{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_60602/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_60602","id":"gutenberg_60602","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60602","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity","Philosophy and religion","Religious thought -- 19th century"],"text":"[Transcriber's note: This production is based on\nhttps://archive.org/details/meditationsonact00guiz/page/n6.]\n\n{1}\n              Meditations\n\n     Actual State Of Christianity,\n\n          And On The Attacks\n\n     Which Are Now Being Made Upon It.\n\n\n\n               By M. Guizot.\n\n\n\n\n   Translated Under The Superintendence\n\t     Of The Author\n\n\n\n\n               New York:\n         Charles Scribner & Co.,\n\n             654 Broadway.\n\n{2}\n\n{3}\n\n                Preface.\n\n\nWhen I published, two years ago, the first series of these\n_Meditations_, the series which had for its object the\nessence of Christianity, \"that is to say, the natural problems to\nwhich Christianity is the answer, the fundamental dogmas by which\nit solves those problems, and the supernatural facts upon which\nthose dogmas repose,\" I indicated the general plan of the work\nwhich I so commenced, and the order into which its different\nparts would be distributed.\n\n\"Next to the essence of the Christian Religion,\" I said in my\nPreface, \"comes its history; and this will be the subject of a\nsecond series of _Meditations_, in which I shall examine the\nauthenticity of the Scriptures; the primary causes of the\nfoundation of Christianity;\n{4}\nChristian faith, as it has always existed throughout its\ndifferent ages and in spite of all its vicissitudes; the great\nreligious crisis in the sixteenth century, which divided the\nChurch and Europe between Romanism and Protestantism; finally,\nthose antichristian crises which, at different epochs and in\ndifferent countries, have set in question and imperiled\nChristianity itself, but which dangers it has ever surmounted.\nThe third series of _Meditations_ will be consecrated to the\nstudy of the actual state of the Christian religion, its internal\nand external condition. I shall retrace the regeneration of\nChristianity which occurred among us at the commencement of the\nnineteenth century, both in the Church of Rome and in the\nProtestant Churches; the impulse imparted to it at the same epoch\nby the Spiritualistic Philosophy that then began again to\nflourish, and the movement in the contrary direction which showed\nitself very remarkably soon afterward in the resurrection of\nMaterialism, of Pantheism, of Skepticism, and in works of\nhistorical criticism.\n{5}\nI shall attempt to determine the idea, and consequently, in my\nopinion, the fundamental error of these different systems, the\navowed and active enemies of Christianity. Finally, in the fourth\nseries of these _Meditations_, I shall endeavor to\ndiscriminate and to characterize the future destiny of the\nChristian religion, and to indicate by what course it is called\nupon to conquer completely, and to sway morally, this little\ncorner of the universe, termed by us our earth, in which unfold\nthemselves the designs and power of God, just as, doubtless, they\ndo in an infinity of worlds unknown to us.\"\n\nStill adhering in its entirety to the plan which I thus proposed,\nI nevertheless now invert the order. I publish the\n_Meditations_ concerning the actual state of Christianity\nbefore those which propose for their object its history. I am\nstruck by two circumstances in the actual state of opinions upon\nreligious questions. On the one side, the sentiments contrary to\nor favorable to Christianity are defining themselves each day\nwith greater precision.\n{6}\nBeliefs become firmer beliefs; opinions hostile to them receive\nfuller developments. On the other side, vacillating minds are\noccupying themselves more and more with the struggle to which\nthey are witnesses: minds, earnest at once and sincere, feel the\ndisturbing influence of the doctrines hostile to Christianity;\nmany again are uneasy at these doctrines, many demand a refuge\nfrom them, without finding it or daring to seek it in the\nessential facts and principles of the Christian faith. Between\nthe adversaries of Christianity and its defenders the discussion\ngrows each day in importance and gravity; and with it also grows\nthe perplexity in the minds of the spectators. By setting in full\nlight this actual state of the Christian religion, by comparing\nthe forces at its disposal with those of the systems that it\ncombats, I proceed thither where the emergency is the greatest; I\nbetake myself at once to the very field of battle. I shall\nafterward resume the history of Christianity from its first\nestablishment down to our own time, and then finally consider the\nprospect open to it in the future.\n\n{7}\n\nI regard with very complicated feelings, with feelings of great\nperplexity, the actual state of my country; its intellectual and\nmoral state as well as its social and its political state. I have\na mind full at once of confidence and of disquietude, of hope and\nof alarm. Whether for good or for evil, the crisis in which the\ncivilized world is plunged is infinitely more serious than our\nfathers predicted it would be; more so than even we, who are\nalready experiencing from it the most different consequences,\nbelieve it ourselves to be. Sublime truths, excellent principles,\nare intrinsically blended with ideas essentially false and\nperverse. A noble work of progress, a hideous work of\ndestruction, are in operation simultaneously in men's opinions\nand in society. Humanity never so floated between heaven and the\nabyss. It is especially when I regard the generation now\nadvancing, when I hear what they affirm, when I gather a hint of\nwhat they desire and hope for, it is especially then that I feel\nat once sympathy and anxiety.\n{8}\nSentiments of propriety and of generosity abound in those young\nhearts; they reject, when once convinced of their justice,\nneither the ideas which they before did not admit, nor the curb\nto which by the inspiration of the divine law even human ambition\ndoes not refuse to submit; but by a strange and deplorable\namalgam, good instincts and evil tendencies exist in them\nsimultaneously; ideas the least reconcilable clash together, and\npersist in them at the same time. The Truth does not rid them of\nthe error; a light indeed shines upon them, but out of a chaotic\ndarkness which that light has not the power to dissipate.\n\nIn the presence of this condition of men's minds, under the\nimpulse of the sentiment which it inspires, I publish this second\nseries of _Meditations_.\n{9}\nIn touching upon the great questions at present under debate in\nthe philosophical world, in expressing my opinion concerning\nRationalism, Positivism, Pantheism, Materialism, Skepticism, I\nhave not for a moment pretended to discuss these different\nsystems completely and scientifically. Although I am convinced\nthat they are no more in a condition to support any profound\nexamination of severe reason than to stand the first regard of\ncommon sense, the object which I propose to myself is to indicate\nonly their radical and incurable vice. This is no treatise of\nMetaphysics; it is only an appeal addressed to upright and\nindependent minds; an appeal made to induce them to subject\nscience to the test of the human conscience, and to regard with\ndistrust systems, which, in the name of a pretended scientific\ntruth, would, between the intellectual order and the moral order,\nbetween the thought and the life of man, destroy the harmony\nestablished by the law of God.\n\n    Guizot.\n    Val-Richer, _April_, 1866.\n\n{10}\n{11}\n               Contents.\n\n\n\n                                            Page\n\n      Preface                                  3\n\nI.    The Awakening Of Christianity In\n      France In The Nineteenth Century        13\n\nII.   Spiritualism                           218\n\nIII.  Rationalism                            245\n\nIV.   Positivism                             267\n\nV.    Pantheism                              310\n\nVI.   Materialism                            330\n\nVII.  Skepticism                             350\n\nVIII. Impiety, Recklessness, And Perplexity  369\n\n{12}\n\n{13}\n\n     Meditations On The Actual State Of\n\n         The Christian Religion.\n\n\n\n\n          First Meditation.\n\n\n    The Awakening Of Christianity In\n    France In The Nineteenth Century.\n\n\nIn 1797, La R\u00e9veilli\u00e8re-L\u00e9peaux, one of the five Directors who\nthen constituted the government of France, having just read to\nthat class of the Institut [Footnote 1] of which he was a member\na memorial respecting Theophilanthropism, and the forms suitable\nfor this new worship, consulted Talleyrand upon the subject; the\nlatter replied, \"I have but a single observation to make: Jesus\nChrist, to found his religion, suffered himself to be crucified,\nand he rose again. You should try to do as much.\"\n\n    [Footnote 1: The class of moral and political sciences.]\n\n{14}\n\nNor was it long before events justified the ironical counsel. In\n1802, hardly four years afterward, Theophilanthropism and its\napostle, the dream and the dreamer, had disappeared from the\nstage where they had been powerless in influence, barren in\nconsequence. The strong hand of Napoleon again solemnly set up in\nFrance the religion of Christ crucified and Christ risen, and in\nthat same year the brilliant genius of Chateaubriand again placed\nbefore the eyes of his countrymen the beauties of Christianity.\nThe great politician and the great writer bowed each of them\nbefore the Cross; the Cross was the point from which each\nstarted--the one to reconstruct the Christian Church in France,\nthe other to prove how capable a Christian writer is of charming\nFrench society and of stirring its emotions.\n\n{15}\n\nIn these days, and in some parts of Christendom, the Concordat\nand the \"G\u00e9nie du Christianisme,\" the one as a political\ninstitution, the other as a literary production, have lost\nsomething of their vogue. Catholics, zealous and sincere,\ncriticise severely the defects of the Concordat; they regard it\nas sometimes incomplete, sometimes tyrannical: they reproach it\nwith assailing the rights of religious society, of paralyzing its\ninfluence, and restricting its liberty. Some go so far as to\nexpress wishes for the separation of Church and State, and for\ntheir entire independence of each other, the only certain\nguarantee to either, they affirm, of a real moral influence.\nProtestants, equally zealous and sincere, entertain the same\nopinions and the same wishes. Not contented with this, the latter\nhave gone further, and acted; they have separated themselves from\nthe Protestant Church recognized by the State, and have founded\nindependent Churches, self-governing and self-sufficing; nor have\nthey demanded anything from the State but the liberty that is\nevery citizen's due.\n{16}\nIn a work recently published, [Footnote 2] a pastor of one of\nthese Churches, a man distinguished both by the elevation of his\nmind and the generosity of his sentiments, M. Edmond de\nPressens\u00e9, has gone still farther.\n\n    [Footnote 2: L'\u00c9glise et la Revolution fran\u00e7aise,\n    histoire des relations de l'\u00c9glise et de l'\u00c9tat,\n    de 1789-1802. 8vo. 1864.]\n\nNot content with defending the principle of the separation of\nChurch and State, he has endeavored to prove that, in 1802, the\nConcordat was, on the part of Napoleon, simply an act of tyranny\nand ambition; that it was, as far as Christianity is concerned,\nan untoward incident; and that if the Christian Church, at the\ntime spontaneously regenerating itself, had been left free and\nuncontrolled, it would have risen by its own proper strength, and\nwould have grown in influence and in faith far more than the\nConcordat has permitted it to do. I am far from proposing to\ndiscuss here, as a general proposition, the system of separation\nof Church and State, or its worth in a religious or social point\nof view;\n{17}\nsuch a system I do not regard as the ideal of religious society:\nthe co-existence, I would rather say the competition, of Churches\nrecognized by the State and of Dissenting Churches independently\nconstituting themselves and self-sufficing, is, in my opinion,\nthe system most in conformity with the nature of things, and most\nfavorable to the solidity and general efficiency of religion.\nThat is a question rather of epoch, time, manners, and social\ncondition than of principle. But, however this may be, I hold it\nas certain that, in 1802, the Concordat was, on the part of\nNapoleon, far more an act of superior sagacity than of arbitrary\npower, and that it was for the Christian religion in France an\nevent as salutary as necessary. After the anarchy and the orgies\nof the Revolution, nothing but the solemn recognition of\nChristianity by the State could have given satisfaction to the\npublic sentiment, and insured to the religion of Christ the\ndignity and the stability, the recovery of which was so essential\nto its influence.\n{18}\nNothing is more liable to error than an attempt to appreciate,\nwith reference to present circumstances and the actual condition\nof men's minds, what was possible and good sixty years ago; and I\nam convinced, that in spite of his zeal for the separation of\nChurch and State, M. Edmond de Pressens\u00e9, had he lived in 1802,\nwould have been as little satisfied as France herself with a\nChristian Church restored in accordance with the plan of the Abbe\nGr\u00e9goire, The Concordat was a mixed and imperfect measure,\nsubject to grave objections, and the source of numberless\ndifficulties; but, taken altogether, the measure was grand and\nsalutary; it gave at once to the Christian movement a sanction\nand an impulse that no other scheme would have been capable of\nimparting.\n\nM. de Chateaubriand and the \"G\u00e9nie du Christianisme\" are entitled\nto the same justice. I am ready, with regard to both book and\nauthor, to concede the truth of all the objections and of all the\ndefects that the severest critic may be able or may wish to\ndetect; their grand and salutary action will not be the less a\nliving fact.\n{19}\nIt is with books as it is with men; it is by their qualities,\nwhatever their faults, that they command position and exercise\nsway, and wherever superior qualities are discernible, their\nefficacy remains in spite of any faults, in spite of any defects,\nby which they may be accompanied. Notwithstanding its\nimperfections in a religious and literary point of view, the\n\"G\u00e9nie du Christianisme\" was in both these respects a performance\nat the same time remarkable and powerful: it strongly moved men's\nminds, it gave a fresh impulse to men's imaginations, it\nreanimated and placed in their proper rank the traditions and the\nearly impressions of Christianity. No criticism, however\nlegitimate, can ever deprive that work of the place that it at\nonce assumed in the religious and the literary history of its\ntime and country.\n{20}\nNeither the Concordat nor the \"G\u00e9nie du Christianisme\" was, in\n1802, the result of a spirit of blind and barren reaction.\nNapoleon and Chateaubriand were both, of them hardy innovators.\nAt the side of the ancient religion which he re-established,\nNapoleon firmly maintained also the liberty of conscience,\nwhether in matters of worship or philosophy. At the very instant\nwhen the Concordat was proclaimed and the \"G\u00e9nie du\nChristianisme\" was published, the learned physiologist, Cabanis,\nalso published his treatise on the relations of man's physical\nand moral nature, a work which characterized man as a mere\nmachine. And in recalling France to an admiration of the beauties\nof Christian literature, Chateaubriand imaged them to her in\nforms of language so novel and so original, that many among the\nsevere guardians of the French language treated him as an\noutrageous and barbarous writer. A new era opened at this epoch\nin France for religion and for literature.\n{21}\nChristianity and systems opposed to Christianity, Roman\nCatholicism, Protestantism, and Philosophy, a taste for classics,\nand a tendency to romanticism, unfolded themselves\nsimultaneously, surprised to be living together, and at the same\ntime encountering one another as ardent combatants.\n\nI have no design to retrace here their contests nor to constitute\nmyself their judge. Let but a great arena be thrown open, and the\ncrowd rushes in, carrying with it its confusion and its buzz.\nHappily, the tumult is not of long duration. In this mighty\nmovement of men's minds in France at the commencement of the\nnineteenth century I occupy myself with a single grand fact--the\nAwakening of Christianity, its different characteristics, its\ndifferent results. The crisis itself had illustrious witnesses. I\nwill interrogate these alone.\n\nAfter Napoleon and Chateaubriand, the first whom I meet with are\ntwo Catholic writers, who have left behind them great and\ndeserved reputations. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre hoisted the\nbanner of Christianity valiantly, and at an early date.\n{22}\nBut their ideas and their writings were rather political than\nreligious: the exigencies of public order occupied their\nattention far more than those of man's soul, and their works were\nrather attacks upon the French Revolution than a defense of the\nfaith of Christians. By a coincidence very remarkable, although\nat the same time very natural, the first production of each--\"The\nTheory of Power,\" by M. de Bonald, and the \"Considerations on\nFrance,\" by M. de Maistre--was published at the same moment, in\n1796, and each in a foreign land, where the authors were living\nas emigrants. In the first ardor of the reaction, and with the\nimpassioned and vague feelings that it suggested, each wrote\nagainst the Revolution that shook the world and wrecked his own\nfortunes. Potent intelligences both, profound moralists, eminent\nwriters; but their philosophy is a philosophy of circumstance and\nof party. Their theories they use as arms; their books as a\ndischarge.\n{23}\nM. de Bonald is a lofty-minded original thinker, but subtle, too,\nand complex; disposed to content himself with verbal combinations\nand distinctions, and sparing no labor to contrive his vast web\nof arguments proper to entrap the unwary adversary. M. de\nMaistre, on the contrary, blasts him with the absoluteness of his\nassertion, the poignancy of his irony, the rude eloquence of his\ninvectives. He is a powerful, a charming extemporizer. Both of\nthem excel in seizing and presenting in a striking manner one\ngreat side, but only one of the great sides, in questions or\nmeasures. They see not these in their variety and in their\nentirety. Combatants approved--the one tenacious, the other\nimpetuous--they both committed two grave faults: they instituted\na closer bond between statesmanship and religion than is proper\nor suitable to either; they could not discover any other remedy\nfor anarchy than absolutism. In the natural and never-ending\nconflict of the two great forces whose co-existence imparts vital\nenergy to human society--authority and liberty--they declared for\nthe former alone, thus ignoring the right of thought, the spirit\nof our times, and the general course of Christian civilization.\n{24}\nWhen attacked in her essence, Religion should be defended as she\nwas founded, in herself and for herself, setting aside every\npolitical consideration, and in the name alone of the problems\nwhich lay siege to man's soul, and of the relations of man's soul\nwith God. \"Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and\nunto God the things that are God's,\" said Jesus to the Pharisees\nwhen they sought to embarrass and to compromise him politically.