In this connection it is particularly interesting to note the appearance of _conscience_ in the thirteenth century. In classical times the Latin ‘conscientia’ seems to have meant something more like ‘consciousness’ or ‘knowledge’; it was generally qualified by some other word (‘virtutum, vitiorum’—‘consciousness of virtues, of vices,’ ...), and its termination, similar to that of _science_, _intelligence_, ... suggests that it was conceived of by the Romans more as a general, _abstract_ quality, which one would partake of, but not actually possess—just as one has knowledge or happiness, but not “a knowledge” or “a happiness”. Used in ecclesiastical Latin and later in English, _conscience_ seems to have grown more and more real, until at last it became that semi-personified and perfectly private mentor whom we are inclined to mean to-day when we speak of “my _conscience_” or “his _conscience_”. The movement towards “individualism”, like many other phenomena of modern civilization, has long ago shifted its centre of gravity outside the walls of the Church. Once it was felt as the peculiar glory of the Christian religion. In the Dark Ages heresies which attempted to explain away the significant paradox of Christ’s simultaneous divinity and humanity were hunted down with the utmost rigour, and it is probable that a vivid sense of the dignity of the individual human soul was at the bottom of a good many actions which now seem to us like the very stultification of such a conviction. This great inner world of consciousness, we may suppose, which each individual was now felt to control in some measure for himself, was a thing to fear as well as to respect. It gave to every single soul almost infinite potentialities, for evil as well as good; and even the wisest heads seem to have felt that civilization could only be held together as long as all these souls maintained a certain uniformity of pattern. Thus, while the influence of Christianity had ensured to all men—not merely to a small slave-owning class—a modicum of personal liberty, it deprived them in the same breath of that dearest of all possessions, freedom of thought. The grim meaning gradually acquired by the Latin word _Inquisition_, meaning an ‘inquiry’, still signifies to us the ruthless pains that were now taken, for the first time in the world’s history, to pry into and endeavour to control that private thinking life of men which had suddenly acquired such a vast importance in their eyes. The still grimmer _auto-da-fé_ began life as a Spanish phrase meaning simply an ‘act of faith’. * * * * *