Note 219 — Front matter (continued 5)

It may well be, indeed, that in all ages the actual sum of immorality, broadly considered—in public and in private, in thought and in act—undergoes but slight oscillations. But in the nature of its manifestations and in the nature of the manifestations that accompany it, there may be immense fluctuations. Tarde, the distinguished thinker, referring to the "delicious Catholicism" of the days before Luther, asks: "If that amiable Christian evolution had peacefully continued to our days, should we be still more immoral than we are? It is doubtful, but in all probability we should be enjoying the most æsthetic and the least vexatious religion in the world, in which all our science, all our civilization, would have been free to progress" (Tarde, La Logique Sociale, p. 198). As has often been pointed out, it was along the lines indicated by Erasmus, rather than along the lines pursued by Luther, that the progress of civilization lay.