipment, and with that equip- 
 ment we are going to produce railroad tracks, and the 
 framework of buildings, and the countless other 
 things which the Steel Trust now produces. There is 
 to be no change in production ; there will be the pud- 
 dling and the rolling and the moulding, and all the 
 processes to which steel is subjected. But in the dis- 
 tribution it will be different. We are producing for 
 use now, not for profit. We shall so set our prices 
 that each man employed in our huge plant will get a 
 salary of $5000 a year. Puddler, roller, water-boy, 
 engine-tender, oiler, stoker, foreman, superintendent, 
 salesman, office messenger, bookkeeper all of these 
 are to get out of the value they create the equivalent 
 
 229]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 of $5000 per annum. There are two hundred thou- 
 sand of them. It means $1,000,000,000 a year for our 
 product. It is like giving the stuff away. But wait. 
 We forgot something. We have taken over the rail- 
 road, and there are some thousands employed there 
 who must get the $5000 a year which Mr. Benson has 
 fixed as the living wage. Of course we shall have to 
 pay for that. Then there are the plant betterments 
 with our five-thousand-dollar-a-year craftsmen and 
 unskilled laborers, and we have to get their money out 
 of our income on the products ; and the five-thousand- 
 a-year miner, and the five-thousand-a-year helpers 
 all these must be figured in. It will add something to 
 the cost of steel. Then we must all have five-thou- 
 sand-a-year wives and five-thousand-a-year servants, 
 for everybody is in on this. It will add something, 
 I'm afraid, to the price of steel. The whole thing is to 
 be democratically managed. We are going to deter- 
 mine every question by vote. Here is one now ; let us 
 determine it. Boris Humphniak says puddling is a 
 hot, hard job, and he doesn't see why he should blister 
 and sweat while Reginald Carnegie just sits in a cool 
 office talking to a stenographer. Comrade Carnegie 
 explains to Comrade Humphniak that the Carnegie 
 labor is necessary directive labor, and can be per- 
 formed in the office, while the Humphniak labor is 
 manual labor and must be performed in the puddling- 
 room. Comrade Humphniak cannot see it. He says 
 each man ought to take his turn at puddling and at 
 superintending. Let us vote on it. There are a thou- 
 sand puddlers, one superintendent. The vote is a 
 thousand to one for the Humphniak proposition. 
 
 [230]
 
 SOCIALISM 
 
 Comrade Carnegie goes down to the puddling-room, 
 tries to puddle (to the intense joy of the other pud- 
 dlers, who cease labor in order to enjoy his weak and 
 inefficient attempts at puddling), and, blinded and ex- 
 hausted, overturns a vat of molten metal; whereat 
 those who survive are sorry, and those who do not 
 among whom is Comrade Carnegie do not care any 
 more. Meanwhile Comrade Humphniak goes into 
 the office, lights a cigar, and neglects to give some 
 orders ; as a result of which f orgetf ulness on his part 
 the mill burns down. So labor gets what labor 
 creates. "The Revolution" is accomplished : there is 
 no profit.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 IN the very opening words of that address whose 
 sentences, few in number but tremendous in 
 power, gleam in letters of light from a dark and 
 troubled page of our history, Abraham Lincoln said 
 that our fathers had brought forth on this continent a 
 nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the 
 proposition that all men are created equal." 
 
 There had come a great test, he said, a mighty or- 
 deal to try out the question whether that nation, or 
 any other nation so conceived and dedicated, could 
 endure. His closing words were an exhortation to 
 the American people to resolve that the huge sacrifice 
 of patriot life should not be made a vain and fruitless 
 sacrifice, "that this nation, under God, shall have a 
 new birth of freedom, and that government of the 
 people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth." 
 
 "Under God!" When a great man greatly ex- 
 presses a great truth, he sets a stumbling-block in the 
 path of every falsehood that ever was or ever will be. 
 When that clear, simple, sublime mind contemplated 
 what was, what had been, and what was to be a na- 
 tion sundered by a great bleeding wound, a nation ani- 
 mated from its birth by the spirit of freedom and no 
 more capable of growth and power with any other 
 spirit than would one man be with the soul of another,
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 a nation which was painfully but completely to cut 
 out the cancerous growth that threatened its life he 
 uttered the protest I have quoted against the lie that 
 in a free nation any man can be the chattel of another. 
 
