IN the time which follows the period of the great councils it will be convenient to consider the East separately from the West. Such a division is not a matter simply of order and system. For the characteristics of Eastern minds and of Eastern theology differ widely from those of the West. In the East till the ninth century there is more tendency to speculation, more power of theological instinct, more capacity for realising abstract truth. In the West there is a love of the concrete and the practically useful and efficient, a desire to make sharp distinctions and press alternatives, a fuller regard for considerations of common sense. And the controlling powers are different in these different part of the Church. In the East the authority of the Church as a whole, expressing its voice by means of conciliar decisions which the Christian community accepts and ratifies, continues to be a dominant force. In the West the government of the Church passes more and more into the hands of the Popes, though councils and the collective acceptance of doctrine continue to exist. In the East the power of the State over the Church reaches a degree which the position of the Papacy prevents in the West. In the East from the ninth century conservatism is stronger; and enterprise is greater in the West. Marked differences of character and general history, of which these are representative, necessarily affect the maintenance and development of particular doctrines, and among them of the Eucharist. And from at any rate the eighth century onwards the special form taken by the veneration of images in the East has had an important bearing on some matters connected with Eucharistic doctrine.