\nThus did Jesus himself define the proper and paramount\ncharacteristic of his work. He did not come to destroy or to\nfound any government; he came to feed, to regulate, and to save\nthe human soul, leaving to time and to the natural efficacy of\nevents the development of the social consequence of his religious\nfaith and of his religious law. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre\njoined too often together God and Cesar.\n{25}\nThey thought too much of Cesar while defending God. In doing this\nthey changed and compromised the character of that great\nmovement, the Awakening of Christianity, which their conduct\notherwise provoked and served. [Footnote 3]\n\n    [Footnote 3: \"The dead move quick,\" says the poet Burger in\n    his ballad of Leonora. The men and the books I record died at\n    a period already distant from us; and in spite of their fame\n    that abides, they are probably little known to the generation\n    at present in possession of the stage. I regard it,\n    therefore, as not improper for me to mention below the titles\n    of their principal works, of which I have in the text sought\n    to determine the true character.\n\n    Those of M. de Bonald are:\n\n    1. La Th\u00e9orie du pouvoir politique et religieux. 3 vols. 8vo.\n    Constance: 1796.\n\n    2. La L\u00e9gislation. primitive. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1821.\n\n    3. L'Essai sur le divorce. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris.\n\n    4. Les Recherches philosophique. 2 vols. 8vo. 1818 and 1826.\n\n    5. Les M\u00e9langes litt\u00e9raires et politiques. 2 vols. 8vo.\n\n    6. Pens\u00e9es et discours. 2 vols. 8vo.\n\n    All these writings, with some others, have been collected in\n    the complete edition of the works of M. de Bonald, in seven\n    volumes. 8vo. Paris: 1854.\n\n    The principal works of M. de Maistre are:\n\n    1. Considerations sur la France. 1 vol. 8vo. 1796.\n\n    2. Essai sur le principe g\u00e9n\u00e9rateur des constitutions\n    politiques et des autres institutions humaines. 1 vol. 8vo.\n    1810.\n\n    3. Du Pape. 2 vols. 8vo. 1819.]\n\n    4. De l'\u00c9glise gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain\n    pontife. 8vo. 1821.\n\n    5. Examen de la philosophic de Bacon. 2 vols. 8vo. 1836.\n\n    6. Soir\u00e9es de Saint-P\u00e9tersbourg. 2 vols. 8vo.\n\n    7. Lettres et opuscules in\u00e9dits. 2 vols. 8vo. 1851.\n\n    8. M\u00e9moires politiques et correspondance du comte de\n    Maistre, publi\u00e9s par M. Albert Blanc. 2 vols. 8vo. 1858.\n\n{26}\n\nAfter these two great writers, another great writer, (shall I\nterm him Catholic?) the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais, placed himself upon\nthe same path, but to arrive at a very different issue. He, too,\nmade authority alone the basis of man's faith and of human\nsociety; but seeking to ascertain the sign which distinguishes\nlegitimate authority, and which entitles it to unarguing\nsubmission, he fixed this sign in the general and traditional\nassent of mankind. \"The common consent or authority,\n_there_,\" said he, \"we find the natural rule of our\njudgment; and what but folly can reject that rule, and listen to\nits own reason in preference to the reason of all? ... The search\nfor certitude is the search for a reason not liable to error at\nall, that is, for a reason that is infallible.\n{27}\nNow this infallible reason must necessarily be either the reason\nof each individual or the reason of all men; in fact, of human\nreason. It is not the reason of each individual, for men\ncontradict one another, and nothing frequently is more discordant\nand more contradictory than their judgments; therefore it is the\nreason of all.\" [Footnote 4]\n\n    [Footnote 4: Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rence en mati\u00e9re de religion,\n    t. ii, p. 59. D\u00e9fense de l'Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rence, chap. x,\n    pp. 133-148.]\n\nIn holding this language in his very first work, the Abb\u00e9 de la\nMennais was already forgetting that he was a Christian and a\nCatholic. When a man demands here below an infallible authority,\nhe must not seek it from any human source. The reason of all?\n(That is, the reason of the majority of men in all the ages of\nthe world, for the reason of _all_ is a fallacy.) What is\nsuch reason, but the sovereignty of superior numbers in the\nspiritual order? Having fixed his principle, the Abb\u00e9 de la\nMennais kept it in sight everywhere. After having established an\ninfallible authority in the name of the reason of all, he\nproclaimed the absolute sovereignty in the name of universal\nsuffrage.\n{28}\nBut this apostle of universal reason was at the same time the\nproudest worshiper of his own reason. Under the pressure of\nevents without, and of an ardent controversy, a transformation\ntook place in him, marked at once by its logical deductions and\nits moral inconsistency: he changed his camp without changing his\nprinciples; in the attempt to lead the supreme authority of his\nChurch to admit his principles he had failed; and from that\ninstant the very spirit of revolt that he had so severely rebuked\nbroke loose in his soul and in his writings, finding expression\nat one time in an indignation full of hatred leveled at the\npowerful, the rich, and the fortunate ones of the world; at\nanother time in a tender sympathy for the miseries of humanity.\nThe \"Words of a Believer\" are the eloquent outburst of this\ntumult in his soul. Plunged in the chaos of sentiments the most\ncontradictory, and yet claiming to be always consistent with\nhimself, the champion of authority became in the State the most\nbaited of democrats, and in the Church the haughtiest of rebels.\n\n{29}\n\nIt is not without sorrow that I thus express my unreserved\nopinion of a man of superior talent--mind lofty, soul intense; a\nman in the sequel profoundly sad himself, although haughty in his\nvery fall. One cannot read in their stormy succession the\nnumerous writings of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais without recognizing\nin them traces, I will not say of his intellectual\nperplexities--his pride did not feel them--but of the sufferings\nof his soul, whether for good or for evil. A noble nature, but\nfull of exaggeration in his opinions, of fanatical arrogance, and\nof angry asperity in his polemics. One title to our gratitude\nremains to the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais--he thundered to purpose\nagainst the gross and vulgar forgetfulness of the great moral\ninterests of humanity. His essay on indifference in religious\nquestions inflicted a rude blow upon that vice of the time, and\nrecalled men's souls to regions above.\n{30}\nAnd thus it was that he, too, rendered service to the great\nmovement and awakening of Christians in the nineteenth century,\nand that he merits his place in that movement although he\ndeserted it. [Footnote 5]\n\n    [Footnote 5: The principal works of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais\n    are:\n\n    1. L'Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rence en mati\u00e8re de religion, avec la\n    d\u00e9fense de l'Essai. 5 vols. 8vo. The first volume appeared in\n    1817.\n\n    2. De la Religion consid\u00e9r\u00e9e dans ses rapports avec l'ordre\n    civil et politique. 1 vol. 8vo. 1825.\n\n    3. Les Paroles d'un Croyant. 8vo. 1834.\n\n    4. Les Affaires de Rome. 8vo. 1836.\n\n    5. Esquisse d'une philosophic. 4 vols. 8vo. 1841-1846. All\n    his works, including numerous pamphlets and articles\n    published in religious and political journals, have been\n    collected in two editions: one in 12 vols. 8vo., 1836-1837;\n    the other in 11 vols. 8vo., 1844 and following years. Besides\n    the above, there are his Posthumous Works, 2 vols. 8vo.,\n    1856, and his Correspondence, 2 vols. 8vo., 1858.]\n\nAt the same time that great minds were thus at work in order to\nrestore to the belief in Christianity and the belief in\nCatholicism its honor and its authority, another influence was\noperating in the same direction, with less notoriety but no less\neffect.\n{31}\nThe Jesuits were re-establishing themselves in France--were\nfounding houses of education and noviciates for their order--were\nopening chapels, preaching, teaching, careless of the existence\nin France of laws proscribing them; occupying themselves solely\nwith fulfilling what they regarded as a duty, and a duty, too,\nspringing from a right believed by them to be superior to the\nlaws. That duty for them was to uphold the Church of Rome; that\nright was the right of preaching and teaching, according to the\nfaith of the Church. The Jesuits have also been considered and\nrepresented as politicians in the garb of monks, rather than\ngenuine members of the monastic orders. Often, in effect, in\ntheir acts and in their words, they have appeared as politicians,\nand politicians, too, with a certain indulgence for the world and\nthe world's masters; but, at bottom, they have been and they are\nessentially monastic--an order perhaps the most ardent of all,\nfor they are of all orders the order most completely devoted to\nthe cause of religious authority.\n\n{32}\n\nThere are commonplaces that have to be continually repeated, so\napt are men to forget them. In religions society, as well as in\ncivil society, there are two great moral forces--Authority and\nLiberty; these coexist of necessity--have dominion turn by turn,\nand have alternately their heroes and their martyrs. Regarded\neither with respect to its political or religious constitution,\nsociety cannot long dispense with either Authority or with\nLiberty; and each of these two forces is liable to abuse its\ninfluence, and to lose it by the very abuse.\n\nWhen Authority has had a long dominion, and its abuse too has\nbeen long, a reaction occurs: Liberty has her revenge; but in her\nturn is prone to compromise her interests by abuses and by\nexcess. It is the history of all human society; facts prove it\nquite as much as common sense foretells it. In the bosom of this\ngeneral fact it is the peculiar character, as it is the glory, of\nChristianity that it has fully accepted these two rival forces;\nand the one in the face of the other--authority and\nliberty--both of divine origin.\n{33}\nChristianity has constantly accounted them for such as they\nare--the one the revealed law of God, the other the innate right of\nman, whom God created free and responsible. The history of the\nJews is only that of the intimate and continued relations between\nGod as sovereign and man as free agent; God uttering and giving\nthe law, man using his liberty at one time to fulfill, at another\nto reject, the law of God. When the great day of humanity dawned\nand Jesus came, it was in liberty's name, and in claiming the\nright of the soul to obey the divine law according to its\nconvictions, that Christianity engaged in its primitive struggle\nof three centuries. Under this banner, too, it conquered, and\nunder it religious society and civil society combined without\nbecoming identical. The tempestuous and painful fecundity of the\nmiddle ages succeeded to the tyrannical unity of the Roman\nempire, so sterile in result.\n{34}\nHence principles the most inconsistent, issues the most\ncontradictory--the power of religion and the power of the\nstate--popes and kings now supporting, now combating each other's\nambitious purposes, and thwarting each other's measures, without\nany regard to law or right; liberty sometimes suffering cruelly\nby their alliance, sometimes happily profiting by their\ndissensions; on some occasions popes, on others monarchs\nprotecting liberty against their reciprocal pretensions and\nexcesses. Spiritual and temporal princes still wavered in their\nmaxims and in their policy, and did not during the middle ages\nsystematically and on all occasions form coalitions, of which\nliberty was to pay the cost. Liberty, on the contrary, continued\nto subsist and to grow in the midst of their rivalries and of her\nown sufferings. But these rivalries and these sufferings produced\na chaos which recurred incessantly, and became ever more and more\nintolerable, precisely on account of the progress still made, and\nwhich no effort could stifle.\n{35}\nThe great body of Christians at last demanded some issue from\nthis chaos; then those who wielded the religious power and the\ncivil power, now separately, now in concert, endeavored to\nsatisfy the craving of the world; and by their councils,\npragmatic sanctions, encyclical letters and concordats, sought to\nreform the abuses and the grievances which, as men loudly\nproclaimed, existed, if not in the Church itself, at least in the\nrelations of the Church with the State. Whether from want of\nwisdom, virtue, courage, or sagacity in their authors, or from\ntheir measures being too superficial, or meeting with too much\nopposition, those attempts failed; and the reform that was to\nhave proceeded from Authority herself remained without\naccomplishment. Then came the reform by insurrection, in the name\nof Faith and Liberty; and as happens in similar crises, whether\nof the Church or the State, the supreme authority of Romanism was\nattacked, not only in its abuses and its vices, but in its\nprinciple and its very existence.\n{36}\nRome then committed the fault almost always committed by Power\nwhen seriously menaced--it defended itself by pushing its\nprinciple and its right to the extreme, without holding account\nof any other principle or of any other right. In the name of\nUnity and Infallibility in matters of faith, the supreme power in\nthe Church of Rome allied itself with the absolute power in the\nState, and supported the latter in its resistance to liberty.\nUnder the inspiration of their founder and hero, Loyola, whose\ngenius was that of a fanatic and a mystic, but who was adroit in\norganizing and realizing his design, the order of the Jesuits\nsprung into existence. This order was born of this war and for\nthis war--a chosen troop, charged in the name of the faith to be\nthe uncompromising defenders of authority in Church and in State.\n\n{37}\n\nSince that epoch three centuries have passed, and the fourth is\nin its turn sweeping by us; neither times nor chances have been\nwanting to causes to produce their effects, nor to men to\naccomplish their designs; principles and events have received\ntheir development over a vast space; and in the light of heaven\nthe different systems have been put to the test of successes and\nof reverses. Absolutism has had its triumphs and its victories;\nmore than once the faults of its adversaries have played into its\nhands, and it has found able and glorious champions. It has not\nsucceeded in arresting the course of a civilization full of\nliberty and yet still greedy to have more. It has taken its place\nin the midst of liberty as a temporary necessity, never as a\npreponderating tendency. More than this, even in the epochs when\nits influence was its height, and its splendor the greatest,\nAbsolutism has often served the cause hostile to its own. Louis\nXIV. seconded the movement of mind and the people's progress;\nNapoleon sowed in every direction the germs of social advancement\nor innovation.\n{38}\nAnd now, even there, where liberty does not exist, Absolutism\ndoes not avow itself; it furls its banner, and admits\ninstitutions contrary to its principles, reserving to itself the\nright to elude, or to render them powerless. Experience has\npronounced its judgment; whatever the problems that the future\nwill have to solve, or the trials which the future will have to\nencounter, the cause of Absolutism is a lost cause throughout\nChristendom.\n\nAt the commencement of this century, the Jesuits, unfortunately\nfor them, and yet very naturally, were regarded as devoted to\nthat cause. After having served it in the eighteenth century,\nthey had been the first victims of its decline; the papal and the\nmonarchical sovereignty had sacrificed them to the new opinions,\njust as mariners in a tempest throw overboard their heavy\nordnance. When the nineteenth century opened, all was greatly\nchanged; the Revolution was not only victorious, but earnestly\nengaged in conciliating parties by disavowing and making amends\nfor its excesses. After the commission of so many follies and\ncrimes in the pursuit of liberty, France submitted once more with\nthe greatest satisfaction to the voice of authority.\n\n{39}\n\nHow would they then reconstruct that French policy that had been\nat once so overthrown and so regenerated? By what means would\nthey conciliate new and ancient ideas, new and ancient interests?\nUpon what terms would Authority and Liberty consent to be\nreconciled, and to live henceforth side by side--Authority\nsoaring triumphant after her fall, Liberty embarrassed with her\nrecent excesses; and yet both of them more than ever necessary to\nsociety, if society was to be healthy and strong? This was\nevidently the vital question of the new century. God placed its\nsolution at first in the hands of Napoleon, the crown and the\nscourge of the Revolution, the most remarkable example at once of\nreaction and of progress recorded in the history of the world.\n\n{40}\n\nIn this condition, so new to France, the situation of the Jesuits\nwas embarrassing and perilous. Napoleon was again re-establishing\nthe Church of Rome, and at the same time enforcing the maxims of\nAbsolutism--a double title to their sympathy. On the other hand,\nhe was consolidating the Revolution, and maintaining and putting\ninto practice some of its essential principles, among others,\nthat of freedom of conscience. Napoleon arrogated also to himself\nthe right of dictating and acting as master in the Church as in\nthe State, at Rome as at Paris; he was neither a serious believer\nin the faith of Christ nor a sure friend of the Papacy. In this\ntwofold aspect, the Jesuits could not but regard him with\ndistrust. The distrust was mutual: for if Napoleon was for the\nJesuits a too faithful and too ambitious heir of the Revolution,\nthe Jesuits were for him Catholics too independent and too\ndevoted to their Church and to its chief. As far back as 1804,\ntheir establishments, scarcely disguised under different names,\nhad been a source of disquietude to Napoleon.\n{41}\nHe directed them to be closed, enforced the laws which denied to\nreligious corporations an independent existence, and founded the\nUniversity, which at the same time he invested with the privilege\nof teaching. This system was not abolished at the Restoration.\nThe Jesuits then entered into the simultaneous possession of two\nforces novel to them--the one sprang from the support of power,\nthe other was derived from the progress of liberty. They had the\nfavor of the court, and might wield as their own arms, and in\ntheir own interests, the liberal principles that were dear to the\npeople. A position excellent, had they known how to restrict\nthemselves to their religious mission, keep aloof from political\ncontests, and devote themselves exclusively to the task of\nawakening the faith of Christians, and arousing them to a\nChristian life! Their action upon the soul might have extended\ntheir influence beyond their peculiar sphere to the world\nwithout. Had they not then a striking instance of such an\ninfluence even in their own order?