 The moral evils that were in front of him, that he 
 could see and touch, were human slavery and fratri- 
 cidal war. But the truth he erected as a shield for the 
 nation against them is to serve also as a shield for the 
 nation against another and a deadlier peril that has 
 come in another generation. 
 
 What was this conception of liberty and this dedica- 
 tion to the proposition that all men are created equal? 
 It was a new thing in the world. There had been 
 other governments conceived in liberty, but in all the 
 history of the world there had been no government 
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
 equal. 
 
 The Greek and Roman democracies are, when they 
 are closely examined, very narrow indeed. Under the 
 society which exercised the power of government was 
 a great menial class, a servile foundation upon which 
 society was builded. There were artisans and trades- 
 men who were free, but labor as such was shackled, a 
 huge bondsman that builded and delved, and that had 
 no rights that was, in the dominant opinion of the 
 day, on the level of the brutes. 
 
 And this servile class, this great mass of human 
 labor, was greater than all the rest in bulk among 
 the Greeks the slave class at one time constituted 
 nine-tenths of the population. 
 
 For centuries, however, even the approach to de- 
 mocracy that the Greeks and Romans knew had been
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 but a memory. The world lived according to the op- 
 posing political principle. The thought that lay back 
 of social organization was that men had been created 
 unequal, that some were born to govern and some to 
 slave; the former were the select few, the latter the 
 great mass. The aristocracy was entitled by right to 
 the profit of the fields, to preference before the courts 
 and in the halls of government; the mass was just a 
 beast of burden, base, ignoble, unworthy of considera- 
 tion by the superior men. 
 
 Among all the peoples of the world the principle of 
 government was the principle of privilege. There had 
 been something to temper all this the humanity of 
 those in power, and, more important than all else, the 
 influences of the Church of Christ; for the justice of 
 God, unlike the justice of man, held all men created 
 equal. 
 
 It was a divine ideal, then, that our fathers put into 
 the new nation. It was to a divine purpose that they 
 dedicated this republic. Men were to be free and 
 equal. Not equal in material things, but in moral 
 things. The vote of every man was to be equal to 
 that of every other man in the governing of the state. 
 The cause of every man was to be as sacred in the 
 courts of the land as that of every other man. 
 
 Not equal in physical strength, nor yet in intel- 
 lectual strength, nor yet in circumstances of material 
 wealth, but as a moral being, as an entity before the 
 law of the land as before the justice of heaven, as a 
 unit in government, each man was born with the right 
 of equality. For this was a nation "under God," as 
 Lincoln said. 
 
 C2343
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 There was another conception in liberty, another 
 dedication to equality, which, however, was not "under 
 God." It was under rationalism, under the philosophy 
 that takes human reason out of a man's noddle and 
 sets it on his altar, that ceases to use it because wor- 
 shiping it, that deifies it, substituting it for the living 
 God. 
 
 There were two revolutions. Almost as if it were 
 designed as a lesson to humanity, they are set side by 
 side. So close are they in time that some of the prin- 
 cipal actors in the one great drama are principal ac- 
 tors in the other. 
 
 They are set down in history's page like two sums 
 in mathematics side by side, so that we can see the 
 factors and contrast the products. It is as if God said 
 to us, "Here is the demonstration. See how, these 
 factors chosen, this is the result, and these other fac- 
 tors chosen, that is the result." 
 
 What is the most significant thing we see as we 
 look at those two portentous examples in political 
 arithmetic? Why, this America has no Voltaire! 
 There is no sneering, brilliant, God-denying mind 
 to dominate completely the mind of the nation. 
 America has no Encyclopedists, no Intellectuals to 
 interpose their cheap hand-made philosophy between 
 a suffering people crushed down and brutalized by 
 cruel privilege and the light of heaven ; to substitute 
 their joke-books and epigrams for the commandments 
 of God. 
 
 If France before the Revolution was "a despotism 
 tempered by epigrams," during the Revolution it was 
 a mobocracy distempered by epigrams. 
 
 235]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Here, then, is a difference between the moving fac- 
 tors. In France there was infidelity ; in America there 
 was a belief in God. France was a nation under Vol- 
 tairism; America was a nation "under God." 
 
 See how these two factors worked as the problem 
 became involved. In America a Congress assembled, 
 as in France a parliament of the Three Estates. In 
 America this Congress, sane, sober, stern, governs the 
 nation in revolt until the work is done, and the marvel- 
 lous new government dedicated to the proposition that 
 all men are created equal is a vital fact in the world. 
 
