From these statements respecting the crisis at which ancient philosophy had arrived, we might be disposed to believe that the result was unmitigated evil, for it scarcely deserves mention that the quibbles and disputes of the Sophists occasioned an extraordinary improvement of the Greek language, introducing precision into its terms, and a wonderful dialectical skill into its use. For us there may be extracted from these melancholy conclusions at least one instructive lesson--that it is not during the process of decomposition of philosophies, and especially of religions, that social changes occur, for such breakings-up commonly go on in an isolated, and therefore innocuous way; but if by chance the fragments and decomposed portions are brought together, and attempts are made by fusion to incorporate them anew, or to extract from them, by a secondary analysis, what truth they contain, a crisis is at once brought on, and--such is the course of events--in the catastrophe that ensues they are commonly all absolutely destroyed. It was doubtless their foresight of such consequences that inspired the Italian statesmen of the Middle Ages with a resolute purpose of crushing in the bud every encroachment on ecclesiastical authority, and every attempt at individual interpretation of religious doctrines. For it is not to be supposed that men of clear intellect should be insensible to the obvious unreasonableness of many of the dogmas that had been consecrated by authority. But if once permission were accorded to human criticism and human interpretation, what other issue could there be than that doctrine upon doctrine, and sect upon sect should arise; that theological principles should undergo a total decomposition, until two men could scarcely be found whose views coincided; nay, even more than that, that the same man should change his opinion with the changing incidents of the different periods of his life. No matter what might be the plausible guise of the beginning, and the ostensibly cogent arguments for its necessity, once let the decomposition commence, and no human power could arrest it until it had become thorough and complete. Considering the prestige, the authority, and the mass of fact to be dealt with, it might take many centuries for this process to be finished, but that that result would at length be accomplished no enlightened man could doubt. The experience of the ancient European world had shown that in the act of such decompositions there is but little danger, since, for the time being, each sect, and, indeed, each individual, has a guiding rule of life. But as soon as the period of secondary analysis is reached a crisis must inevitably ensue, in all probability involving not only religion, but also the social contract. And though, by the exercise of force on the part of the interests that are disturbed, aided by that popular sentiment which is abhorrent of anarchy, the crisis might, for a