Now the consequences of this difference are considerable. To the system of caste, to the fact of hereditary descent, monopoly is inevitably attached. The very definition of the word proves it. When the same functions and powers become hereditary in the same families, it is clear that an exclusive privilege is transmitted, and that no one can acquire these functions or powers independently of his origin. Such, in fact, was the result; for where the religious government fell into the hands of a caste, it became matter of privilege, and no person entered it but those who sprang from the families of the caste. But nothing of this sort is met in the Christian church, and indeed so far from that being the case, the church maintained the principle of the equal admissibility of all men, whatever might be their origin, to all its charges and dignities. The ecclesiastical career, more particularly from the fifth to the twelfth century, was open to all. The church was recruited from all ranks, from the inferior as well as the superior, and most frequently, indeed, from the inferior. All things were crumbling around it, under the influence of the exclusive system; it alone maintained the principle of equality and fair competition, and summoned the possessors of legitimate superiority to the assumption of power. This was the first great consequence that naturally resulted from it being a body and not a caste. Again, there is a spirit inherent in castes, that of immutability or stagnation. This assertion has no need of proof. All history informs us that the spirit of stagnation has possessed all societies, political or religious, in which the system of castes predominated. The fear of change or progress was certainly introduced into the Christian church at a certain epoch, and up to a certain point. But we cannot say that it predominated, nor can we assert that the church has remained immovable and stationary: during many ages it was in movement and progress, sometimes stimulated by the attacks of an outward opposition, sometimes impelled from within by the necessities for internal reform and development. {96} Upon the whole, it is a society which has constantly changed and progressed, and whose history is marked with corresponding characteristics. It admits of no doubt that the indiscriminate admission of all men to ecclesiastical charges, and the continual recruitment of the church upon a principle of equality, powerfully aided in maintaining and unceasingly reanimating its activity and energy, and in preventing the triumph of the immutable or stagnant spirit. How was the church, thus admitting all men to power, assured as to the justness of their claims? How did it discover, and draw out from the obscurity of the mass, those legitimately superior spirits entitled to take part in the government?