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.
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