His earliest enthusiasm was for the defence and exaltation of the
Catholic Faith, for the liberation of the Church from the bonds of
nationalism and Erastianism. Even those who repudiate altogether the
extreme Ultramontanism of De Maistre and De Lamennais must allow their
conception to be one of the boldest and grandest which has inspired the
mind of man. He realized more vividly than many that the cause of the
Church and of society, of Catholicism and humanity, were one and the
same. It was the very intensity and depth of his convictions that made
him so importunate in pressing them on others, so intolerant of delay,
so infuriated by opposition. For indeed nothing is more common than to
find a thousand selfishnesses co-existing and interfering with a
dominant unselfishness, lessening or totally destroying its fruitfulness
for good. A man who is unselfish enough to devote his fortune to charity
will not necessarily be free from faults which may more than undo the
good he proposes.

The same hastiness of thought which moved him to a wholesale,
indiscriminate condemnation of metaphysics, led him to conclude that
because hitherto no happy adjustment of the relations between Church and
State had been devised, there could be no remedy save in their total
severance. Doubtless such a severance would be better, if Gallicanism
were the only alternative; or if the Church's liberty and efficiency
were to be seriously curtailed. A superficial glance might fancy a
fundamental discrepancy in this matter, as well as in the questions of
toleration, and of the freedom of the press, between the official
teaching of Gregory XVI. and Pius IX., and that of Leo XIII. But a
closer inspection shows no alteration of principle, and only a
recognition of altered circumstances, either necessitating a connivance
at inevitable evils, or totally changing the aspect of the question. But