Thus we see that under whatever point of view the political history of Europe of that epoch presents itself to us--whether our attention is directed to the internal state of the countries, or to their mutual relations with each other--whether we look to the administration of war, justice, or taxation--the same general character is in all distinguishable; we perceive everywhere the same tendency to centralisation and unity, to the formation and predominance of general interests and public powers. This was the hidden labour at work in the fifteenth century--a labour which did not then produce any very apparent result, any revolution, properly so called, in society, but which prepared the way for all. I now proceed to facts of another nature, to moral facts, or those which have reference to the development of the human understanding and of general ideas. We shall there also discern the same phenomenon, and be carried to the same conclusion. I will commence with an order of facts which has very often been the subject of our inquiry, and which, under various forms, has always occupied an important station in the history of Europe: I mean the facts relative to the church. In our views of affairs in Europe up till the fifteenth century, we have been made aware that the only general and potential ideas operating veritably on the masses were religious ideas. We have seen that the church alone was invested with authority to regulate, promulgate, and prescribe these ideas. Often, it is true, attempts at independence and separation were made, and the church was called upon for its most strenuous exertions to put them down. Those exertions had hitherto been successful; the dogmas anathematised by the church had not taken general and permanent possession of the minds of the people; even the Albigenses had been crushed. Dissent and strife were continual in the bosom of the church, but without any decisive or striking result. At the opening of the fifteenth century, a very different state of things appeared; new ideas, and a public, avowed desire for alteration and reform, agitated the church itself. The close of the fourteenth, and the dawn of the fifteenth century, were illustrated by the great western schism, arising from the translation of the Holy See to Avignon, and the creation of two popes, the one at Avignon, and the other at Rome. The contest between these two papacies is what is called the great schism of the west. It commenced in 1378. In 1409, the Council of Pisa, wishing to bring it to an end, named a third, Alexander V. This proceeding, so far from moderating the violence of the schism, fanned it into additional fury, and instead of two opposition popes, there were three. The disorder and abuses caused by this lamentable dissension went on increasing. In 1414, the Council of Constance assembled at the instance of the Emperor Sigismond. It entered upon a very different matter than naming a new pope; it undertook the reform of the church.