\n{42}\nTo what cause, thirty years ago, did the P\u00e8re Ravignan owe the\nrespect and moral authority with which he was surrounded, not\nonly by members of his own Church, but by men not remarkable for\ntheir faith? Far less to his talent as an orator, than to the\nthorough sincerity and disinterestedness of his religious\ncharacter. He was a believer, a pious Christian, and a stranger\nto every mental reservation; neither was he a partisan, but\nsolely occupied with the service of God, of his Church, and of\nhis order, at the same time that he was propagating the faith and\nenforcing piety. He declared himself aloud a Jesuit, but the\ndeclaration excited no distrust even in his adversaries. If his\norder had imitated his example, it would have obtained a similar\nsuccess. Nor was the instance new. In the seventeenth century, at\nthe court of Louis XIV., Bourdaloue displayed the same virtues as\nthe P\u00e8re Ravignan in our own days; and, in all certitude, did\nmore honor and rendered more service to his Church and order than\nhad ever been done or rendered by P\u00e8re la Chaise.\n\n{43}\n\nI shall not attempt to examine how far the Jesuits in effect were\nreally engaged, or what was the degree of their direct agency in\nthe intrigues of the retrograde party who were seeking to\nrepossess themselves of the relics of the ancient institutions,\nin the idle hope of reconstructing the social edifice upon those\nruined foundations. I am convinced that France felt at this epoch\nfar too much alarm for this party and its allies, Jesuits or no\nJesuits, just as the Monarchy itself felt too much apprehension\nof the Revolutionists. No graver fault can be committed by\nnations or by governments than to give way to fears out of\nproportion with the dangers which they encounter. France had no\nreason under the Restoration to dread either the triumph of\nTheocracy or of Absolutism; and yet she was alarmed at both, and\nthe people persisted in believing that the Jesuits were serving\nthis double cause--that of the ancient r\u00e9gime of the Papacy, and\nof the ancient r\u00e9gime of the Monarchy.\n{44}\nThe Jesuits had then to struggle at once against the ideas and\nthe passions of modern society, and the traditions and maxims of\nancient France herself; they had for adversaries, the laity, the\nbar, and the liberals, respectively represented by M. de\nMontlosier, M. Benjamin Constant, and M. Dupin. The odds against\nthem were too great; even the Monarchy itself, however well\ndisposed toward them, was carried away by the movement which\nattacked them, and Charles X. did not think his own position\nstrong enough to dispense with treating them, by his ordonnances\nof the 21st June, 1828, as Napoleon had done by his decree of the\n22d June, 1804. Throughout this whole period the conduct of the\nJesuits was feebler than their cause. Sworn and devoted to the\ndefense of Authority, they had not foresight enough to perceive\nby what means and on what conditions Authority might raise and\nconsolidate itself.\n{45}\nHaunted by the traditions of past times, and having the history\nof their own order continually before their minds, they no longer\nregarded the future boldly or confidently; they failed to\nappreciate justly the present; they did not believe sufficiently\nin the power of Christ's faith, and they believed too implicitly\nin the efficiency of worldly policy. By this vulgar blunder they\ncompromised, in the case of many Christians, the full effect of\nthat great stirring movement of Christianity, at the very time\nthat, with respect to others, they aided it materially.\n\nThe Revolution of 1830 inflicted a rude blow upon these\nretrograde tendencies, and a new element started up in the bosom\nof the Church of Rome. In the midst of the grand manifestation\nand progress of liberty now realizing itself in the State,\nCatholics, genuine and ardent too, conceived the hope of turning\nboth to the profit of the Church of Rome, and of at last setting\nCatholicism at peace and in harmony with the new social\ninstitutions of France.\n{46}\nThen the group, I will not say the party, formed itself of men at\nonce generous and hardy, who did not hesitate to declare\nthemselves Ultramontanists, like the P\u00e8re de Ravignan, Liberals\nlike M. de la Fayette. It consisted of priests and laymen, of men\nof mature years and men in the spring-time of life--the Abb\u00e9\nLacordaire, Abbe Gerbet, M. de Montalembert, and M. de Coux: I\nconfine myself to the names that at the outset gleamed on their\nbanners. They founded an _agency_ for the defense of the\nliberties of religion, and a journal, the _Avenir_, to\ndevelop its principles and its constitution. But the association\nwas born under an unlucky star; for its little army had for its\ndeclared chief, and the object of its passionate reverence, the\nAbbe de la Mennais. In the more intimate and unrestricted\nrelations of life this great man appears to have exercised\nextraordinarily attractive power over his friends and disciples.\n{47}\nCited jointly with him on the 31st January, 1831, before the Cour\nd'Assises of Paris to answer for the appearance of two articles\nin the _Avenir_, the Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire said, \"I stand here\nnear the man who began the reconciliation of Catholicism with the\nworld. Let me tell him how affected I am by the part that God has\nmade for me in giving me him as my master and my father. Suffer\nthese words of filial piety to penetrate to the heart of one so\nlong misunderstood; suffer me to exclaim with the poet:\n\n  \"L'amiti\u00e9 d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux.\"\n  [Footnote 6]\n\n    [Footnote 6: \"A great man's friendship, blessed gift of\n    Heaven.\"]\n\nThe Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire had soon to feel the danger and to repel with\nsorrow the yoke of this seductive friendship. The errors and the\nevil passions of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais were not long in\nexploding; his was a mind lofty and powerful, but without grasp,\nwithout foresight, without moderation, and without equity;\nincapable of discerning the different sides of a subject and of\nembracing all the elements of the problem demanding solution, he\nwas a haughty slave to the truth that he served but partially,\nand the somber enemy of every one who wounded his pride by\ncontesting his opinions.\n{48}\nHe gave to the _Avenir_ a character at once democratic and\ntheocratic, imperious and revolutionary. All the ideas contrary\nto his own, all the institutions, all the governments, that stood\nin his way, were attacked by him with a degree of vehemence,\ninsult, and menace never surpassed by any political partisan,\nhowever violent. The maxims of the Gallican Church were, to cite\nhis words, \"an object of disgust and horror; opinions as odious\nas they were base, which, while rendering even the conscience the\naccomplice of tyranny, make servility a duty and brute force an\nindependent and just right.\" He demanded the separation of Church\nand State as a necessity absolute and urgent; \"for,\" said he, \"we\nregard as abolished and of no effect every particular law which\ncontradicts the Charter, and is incompatible with the liberties\nthat _it_ proclaims.\n{49}\nIn the event of such law, we believe that it becomes immediately\nand without delay the duty of government to come to an\nunderstanding with the pope, and to rescind the Concordat, which\nlost all the means of being executed from the instant when, thank\nGod, the Catholic religion ceased to be a state religion.\" Four\nmonths had scarcely elapsed since the birth of the government of\nJuly, and because the liberty of teaching promised by the Charter\nof 1830 was not already in vigor, the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais said to\nthe Catholics: \"Whence comes the oppression that weighs upon us?\nEither, in what concerns us, the government cannot or it will not\nkeep its promises. If it cannot, what is this mockery of a\nsovereignty, this miserable phantom of government, and what have\nwe to do with it? It is as far as we are concerned as if it were\n_not_, and nothing remains to us but to forget it, and seek\nour safety in ourselves.\n{50}\nLet us proclaim aloud who the powers are that are hostile to us;\nwhose servants seek only to satisfy blindly their thirst for\npersecution.\" What attacks leveled at a government were ever more\nprecipitate, more violent, and showed a less just appreciation of\nfacts? What revolutionary party ever proclaimed with greater\naudacity disobedience to the laws, and insurrection as the first\nof rights and of duties?\n\nSide by side with these violent and insulting invectives leveled\nat the government of France, the _Avenir_ placed a\ndeclaration of respect and submission to the chief of the Church\nof Rome: \"We profess,\" it said, \"the most complete obedience to\nthe authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. We will not have\nother faith than his faith, other doctrine than his doctrine. All\nthat he approves we approve, all that he condemns we condemn, and\nwithout the shadow of a reservation; we, each of us, submit to\nthe judgment of the Holy See all our past, all our future\nwritings, of what nature soever they may be.\" Here, at least, the\nrevolutionary spirit seemed absent, or, at all events, was in a\nhurry to disavow itself.\n\n{51}\n\nI am persuaded that, in holding this language, the Abb\u00e9 de la\nMennais was sincere. When an exclusive idea or passion sways a\nman's mind, nothing is more unknown to him than his own future\nconduct; he knows even less what he will do than what he is\ndoing. The Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais no more suspected in 1831 what he\nwould say and what he would do a few years later, than the most\nviolent leaders of the French Revolution suspected in 1789 what\nthey would be and what they would do in 1793. The court at Rome\nwas clearer-sighted than its fanatical champion; it had been\nunder the influence of the charm of the first works and of the\nfirst successes of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais. It had not, however,\nfailed to perceive what pernicious and dangerous seed might\nthence germinate.\n{52}\nThe _Avenir_ occasioned it profound disquietude; the\nprinciples and the yearnings of modern society found therein a\ntoo ready acceptance; the r\u00e9gime which had governed France since\n1830 was too much the object of its attacks; it demanded too much\nliberty, and made too much noise in doing so; for beneath that\nnoise, and in the shadow of that liberty, fermented the\nanarchical doctrines and tendencies which in all cases and places\nit is the aim and the policy of the court of Rome to contest.\nThus the _Avenir_ and its writers placed her in a position\nfull of embarrassment; Rome was anxious neither in any way to\nignore the services that they had rendered and that they might\ncontinue to render her, nor to lose sight of the perils that they\nmade her incur; Rome desired to preserve silence respecting these\nwriters--neither to avow nor disavow them--and to leave it to\ntime to terminate their transport and their errors. The Abb\u00e9 de\nla Mennais did not, however, permit this expectant policy; he\ninsisted absolutely that the papacy, by pronouncing upon his\ndoctrines and upon his attitude, should publicly either give him\nher support or withdraw it from him.\n{53}\nAll the world knows of the journey which he undertook in 1831 to\nRome to obtain this result, and of his stay there in company with\nthe Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert, \"three obscure\nChristians\"--to use the words of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais--men who\nthought themselves called, according to the expression of the\nAbb\u00e9 Lacordaire before the Cour d'Assises at Paris, \"to reconcile\nCatholicism with the world.\" The Pope (Gregory XVI.) judged\notherwise, and by his encyclical of the 15th August, 1832, with\nregret, but at the same time with as much decision as to the\nsubstantial matters before him as tenderness to the three\npilgrims personally, condemned the _Avenir_, its doctrines,\nand its tendencies. On the instant, with the concurrence of their\nfriends, they declared, all three, (10th September, 1832,) that,\nrespectfully submitting themselves to the authority of the Vicar\nof Jesus Christ, they abandoned the lists in which they had\nfaithfully combated during the past two years; that, in\nconsequence, the _Avenir_, which had been provisionally\nsuspended ever since the 15th November previously, would no\nlonger appear, and that the _General Agency for the Defense of\nReligious Liberty_ was dissolved.\n\n{54}\n\nAs the first declaration of the writers of the _Avenir_,\nafter their acquittal by the Cour d'Assises at Paris, had been\nsincere, so was also the declaration sincere which was published\nby them immediately after their condemnation by the papacy; but\nthey promised more than they could perform. When a deep social\nwound has been laid bare, and measures on a large scale have been\nadopted to cure it, it is no longer in the power of any\nindividual to keep that wound secret, or to stifle the hope of a\nremedy. How many times in the course of this century has not the\npapacy, and have not the ardent champions of liberty, condemned\nand combated the efforts made to reconcile Catholicism with\nmodern civilization, and to cause the Church to accept the\nliberties of civil society, and the State to recognize the rights\nof the Church?\n{55}\nHow often has the Church by its censures signalized such efforts\nas impious and suicidal? What wit, what eloquence, have not been\ndisplayed by the Liberals to declare their vanity, their\nworthlessness? To what reproaches, invectives, and sarcasms have\nnot their advocates had to submit? But no ecclesiastical censure,\nno wrath of religion, no mockery of liberalism has arrested the\nmarch of this great idea. It has made, and it continues every day\nto force, its way in spite of condemnations, attacks, and\nobstacles of every description. Why? For paramount reasons,\nimpossible to be lost sight of. For Christianity and modern\ncivilization confront each other; there exists in the public a\nprofound and irrepressible feeling of their reciprocal right and\nstrength--a profound and irrepressible feeling that their\ndisagreement is an immense evil for society and for men's souls;\nthat neither the new civil liberties nor the ancient forms of\nbelief and influences of Christianity can ever perish; that,\nnecessary, both of them, to nations and to individuals, they are\nboth of them destined to live, and consequently to live together.\n{56}\nWhen and in what manner will this feeling realize its object, and\nwhen will the ancient Church and modern civilization have solved\nthe problem of their mutual pacification? No one can at this\nmoment pronounce; but in all certitude, the problem will not for\nthat cease to weigh upon the world, or the world to strive at its\nsolution. Even the men who, in a spirit of pious submission or in\na paroxysm of sadness and discouragement might wish, after having\nattempted it, to renounce the work, could never remain inactive\nbefore a necessity becoming more and more urgent; they doubtless\nwould not be long before they returned to the lists from which\nthey might have consented to withdraw.\n\n{57}\n\nAnd this is what happened to the three eminent men who had made\nso precipitate a journey to Rome, and had importuned her at an\ninconvenient moment, summoning her at once to solve the momentous\nquestions they had raised. They returned from Rome with the\nintention of submitting to the decision of the Pope; but slumber\nto such souls was impossible, and it was not long before men saw\nthem, the three, resuming, although by the most contrary paths,\nall the activity of their minds and of their lives. The Abb\u00e9 de\nla Mennais threw himself with impetuosity into the revolt--a\nrevolt radical against the Church and against the State;\nfuriously demanding from the populace and from revolutions the\nsuccess which he could not obtain in the bosom of order, and in\nconcert with the authority previously so ardently defended by\nhim. Far from following in his new and violent course, the Abb\u00e9\nLacordaire and M. de Montalembert separated from him, and\nreturned each to his natural and tranquil position; the one to\nthat of a simple priest, almoner of the convent of the\nVisitation, and preacher in the chapel of the College Stanislas;\nthe other to that of a young and brilliant political orator,\nalready a favorite in the chamber of Peers, although its members\ndid not always think or vote with him.\n{58}\nBoth remained Romanists at heart; they zealously shared in the\ngreat movement of Christianity, now roused from her slumber, but\nwithout ceasing to be Liberals in their Catholicism, or without\narresting their efforts to reconcile the Church with the r\u00e9gime\nof liberty.\n\nThe position of each, and the genius of each, determined the\nshare that he took in the duties, and the place that he selected\nfor the field of his action. The Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire, from the pulpit\nof Notre Dame, developed, or rather let me say, painted, in all\ntheir splendor, the truths, the beauties, the moral and social\nexcellences of the Christian Faith and of the Catholic Church. M.\nde Montalembert, in the house of Peers and in literature, was the\nardent and indefatigable champion of the Church, of its maxims,\nand of its rights.\n{59}\nTo neither was there any lack of success any more than any lack\nof talent and of zeal. A numerous auditory, young and old, from\nthe salons and from the schools, believers and freethinkers,\nflocked round the Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire, all feeling the attraction,\nand almost all the charm; many among them yielding to the\npersuasion of that eloquence so fresh and vivid, and abundant,\nand unlooked for--impetuous without rudeness, hardy yet graceful,\nnatural even where there was temerity of thought or of\nexpression, and repairing or vailing these faults by the\nenchantment of candor and of originality. Different, but not\ninferior, were the merits and the successes of M. de\nMontalembert. He was a combatant young too, a fearless Christian,\nboth in the political arena and in society; and he carried with\nhim in his polemics to the service of the State a sincerity of\npassion, a rich and mobile eloquence, piquant strokes of wit, an\noutpouring of indignant conviction, all of which deeply stirred\nthe emotions of his auditors, whether friends or adversaries, and\nleft in the mind of calm spectators an impression of approving\nsatisfaction, however frequently a shock might be given to their\nfeelings of moderation and of fairness.\n{60}\nIn the \"Conferences\" of the Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire it cannot be denied\nthat many failings and many omissions are observable; although\nexpressed clearly and with vivacity, his thought was often\nsuperficial; there was in turn a singular mixture of precipitate\nenthusiasm and of discretion, the former displaying itself in his\nexordiums, the latter at the close of his discourses. He\nannounced courageously his opinions, but accompanied them by more\nreservations than are usually expected from one of his Church and\nparty: thus at the same time, that throughout all his discourses,\nand in their general character, he showed himself the friend of\nreligious liberty, he hesitated sometimes even when the occasion\nrequired him to proclaim its fundamental principle and to rebuke\nits violations.