But there remain further parallelisms to which we have not yet adverted:  that, namely, between the processes by which these respective changes have been wrought out; and that between the several states of heterogeneous opinion to which they have led.  Some centuries ago there was uniformity of belief—­religious, political, and educational.  All men were Romanists, all were Monarchists, all were disciples of Aristotle; and no one thought of calling in question that grammar-school routine under which all were brought up.  The same agency has in each case replaced this uniformity by a constantly-increasing diversity.  That tendency towards assertion of the individuality, which, after contributing to produce the great Protestant movement, has since gone on to produce an ever-increasing number of sects—­that tendency which initiated political parties, and out of the two primary ones has, in these modern days, evolved a multiplicity to which every year adds—­that tendency which led to the Baconian rebellion against the schools, and has since originated here and abroad, sundry new systems of thought—­is a tendency which, in education also, has caused divisions and the accumulation of methods.  As external consequences of the same internal change, these processes have necessarily been more or less simultaneous.  The decline of authority, whether papal, philosophic, kingly, or tutorial, is essentially one phenomenon; in each of its aspects a leaning towards free action is seen alike in the working out of the change itself, and in the new forms of theory and practice to which the change has given birth.

While many will regret this multiplication of schemes of juvenile culture, the catholic observer will discern in it a means of ensuring the final establishment of a rational system.  Whatever may be thought of theological dissent, it is clear that dissent in education results in facilitating inquiry by the division in labour.  Were we in possession of the true method, divergence from it would, of course, be prejudicial; but the true method having to be found, the efforts of numerous independent seekers carrying out their researches in different directions, constitute a better agency for finding it than any that could be devised.  Each of them struck by some new thought which probably contains more or less of basis in facts—­each of them zealous on behalf of his plan, fertile in expedients to test its correctness, and untiring in his efforts to make known its success—­each of them merciless in his criticism on the rest; there cannot fail, by composition of forces, to be a gradual approximation of all towards the right course.  Whatever portion of the normal method any one has discovered, must, by the constant exhibition of its results, force itself into adoption; whatever wrong practices he has joined with it must, by repeated experiment and failure, be exploded.  And by this aggregation of truths and elimination of errors, there must eventually