 In that Congress statesmen and patriots are devel- 
 oped, men of the common people who can devise an 
 instrument of government that has stood the test of 
 time. Not superior men, not sneerers at faith in God, 
 not Intellectuals, but men out of the ranks, wise, prac- 
 tical and inspired makers of a nation, whose every 
 official declaration is a profession of faith in the wis- 
 dom and justice of the Most High. 
 
 But in that French parliament is such a gathering 
 of self-seeking demagogues as never before the world 
 has seen ; cheap, rabid, hating and hate-inspiring poli- 
 ticians, rats that struggle and gnaw and squeal in the 
 recesses of that rotting body which they are tearing 
 down. Wit against wit, vanity against vanity, ambi- 
 tion against ambition, selfishness against selfishness, 
 it was a government gone completely mad, shifting 
 and veering at each noisy gust from the lungs of a 
 bar-room statesman inspired of a sudden with a plan 
 for making all men happy. Under rationalism, Lib- 
 erty has gone insane. 
 
 These two huge dramas have each its principal hu- 
 
 236]
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 man character, its man of whom all the world thinks 
 when the world thinks of the drama. The nation 
 under God had Washington, patriot and statesman, 
 whose name was a glory even among his enemies. 
 The nation under rationalism had Napoleon, con- 
 queror and despot, bloodied to his boot-tops, filling 
 Europe with fire and slaughter until his red and drip- 
 ping star sank forever behind the lurid cannon smoke 
 of Waterloo. 
 
 And now let us consider the products, the two an- 
 swers worked out by these two examples in political 
 arithmetic. The nation under philosophy ended its 
 huge struggle in a despotism not even tempered by 
 epigrams. Drained of its best blood, weakened in 
 heart and in limbs, foreign kings riding at the head of 
 their squadrons into its capital at will, the mass 
 crushed down again and privilege enthroned again, 
 nothing left of that great hope that raised it in revolu- 
 tion except the insanity, the Voltairism which is still 
 at work. 
 
 But the nation "under God" has kept democracy 
 alive, has advanced all the time, standing up against 
 that bloody back-wash of the French Revolution that 
 rocked every other government; attracting to itself 
 the oppressed of all the world, destroying human 
 slavery when that evil, grown strong, conflicted with 
 the very purpose of its being; crushing out bigotry so 
 that now Protestant and Catholic and Jew sit down at 
 the same board to do honor to their brother American 
 who has been elevated to the cardinalate of his church. 
 This is the fruit of a conception in liberty and a dedi- 
 cation to equality of a nation "under God." 
 
 [237:]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 These two things are side by side, as I have said, 
 and yet there is a philosophy that cannot read the les- 
 son as it is written. Little by little that philosophy 
 has made headway in this country. It is not indig- 
 enous. The Irish potato is an American vegetable, 
 you know, but rationalism is not. It is something that 
 has been transplanted from the old world, where it 
 grows rank in the shadow of privilege. Free men are 
 rarely "free thinkers." You will always find tyranny 
 and Voltairism close together. And this modern ra- 
 tionalism is nothing but warmed-over Voltairism, al- 
 though its political manifestation is not in precisely 
 the same form. Analysis was the social cure-all of the 
 Voltaire period. They were going to make all men 
 happy by taking things apart. 
 
 And, truly, they went the full logical length of the 
 formula. Not satisfied with the stage at which Intel- 
 lectualism would pause the taking apart of aristoc- 
 racy the mob took the aristocrats apart also; and 
 having taken monarchy apart, they must also take a 
 monarch apart. 
 
 And what then? Why, then the discovery by the 
 hungry millions that "Victorious Analysis," as Carlyle 
 puts it, "bakes no bread." 
 
 This formula having been found of no fruit, there- 
 fore, rationalism sets up another, a new make-believe 
 for victims of social injustice, which it calls Socialism. 
 It came out of the sick thought of atheists who looked 
 into themselves and thought they saw a universe. Its 
 fundamental assertion is that there is no God. 
 
 This is what is meant by the "materialistic concep- 
 tion of history," this is what they mean by their "eco-
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 nomic determinism." "God is a reflex of economic 
 conditions," they say ; that is, a ruling class invented 
 him and preached him to keep a servile class in sub- 
 jection. 
 
 A child may laugh at the absurdity of such a state- 
 ment. Think of it ! Back in the dim past, when, they 
 would make us believe, men were just beginning to be 
 men and leaving off being monkeys, some particularly 
 wise anthropoid ape, some J. P. Morgan among the 
 "missing links," conceived this vast deception in order 
 that he might get the milk in the cocoanut, and his 
 tailed, or rather recently detailed, brethren might be 
 satisfied with the husks ! 
 