\n{61}\nOn his side, M. de Montalembert gave himself up entirely to the\nimpression and the combat of the moment; in his legitimate ardor\nfor free instruction, the then chosen object of his public life,\nhe held obstacles, however real, of no account; he ignored the\ntime necessary for its final triumph, as well as the real\nprogress, although partial, which it had obtained, from the\nco-operation or the sufferance of the government of 1830; and in\nhis uncompromising defense of the Church, he was more violent\nagainst the members of the executive government than his own\nsentiments and his real political views would, in moments of cool\nreflection, have permitted him to be. The Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire did not\nsound sufficiently the sources of his opinions; M. de\nMontalembert did not properly measure his attacks. But in spite\nof their shortcomings and of our own, of their faults and of our\nown, in all the struggles that grew out of religious questions\nbetween us, they rendered constantly faithful and powerful\nservices to their cause, which, notwithstanding our dissentiments\non other points, was really the cause of Christ's Faith awaking\nto new birth and life on the bosom of Liberty.\n\n{62}\n\nIt is not without well reflecting that I term that _our_\ncause. When religious liberty reigns in a State, it is a great\nand a too common error to believe that the statesmen charged with\nits government have no religious belief whatever; that they are\ncareless in matters of faith because they embrace and advocate\nthe cause of liberty of conscience. The soul does not abdicate\nthe right to its proper and intimate life, because it respects in\nother souls the rights of that same life; and nothing is more\nlogical or more legitimate than to sustain with fervor the\nprinciple of freedom of conscience, and yet to be at the same\ntime a true and an earnest Christian.\n\n{63}\n\nI have not here to make a profession of faith for others; but I\naffirm that, from 1830 to 1848, the Prince whom I had the honor\nto serve, and the Cabinets to which I had the honor to belong,\nnot only always had at heart the maintenance, however difficult,\nof the principle of religious liberty, but that they always\nfelicitated themselves upon the progress made by the Christian\nFaith, even when the manner of that progress was for them a\nsource of serious embarrassment. In 1841 we were placed, in this\nrespect, in a most trying position. Great was the general\nastonishment, and violent were the attacks made upon us, when,\nwith a devotedness to Catholicism even bolder than had been his\nconferences at Notre Dame, the Abb\u00e9 Lacordaire returned from Rome\na monk, and a monk of an order which has left more somber\nmemories behind it than any other, that of St. Dominic. This is\nnot the place to examine what the utility may be in our days to\nthe Catholic Church of the monastic orders, or to inquire whether\nthe services they are capable of rendering the Church outweigh\nthe objections and the feelings of repulsion and uneasiness which\nthey arouse.\n{64}\nNo well-read man can deny their having, in seasons of chaotic\nconfusion, effectually served the cause, not only of the\nChristian Faith, but of civilization, of science, and even of\nliberty.\n\nThe condition of society and of the human mind is now very\ndifferent, and the monastic orders cannot take the same position\nor produce the same effects. But whatever we may think of the\nopportuneness of their reconstruction, of the right there can be\nno doubt. Under a system sanctioning freedom of conscience and\nfree institutions, associations for religious purposes cannot be\nworse treated than those for purposes of industry, commerce, or\nliterature. The State is required to exercise upon combinations\nof every kind a certain degree of surveillance; but doubtless the\nunion of souls and of lives under one rule and in one costume,\nwith a view to eternal interests, is not a juster cause for\ndisquietude than a union of purses and of labor for the purpose\nof economizing both, with a view to worldly interests.\n{65}\nIn 1829, some young Catholic Liberals, MM. de Carn\u00e9, de Cazal\u00e8s,\nde Champagny, de Montalembert, Foisset de Meaux, Henri Gouraud,\nfounded a periodical, _Le Correspondant_, devoted to the\nreconciliation of Catholicism with the free social institutions\nof the age. The _Correspondant_ had been suspended in 1835,\nbut reappeared in 1843, under the editorship of M. Charles\nLenormant, one of those friends I have lost who retain in my\nmemory the place they occupied in my life. In conducting this\nwork, he kept ever in view the principles in which it had\noriginated, and among other positions, he defended in 1845, with\nthe frank intrepidity both of a Catholic and of a Liberal, the\nrights of those religious associations which were at the time the\nobject of violent debate. [Footnote 7]\n\n    [Footnote 7: Des associations religieuses dans le\n    catholicisme; de leur esprit, de leur histoire et de leur\n    avenir; par Charles Lenormant, de l'Institut. Paris: 1845.]\n\n{66}\n\nThe cabinet abstained from all measures of repression, and left\nthe new monks freely to their chances of success or failure.\nTwenty-five years have since elapsed; the P\u00e8re Lacordaire mounted\nonce more, in his costume as a Dominican, his pulpit in\nNotre-Dame; he resuscitated in France an order forgotten, or the\nobject of dread only; and to what trouble or embarrassment, I\nask, to what complaints even, has this resuscitation led? To what\npretensions of ambition have these monks laid claim? what\nturbulent disposition have they manifested? They have paced\nmeekly along our streets; they have preached eloquently in our\nchurches; they have founded some houses of education; they have\nmade use of their rights as freemen, without offering in any way\nto infringe the liberty of any other class of citizens. More than\nall this: the sincerity of their sentiments and language has been\nput to the proof; the P\u00e8re Lacordaire resumed, as a Dominican, at\nParis, at Toulouse, at Nancy, at Bordeaux, the conferences and\nthe preaching that had rendered him popular as a simple priest;\nthey became, perhaps, more liberal even than they had been\noriginally.\n{67}\nWhen the tempest of 1848 had given birth, in the imaginations of\nall men, to every kind of dream, and had opened to every ambition\nevery career, the P\u00e8re Lacordaire was returned by the popular\nsuffrage as Deputy to the Constituent Assembly. For a moment he\nthought a new era opening for his Church--perhaps for himself. In\nthis arena, upon which the passions of party were unchained amid\nthe general darkness resting upon society, he soon discovered\nthat the priest and monk of our day was not in his proper place;\nhe withdrew from it to resume, in his modest retreat at Sor\u00e8ze,\nhis true mission as a Christian teacher. He afterward issued from\nit, but for a moment only, to express in the French Academy his\nfaith as a Catholic, and his confidence in the democratic\nprinciples of modern times. Such are the peaceable, such the only\nresults among us, of the re-establishment of the order of the\nDominicans and of the glory of its restorer.\n\n{68}\n\nIts _only_ results? Not so; if the work of the P\u00e8re\nLacordaire did not exercise any important influence upon the\nlaity, it was attended with fruitful and salutary effects in the\nChurch of Rome itself. Like him, other priests had the courage to\nbrave the prejudices of the age respecting the religious orders;\nlike him, others refused to suffer themselves to be subjugated by\nthe alarms felt by most members of their Church at the names of\nScience and of Liberty; and like him, they scrupled not to devote\nthemselves to a common life and a common rule, \"to work\ntogether,\" according to their own expressions, \"to secure the\ntriumph of Christian truth, and its triumph by means of\nPhilosophy and Science.\" Thus was re-established, under the\ndirection of the pious curate of Saint-Roch, the P\u00e8re P\u00e9t\u00e9tot,\nthe congregation of the Oratoire--that learned and modest society\nthat gave to France Malebranche and Massillon, and of which\nBossuet said, two centuries ago: \"The immense love for the Church\nof the Cardinal de B\u00e9rulle inspired him with the design of\nforming a company, to which he desired to give no other spirit\nthan the very spirit of the Church, no other rule than its\ncanons, no other superiors than its bishops, no other goods than\nits charity, no other solemn vows than those of baptism and the\npriesthood. ...\n{69}\nThere, to form true priests, they lead them to the fountain of\ntruth; they have always in their hands the sacred volume, to\nsearch there unceasingly its literal sense by study, its spirit\nby prayer, its depth of meaning by retreat from the world, and\nits end by charity--the termination of everything and the\ntreasure of Christianity--'Christiani nominis thesaurus,' as\nTertullian terms it.\" [Footnote 8]\n\n    [Footnote 8: Bossuet, Oraison fun\u00e8bre du p\u00e8re Bourgoing,\n    delivered in 1662, vol. viii, p. 271.]\n\n{70}\n\nDating its restoration from only thirteen years ago, the new\ncongregation of the Oratoire is still not numerous, and remains\nlittle known; it is poor, and it desires to remain so; it has\nneed of extension and of support, but at the very outset of its\nnew career it proved itself faithful to its origin and worthy of\nthe words of Bossuet. One of its founders, the P\u00e8re Gratry, took\nhis place at once in the first rank of the Christian apologists,\nmoralists, and writers of the day: he is a man at once animated\nand gentle, full of his peculiar ideas and sentiments, which he\ncarries to an enthusiastic height, but without pride and without\njealousy, and ardently propagating them by his books, his\nlectures, and his conversation. These are all distinguished by\neloquent appeals to human sympathies, touching even where they do\nnot convince, and leaving the mind always in emotion at the\nprospects which they open. Another member of the new Oratoire,\nthe P\u00e8re Valvoger, has given a succinct account, in a learned\nwork, (\"Introduction historique et critique aux livres du Nouveau\nTestament,\") of the Researches and Evidences of Christianity, by\nthe principal foreign theologians.\n{71}\nUnder the strong influence of the opinions of its first founders,\nand at the same time comprehending the mind and the requirements\nof France at the present day, the rising congregation of the\nOratoire does not evade examination or discussion; it respects\nscience, and in the religious truths which it teaches, and its\nrelations with the souls that it summons to believe, it does not\nshrink from accepting fearlessly the terms and the forms of\nliberty.\n\nIn the midst of this great movement of men's minds in matters of\nreligion, what has been done since the opening of this century by\nthe chiefs of the Catholic Church of France, by their bishops and\nby the clergy, called, by their alliance with the State and by\ntheir own rights, to assume the education and the Christian\ndirection of the human soul?\n\nThey were at first and especially occupied with the real\nresuscitation of that Christian religion, now returning to French\nsociety, to its rank there and to its mission, but returning as\nexiles return--ill provided, disorganized, and to a home that\nseems no home.\n{72}\nTo render back to France, now Catholic, churches for its worship,\npriests for its churches, seminaries to form its priests, pupils\nto people those seminaries; to assure also to the edifice thus\nrising from its ruins the time for its proper establishment and\nconsolidation--such, under the first empire, was the dominant\nthought, almost the exclusive thought, of the Episcopacy, of the\nclergy instituted by the Concordat. A work great and difficult,\nfor which neither materials nor workmen were at hand, and which\nrequired for its accomplishment strong support and a long period\nof repose. The clergy of this epoch have been justly reproached\nwith their uniform obsequiousness to the Emperor Napoleon. No\ndoubt it was a shameful spectacle, in 1811, which those docile\nbishops afforded, when they assembled in council and were never\nweary of lavishing caresses upon the despot who had not only\nstripped the chief of their Church, Pius VII., of his dominions,\nbut was then detaining him a prisoner at Savona, denying his\nnatural counselors, the cardinals, all access to him, refusing\nhim even a secretary to write his letters, and charging an\nofficer of the gendarmerie to watch by day and by night all his\nmovements.\n{73}\nOnly a single fact explains and somewhat excuses the\npusillanimity of the clergy when confronted with this tyranny:\nthese bishops had seen Christianity proscribed, its churches\nclosed, profaned, demolished, its priests hunted and massacred,\ntheir flocks left without any worship, any guide, any\nconsolation. The chance of the recurrence of such events filled\nthem with horror. Who could affirm that there was no such chance,\nand that the reality of the eve was not the possibility of the\nmorrow? With such causes of apprehension a good priest might feel\nhis conscience profoundly troubled; and a timid priest might\nregard his weakness as justified. What sacrifices were not\npermissible, nay, even imperative, to prevent such disasters?\n\n{74}\n\nStill, the violent measures of Napoleon did not fail to\nencounter, sometimes rebukes, and occasionally resistance, on the\npart of the clergy; it was not only that some prelates [Footnote\n9] in the council, with more courage than moderation, censured\nhis conduct toward the Pope: the council itself--forgetting at\nlast, in its anxiety to vindicate the honor of the whole body,\nits long habit of obsequiousness--voted an address to the\nEmperor, an act of independence which occasioned its abrupt\ndissolution.\n\n    [Footnote 9: Among others M. d'Avian, Archbishop of Bordeaux,\n    M. de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, and M. de Broglie, Bishop\n    of Gaud.]\n\nAnd of the two ecclesiastics to whose counsels, from just motives\nof esteem, Napoleon showed least disinclination to give ear,\none--the Abb\u00e9 \u00c9mery, \"Superior General\" of the Congregation of\nSt. Sulpice--had just previously, not long before he died,\nopenly, yet with dignity, resisted the Emperor; [Footnote 10] the\nother, M. Duvoisin, Bishop of Nantes, dictated upon his deathbed\nthese powerful and affectionate lines: \"I supplicate the Emperor\nto restore the holy Father to liberty. His captivity troubles the\nextreme moments of my life. On several occasions I had the honor\nto inform the Emperor of the affliction which this captivity is\ncausing to the whole of Christendom, and of the inconveniences\nwhich would attend its prolongation. The happiness of his Majesty\nhimself, I believe, depends upon the return of his Holiness to\nRome.\"\n\n   [Footnote 10: Vie de M. \u00c9mery, sup\u00e9rieur g\u00e9n\u00e9ral du s\u00e9minaire\n   et de la compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, t. ii, pp. 236-346.\n   Paris: 1862.]\n\n{75}\n\nIdly does Despotism excuse its arbitrary acts, as if they\nresulted from the want of foresight or the servility of its\nflatterers; for the blindest have their gleams of light, and even\nthe most timid their intrepid moments, during which they speak\nthe truth, although they speak it in vain.\n\nUnder the Restoration, it was no longer fear, but hope--hope,\nill-founded, too--which misled the French clergy, betrayed them\ninto the commission of many faults, and checked the progress of\nroused Christendom.\n{76}\nIn the then reaction against the Revolution, ecclesiastical\nambition had its part; partisans of the Crown and of Rome--ardent\nones--some through sincere devotion, others from political\ncalculation, believed it to be necessary and possible to restore\nto the Catholic clergy a part at least of the social position and\nof the direct authority which they had possessed before 1789.\nThis was evincing a strange ignorance of the fundamental\ncharacter of French society, such as it has been made by its\nhistory and by its great modern Revolution. French society is\nessentially and insuperably \"laic;\" the separation of temporals\nfrom spirituals, and the empire of the laity in public affairs,\nare consummated and dominant facts, not to be attacked, or even\nmenaced, without occasioning throughout the whole framework of\nsociety an irritation and a disquietude, perilous alike for\nChurch and for State. Nothing in France at the present moment is\nmore fatal to the influence of religion than the chance, or the\nappearance even, of ecclesiastical domination.\n{77}\nThis chance and this appearance were, under the Restoration, the\nplague of the Catholic religion and of the French clergy--a\nplague the grave consequences of which are the more to be\ndeplored as it was neither very deep-seated nor very formidable.\nIt is a fact too little remarked, that the clergy were not then\nthe principal authors of the faults which subsequently both they\nand religion had such cause to rue. No doubt many inadmissible\nclaims, many unreasonable and offensive requirements, many rash\nexpectations, proceeded from the ranks of the clergy; but there\nwas in all this more a suggestion of their past history, or an\nunmeaning vanity, than a real and ardent ambition; even the\nclergy felt instinctively that political power was not now suited\nto them, and that France would no longer accept at their hands as\nministers even a Cardinal Richelieu or a Cardinal Mazarin.\n{78}\nAt first the contra-revolutionary and non-ecclesiastical party in\nthe Chamber of 1815, and, afterward, the blind fanatical coterie\nof the Court of Charles the Tenth, hurried the clergy into their\nown vortex, and compromised the cause of religion by making its\nministers instruments of their influence and auxiliaries in their\ncombats. The ecclesiastics had not the courage to resist; in\nspite of their distaste for the new spirit which was abroad, most\nof the bishops and of the priesthood, warned by their experience\nin the Revolution, would have preferred to remain out of the\nsphere of politics, and to confine themselves to the functions of\ntheir religious mission, rather than to be constantly struggling\nagainst popular opinions; so, when any opportunity presented\nitself to show their sympathy, they hastened to embrace it. When,\nin 1824, the bill of M. de Vill\u00e8le for the conversion of the\n\"Rentes\" created a great stir among the \"Bourgeoisie\" of Paris,\nit was the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Qu\u00e9len, who constituted\nhimself in the Chamber of Peers the principal organ of the\nOpposition; and when, in 1828, the movement of public opinion and\nof the magistracy against the religions congregations wrested\nfrom the King (Charles the Tenth) the Ordonnances of the 21st\nJune, the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutries, at that time the\nMinister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, did not hesitate to\ncountersign them.\n{79}\nThe members of the priesthood live in close contact with the\npeople, and cannot long remain in ignorance of the real state of\ntheir opinions, or long persist in holding them lightly. The\nFrench clergy, as a whole, were more resigned to the new state of\nsociety than King Charles the Tenth and his intimate friends; the\nfalse ideas and the unreasonable political pretensions of the\nmonarch and of the coterie which formed his court, far more than\nthe religious bigotry of the Church, occasioned the great faults\ncommitted under the Restoration.