I have selected the foregoing illustration, drawn from American history, in preference to many others that might have been taken from European, because it furnishes an instance of the operation of the acting principle least interfered with by extraneous conditions.  European political progress is less simple than American.

Quarrel between France and the papacy.  Before considering its manner of action, and its results, I will briefly relate how the scientific principle found an introduction into Europe.

Introduction of science into Europe.  Not only had the Crusades, for many years, brought vast sums to Rome, extorted from the fears or the piety of every Christian nation; they had also increased the papal power to a most dangerous extent.  In the dual governments everywhere prevailing in Europe, the spiritual had obtained the mastery; the temporal was little better than its servant.

From all quarters, and under all kinds of pretenses, streams of money were steadily flowing into Italy.  The temporal princes found that there were left for them inadequate and impoverished revenues.  Philip the Fair, King of France (A.D. 1300), not only determined to check this drain from his dominions, by prohibiting the export of gold and silver without his license; he also resolved that the clergy and the ecclesiastical estates should pay their share of taxes to him.  This brought on a mortal contest with the papacy.  The king was excommunicated, and, in retaliation, he accused the pope, Boniface VIII., of atheism; demanding that he should be tried by a general council.  He sent some trusty persons into Italy, who seized Boniface in his palace at Anagni, and treated him with so much severity, that in a few days he died.  The succeeding pontiff, Benedict XI., was poisoned.

The French king was determined that the papacy should be purified and reformed; that it should no longer be the appanage of a few Italian families, who were dexterously transmuting the credulity of Europe into coin—­that French influence should prevail in it.  He Therefore came to an understanding with the cardinals; a French archbishop was elevated to the pontificate; he took the name of Clement V. The papal court was removed to Avignon, in France, and Rome was abandoned as the metropolis of Christianity.

Moorish science introduced through France.  Seventy years elapsed before the papacy was restored to the Eternal City (A.D. 1376).  The diminution of its influence in the peninsula, that had thus occurred, gave opportunity for the memorable intellectual movement which soon manifested itself in the great commercial cities of Upper Italy.  Contemporaneously, also, there were other propitious events.  The result of the Crusades had shaken the faith of all Christendom.  In an age when the test of the ordeal of battle was universally accepted,