The very existence of these two great parties, the Ultramontane and the Secularist, over against each other, seems to be it kind of standing protest against either of them.

If Ultramontanism is true, how is it that so many wise and good men openly avow Secularism?
If 'Secularism is true, how is it that so many of the finest and highest minds take refuge from it--a treacherous refuge, I allow--in Ultramontanism?
There is something in this more than a mere defective syllogism--more than an insufficient presentation of the evidence.

Truth, in the widest sense, is that which is in accordance with the laws and conditions of human nature.

But where beliefs are so directly antithetical as they are here, the repugnance and resistance which each is found to cause in so large a number of minds is in itself a proof that those laws and conditions are insufficiently complied with.

To the spectator, standing outside of both, this will seem to be easily explained: the one sacrifices reason to faith; the other sacrifices faith to reason.