\n\n{80}\n\nAt all epochs and in all parties some man is always met with in\nwhom are centered and personified whatever good sense, sound\nviews, and wise purposes there are in the party to which he\nbelongs. Such a man under the Restoration and for the lay\nLegitimists was M. de Vill\u00e8le. True to his friends, he\nnevertheless knew, or I should rather say he promptly learned in\npublic life to understand, what France then actually was, and\nwhat qualities, to be successful, her government should possess.\nIf he had had toward his party and his king as much independence\nand firmness in action as he had correct appreciation in thought,\nhe might perhaps have obtained a more complete and more lasting\nsuccess. The clergy on their side also had at this epoch a\nfaithful representative of whatever religious or political\nsagacity existed in the French Church: it is here to the Abb\u00e9\nFrayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis, that the honor and the merit\nbelong. His task was far easier than that of M. de Vill\u00e8le, for\nhe was never put to any trial: he had no struggle to sustain; he\nremained naturally, or kept himself voluntarily, out of the arena\nof events and of parties; but it was in this precisely that he\nshowed his good sense, and his correct appreciation of the\npermanent interests and the real dispositions of the clergy of\nhis time.\n{81}\nNeither as theologian, nor as orator, nor as statesman was the\nAbb\u00e9 Frayssinous a man of eminence, or remarkable for power of\nintellect; but in the different phases of his career, in his\npersonal conduct, and in his writings, he had an unerring\ninstinct of what was just and possible, and showed no common tact\nin retiring with dignity from untenable positions, and escaping\nfrom questions that he could not settle. Upon these occasions he\nwould confine himself to his mission of a priest and moralist of\nthe Christian religion. From 1803 to 1822 he held, suspended, and\nresumed in the Church of St. Sulpice, his \"conferences upon\nreligious subjects;\" remarkable not only by a judicious defense\nof the great truths of Christianity, but by a continuous,\nalthough somewhat timorous, effort to place the doctrines of the\nChurch in harmony with the principles of natural justice and of\ncivil liberty.\n{82}\nHe was not, like the P\u00e8re Lacordaire or M. de Montalembert, a\nCatholic Liberal; he was a priest--moderate and equitable, not\nfrom luke-warmness in his faith, but from respect to legal rights\nand human sentiments. Although his \"conferences\" had not the\nsuccess and popularity that distinguished later, in Notre-Dame,\nthose of the P\u00e8re Lacordaire, they attracted a numerous auditory,\nand exercised material influence in giving to the awakening of\nChristianity a wider range and a firmer basis. [Footnote 11]\n\n    [Footnote 11: The \"conferences\" of the Abb\u00e9 Frayssinous at\n    St. Sulpice have been published under this title: Defense du\n    Christianisme, ou conf\u00e9rences sur la religion. 3 vols. 8vo.\n    Paris: 1825. The Abb\u00e9 Frayssinous published also in 1818 a\n    work with the following title: Les vrais principes de\n    l'\u00e9glise gallicane sur la puissance ecclesiastique, la\n    Papaut\u00e9, les Libert\u00e9s gallicanes, la Promotion des \u00e9v\u00eaques,\n    les trois Concordats, et les Appels comme d'abus.]\n\n{83}\n\nIn his work upon the true principles of the Gallican Church, the\nAbb\u00e9 Frayssinous manifested the same moderate and conciliatory\nspirit--not always tracing principles to their sources, but never\npushing facts or ideas to their extreme consequences; while\nremaining the faithful servant of the Church he showed himself\nalso rather the friend of Christian peace than the jealous\nadvocate of ecclesiastical power. His mode of life was as modest\nas his opinions; he never made power his aim, neither did he ever\nseek for honors, whether political, ecclesiastical, or academic;\nhe declined them even when within his reach. He joined the\nCabinet in 1824, as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and of\nPublic Instruction; he withdrew from it in 1828, when the\nmounting wave of Liberalism demanded that a more vigorous policy\nshould be adopted against the religious congregations than the\npupil and orator of St. Sulpice was willing to sanction. He\nneither had the qualities necessary for governing the French\nclergy, nor did he pretend to govern them; but he represented\nthem, nevertheless, in all their more irreproachable and prudent\nopinions.\n{84}\nUnfortunately, mere common sense and prudence do not suffice more\nin the Church than in the State to save nations from the\nconsequences of their faults of omission and commission; for this\nobject, higher qualities are necessary as well as more rude\nefforts.\n\nIt was one of the first effects of the Revolution in 1830, to\nmake visible to all the injury that the faults of their friends,\nrather than the blows of their adversaries, had inflicted, under\nthe Restoration, upon the clergy, and through the clergy upon\nreligion. The acts of violence which, during the revolutionary\ncrisis from 1830 to 1832, were directed at the Churches--the\ncrosses thrown down, the insulting cries, and antichristian\nmanifestations; a little later, the riot before the church of St.\nGermain l'Auxerrois, on the occasion of the service celebrated on\nthe anniversary of the death of the Duke de Berri--the\narchiepiscopal palace ruined and pillaged--the church broken into\nand closed--the menaces directed at the priests--what were all\nthese deplorable acts but the explosion of a popular reaction,\nprovoked by the share a part of the clergy had taken in favor of\na retrograde policy--of a return to the ancient r\u00e9gime and to\nabsolutism?\n{85}\nViolent men profited by this reaction to satisfy their impiety\nand licentiousness, but they could never have excited the\nmovement or made it successful had they hoisted their own banner;\nthere must be some little truth before a populace will suffer\nitself to be so misled; and the crowd who in February, 1831, so\nfuriously rose in insurrection before St. Germain l'Auxerrois,\nwould have paused in astonishment had it perceived that what it\nwas so brutally attacking and destroying was--not the ancient\nr\u00e9gime, not absolutism--but religion and liberty.\n\nTo put an end to this confusion, full at once of deception and of\nperil, but a single thing was required: to banish from the\nChurch, and from its relations with the State, worldly ambition\nand influences, and to replace them by influences of a moral\ndescription; instead of a political banner, they should have only\nhoisted the banner of religious faith and liberty of conscience.\n{86}\nThat was the great work, or, to use a better expression, the\ngreat progress, which from 1830 to 1848 was aimed at and\naccomplished.\n\nThe efforts made and the debates instituted at this epoch by the\nmost eminent champions of the Church are remarkable, because they\nno longer proposed to restore any fragment of its ancient power,\nbut to insure to it its place and its share in the new public\ninstitutions of liberty. The little militant party of Catholic\nLiberals quitted the arena of the ancient political regime, and\ntook up their position on that of the new constitution, claiming\nfor the Church, for its ministers, and for its faithful subjects,\nthe exercise of all the rights and the free development of all\nthe power that, under the constitution, either belonged, or ought\nto belong, to all citizens.\n{87}\nThey made no reservation of opinion, no effort more or less\ncovert, in furtherance of any pretensions of bygone times,\nwhether dynastic, aristocratic, or theocratic; the frank\nacceptance of the present age and actual society, provided that\nChristian faith, Christian morals, and Christian institutions,\nmight have free room to work; such was, in the midst of all the\nfactions and political plottings of this period, the constant\nattitude of the Catholic Liberal party, that is, of M. de\nMontalembert, the P\u00e8re Lacordaire, M. Charles Lenormant, Frederic\nOzanam, and of the friends in small number grouped around them.\n\nWhoever feels astonished that their number was so small, shows\nlittle acquaintance with our country or our times. The enterprise\nwhich they undertook was singularly bold and difficult; to drag\nFrance out of its rut of incredulity and irreligion, and at the\nsame time to extricate Catholicism from its rut of impolicy, its\nalliance with absolutism, its timorous immobility in the presence\nof liberty; to proclaim and simultaneously to defend, in\nspirituals, the Christian faith, and, in temporals, the regime of\nliberty.\n{88}\nCertainly in France, and in the 19th century, the devotion of men\nto such a task supposes an enthusiasm and an energy of conviction\nof which few are capable; and if the new Christian Liberals\nflattered themselves that success would be easy, events must soon\nhave disabused them. Attacked with ardor by the opponents of all\nreligion, they were also assailed by Catholics devoted to the\nancient r\u00e9gime of the Church, and alarmed at the new system\npressed upon their acceptance. The former of these two attacks\ncaused the Catholic Liberals neither surprise nor embarrassment;\nbut the latter brought with it bitter annoyance and\ndisappointment, for they found directly opposed to them members\nof their own faith. Soon they were to have as their adversary a\nman who, by his vigorous talents--employed with equal violence\nagainst the incredulous of all shades of opinions, and against\nthe Catholic Liberals--too exercised an influence upon a great\nnumber of Catholics, whether of the laity or priesthood, and\nindisposed them to any reconciliation with that modern society\nwhich he irritated still more against them.\n{89}\nI knew M. Veuillot at the commencement of his literary career,\nwhen he accompanied General Bugeaud to the seat of his government\nin Algeria. At this epoch he addressed to me two memorials upon\nthe subject of the moral condition of the colony and of the army.\nThey struck me by their decided tone, and the straightforwardness\nand candor with which he expressed sentiments already\ndistinguished by devotion. Already he regarded the religion of\nhis own Church, and of _it_ alone, as the sure basis of\nhuman morality and social order; but he had not yet proclaimed as\nhis doctrine the deplorable error that Faith enjoins war upon\nLiberty. He merited a better understanding of the cause of\nChristianity; he merited to be a better advocate of the Church at\nRome than an advocate who, although one of its most devoted\ndefenders, has yet most injured the cause that he sought to\nserve.\n\n{90}\n\nThese political revolutions and these domestic dissensions left,\nin the period that ensued after 1830, the Catholic Church in a\ndifficult situation, but in one salutary for it and fruitful of\nconsequences. The clergy no longer counted on the favor of\nGovernment, but they had at the same time to fear from it neither\nviolence nor hostility. Left to themselves, they felt the\nnecessity of independent existence, and saw that they must\nreplace credit with the authorities by influence with the\ncountry; and this influence they were likely to obtain. If they\ndid not possess all the privileges which they coveted, they had\nenough to enable them every day to conquer additional powers,\nsupposing them willing and sagacious enough to take the trouble\nand employ the right means.\n{91}\nIn my opinion, they did not do at this epoch, in the interest of\nreligion and of the Church, all that their position permitted, or\nall that their mission required at their hands; but temporal or\nspiritual governors, layman or priests, who ever did, I do not\nsay what he ought, but what he could have done? The greater part\nof the bishops and of the priests were vacillating and timorous;\nthe problem before them went beyond their opinions, and the\nevents beyond their strength; the impetuous Liberalism of M. de\nMontalembert and of his friends disquieted them; they saw in him\nrather a valiant champion than a representative they could rely\nupon. Among those who joined with him in the struggle for the\nfreedom of instruction, there were some who showed, with\nreference to the Government of 1830 and the University, little\nfairness or prudence: these injured the cause rather than served\nit. Whether from submission to orders from Rome, or from their\nnatural impulse, the clergy, taken as a whole, showed little\ntaste for liberty; even while they demanded it, they were rather\ninclined to immobility than progress.\n{92}\nBut whatever the fears and hesitations of individuals, when the\ngeneral current of ideas and of popular opinions once penetrates\nto the classes least disposed to entertain them, it never fails,\nwhether they avow it, or whether they even know it, to swell and\nto advance. Around and among the clergy themselves the spirit of\nprogress and of liberty gained ground, although by insensible\ndegrees. Here and there individual priests, like the Abb\u00e9\nBautain, formerly a student with M. Jouffroy at the \u00c9cole\nNormale, and Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Letters at\nStrasbourg, propagated in the Church the liberal movement,\nforming for it in different places new centers of action. The\nspirit which had awakened Christianity manifested itself, too, in\nour great lay establishments for the higher course of\ninstruction; not always without check, but still with a success\nthe more conspicuous the more it was contested.\n{93}\nIn 1846, some disturbances, occasioned by a thoughtless and\npuerile intolerance, made by M. Lenormant, at that time my\nsubstitute (suppl\u00e9ant) in the chair of Modern History at the\nFaculty of Letters, determine to withdraw from the Sorbonne,\nwhere he had made a courageous avowal of his faith; but M.\nOzanam, the worthy successor to the chair of M. Fauriel,\nmaintained in the same place the same principles with a more\nsuccessful perseverance, and with such a depth of conviction and\nsuch a warmth of emotion that sometimes he carried the feelings\nof his auditors away with him, and sometimes commanded respectful\nattention even from those most confirmed in their incredulity.\nAnd while the spirit of Christianity was thus manifesting itself\nin the free Faculty of Letters, the teaching of the Faculty of\nTheology attested, under that same roof, a notable progress in\nknowledge and in Liberalism. The Abb\u00e9 Maret, in his lectures on\nthe Dogmas of Religion, the Abb\u00e9 Fr\u00e8re, in his discourses on the\nScriptures; the Abb\u00e9 Dupanloup and the Abb\u00e9 Gerbet, in their\nlectures on Sacred Eloquence, displayed not only a firm and\nactive faith, but views upon philosophy, history, and literature,\nnecessarily implying an acquaintance with the works of human\nscience, and an appreciation of the rights of liberty.\n{94}\nEcclesiastics and laymen, not members of the scientific\nestablishments of the State, published, under the name of the\n\"Universit\u00e9 Catholique,\" a series of courses in which philosophy,\nhistory, natural sciences, archaeology, and the arts were\nexplained and taught in harmony with the dogmas and sentiments of\nreligious men. And even far from Paris, in several great\nepiscopal seminaries, classical and theological studies took a\nwider range, and attained a scientific value that they had not\nfor a long time possessed.\n\n\"Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone,\" says the\nApostle St. James. Christianity has borne abundant fruits since\nits awakening at the commencement of this century. I have before\nme the \"Manual des \u0152uvres et institutions de charit\u00e9 de Paris,\"\npublished in 1862, by order of the archbishop, M. Sibour.\n{95}\nIndependently of the establishments under the direction of\nGovernment, I find in it 107 charitable institutions or\nassociations, of every kind, originated and supported by zealous\nChristians in the interval between 1820 and 1848. Of these I will\nonly cite some of the principal ones, to establish their\ncharacter and their progress. In the year 1822 the idea struck\ntwo poor servants at Lyons to make the rounds of their parish and\ncollect weekly one sou from each person, in aid of the conversion\nof infidels. This was the origin of the association called\n\"l'\u0152uvre de la propagation de la Foi,\" now under the direction of\ntwo councils, composed of members of the clergy and of the laity,\nhaving their sittings, one at Lyons, the other at Paris. The\nreport published by this association in June, 1824, showed for\nthe two years, 1823 and 1824, a receipt of 80,000 fr.,\n(3200_l_.) This association received in 1864 the sum of\n5,090,041 fr. 48 cent., (203,601_l_. 13_s_.\n3\u00bd_d_.,) in which amount France alone figures for 3,479,290\nfr. 65 cent., (139,171_l_. 12_s_. 6\u00bd_d_.,) and it\ndivided 4,658,672 fr. 56 cent. (186,346_l_. 18_s_.\n6\u00bd_d_.) among five hundred dioceses, and appropriated those\nfunds to the support of the Catholic missionaries in the five\nparts of the world.\n{96}\nIt counted from the year 1852, 1,500,000 subscribers, and it\ndistributed 170,000 copies of its \"Annals,\" (Annales de\npropagation de la Foi,) which form a sequel to the \"Lettres\n\u00e9dificantes,\" and keep the Christian world informed of their\ndoings. In May, 1833, eight young men, at the suggestion of\nFrederic Ozanam, \"wishing,\" said the Per\u00e8 Lacordaire, \"to give\none more proof of what Christianity can effect in behalf of the\npoor, began to ascend to those upper stories which were the\nhidden haunts of the misery of their quarter. Men saw youths in\nthe flower of their age and fresh from school regularly visiting,\nwithout any feeling of repulsion, the most abject habitations,\nand conveying to their unknown and suffering tenants a passing\nvision of charity.\"\n{97}\nTwenty years later, in 1853, Ozanam said at Florence, when on his\ndeath-bed: \"Instead of eight only, at Paris alone we are two\nthousand strong, and we visit five thousand families, that is to\nsay, about twenty thousand individuals, or a quarter of the poor\ncontained in that great city. The conferences in France alone\nnumber five hundred, and we have them too in England, in Spain,\nBelgium, America, and even in Jerusalem.\" Nine years afterward,\nin 1862, when the Government, listening to mistaken counsels,\nsuppressed the General Council of the Conferences of St. Vincent\nde Paul, and by doing so destroyed the central bond that kept the\nsociety together, the latter counted more than 3000 local\nconferences; it consisted of about 30,000 members, who visited in\ntheir homes more than 100,000 indigent families, and had already\nintroduced into the greater part of the principal cities a system\nwhich exercised a control over the interests of apprentices and\nof prisoners.\n{98}\nDuring the course of the same epoch the Sisters of Charity, whose\nnumber, a century after their foundation by St. Vincent de Paul,\nhad not exceeded 1500, already reached 18,000, of whom 16,000\nwere Frenchwomen; and at this moment they are plying throughout\nthe world their works of piety and charity. Another society, \"Les\npetites s\u0153urs des pauvres,\" was founded in 1845, in imitation of\nJeanne Jugan, a poor servant, a native of Brittany, who had been\njust crowned by the French Academy. This society receives and\nsuccors in their establishment nearly 20,000 aged men. Another\nassociation, \"Les Fr\u00e8res de la doctrine Chr\u00e9tienne,\" which had in\nthe year 1844, 468 schools, maintains this year (1865) 920, and\nthe number of the pupils has increased from 198,188 to 335,382.\nState and ecclesiastical documents attest, that by concurring\ncauses of encouragement on the part of the State, of local\nsubventions and of private donations, ten thousand churches have\nbeen, during the last fifty years, built, rebuilt, or suitably\nadapted for the performance of the services of the Church of\nRome.