"You were perhaps right, Monsieur," he said; "but we should prefer not to tax your ingenuity. The gods invented by science are always afar off; or they sleep, perchance; or they are concerned with their own affairs; in any case they do not hear us when we call to them. I consider our Church capable of a larger growth if it will only remain silent on the question of dogma, which should be left like seed to grow and quicken in the earth. Time will obtain for any dogma a certain measure of tacit acceptance, because truth to the majority is merely something which has been said over and over again. Besides the psychological basis of my calculations, the fact that the majority do not think, there is the political basis. This has entered into a new phase. In the Middle Ages the Church was allied with the State against the people. Its dogmas were enforced by the secular arm. Innocent III. was a kind of suzerain over the princes of Europe. But even here, already, the Church knew upon occasion to ally herself with the people, and threaten a king through his own subjects, by releasing a nation from its allegiance, and troubling its internal peace by an interdict. "Since my predecessor, the Church has definitely adopted this policy; but with a more subtile and insinuating method. Infallibility relates not only to matters of dogma, but to matters of State, _quoad mores_ as well as _quoad fidem_. You will remember, Monsieur, that Antonelli addressed a despatch to the Nuncio at Paris, in which he says: 'The Church has never intended, nor now intends, to exercise any direct and absolute power over the political rights of the State. Having received from God the lofty mission of guiding men, whether individually or as congregated in society, to a supernatural end, she has by that very fact the authority and the duty to judge concerning the morality and justice of all acts, internal and external, in relation to their conformity with the natural and divine law. And as no action, whether it be ordained by a supreme power, or be freely elicited by an individual, can be exempt from this character of morality and justice, it so happens that the judgment of the Church, though falling directly on the moral of the acts, indirectly reaches over everything with which that morality is conjoined. But this is not the same thing as to interfere directly in political affairs.' That direct interference we must avoid." Renan seemed to hesitate before he spoke.