one private library.  From his talks with Alfieri, and from the pages of Plutarch, he had gained a certain insight into the Stoical view of reason as the measure of conduct, and of the inherent sufficiency of virtue as its own end.  He now learned that all about him men were endeavouring to restore the human spirit to that lost conception of its dignity; and he longed to join the band of new crusaders who had set out to recover the tomb of truth from the forces of superstition.  The distinguishing mark of eighteenth-century philosophy was its eagerness to convert its acquisitions in every branch of knowledge into instruments of practical beneficence; and this quality appealed peculiarly to Odo, who had ever been moved by abstract theories only as they explained or modified the destiny of man.  Vivaldi, pleased by his new pupil’s eagerness to learn, took pains to set before him this aspect of the struggle.

“You will now see,” he said, after one of their long talks about the Encyclopaedists, “why we who have at heart the mental and social regeneration of our countrymen are so desirous of making a concerted effort against the established system.  It is only by united action that we can prevail.  The bravest mob of independent fighters has little chance against a handful of disciplined soldiers, and the Church is perfectly logical in seeing her chief danger in the Encyclopaedia’s systematised marshalling of scattered truths.  As long as the attacks on her authority were isolated, and as it were sporadic, she had little to fear even from the assaults of genius; but the most ordinary intellect may find a use and become a power in the ranks of an organised opposition.  Seneca tells us the slaves in ancient Rome were at one time so numerous that the government prohibited their wearing a distinctive dress lest they should learn their strength and discover that the city was in their power; and the Church knows that when the countless spirits she has enslaved without subduing have once learned their number and efficiency they will hold her doctrines at their mercy.—­The Church again,” he continued, “has proved her astuteness in making faith the gift of grace and not the result of reason.  By so doing she placed herself in a position which was well-nigh impregnable till the school of Newton substituted observation for intuition and his followers showed with increasing clearness the inability of the human mind to apprehend anything outside the range of experience.  The ultimate claim of the Church rests on the hypothesis of an intuitive faculty in man.  Disprove the existence of this faculty, and reason must remain the supreme test of truth.  Against reason the fabric of theological doctrine cannot long hold out, and the Church’s doctrinal authority once shaken, men will no longer fear to test by ordinary rules the practical results of her teaching.  We have not joined the great army of truth to waste our time in vain disputations over metaphysical subtleties.