\n{99}\nI might cite many similar facts. In all the directions and under\nall the forms in which piety and charity manifest themselves,\nfaith and liberty, and faith and science have, since the\nawakening of Christianity and since the cause of religion has\nbeen separated from politics, drawn nearer to one another, and\nfaith and its manifestation by charity have made a simultaneous\nadvance and a like progress.\n\nHad the Government of 1830 remained standing; had State and\nChurch each retained reciprocally the same situation and the same\nattitude, the facts to which I have just alluded might have long\nremained unobserved. Society does not, any more than individuals,\nrender an account to itself of the intimate relations of its\nexistence, or of the transformations to which these give rise;\nbut Providence has its moments when it suddenly lightens up the\nstage of the world and reveals to all actors and spectators the\nimport and the effect of what is passing around them.\n{100}\nThe Revolution of 1848 threw upon the progress of the Catholic\nChurch and its relations with French society since 1830 the clear\nlight of such a revelation.\n\nIn this sudden subversion of all things, in the presence of a\nrepublic extemporized upon the ruins of three monarchies--the\nmonarchy of glory, the monarchy of tradition, and the monarchy of\npublic opinion--in the midst of this nation, suddenly insurgent\nand beyond either its aim or expectation sovereign, what became\nof the Church? What did its ministers? If some of them\nparticipated in the current dreams, certainly the majority were\nfull of anguish and alarm; they did not combat the new\ninstitutions; they did not pretend to exercise any influence for\nor against any party; they sought only to purify the Republic by\nsecuring in it a place for Religion; they did not stand aloof\nfrom the people; they showed themselves, in its great assemblages\nand in its f\u00eates, planting the cross of Jesus by the side of the\ntree of liberty.\n{101}\nNever did the Church stand so aloof from politics; never was she\nmore modest in her attitude; never less exacting--I will not say\nmore obsequious, as far as the Government or the public was\nconcerned; never more absorbed with her mission of piety and\nmorality, whatever the Government of France might be, and whoever\nher masters.\n\nAnd what in their turn was the conduct of the people toward the\nChurch? I do not mean to say that they confided in her, or showed\nher much affection. The popular movement in 1848 was no doubt far\nfrom being religious; and the ideas, acts, and language which\nproceeded from it every instant, were well calculated to disturb\nand sadden the hearts of Christians; but religion and its\nministers were in no respect ill treated, insulted, or\npersecuted; their forms of worship were not interrupted: when\nthey showed themselves out of doors, they were received with\nrespect; and at the sight of a virtuous archbishop mortally\nwounded in the streets, in the very endeavor to appease the civil\nwar by the exhibition of the cross, a painful stupor seized the\npeople; a pang of remorse and of shame traversed those masses of\ndisbelievers at the sight of a martyr.\n{102}\nIt was clear that in the interval between 1830 and 1848, although\nthe Christian Church had not aroused in the people either faith\nor sympathy, that Church had at least won liberty and peace. When\nthe revolutionary fever had subsided, when the Republic had given\nitself a chief, and was waiting for a master, it was no longer in\nthe street, by popular impressions, but in the Assemblies, and by\nthe constituted authorities, that the great questions of the day\nwere put and were solved. There, too, the progress, which the\nCatholic Church had made, became immediately evident, and its\ngains were ascertained. It counted at this moment among its most\nzealous servants a man new to public affairs, who had entered\npolitical life as an adherent of the Legitimist Opposition to the\nMonarchy of 1830, a man who accepted the Republic, and had\nacquired in a few days a just renown by his courageous resistance\nto anarchy.\n{103}\nBy a choice, fortunate but at the same time unforeseen, M. de\nFalloux became the Minister of Public Instruction and of Worship\nin the first cabinet formed by the Prince President of the\nRepublic. The new minister immediately devoted himself to the\nimportant measure that the Catholic Church had had in view ever\nsince the year 1830, that is, to the complete establishment,\nunder the sanction of the law, of the principle of liberty of\ninstruction. He proceeded in his task at once with intelligence\nand boldness. To prepare his project of law, he appointed a\nnumerous commission, and summoned to it the most eminent men, who\nrepresented views and interests the most diverse; laymen and\necclesiastics, Romanists, Protestants and philosophers,\nRepublicans, Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists, M. Thiers\nand the Abb\u00e9 Dupanloup, M. Cousin and M. de Montalembert, M.\nSaint Marc Girardin and M. Cochin, M. Cuvier and the Abb\u00e9 Sibour.\n[Footnote 12]\n\n    [Footnote 12: The following is a complete list of the members\n    of the Commission, as given in the \"Moniteur\" of the 22d\n    June, 1849: M. Thiers, president; MM. Cousin, St. Marc\n    Girardin, Dubois, the Abb\u00e9 Dupanloup, Peupin, Janvier,\n    Laurentie, Freslon, Ballaguet, de Montalembert, Fresneau,\n    Poulain de Bossay, Cuvier, Michel, Armand de Melun, Henri de\n    Riancey, Cochin, the Abb\u00e9 Sibour, Roux-Lavergne, de\n    Montreuil-Housset, and Alexis Chevalier, secretary.]\n\n{104}\n\nM. Thiers was the president of this commission, which sat during\nfive months. It discussed every question respecting the\norganization of public instruction with a passionate ardor, and,\nat the same time, with an earnest and sincere desire to\nconciliate, by their resolutions, all opinions. According to the\ncharacter of the times and the state of public sentiment,\ncritical and perilous situations precipitate men sometimes to the\ncommission of insane acts of violence, and sometimes keep them\nwithin the line of fairness and prudence. The project of law\nwhich issued from the commission of M. de Falloux had the merit\nof prudence.\n{105}\nIn making mutual concessions, the representatives of the\ndifferent systems took good care to protest that they did not\nrenounce their peculiar principles--a language which made\nsometimes their resolutions have the air of a superficial and\nincoherent compromise; but men could, nevertheless, observe how\nconspicuous that project was for its large and practical\ncharacter, and its respect for different rights; and they could\nalso see how the State, the Church, and private establishments\nwere left free to compete in matters of public instruction. When\nthis project was discussed in the Legislative Assembly, M. de\nFalloux was no longer minister; but the impulse had been given,\nand his measure was out of danger; his successor, M. de Parien,\ntoo, gave it the support which it deserved; and after a\ndiscussion which occupied thirty-seven sittings, the Assembly, by\na strong majority, passed the law, without introducing any\nimportant modification. The Liberty of Instruction was founded.\n\n{106}\n\nFifteen years have passed, and it subsists. The State, the\nChurch, private institutions founded by laymen or by\necclesiastics, have competed actively during all that period.\nReligious congregations, Lazarists, Dominicans, Oratorians,\nJesuits, have in this struggle displayed all the enthusiasm of\nfaith, all the ardor of reciprocal rivalry. The Jesuits, since\nthe year 1850, have opened twenty colleges for secondary\ninstruction, and have founded at Paris, for courses of study\npreparatory to the special schools, an establishment whose\nsuccesses have attracted the attention of the government and of\nthe public; for it sends every year to the Military Schools, the\nPolytechnic, Naval, or Central, an extraordinary number of\nsuccessful candidates, who have passed with honor, although the\ncompetition has been extensive and the examinations are severe.\n{107}\nA great school, founded by the Archbishop of Paris for the higher\nbranches of ecclesiastical study in the ancient house of the\nCarmelites, has formed priests who, in the public examinations\nand theses, have proved themselves capable of taking rank by the\nside of the best pupils of the lay establishment of the \"\u00c9cole\nNormale Sup\u00e9rieure.\" Everywhere the University has encountered\nnumerous and ardent rivals; and it has been at the same time in\nits own interior a prey to painful trials. Under the pretext of\nan interest for studies of a scientific and practical nature,\nclassical and philosophical studies have been displaced and\ndepreciated. At the very moment that the University was losing\nits privileges beyond, it saw its principles and its organization\nshaken inside its walls.\n\nFaithful to her convictions and traditions, even while accepting\nthe experiments and the struggles that were forced upon her, the\nUniversity has surmounted perils from within and rivalries from\nwithout; on the one side, little by little, it has returned to\nits system of a large and solid teaching of the classics; on the\nother, the level of the studies in its principal establishments\nhas been raised, and the number of its pupils has been ever on\nthe increase.\n{108}\nThe Lyc\u00e9es counted (in 1850) 19,300; they have now (1865) more\nthan 30,000 pupils. The State has thrown open the career of\ninstruction to the Church, and has at the same time redoubled its\nown solicitude and success. Liberty of instruction has calmed\nboth the anxieties of the religious party that made them demand\nit, and those anxieties of the laity which that liberty had\ninspired. It has given peace to the State and to the Church, at\nthe same time that it has excited their emulation and stimulated\ntheir progress.\n\nAn incident which made some noise at the time has, under the new\nregime, shown the force of the Liberal spirit, and proved that,\nwhen needed, it would have unforeseen defenders.\n{109}\nUnder the influence of a blind zeal, a pious ecclesiastic, the\nAbb\u00e9 Graume, demanded by what right the literature of pagan\nantiquity occupied the place it did in public teaching; denounced\nit as \"the devouring canker of modern societies;\" and insisted\nthat the Christian classics should replace in our schools the\nGreek and Latin classics. What was this but to reject one of the\ngreat cradles of modern civilization; to condemn the renaissance\nof literature in the fifteenth century, as well as the religious\nreform in the sixteenth century; and to close to the minds of\nrising generations of Christians the general history of the\nworld! This attack upon the system of public instruction which\nhad been in vigor during the last four centuries in all the\nStates of Christendom, met from a part of the Romanists with a\nsympathetic reception: bishops, eminent for learning, thanked its\nauthor; M. Veuillot constituted himself his champion. But in the\nCatholic Church itself, as well as in the University, the fire of\nthe defense silenced that of the attack; ecclesiastics, as\neminent by their piety as by their science, the Bishop of Orleans\nat their head, proclaimed aloud their sympathy for the\ncomprehensive scheme and the liberal studies which embrace all\nthe fair works of man's intelligence.\n{110}\nThe Jesuits on this occasion set an example of broad views and\ncommon sense; they introduced no modification into the programmes\nof their colleges; the P\u00e8res Cahoux and Daniel demonstrated their\npropriety, nay, their necessity; and the literature of the Greeks\nand of the Romans has preserved in the education of Christians\nthe place which it gained in their history by the right of genius\nand by the splendor of its productions.\n\nScarcely had this controversy on a literary and moral subject\nbeen settled, when questions of far more gravity were raised, and\nmore profoundly agitated Christian society. Christians found\nthemselves attacked simultaneously upon scientific and upon\npolitical grounds. Men denied to the Christian Faith its\nreasonableness and its vital sources--to the Church of Rome its\ntraditional and historical r\u00e9gime, and the temporal power of its\nchief.\n\n{111}\n\nTwo things strike me in this double attack--on the one hand its\ntimidity, yet gravity; on the other, the powerful resistance\nwhich it encounters. Nothing is less novel than a denial of the\nsupernatural character of Christianity, and of its primitive\nfacts, of its miracles, of the divinity of its founder. The\neighteenth century carried on this war in a far more violent,\nrude, and iniquitous spirit than the nineteenth century has done.\nM. Renan, in the attempt to dethrone Jesus, has at least treated\nhim with admiration and respect; not from calculation, I feel\nassured, but from the natural tone of his mind. In our time, men\nhave instincts and tastes, at once inconsequent and prudent; at\nthe very time when they engage in a deadly struggle they affect\nto carry thither the cool impartiality of spectators; they\nflatter themselves that they unite the acumen of the critic to\nthe feeling of the poet. The skeptic shows no disinclination to\nplay the mystic; and the erudite man strives to cover with the\nvail of fancy the ruin that he makes.\n{112}\nHume was a more stubborn skeptic, and Voltaire an enemy more\ndaring. If I pass from philosophy to politics, and from books to\nevents, I observe the war undergoing a similar transformation.\nWhat a contrast between the attacks of the Directory and the\nEmperor Napoleon the First upon the Papacy, and the circumspect\nand hesitating treatment of which, in spite of the blows that it\nreceives, the Papacy is in these days the object? Are we to\nconclude that the general course of events has changed, and that\nthe flood, which for a century whirled Europe along, is arrested\nand subsiding? Certainly not: there are abundant facts to prove\nthe contrary. Whether regarded as a religious or a political\nquestion, whether considered as affecting opinions or interests,\nthe contest between authority and liberty, between faith and\nincredulity, is carried on more earnestly and more systematically\nnow than ever: principles on each side are pushed to their\nextreme consequences, and contrasted in a manner never before the\ncase.\n{113}\nBut experience imposes a restraint upon men even where it does\nnot change them. In the years of internal order which the Empire\ninsured, and in the years of liberty to which the constitutional\nMonarchy gave the sanction of its laws, the different parties\nlearned to appreciate the obstacles with which they had to\ncontend, and to measure their own strength and that of their\nopponents: they now know that everything is not possible to them;\nand necessity has inculcated a certain amount of equity and good\nsense. The experience of the past, as well as that of each day,\nconvinces them of their inability to insure a complete success to\ntheir systems and their designs. Its adversaries thought\nChristianity expiring; but they soon saw that it was still full\nof life: while they express their surprise and persevere in their\nwarfare, they admit its practical influence, render homage to its\nmoral value, and strive, although they contest its rights, to\nappropriate to themselves the inheritance of its blessings.\n{114}\nThe wind has often blown from the right quarter for Catholic\nAbsolutists during this century; they have enjoyed the favor of\nmore than one master, and more than once they have requited him\nby devoted services. More than once, also, they have obtained\nfrom the supreme head of their Church official declarations,\nwhich have been used by them against the Catholic Liberals. The\nAbsolutists, nevertheless, have not succeeded in changing the\ntendency of Christian societies; they have arrested the course\nneither of ideas nor events; their defeats have cost them dearer\nthan their victories were worth; and in spite of the obstinate\ninfatuation of parties, I doubt whether they themselves believe\nin the progress of their cause. And how often has the Papacy\nitself in our days been insulted and despoiled? Has it not even\nbeen vanquished and expelled?\n{115}\nStill, in spite of what it has suffered, sometimes from\nrevolutions, sometimes from arbitrary power, it has outlived not\nonly the triumphs of its enemies, but its own impolitic measures:\nand at this day, assailed by freethinkers in spirituals, by\nambitious neighbors in temporals, menaced with abandonment even\nby its protectors, it is more energetically defended and\nefficaciously supported than it ever was at the commencement of\nthis century in its reverses. Pius VII. never received such\npecuniary contributions as have been forwarded to Pius IX. in his\nnecessities; and if the French bishops were now summoned to a\ncouncil, their conduct would, beyond doubt, be more dignified and\nmore influential than was that of their predecessors in 1811.\n\nWhy such changes in a situation itself in effect unchanged?\nWhence these hesitating measures, this embarrassed attitude of\nthe adversaries of the Christian faith and of the Christian\nChurch? What cause at the same time gives such boldness and even\nsuccess to their defenders?\n\n{116}\n\nEach age has its own peculiar and characteristic mission, and one\nfrom which it cannot escape; every human being has his share in\nit, whether he knows it or not. As a consequence of the truths\nand the errors, of the good and evil, of the triumphs and\nreverses of the preceding centuries, the nineteenth century has\nbefore it a special task, which will employ all its energies, and\nwhich will also, I hope, constitute its glory. It has both in the\nState and in the Church found the two supreme forces that preside\nover man's life, and over that of society, Authority and Liberty,\nin violent conflict, in turn intoxicated with victory, or\nvanquished, ruined. It is the mission of the nineteenth century\nto make them live together, and live in peace; or at least in an\nantagonism entailing upon neither any mortal danger. The\nrecognition of, and respect for, authority; the acceptance and\nguarantee of freedom; these are the imperative necessities which\nour age is called upon to feel and to satisfy, both in State and\nChurch.\n{117}\nNor does this imply, as is often pretended, any inconsistency or\nany compromise of principle or any policy of expedients; it is\nnot by inconsistency that great questions are settled, it is not\nby expedients that we content the cravings of men's souls, or\ncalm the anxieties of human society; for mankind yields genuine\nsubmission and feels real confidence only where it believes in\nthe existence of truth and justice. The recognition, veneration,\nand guarantee of the different rights which co-exist naturally\nand necessarily in human societies--of the rights, both of\nindividuals and of the State--of the rights of religious society\nand of civil society--of the rights of little local societies as\nwell as of the grand general society--of the rights of conscience\nas well as of tradition--of the rights of the future as well as\nof those of the past--these are the dominant principles of which\nthe nineteenth century has to insure the triumph.\n{118}\nTriumphs assured, if Liberals and Christians are both of them\ndetermined to accomplish it! Notwithstanding all the violent\nemotions of party, and of all our differences on intellectual and\nsocial subjects, the consciousness of this situation is ever\nbefore our minds; and whether we admit it or not, the alliance of\nthe liberal movement with the movement of awakened Christianity,\nis the grand measure and the grand hope of the day.