“It is not insignificant that the Church, in the rare places and times when she had power to do so, did not compel the mind. During all that intense intellectual life of the thirteenth century instruction was by choice: endowed—so that the poorest could reach the highest inspiration, but at the choice of the individual or family will, to be taken or left.”

— Hilaire Belloc

Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. IV The Main Opposition (iii) The "Modern" Mind

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Hilaire Belloc 91

writer 1870–1953

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