But this main argument does not concern the little essay which you are reading. I am dealing only with the value of the historical argument against the Faith, as I have put it, I think fairly, into the lips of one of our typical, modern, well-read opponents. Now what is our reply? Our reply is that the generalisation is hasty and inaccurate, and that the more you examine it the more you discover upon what a false and superficial basis it reposes. There is not a great number of religions, nor has there been in the past a greater number, apparent to men of different nations and temperaments, of which hotchpotch the Catholic Church is but one. There is not a multitude of systems of theology falling under the one general category “theologies,” of which the Catholic scheme is but a single specimen. Upon the contrary, there is, and has been for these centuries past, a social and religious phenomenon _unique and comparable to nothing else_, called the Catholic Church. Its spirit, quality, voice, personality is such that the line of cleavage does not lie between it and pure scepticism, leaving on the one side _all_ religions (including Catholicism) and on the other the free uncertain mind; the line of cleavage lies between the Faith upon one side and all other human opinions and moods upon the other. And this unique character of the Catholic Church is as plain an historical truth as the astronomical truth of the reverse rotation of Uranus is unique among the planets. It claims what no other society has ever claimed. It affirms its Founder to have been what no other society claims its founder to have been. It functions as no other society has functioned: by an unsupported authority, absolute in its affirmation. It may indeed be granted that in pure theory at least there is an equal alternative to the unique thing. One might say that, outside the Catholic Church, the human mind can stand quite unattached, examining all things by no criterion save common experience and the deductive power of the intelligence. In pure theory there might be a whole society of such detached (but also quite unrooted) minds with no certitudes, no ethical predicates, living upon the void.