\n\nA Catholic priest, now a bishop, inquiring the origin of the\nactual disputes of religion, and their probable issue, expresses\nhimself as follows:--\"Free institutions, freedom of conscience,\npolitical liberty, civil liberty, individual liberty, liberty of\nfamilies, of education, and of opinions, equality before the\nlaws, the equal division of imposts and of public charges, these\nare all points upon which we make no difficulty; we accept them\nfrankly; we appeal to them on solemn occasions of public\ndiscussion; we accept, we invoke the principles and the liberties\nproclaimed in 1789; even those who combat those principles and\nthose liberties admit that liberty of religion and free education\nhave become acknowledged, self-evident truths (_des verit\u00e9s de\nbon sens_).\" [Footnote 13]\n\n    [Footnote 13: De la Pacification religieuse. By the Abb\u00e9\n    Dupanloup, pp. 263, 294, 306. Paris, 1845.]\n\n{119}\n\nThis Catholic, this bishop, is no timorous priest, disposed to\nmake every sacrifice for the purpose of conciliation. It is the\nsame priest, who, from the first attack made upon the\nconstitution of the Catholic Church, has always distinguished\nhimself by the warmth and ability with which he has defended it.\nThe Papacy, its rights, its temporal independence and spiritual\nsovereignty never had a champion more resolute, more opposed to\nweak concessions or fallacious compromises, more constantly\nintrepid in the breach than the Bishop of Orleans.\n\n{120}\n\nWhen the contest was warmest, the Pope (Pius IX.) published his\n\"Encyclical\" of the 8th of December, 1864. Exempt from every\nfeeling of prejudice and hostility, and having no connection or\nrelation with the Papacy to make me pause, I feel no hesitation\nin saying what I think of this document, at once the occasion and\nthe pretext for such a stir. In my opinion the error was a grave\none. Regarded as doctrine, the \"Encyclical\" was dignified and yet\nembarrassed, positive and yet evasive; it confounded in the same\nsweeping condemnation salutary truths and pernicious errors, the\nprinciples of liberty and the maxims of licentiousness; it made\nan effort to maintain, in point of right, the ancient traditions\nand pretensions of Rome, without avowing in point of fact that\nthe ideas and potent influences of modern civilization were the\nobjects of its declared and unceasing hostility. In a system like\nthat of the present day--a system of publicity and freedom of\ndiscussion--this manner of proceeding, its inconsistencies, its\nreticence, its obscurities, whether arising from instinct or\npremeditation, have ceased to be good policy, and in fact serve\nno purpose whatever.\n{121}\nAs a measure to meet a particular emergency, the \"Encyclical\" of\nthe 8th of December 1864 did not resemble that of Gregory XVI. in\n1832; it was not called for by such extravagances as those of the\n_Avenir_, or those of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais; no urgent\nnecessity, no public exigency required that Rome should pronounce\nitself; the debate between the Catholic Absolutists and the\nCatholic Liberals was of ancient date, and was evidently destined\nto long duration; the Papacy could not flatter itself that it\ncould put an end to this contest by any peremptoriness of\ndecision; her indulgent consideration was as due to the one party\nas to the other. Doubtless the Catholic Liberals had not shown\nless zeal for her cause, nor had the services which they had\nrendered been less important; it was not a moment of peril for\nRome, and Rome was bound in justice, without any open declaration\nat least, to maintain toward them an attitude of reserve.\n{122}\nThe party, even before the publication of the \"Encyclical,\" had\nearned, as it still merits, her gratitude and her esteem; neither\nM. de Montalembert, nor the Prince Albert de Broglie, nor M. de\nFalloux, nor M. Cochin, nor any of their friends had imitated the\nexample of the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais; nor has one of them shown\nsubsequently any irritation, or even uttered a word of complaint;\nthey have maintained a respectful silence. The Bishop of Orleans\nhas done even more. A man of action as well as of faith, he\nthought in the midst of the storm excited by the \"Encyclical\" of\nthe 8th of December, that he was bound to consider the perils\nrather than the faults, and that it became a priest who had\nsupported liberty to support authority also when the object of\nattack. He threw himself into the arena to cover the Papacy at\nall hazards with his valiant arms: after having played the part\nof a sagacious counselor, he played that of a faithful champion,\nand he inflicted upon her adversaries blows so sturdy, that the\nlatter were in their turn obliged to put themselves upon their\ndefense, even in the midst of the success that the \"Encyclical\"\nhad insured them.\n\n{123}\n\nThe Bishop of Orleans is probably reserved for many other\nstruggles; he may even be hurried by a warlike temperament to\ncarry the war into a field where it is uncalled for; but I shall\nbe both surprised and grieved if he do not always remain what he\nis at this moment in the Church of France, the most enlightened\nrepresentative of its mission, moral and social, as well as the\nmost intrepid defender of its true and legitimate interests.\n\nWhether the matter in debate concerns religious or social affairs\nand contests, parties are liable to two errors of equal gravity:\nthey may misapprehend their respective perils, or their\nrespective strength. Wisdom consists in a just appreciation of\nthese perils and of these forces, and it is upon such an\nappreciation precisely that success itself depends. The actual\nperils to which Catholicism is exposed are evident to all. It\nowes its development and its constitution to times essentially\ndifferent from the present. It adapts itself with reluctance to\nthe principles required and the demands made upon it in this age.\n{124}\nIts antagonists think and assert that it will never so adapt\nitself. Most of the lookers-on, who are indifferent or\nvacillating--and their number is great--incline to believe its\nantagonists in the right. This is the trial through which\nCatholicism is at this moment passing. To pass through it\ntriumphantly, it has two great forces to rely upon; the one is,\nthe reaction in favor of religion occasioned by the follies and\nthe crimes of the Revolution, the other is, the liberal movement\nthat took place among the Catholics after the faults of the\nRestoration, and the new opening made for them by the Government\nof 1830. The Concordat built up again the edifice of the Catholic\nChurch; Liberalism is laboring to penetrate its sanctuary, and,\nwithout impairing its faith, to obtain for it once more the\nsympathies of civil government.\n{125}\nLet sincere Catholics reflect well upon their course, for here is\ntheir main stay, here their best chance for the future; let them\nmaintain with a firm hand the strong constitution of their\nChurch, but accept frankly, and at once claim, their share also\nin the liberties of their age; let them take care of their\nanchors and spread their sails, for this is the conduct\nprescribed to them by the supreme interest, which should be their\nlaw, the future interests, I mean, of Christianity.\n\nThe time has been short, but the experiment has been made and is\nsuccessful. I have now enumerated the principal events connected\nwith religion which have taken place in the course of this\ncentury in the bosom of the Catholic Church of France. In spite\nof the obstacles, the oscillations, the deviations, and the\nfaults that are remarkable, the awakening of Christianity is\nevident. Under the influence of the causes which I have pointed\nout, Christian faith has evidently made progress; Christian\nscience, progress; Christian charity, as shown by works,\nprogress; Christian force, progress; progress incomplete and\ninsufficient but still progress, real, and fall of fruit,\nsymptomatic of vital energy and future promise.\n{126}\nLet not the enemies of Christianity deceive themselves; they are\nwaging a combat of life and of death, but their antagonist is not\nin extremis!\n\n---------------------------------\n\n   II. Awakening Of Christianity In France.\n\n\nI pass without any transitional stage from the awakening of\nChristianity in the Roman Catholic Church to the awakening of\nChristianity in the Protestant Church. What need of a transition?\nI am not quitting the Christian Church. With respect to their\nclaims as Christians, Protestant nations have been put to the\ntest. They have had, like Catholic nations, to pass through\nviolent struggles, to combat evil tendencies, to undergo perilous\ntrials; but the peculiar characteristic of Christianity, the\nsimultaneous action of faith and of science, of authority and\nliberty, has received a glorious development in the bosom of\nProtestant nations.\n{127}\nEngland and Holland, Protestant Germany, Sweden, Denmark,\nSwitzerland, and the United States of America, have had their\nvices, their crimes, their sufferings, and their reverses; but,\nafter all, these States have in the last four centuries labored\nwith effect at the solution, in a Christian sense, of that grand\nproblem of human society--the moral and physical progress of the\nmasses, as well as the political guarantee of their rights and\nliberties. And in these days the States to which I have alluded\nresist effectually the shocks--now of anarchy, now of despotism,\nwhich alternately trouble the peace of Christendom. As for the\nChristian Faith itself, if, in Protestant countries, it does not\nescape the attacks elsewhere made upon it, neither is it without\nits powerful defenders and faithful followers. In those\ncountries, Christian Churches are full of adherents, and the\ncause of Christianity finds every day valiant champions to devote\nto its service the arms which science and liberty supply.\n{128}\nThere is on the part of the Romanists a puerile infatuation upon\nthis subject, which makes them absolutely close their eyes to\nfacts; by an error fatal to themselves, they persist in imputing\nthe fermentation in society, and the abandonment of religion, to\nthe influence of the Protestant nations--nations among whom\nthese two scourges are combated with at least as much resolution\nand effect as elsewhere. It is not my wish to institute\ndisparaging comparisons, or to foment a rivalry opposed to the\nspirit of Christ's religion. Protestantism is not, in\nChristendom, the last, neither is it the sole bulwark of\nChristianity; but there exists none that is stronger, that offers\nfewer weak points to assailants, or that is better provided with\nfaithful and able defenders.\n\n{129}\n\nAt the commencement of this century, and in the years which\nfollowed the promulgation of the Concordat, the Protestants, like\nthe Catholics in France, thought only of the re-establishment of\ntheir worship and of the liberty of their faith. A liberty the\nmore precious in their eyes, as it followed upon two centuries of\npersecutions and of sufferings of which we cannot, in these days,\nread the accounts without mingled sentiments of astonishment, of\nindignation, and of sorrow. Faithfully should men guard the\nmemory of such outrages; they would be infinitely better than\nthey are if they had always present to their minds the vivid\npictures of the iniquities and woes which fill the page of their\nhistory; and evils would not so soon recur if they were not so\nsoon forgotten. The system of Terrorism under the Revolution had\nconfounded Catholic and Protestant in a common oppression; it had\nabolished the forms of worship of each, denied all free\nexpression of opinion to Christians; and without distinction\ncondemned to the same scaffold the \"pastors of the desert\" and\nthe bishops of the Court of Versailles--Rabaut Saint-Etienne as\nwell as the nuns of Verdun.\n{130}\nWhen this terrible regime had ceased to exist, neither party had\nreligiously or politically any desires or pretensions that were\nnot extremely moderate: the one thing regarded by all as the\nsovereign good was, the right to live without molestation and the\nliberty to address their prayers to God in the light of day. No\nother subject so seriously interested them; and they heartily\nwished to show their gratitude and deference to the Government,\nwhich, while it gave security to their bodies, permitted their\nsouls to breathe freely. The condition of the Protestants was in\none sense better than that of the Catholics, for the former were\nnow experiencing the joy, not only of a deliverance but of a\npositive conquest; they had just escaped as well from the system\nof Terrorism, as from the ancient r\u00e9gime; they had lost nothing\nto regret; no revengeful feeling made them desire a reaction;\ntheir sole aspiration was for the consolidation of their rights,\nand of their new acquisitions.\n{131}\n\"You who lived, as we did, under the yoke of intolerance,\" (thus\nthey were addressed in 1807 by M. Rabaut-Dupuy, formerly\npresident of the legislative body, and the last surviving son of\none of their most estimable pastors,) \"you, the relics of so many\npersecuted generations, behold! compare! It is no longer in the\ndesert and at the peril of your lives that you render to the\nCreator the homage which is his due. Our temples are restored to\nus, and every day beholds new ones erected. Our pastors are\nrecognized as public functionaries; they receive salaries from\nthe State; a barbarous law no longer suspends the sword over\ntheir heads. Alas! to those whom we have survived it was\npermitted, it is true, to ascend Mount Nebo, and to obtain thence\na glimpse of the promised land, but it is we alone who have taken\npossession.\"\n\nWhat wonder if, on the morrow after the Concordat, which had\nprocured them the free exercise of their faith and the\nimpartiality of the law, the Protestants acquiesced without\ndifficulty in the incomplete organization with which the new\nsystem had left their Church, and that they troubled themselves\nlittle with the attacks made upon its independence and its\ndignity!\n\n{132}\n\nBut this modest enjoyment of their new privileges did not render\nthem indifferent to their ancient belief, and they returned to\nthe open practice of Christ's faith simultaneously with the\nacquisition of their liberty. In 1812, in the midst of the\nprofound silence which reigned throughout the Empire, a professor\nof the faculty of Protestant theology at Montauban, M. Grasc,\nattacked, in his teaching, the dogma of the Trinity. Earnest\nremonstrances were instantly made from the general body of the\nProtestants in France; a great number of consistories, among\nothers those of N\u00eemes, of Montpellier, Montauban, Alais, Anduze,\nSaint Hippolyte, pastors and laity, addressed their complaints,\nsome to the \"Doyen\" of the faculty of theology, others to M. Gasc\nhimself, demanding, all of them, the maintenance of the doctrine\nof the Protestant Church.\n{133}\nThe grand master of the University, M. de Fontanes, \"earnestly\ninvited the professor not to depart from it,\" and M. Gasc himself\nadmitted that his teaching ought to be in conformity. The spirit\nwhich had animated the Reformation in France in the sixteenth\ncentury was still living in the nineteenth; and under the\nnew-born system of liberty, the Awakening of Christianity\nannounced itself by a summons to the faith.\n\nWhen, under the Restoration, France had regained her political\nliberty, it was not long before that liberty bore its natural\nfruits in French Protestantism; it was accompanied, both on\nreligious and political subjects, by the manifestation of\ndiscordant ideas and discordant tendencies, which were soon to\nstruggle for victory.\n{134}\nAs at epochs of great intellectual crises eminent men emerge who\nrepresent dominant ideas, so now M. Samuel Vincent and M. Daniel\nEncontre immediately appeared in the Protestant Church: both were\npastors, and each worthily represented one of the two principles\nwhich naturally develop themselves in the bosom of Protestantism,\nfaith in traditions and the right of private judgment; principles\ndifferent without being contradictory; principles which may\nsubsist in peace provided they remain respectively in their\nproper places, and within the limits of their rights. M. Samuel\nVincent was a man of a mind remarkably comprehensive and of great\nversatility and fecundity; but his habits at the same time were\nthose of a student, fitting him rather for intellectual\nmeditation than qualifying him either for expansive sympathies or\nfor action; he was versed in the philosophy and erudite criticism\nof Germany, at that time novel and rare to France; he made the\nessence of Christianity, according to his own expression, \"to\nconsist in the liberty of inquiry.\" [Footnote 14:]\n\n    [Footnote 14: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M.\n    Samuel Vincent. 2e \u00e9dition, p. 15. Paris, 1859.]\n\n{135}\n\nHe rejected all written articles of faith, every limited idea of\nreligious unity, and claimed within the Church, for both pastors\nand congregation, the greatest latitude in matters of opinion and\nof teaching. But when he clung closely to this view of the\nsubject, and was pressed to indicate the extreme point to which,\nwithin the Church itself, the diversity of men's individual\nbeliefs might be carried, his embarrassment became extreme, for\nhe had too much sense to admit that this diversity had no limit,\nand that a Church, whether Protestant or not, could exist without\ncertain articles of faith common to all its members, and\nrecognized by them all. \"Protestantism,\" said he himself, \"must\nnot be merely a negation; it should also have its real and\npositive side; it must be beyond all things a religion; that is\nto say, it must be in the possession of the means to endure and\nof the means to edify men by the propagation of a doctrine\nbenevolent and Christian. ... Christianity is the basis of\necclesiastical teaching.\" [Footnote 15]\n\n    [Footnote 15: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M.\n    Samuel Vincent, pp. 17, 22.]\n\n{136}\n\nWhen, after having laid down this principle, M. Samuel Vincent\ninquired how the Protestant Church could remain a Church, and a\nChristian Church, in the midst of the independence of individual\nbeliefs, he found no other way out of the difficulty than \"to\ndetermine,\" he said, \"by conventions, oral and unwritten, a\ncertain number of opinions that each man should, in the interest\nof the general peace, be entreated to keep to himself.\" [Footnote\n16]\n\n    [Footnote 16: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, p. 24.]\n\nHow strange a proceeding, how difficult of realization, to\nprescribe with once voice silence and liberty! M. Samuel Vincent\ndid not attempt to determine what those opinions were which, in\norder to maintain the existence of a Christian Church in the\nmidst of the broadest system of free inquiry, \"each man should be\nentreated to keep to himself.