be something better than, his infant self. We must not attach undue
importance to the study of origins. On the other hand we cannot afford
to neglect them. However slight the fibres by which the present is
rooted in the past, to observe them is to realise the continuity of
human development--the most important, the most obvious, and the most
neglected of the lessons that history can teach. It is true that the
roots, however strong and however deeply set, are insufficient to
account for the characteristics of the plant which springs from them.
But it is also true that neither plants nor institutions can altogether
shed the husk of their immaturity. They are not entirely adapted to the
conditions under which they reach their full development. The Papacy in
the zenith of its power and renown is partly new and partly old. When we
consider the papal theory, as it floated before the mind of a Gregory
VII or an Innocent III, it produces in us the same impression of
symmetry, logical consistency and completeness, which we experience on
entering for the first time one of the great medieval churches. But when
once we have grasped the design of the architect, we shall usually find
that he has conformed in some respects to unmeaning traditions inherited
from an earlier period, and further that his work incorporates the
remnants of an older, simpler structure. Here are pillars of massive
girth altogether disproportionate to the delicate arches which they
carry; there an old tower has been buttressed to make it capable of
supporting a new spire. For all the builder's cunning, we can yet
distinguish between the new and the renovated. So it is with the papal
apologia in the great days of papal policy. A sentence from the laws of
ancient Rome dovetails with an axiom stolen from the philosophers of the
Porch or the Academy. Fables of Gallic or Egyptian origin are invoked to
corroborate the canons of Nicene and Chalcedonian synods. A text from a
Hebrew prophet is interpreted by the fancy of an African expositor. The
fabric composed of these incongruous elements has in truth a unity of