 The men who say their illuminated reason cannot 
 accept the idea of a God ask us to believe that; and 
 ask us to believe that the thing was kept up through 
 all the intervening ages, and that it is a huge, hoary 
 imposture. Why, if it were an imposture, it was one 
 so vast, so tremendous, so obviously beyond human 
 cunning, that none but a God could create or sus- 
 tain it. 
 
 With as broad a lie as that for a foundation, they 
 had room to build anything. And they have builded a 
 weird thing: Karl Marx has evolved from his inner 
 consciousness some shadow of a shadow which he 
 calls a labor-hour. What is it? Perhaps although I 
 doubt it Marx knew, but Marx is dead. 
 
 We only know that it is not an hour of continuous 
 labor by a skilled mechanic any skilled mechanic; 
 for labor, as he uses the term, means unskilled labor. 
 That leaves us at sea again, for unskilled labor is but 
 an arbitrary term to differentiate between those who 
 
 [239]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 are in what we call the handicrafts and those who are 
 not; in philosophy there is no such thing as unskilled 
 labor. If I were called on to-night to go dig in a ditch, 
 I should have to learn how to use a spade. The mon- 
 key and the millionaire are alike in this neither of 
 them knows how to use a spade. What, then, is an 
 hour of unskilled labor? However, why worry about 
 it? Our foundation, you know, is that there is no 
 God. Whatever it is, it is to be the measure of value 
 in the Socialist world. 
 
 All men have it ; that is, all men who are not weak, 
 or old, or too young. But never mind them; never 
 mind anything that is sensible and true. How can a 
 fact stand on the foundation that there is no God? If 
 you are going to introduce facts here, they will sink 
 right through our broad but unsubstantial base, be- 
 cause, while many men have seen a fog upon a moun- 
 tain, no man but a Socialist has ever seen a mountain 
 upon a fog. 
 
 Let us, then, take at its face value this labor-hour. 
 It is to be the currency of the cooperative common- 
 wealth that is to follow the revolution. Money is to 
 be abolished because money is capital, and capital is a 
 vicious oppression-serving reflex of economic condi- 
 tions, devised long ago, doubtless, by that same mon- 
 key-man who invented God. It is just like religion, 
 marriage, and patriotism, and that contemptible bour- 
 geois weakness morality. 
 
 They are all at war with the philosophy of Social- 
 ism, there will be no room for any of them in the co- 
 operative commonwealth. Probably frost and snow, 
 and birth and death also, are economic reflexes ; one of 
 
 [240]
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 these at least the rationalistic science of eugenics pro- 
 poses to abolish in part; doubtless in the glad new 
 time they will all be abolished, somehow. For that is 
 the way all these reforms are to be accomplished 
 just somehow. 
 
 I have been for twenty years reading Socialist liter- 
 ature and attending Socialist meetings and talking to 
 Socialist orators, in the hope that there might be 
 something for humanity in all this, some pot of gold 
 at the rainbow's end, and always the answer to my 
 "How?" has been the same first, let us have revolu- 
 tion, and the reconstruction will be managed some- 
 how. The old Voltairism, the old analysis, the taking 
 of things apart ! Under God men build up, they con- 
 struct; under rationalism they tear down, they de- 
 stroy. 
 
 I have said this thing is of foreign origin and for- 
 eign growth. How comes it, then, that we find it here, 
 in a nation "under God" ? Because similar causes will, 
 everywhere and forever, produce similar effects. We 
 thrust out privilege in our Revolution, and set the face 
 of the new nation forever against it. But it found its 
 way in again until its recognition by the people in the 
 form of slave-ownership led to its expulsion once 
 more. 
 
 And now it is manifesting itself in industry, and we 
 have labor ground down and oppressed, we have 
 babies working in mills, we have vast populations 
 that do not speak our language, do not understand 
 our laws, do not live our life, but do out of their deep 
 misery send up class hatred, flames that privilege has 
 enkindled and that Socialism fans. In this nation,
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 dedicated to equality, there is not equality before the 
 law. 
 
