I shall always hold to this rule of conduct as the only one suitable to the dignity of the _savant_. I know that researches into religious history always bring one face to face with vital questions which seem to demand a solution. Persons unfamiliar with free speculation do not at all comprehend the calm deliberation of thought; practical minds grow impatient of a science which does not respond to their desires. Let us guard against this vain ardor; let us remain in our respective Churches, profiting by their secular teachings and their traditions of virtue, participating in their charitable works, and enjoying the poetry of their past. Let us only reject their intolerance. Let us even pardon this intolerance, for like egotism it is one of the necessities of human nature. The formation of new religious families or beliefs, or any important change in the proportions of those existing to-day, is contrary to present indications. Catholicism will soon be scarred and seamed by great schisms; the days of Avignon, of the anti-popes, of the Clementists and the Urbanists, are about to return. The Catholic Church will see another sixteenth century; and yet, notwithstanding its divisions, it will remain the Catholic Church. It is not probable that for a hundred years to come the relative proportions of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, will be materially varied. But a great change will be accomplished, or, at least, people will become sensible of it. Every one of these religious families will have two classes of adherents; the one believing simply and absolutely after the manner of the middle ages, the other sacrificing the letter of the law and maintaining its spirit. In every communion this latter great class will increase; and as the spirit draws together quite as much as the letter separates, the spiritually-minded of each faith will be brought nearer. Fanaticism will be lost in a general tolerance. The theory of the dogma will become merely a mysterious vault which no one will ever care to open; and if the vault be empty, of what importance is it? Only one religion--Islamism alone, I fear--will resist this mollifying process. Among certain Mahommedans of the old school, several eminent men in Constantinople, and above all among the Persians, there are the germs of a tolerant and conciliatory spirit. If these germs of good be crushed by the fanaticism of the Ulemas, Islamism will perish; for two things are evident--that modern civilization does not wish to see the old religions entirely die out; and that, on the other hand, it will not be impeded in its work by senile religious institutions; these latter must either bend or break.