De Lamennais should have learnt from his own teaching that liberty does
not mean the independence of isolation, but the full enjoyment of all
the means necessary for perfect self-development; that it does not mean
the weakness of dissociation, but the strength of a perfectly organized
association for mutual help and protection. And this holds good, not for
individuals alone, but for societies, and for Church and State. Aiming
at one common end, the perfection of humanity, they cannot but gain by
association and lose by dissociation. Each is weaker even, in its own
sphere, apart from the other. It is an unreal abstraction that splits
man into two beings--a body and a soul; that draws a clean,
hard-and-fast line between his temporal and eternal welfare; that
commits the former interest to one society, the latter to another,
absolutely distinct and unconnected. But all this holds true only in the
hypothesis of a nation of Christians or Theists.

When a large fraction of the community has ceased to believe in
Christianity and the Church, the demands of justice and reason are
different. It may well be allowed that, to determine the exact relation
of the Catholic Church and Christian State, and the law of their
organization into one complex society, is a problem for whose perfect
solution we must wait the further development of the ideas of
ecclesiastical and civil society. But to wait for growth of subjective
truth was just what De Lamennais could not do. He saw that past
solutions of the problem had been unsuccessful; that in most cases the
Church was eventually drawn into bondage under the State as its creature
and instrument in the cause of tyranny and oppression; that it was
insensibly permeated with the local and national spirit, differentiated
from Catholic Christendom, and severed from the full influence of its
head, the Vicar of Christ. The independence of the Church he rightly
judged to be the great safeguard of the people against the tyranny of