From the wider and more general considerations we may now presume to formulate in clearer and more precise terms what is here meant by the words Nature and Grace. In the modern vernacular they no longer at once offer to the mind the clear-cut idea they once represented when Catholic doctrine was more familar and more closely ingrained in the English mind. In the developing and perhaps changing philosophy of any given people, particular terms or words endure in current use; but gradually they are emptied of the significance that once charged them, and they are apt to become uncertain coin of exchange, particularly within the generation which marks the dissolution of a preceding era and the opening out upon new and uncertain adventures of the human spirit.