On the more artistic side of human life, it has done as much to impede the growth of the soul as Catholicism has done on the more intellectual side; and through its influence on character it has done as much to harden the fibre of the soul as Catholicism has done to relax it, the tendency of both religions being to destroy that elasticity of fibre which mediates between hardness and flabbiness, and which has its counterpart in vigorous health and strength.
The truth is--but it is a truth which Protestantism is apt to misinterpret, and which Catholicism finds it expedient to ignore--that religion is not a branch or department of human life, but a way of looking at life as a whole.

Indeed, it is of the essence of religion (as has been already suggested) that it should look at life as a whole, and so be able to look at each of its details in the light of that supreme synthesis which we call Divine.

And the religion which sanctions, and by its own action necessitates, the division of life into two branches--the secular and the religious--has obviously missed its destiny and betrayed its trust.
* * * * * A brief summary of the contents of this chapter will prepare the way for the next.

The movements of higher thought in the West have been dominated, nominally by the professional thinker, really by the average man.

As a thinker, the average man is incurably dualistic.
Enslaved as he is to the requirements of his instrument, language, he instinctively opposes mind to body, spirit to matter, good to evil, the Creator to the Creation, God to Man; and in each case he fixes a great gulf between the "mighty opposites" that constitute the given antithesis.