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 an authority which was still further reinforced by that spiritual dominion its right to which no one disputed. And, further, the Church of the Middle Ages, having completed the fusion of Christian dogma with the Aristotelian philosophy by means of that scholasticism which then included all the knowable, became the arbiter of knowledge and of the minds who knew. This position, even though the events of these late centuries have weakened its force, is still strong enough to render the work of adaptation to the new character of civilization a difficult one for the Church.

The democracy demands of the Church, not only an attitude less conservative and less intent upon favouring the last remnants of the privileged nobility, but also a transformation and purification of forms and persons in her own government, still as tenaciously monarchical and absolute as when she adopted it at the end of the third century and consolidated