[8] Speaking of the Inquisition, Mr. H. C. Lea, in his classic _History of the Inquisition_, says, "There is no doubt that the people were as eager as their pastors to send the heretic to the stake. There is no doubt that men of the kindliest tempers, the profoundest aspirations, the purest zeal for righteousness, professing a religion founded on love and charity, were ruthless where heresy was concerned, and were ready to trample it out at any cost. Dominic and Francis, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, Innocent III. and St. Louis, were types, in their several ways, of which humanity, in any age, might feel proud, and yet they were as unsparing of the heretic as Ezzelin di Romano was of his enemies. With such men it was not hope of gain or lust of blood or pride of opinion or wanton exercise of power, but sense of duty, and they but represented what was universal public opinion from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century." Vol. I., p. 234. If we could once get over the delusion of thinking of human nature as being fundamentally different five hundred years ago from what it is to-day, we should escape a great many fallacies that are prevalent. The changes that have taken place in human nature during the historic period are so slight as to be practically negligible. The motives that animate men and women to-day are the motives that animated men and women a thousand or two thousand years ago. The change is in the direction and form of their manifestation only, and it is in the light of the human nature around us that we must study and interpret the human nature that has gone before us. From that point of view we may safely conclude that bad institutions were kept in being in the past for the same reason that they are kept alive to-day. The majority must be blind to their badness; and in any case it is a general perception of their badness which leads to their destruction.