 Some men, who fear Socialism not because it is a 
 bad thing, but because it may hurt them, will say that 
 this is preaching class hatred. It isn't it is telling 
 the truth. You cannot kill this thing with a lie. You 
 must kill it with the truth. And when we tell this 
 truth, when we say that in this country men are not 
 always equal before the law, we must also say that if 
 the courts are sometimes respecters of persons here, 
 they are here less respecters of persons than any- 
 where else in the world of God for that also is true. 
 Nowhere in the wide world has the man, naked of all 
 rank and power and wealth, more chance of obtaining 
 pure justice than under this flag, which Socialism 
 would tear down and replace with its red international 
 banner and that is also true. 
 
 In this nation under God, of all .nations, the funda- 
 mental law prescribes absolute equality; and where 
 there is aberration from that principle, the fault is 
 not with the nation or its fundamental law, but with 
 the weakness of human nature, to cure which does not 
 lie in Socialism, but in the religion of God. 
 
 But it is true that privilege has done some evil in 
 the courts as, indeed, where has it not done evil? 
 And it has done much evil in our political life. And 
 worse still, because here it cannot claim the right to 
 rob as an open and a legal right, it has had to accom- 
 plish its ends by stealth, by falsehood, and by bribery; 
 and so it has weakened our morality and so affected 
 many of us that we cannot longer bear the thought of 
 a just and righteous God. Some divinity we must 
 
 [242]
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 have, because privilegewiser in its generation than 
 Intellectualism knows that the bare lie of a no-God 
 will not go down with the world; but let it be a vague 
 and far-away divinity. Let us subsidize agnosticism 
 in the colleges by endowments made up of bonds of 
 that corporation that has imported its thousands 
 upon thousands of laborers whose ignorance of our 
 language and our laws makes possible their employ- 
 ment for seven days a week with twenty-four-hour 
 shifts to vary the monotony. Let us forget that 
 "wops" are human beings made in the image of God, 
 just as the nobility of France forgot that its "canaille" 
 were human beings whom also God had made in his 
 image. 
 
 Do you suppose privilege, that so forgets, wants to 
 believe in a Christ? No it isn't possible, comfort- 
 able. Real obligations with sharp edges are too in- 
 convenient; a real God is too terrible. Better accept 
 the Darwinian theory of evolution from science, now 
 that science is getting rid of it, having found it not 
 only unproven but unprovable; better level down all 
 creeds so that they are all alike, which will be when 
 they are all whittled away; better dabble in this Intel- 
 lectualism of Europe, where privilege is ancient and 
 legal and fashionable, if not respectable. 
 
 And so we create a great fund for such colleges as 
 shall abandon Christ, having been founded in his 
 name. We say to college presidents and college pro- 
 fessors, "You shall have a pension in your old age, 
 provided you have not taught as truth that Jehovah 
 of the Jews was God, and Christ, who walked on earth, 
 was his divine Son." 
 
 [243]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 And our public schools ! The pity of it ! We could 
 leave the colleges to materialism, to nothingism, if it 
 had to be so, but are we going to sit silent by while 
 the little children of whom Christ said, "Suffer them 
 to come unto me," are turned over to the Intellectuals, 
 to the teachers of cast-off science, to the materialism 
 and nothingism whose political manifestation is So- 
 cialism? 
 
 Not if we are men with sanity left in our heads! 
 Not if we are still a nation "under God," "conceived 
 in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all 
 men are created equal." 
 
 To pass the plastic years in a godless school, to 
 leave it with no faith to enlighten them, with no belief 
 in their accountability to God to hold them true, with 
 a false notion of life and its meaning; to find the 
 struggle for subsistence hard, and on the corner or in 
 the club the Socialist with his gospel of hatred which 
 he calls "class-consciousness," his sneer at God, his 
 easy plan of conduct, and his somehow political 
 programme of making life easy to live what re- 
 sults? 
 
 What have we to oppose to all this? The truth, the 
 American ideal of a "nation under God," conceived in 
 liberty and dedicated to equality, which is always new 
 because always true. 
 
 We must regain for God the children of the nation. 
 If we were all of one creed, it might be done through 
 our present public-school system. But we are of many 
 creeds, so that the only practicable plan, and the only 
 just plan, is to let each creed teach its own, and let the 
 state pay, out of the taxes collected from all, a just 
 
 244]
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 compensation to such educational agency, secular or 
 religious, for the educational work it shall perform. 
 
 In this way will we best meet this new peril; in this 
 way will we best destroy, on the one hand, the privi- 
 lege that generates class hatred, and, on the other, the 
 false philosophy that would transmute that hatred 
 into Socialism. 
 
