If, now, we demand, What has science done for the promotion of modern civilization; what has it done for the happiness, the well-being of society? we shall find our answer in the same manner that we reached a just estimate of what Latin Christianity had done.  The reader of the foregoing paragraphs would undoubtedly infer that there must have been an amelioration in the lot of our race; but, when we apply the touchstone of statistics, that inference gathers precision.  Systems of philosophy and forms of religion find a measure of their influence on humanity in census-returns.  Latin Christianity, in a thousand years, could not double the population of Europe; it did not add perceptibly to the term of individual life.  But, as Dr. Jarvis, in his report to the Massachusetts Board of Health, has stated, at the epoch of the Reformation “the average longevity in Geneva was 21.21 years, between 1814 and 1833 it was 40.68; as large a number of persons now live to seventy years as lived to forty, three hundred years ago.  In 1693 the British Government borrowed money by selling annuities on lives from infancy upward, on the basis of the average longevity.  The contract was profitable.  Ninety-seven years later another tontine, or scale of annuities, on the basis of the same expectation of life as in the previous century, was issued.  These latter annuitants, however, lived so much longer than their predecessors, that it proved to be a very costly loan for the government.  It was found that, while ten thousand of each sex in the first tontine died under the age of twenty-eight, only five thousand seven hundred and seventy-two males and six thousand four hundred and sixteen females in the second tontine died at the same age, one hundred years later.”

We have been comparing the spiritual with the practical, the imaginary with the real.  The maxims that have been followed in the earlier and the later period produced their inevitable result.  In the former that maxim was, “Ignorance is the mother of Devotion in the latter, “Knowledge is Power.”

CHAPTER XII.

The impending crisis.  Indications of the approach of a religious crisis.—­The predominating Christian Church, the Roman, perceives this, and makes preparation for it.—­Pius IX convokes an Oecumenical Council—­Relations of the different European governments to the papacy.—­Relations of the Church to Science, as indicated by the Encyclical Letter and the Syllabus.

Acts of the Vatican Council in relation to the infallibility of the pope, and to Science.—­Abstract of decisions arrived at.

Controversy between the Prussian Government and the papacy.—­It is a contest between the State and the Church for supremacy—­Effect of dual government in Europe—­Declaration by the Vatican Council of its position as to Science—­The dogmatic constitution of the Catholic faith.—­Its definitions respecting God, Revelation, Faith, Reason.—­The anathemas it pronounces.—­Its denunciation of modern civilization.