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 secondary. Nations existed, it is true, but these nations were to regard themselves, and to be regarded, as part of the European commonwealth. This ideal system rested upon a desire for a higher order of things than men could then hope to realise in their immediate surroundings. Laws were rudimentary, society was but imperfectly developed. Men were conscious that the powers that ruled the State suffered under many limitations. True, they existed for the common good; the laws represented the commonsense of the people, but the officers who had to carry out the laws frequently overruled them, and the princes who represented the community cannot in any way be said to have done so adequately. There is always a desire for some check upon the unauthorised exercise of power. In our age the most potent check is public opinion; and it was just this desire to get public opinion represented as well as possible, that made men welcome the papal authority. People sometimes waste a great deal of time and pains in explaining away the papal power as being the result of all kinds of sacerdotal intrigues and usurpations, when, as a matter of fact, the Papacy came into existence and was generally accepted because it represented what people wanted. There never has been a power which could claim more entirely to rest upon public opinion than could the papal power at its best. This theory of a great spiritual power guarding over truth and righteousness in every part of Christendom was a splendid idea; only the pity of it was that it was so rapidly lost sight of.

At the time when Grosseteste began to take part in