 It is an evil thing we have to conquer. If it were 
 only the Intellectuals, we might let them babble away 
 in their own little insane asylums, while the rest of us 
 go on with the work of the world. But here is this 
 vast army suffering from real social injustice, and 
 here are those Intellectuals telling this army to over- 
 turn the government, break up and throw away the 
 Constitution, close the churches, abandon their fam- 
 ilies, and they shall have bread without sweating 
 for it. 
 
 It is the cruellest lie that ever came out of hell. But 
 how is the sufferer to know it is a lie? He must toil to 
 keep breath in his body ; what time has he to measure 
 and to weigh? He knows, because the weight of it 
 bends down his back, that life is hard, and the Intel- 
 lectuals tell him they have a plan to give him life and 
 ease and food and luxuries. "The whole wealth of the 
 world is yours, and yet you toil and starve," they say 
 to him. "Strike, and be rich !" Not free, but rich. 
 
 Think of the effect of this on a man who is toiling, 
 and who has not too much food. How can one know 
 that their system is a dream of madmen up there in 
 the region above him, the Intellectuals, the smart 
 men, the college professors, say it will be all right, and 
 they must know. 
 
 [245]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 Even high privilege says, with a propitiating smile, 
 that "Socialism has no terrors for him"; and quite 
 true it is too, because if privilege doesn't believe in a 
 hereafter for its spiritual self, what need it care for the 
 hereafter of the Republic? 
 
 Some few years ago our American Socialism spoke 
 softly of a peaceful revolution and a ballot-box cam- 
 paign and conquest. But as it grows stronger it grows 
 bolder, and now we hear less of the peaceful revo- 
 lution. 
 
 They are feeling their strength, they grow bold. 
 The talk now is of "direct action." That means that 
 the brute is getting thirsty for blood. That is the es- 
 sential barbarism growling out a little impatiently in 
 this philosophy that boasts that it is the next step in 
 civilization. 
 
 In Los Angeles they take as a candidate a lawyer 
 who has been counsel for dynamiters, just because of 
 the significant association. Their labor organization 
 is the Industrial Workers of the World, their cry is 
 for the general strike. 
 
 Listen to their editor who has hurried from New 
 York into Massachusetts, as he cries out to the poor 
 mill-hands, who think he is leading them for their 
 sakes, "No arbitration, no compromise !" 
 
 They do not want better wages for labor, they do 
 not want peace they want wide-spread industrial 
 war, dynamiting and bloodshed, and a crashing fall of 
 this Republic Lincoln loved, so that in their beloved 
 revolution they may strut and gabble, cheap little 
 warmed-over Robespierres and second-hand Mira- 
 beaus, and try to set up their crazy government on the 
 
 C246]
 
 THE NATION UNDER GOD 
 
 wreckage of a nation under God, conceived in liberty 
 and dedicated to equality. 
 
 Blind to anything like a fact, they cannot see that 
 this isn't France of one hundred and fifty years ago. 
 There isn't here the depth of misery that was there, 
 although there is more than there should be and more 
 than there shall be. This union isn't founded on privi- 
 lege, as was the tyranny of old France. 
 
 And, more than all, the faith in God still holds in 
 America, and it is strongest and purest right on the 
 battle-line in the very ranks of labor from which this 
 Socialism hopes to draw its strength. Democracy 
 lives here still, and her strength is undiminished. 
 
 And justice when we have made America see 
 what justice is will allow Religion to resume her in- 
 spiring function in the education of the child. Labor 
 shall not drink this cup that Socialism holds to its lips 
 and find the dregs bitter with blasted hope. 
 
 But in our coming ordeal and he is blind who can- 
 not see it coming sanity and sobriety and the spirit 
 of justice must rule our councils, as they did in that 
 other great ordeal half a century ago. 
 
 The people's leaders must be, not demagogues, not 
 babblers, not new-idea-every-minute reformers, not 
 gusty mock-Mirabeaus, but men of courage and con- 
 science and sanity and sympathy and truth. Marx 
 must not become, but Lincoln continue to be, our ideal 
 statesman. Not rationalism, but God, must be our 
 guide. 
 
 And as the hope of Lincoln will come true, the dead 
 of Gettysburg and every other field where patriots 
 fell under the flag for which Socialism would substi- 
 
 [247:]
 
 TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR 
 
 tute its banner of blood, shall not have died in vain 
 "government of the people, by the people, for the 
 people, shall not perish from the earth," but shall live, 
 blessing more and more with the fruit of justice a na- 
 tion under God.
 
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