If it be true, then, that philosophical thought stands in closest connection with civilization, determining the latter in its loftier aspects, then the freedom of thought of modern subjectivism has proved its incompetence as a power for civilization; it can produce only a sham-civilization, it can incite the minds and keep them in nervous tension, until, tired of fruitless endeavour, they yield to pessimism. However painful it may be to admit it, this freedom of thought is and remains the principle of natural decadence of all the higher elements of a culture that is not determined by the number of guns, by steam-engines, and high-schools for girls, but which consists, chiefly, in a steadfast, ideal condition of reason and will, from which all else obtains significance and value. What further proof of intellectual and cultural incompetence can be demanded which this principle has not furnished already? If this be the fact, then it follows in turn that in the life of higher culture, where the health of the soul and the marrow of mental life is at stake, there can rule but a single principle, the _objectivism of Christian thought_, the principle of absolute submission, without variance and change, to a truth against which man has no rights. The submission of Christian thought to a religious, teaching authority, recognized as infallible in all matters pertaining to its domain, while not an exhaustive presentment of this principle, is its perceptive and concrete effect. A Rock in the Waters. The history of human thought of all ages, but especially of the last centuries, proves how necessary a divine revelation is to man; viz., the clear exposition of the highest truths in the view of world and of life, emphasized by a divine authority, which links the human mind to the one immutable truth; not only in ignorant nations, not only in the man of the common people, but also, and more especially, in the educated man and in the scientist, he, namely, who, through the moderate studies of a small intellect, has collected a little sum of knowledge that is apt to confuse his limited understanding and to rob him of modesty. It is just as manifest that revelation alone does not suffice, that there is needed also the enduring forum of a teaching Church, which in the course of centuries gives expression to truth with infallible, binding authority.