\"\n{137}\nAs for himself, he professed his faith in the supernatural, in\nthe revelation of the Old and of the New Testaments, in the\ninspiration of the Scriptures, in the divinity of Jesus Christ;\nin the grand historical facts as well as in the moral precepts of\nthe Gospel; he was one of the pastors, too, who signed the\nremonstrance of the consistory of N\u00eemes, for the irregularity in\npreaching of which Professor Grasc had been guilty. Did M. Samuel\nVincent regard every opinion contrary to these great evangelical\ndoctrines as an opinion which each man should, in the interest of\nthe general peace, be entreated to keep to himself? I doubt\nwhether he would have dared to engraft upon the liberty of\njudgment such a reservation; but I doubt at the same time if he\nwould have persisted in regarding as true and faithful pastors of\nthe Protestant Church, men who should have openly deserted and\ncombated, in its most essential foundations, that Christian faith\nwhich he himself professed. He dreaded almost equally \"unity\ndefined,\" and \"dissent declared.\" He would have remained in the\nembarrassment into which those inevitably fall who neither accept\none basis and manifesto of a common faith, nor admit the moral\nnecessity of a separation into free and distinct Churches when a\ncommon faith does not exist. [Footnote 17]\n\n    [Footnote 17: The principal works of M. Samuel Vincent are:\n    1. Vues sur le protestantisme en France, premi\u00e8re \u00e9dition. 2\n    vols. 8vo. 1829. A second edition, in 1 vol. 12mo., was\n    published in 1859 by M. Pr\u00e9vost-Paradol.\n\n    2. Observations sur l'unit\u00e9 religieuse et observations sur la\n    voie d'autorit\u00e9 appliqu\u00e9e a la religion, (1820,) contre\n    l'Essai sur l'indiff\u00e9rance en mati\u00e8re de religion de l'Abb\u00e9\n    de la Mennais.\n\n    3. Meditations ou recueil de sermons, 1829.\n\n    4. M\u00e9langes de religion de morale et de critique sacr\u00e9e. A\n    periodical published from 1820 to 1825.]\n\n{138}\n\nNo such embarrassment was experienced by M. Daniel Encontre when\nhe began his career to serve the movement of awakened\nChristianity in the bosom of French Protestantism. I will not\nventure here to cite the precise words, harsh and severe,\nemployed by him on the 13th of December, 1816, at Montauban, in\nhis capacity of \"Doyen\" of the faculty of Protestant Theology,\nrespecting those termed by him \"the pretended ministers of the\nGospel, disbelievers in the Gospel and in the divinity of Jesus\nChrist.\"\n{139}\nHe regarded harmony of faith and language, harmony between\nshepherd and flock, as the first law of religious society. Born\nin a grotto of La Vaunage, to which his mother had fled to escape\nfrom the flames of persecution; devoted from his birth by his\nfather, the Pastor Pierre Encontre, to the service of a \"preacher\nin the desert,\" M. Daniel Encontre belonged to that class of\nindomitable Protestants who cling to their faith through all the\nperils, sufferings, and sacrifices which it entails. His first\nsteps in life seemed to indicate in him other aptitudes, and to\npromise for him a different career. After having studied divinity\nat Lausanne and at Geneva, and been consecrated by his father\nhimself to the ministry of the Gospel \"in an assembly in the\ndesert,\" he seemed to doubt his own vocation; for while\nperforming the functions of his ministry he devoted himself to\nthe study of mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the classical\nlanguages, with an enthusiasm eager to become familiar with every\ndepartment of knowledge, and encountering no hinderance from,\ninternal obstacles or from preconceived opinions.\n{140}\nHaving established himself at Montpellier, where his taste for\nscience found subjects of gratification, he led there, during the\ndark days of the Revolution, a life very obscure, and at the same\ntime most laborious; giving lessons to the master masons upon\nstone-cutting, imparting instruction, rendering the aids of\nreligion to Protestants, celebrating the baptismal and marriage\nservices, and pursuing at the same time his labors in geometry,\nbotany, philosophy, divinity, literature, and even poetry. When\norder began to be re-established, he was led by his own natural\ntastes and the counsel of his friends to select as his career\nthat of public instruction. He competed for and obtained, first\nthe appointment of professor of literature at the \u00c9cole Centrale\nof Montpellier; then that of the higher mathematics, at the Lyc\u00e9e\nand in the faculty of science, of which he was nominated \"Doyen.\"\n{141}\nAs his merits established themselves by repeated proofs, his\nreputation increased; the papers of learned societies were filled\nwith his contributions, and the \u00c9cole Polytechnique with his\npupils. \"I have met in our department,\" said Fourcroy, \"two or\nthree heads equal to his, but not one superior.\" M. de Candolle\ngladly selected him to aid him in his \"Researches respecting the\nBotany of the Ancients;\" and M. de Fontanes has more than once\nspoken of him to me as one of the men who most honored the\nUniversity. But in him, neither the mathematician, the botanist,\nnor the philologist took precedence of the Christian. At one time\nas expounder of Moses and of Genesis, [Footnote 18] at another as\na writer defending the Apostles, accused of being a copyist of\nPlato. [Footnote 19] he neglected no occasion of placing his\nscientific attainments at the service of Christianity;\n\n    [Footnote 18: Dissertation sur le vrai syst\u00e8me du monde\n    compar\u00e9 avec le r\u00e9cit que Mo\u00efse fait de la cr\u00e9ation.\n    Montpellier, 1807.]\n\n    [Footnote 19: Lettre \u00e0 M. Combes-Dounous, auteur d'un Essai\n    historique sur Platon. Paris, 1811.\n\n    A remarkable essay of M. Daniel Encontre, \"sur le P\u00e9ch\u00e9\n    original,\" was published, after his death, in 1822, and he\n    left a great number of manuscripts, among others a \"Trait\u00e9\n    sur l'\u00c9glise,\" (600 pages,) written in Latin; \"Etudes\n    th\u00e9ologiques,\" a Hebrew Grammar, a \"Cours de philosophie,\" a\n    \"Cours de lit\u00e9rature Fran\u00e7aise,\" a \"Flore biblique,\" several\n    \"Memoires de math\u00e9matiques transcendantes,\" etc. As a teacher\n    of transcendental mathematics at Montpellier he had as pupil\n    M. Auguste Comte, the head of the \"\u00c9cole positiviste,\" who,\n    in spite of the profound diversity of their opinions,\n    regarded it as a duty to dedicate to him in 1856 his\n    treatise, \"Sur la Synth\u00e8se subjective,\" in testimony of\n    admiration and of gratitude.]\n\n{142}\n\nand when, in 1814, he was asked to quit Montpellier, to abandon\nhis habits, his tastes, and his friends, for the chair of the\nprofessorship of divinity at Montauban, where he was to fulfill\nthe functions of \"Doyen,\" he sacrificed without hesitation the\nenjoyment of his life to his religious vocation, and applied\nhimself with unceasing energy to the warlike activity of a\nChristian professor, until the day when, overcome by fatigue and\nsickness, he accorded to himself the melancholy satisfaction of\nreturning to Montpellier, in order to die near the tomb of a\nbeloved daughter, who had long aided him in his labors.\n\n{143}\n\nThe destinies of Protestantism in France have, to a singular\ndegree, been at once varied and uniform, confused and simple.\nAfter having in the sixteenth century valiantly disputed the\nvictory, it was vanquished, decimated, expelled. But it resisted,\nand survived not only its defeat, but the gradual process of its\nenfeeblement and its expulsion. In the course of the seventeenth\nand eighteenth centuries the French Protestants lost the\nprotection of the laws, their secure sanctuaries, their great\nchiefs, their great divines, their great writers; but they\npreserved nevertheless their faith and their religious honor. In\nthe times that ensued their successors remained faithful to the\nbelief and the customs of their fathers; even persecuted and\ncondemned to death, having their property confiscated, or become\ntenants of prisons and laborers in the galleys, they found in\ntheir very sufferings a resource to confirm them in the\nprinciples of Protestant piety.\n{144}\nTheological controversies died away from among them, leaving\nbehind them the fundamentals of Christianity--living and guiding\nprinciples.\n\nAmong the higher and wealthier classes, the philosophical ideas\nof the eighteenth century made also their way; the great liberal\nmovement filled the Protestant section of the nation with joy,\nand commanded its sympathy without detaching it from its\nreligious habits and traditions. In its members faith had ceased\nto be erudite; the popular Protestant sentiment had been always\nprofoundly biblical and evangelical. Freer and more fortunately\nsituated than their fathers, the French Protestants now anxiously\ndesired to remain, as they had been, Christians; and when, in\n1790, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, who succeeded the Abb\u00e9 de Montesquieu\nas President of the Constituent Assembly, wrote to his aged\nfather, the Pastor Paul Rabaut, \"The President of the National\nAssembly is at your feet,\" he manifested to the humble and\nzealous preacher in the assemblies of the desert, the pride at\nonce of a politician, the piety of a son, and the fidelity of a\nProtestant.\n\n{145}\n\nM. Daniel Encontre was, at the commencement of the nineteenth\ncentury, the faithful representative of this traditionally\nreligious character of French Protestantism; just as M. Samuel\nVincent was the well-meaning and sincere introducer to it of the\nscience and criticism of the Germans. The former corresponded\nmore closely to the pious and national spirit of Protestant\nFrance of the olden times; the latter to the tendencies, at once\nnovel and indefinitely latitudinarian, of a foreign philosophy\nand a foreign erudition. Doubtless, neither measured the range of\nthe religious crisis of which they were themselves the symptoms;\nneither foresaw that within the bosom of Protestantism that\ncrisis was to be marked by an avowed struggle between Rationalism\nin its progress and Christianity in its reaction.\n\n{146}\n\nThis crisis began to manifest itself at Geneva. The mocking\nskepticism of Voltaire, the rhetorical deism of Rousseau,\nproclaimed at its gates, had deeply undermined the faith of\nChrist in the very city of Calvin. It was not merely some of the\nCalvinistic doctrines of the sixteenth century that the pastors\nof Geneva doubted or denied, but it was also the fundamental\narticles of Christianity; they abandoned not only the Dogmas of\npredestination and salvation by faith alone, but the dogmas of\noriginal sin, and of the divinity of Jesus Christ. In 1810\naccording to some, as far back as 1802 according to others,\nsymptoms of an evangelical reaction showed themselves at Geneva\namong the students in theology, some of whom afterward became\ndistinguished pastors or writers. It was not long before MM.\nGaussen, Malan, Gonthier, Bost, Merle d'Aubign\u00e9, displayed their\northodox fervor and their ability. In 1816 a pious Scot, Mr.\nRobert Haldane, previously an intrepid sailor, who had only\nquitted his calling to devote himself entirely to the service of\nhis faith, went to Geneva, and contracted with the young\nMethodists of that city relations of the greatest intimacy and\nactivity.\n{147}\nThey had meetings; they discussed, they preached, they prayed,\nthey wrote. Mr. Haldane could hardly express himself in French;\nhaving his English Bible continually at hand, he turned over its\npages incessantly, pointed out to his friends the passages that\nhe regarded as decisive, invited them to read them aloud from\ntheir French Bible, and then commented upon them in a manner that\nalways commanded their favorable attention, the conviction of the\ncommentator had such moving and persuasive power. [Footnote 20]\n\n    [Footnote 20: Gen\u00e8ve religieuse au XIX si\u00e8cle: par le Baron\n    de Goltz; traduit de l'allemand par C. Malan: 8vo., pp.\n    137-149. Gen\u00e8ve et Paris. 1862.]\n\n{148}\n\nIn 1816 and 1817 the evangelical reaction made rapid progress,\nand the body of Genevese pastors resolved to combat it by the\nvoice of authority. They found, however, no better method of\ndoing so than by insisting upon what, twelve years later, even M.\nSamuel Vincent did not scruple to recommend; they prescribed\nsilence even whilst they proclaimed liberty. \"Without\"--these are\ntheir words--\"giving any judgment upon the questions really\ninvolved, and without controlling in any respect the liberty of\nopinions,\" they imposed a solemn engagement both upon students\ndemanding to be consecrated to the sacred ministry, and upon\nministers candidates for pastoral functions in the Church of\nGeneva. It was conceived as follows: \"As long as we reside and\npreach in the churches of the Canton of Geneva, we promise to\nabstain from establishing, either in entire discourses or in\nparts of discourses directed to this object, our opinion--first,\nof the manner in which the divine nature was incarnate in the\nperson of Jesus Christ; secondly, of original sin; thirdly, of\nthe mode in which grace operates, or grace is efficient;\nfourthly, of predestination. We promise also not to combat, in\nany public discourse, the opinion of any pastors or ministers\ntouching these subjects.\" [Footnote 21]\n\n    [Footnote 21: Gen\u00e8ve religieuse au XIX si\u00e8cle: par le Baron\n    de Goltz; p. 153.]\n\n{149}\n\nIt is difficult to understand how men ever could have flattered\nthemselves with the hope of re-establishing peace in the Church\nby the employment of so sorry an expedient. Liberty, that has\nrent asunder such heavy chains, does not permit itself to be\nconfined by so flimsy a net. The immediate effect of the\nregulation of the Genevese pastors was an outburst of discontent.\nThe more violent Methodists, MM. Malan and Bost at their head,\nproclaimed aloud their separation from the established Church;\nthe more moderate, among others, MM. Gaussen and Merle d'Aubign\u00e9,\npersisted in remaining, by right of their ministry, in its bosom,\nholding themselves responsible representatives _there_ of\nthe doctrines of the Reformation, which, in fact, they did\ncontinue to preach and to teach.\n{150}\nThe body of pastors at first used great forbearance toward them,\nand respected their liberty; and when the populace, irritated at\nthe agitation caused in families by the Dissenters, and offended\nby the austerity of their precepts, made hostile demonstrations\ntoward them, the Council of Geneva had the wisdom and fairness to\nuse measures of repression; but, soon becoming weary of this\npainful duty, the Council formally forbade, without its express\npermission, any book of religious controversy to be printed at\nGeneva.\n{151}\nThe body of pastors soon pronounced as vehement a condemnation of\nthe moderate Methodists as of the ultra Dissenters. The moderate\nMethodists then in their turn resorted to energetic measures in\nsupport of their cause: they founded an evangelical society and a\nschool of theology; devoted the one to propagate the zeal and the\nother to teach the principles of the Christian reaction; and\nfifteen years after the commencement of the struggle, the chiefs\nof the party which had proclaimed that the free divergence of\nindividual belief in the bosom of the Church was \"the great fact\nof our epoch, and the great step that the Reformation had in our\ndays to make\"--these chiefs, being the body of pastors, the\nConsistory, and the Council of State at Geneva, suspended M.\nGaussen from his functions of pastor in the parish of Satigny for\nhaving taken part in the organization of an independent form of\nworship, and of a school of independent theology; \"a proceeding,\"\nthey said, \"incompatible with the peace of the Church, and to be\nregarded as an act of insubordination, tending to bring\necclesiastical authority into discredit.\" [Footnote 22]\n\n    [Footnote 22: Gen\u00e8ve religieuse au XIX si\u00e8cle: par le Baron\n    de Goltz; pp. 379-384.]\n\nSuch religious ferment in the primitive home of the French\nReformation, and at the very gates of France, could not fail to\nexercise a powerful influence upon the French Protestant Church.\n{152}\nOn quitting Geneva in 1817, Mr. Robert Haldane proceeded to\nMontauban, where he formed friendships with some of the\nProfessors of the Faculty, and among others with M. Daniel\nEncontre. He published there also a work in French, which his\nfriends hastened to circulate. It was styled \"Emmanuel: vues\nScripturaires sur J\u00e9sus-Christ.\" In 1818, a society formed in\nEngland, named the \"Continental Society,\" specially devoted\nitself to the purpose of seconding on the Continent the progress\nof this Christian reaction. An English dissenter, Mr. Mark Wilks,\npastor of the American community formed at Paris, was the most\nefficient agent of the societies which had this object in view.\n\"It might be said of Mr. Wilks,\" wrote lately the Pastor\nJuillerat, \"that he might have governed an empire, his character\nwas so energetic, his mind so active and enterprising. He brought\nme aid of every description: money was required, he had money;\npamphlets and books were wanted, no one was better provided; no\none understood better the details pertaining to the printing and\npublication of papers.\"\n{153}\nSeveral Protestant journals and magazines, \"La Voix de la\nReligion Chr\u00e9tienne au XIX si\u00e8cle,\" \"Les Archives du\nChristianisme au XIX si\u00e8cle,\" \"Les M\u00e9langes de Religion, de\nMorale, et de Critique Sacr\u00e9e,\" \"L'Evangeliste,\" \"La Revue\nProtestante,\" \"Le Semeur,\" etc., etc., were at this epoch\nsuccessively founded and carried in different directions\nthroughout the scattered Protestant Church, from its central\norganization, the fervor which had there been kindled. Genuine\nzeal for religion is not satisfied by action from a distance, or\nby action upon unknown persons, or by indirect means, as by books\nand by journals: it demands direct oral communication from man to\nman--the union of men's souls in common prayer. Certain young\npastors who had at first shared in the evangelical movement at\nGeneva, MM. Neff, Pyt, Bost, Gonthier, scattered themselves over\nFrance, some assuming functions as local pastors, others as\ntraveling missionaries, attracting to their proximity groups of\nzealous Protestants, animating the lukewarm, and erecting in\nevery place where they made any stay little centers of\nChristianity, which radiated to the neighboring country around.\n{154}\nDistinct associations, some officially recognized by the State,\nothers having no public character, [Footnote 23] gave to the\nlabors of isolated individuals the publicity, the unity, the\npermanence which they required; and a special organization\n(colportage biblique) which at its commencement numbered only\nseven, but a few years afterward had sixty agents, all of them,\nalthough obscure individuals, as zealous as their patrons were\nzealous, caused the Holy Scriptures and religious tracts to\npenetrate into parts of France hopelessly inaccessible to any\nother method of communication and of instruction.\n\n    [Footnote 23: La Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 biblique, la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 pour\n    l'encouragement de l'instruction primaire parmi les\n    protestants, la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9vang\u00e9lique de France, la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des\n    trait\u00e9s religieuse, la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des missions protestantes, la\n    Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 centrale pour les int\u00e9r\u00eats protestants, la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9\n    d'\u00e9vangelisation, etc.]\n\n{155}\n\nTo a movement so earnest and so general, although propagated by a\nsmall number of persons in the heart of a population itself\nforming but a small minority in the nation at large, obstacles\nwould inevitably occur. They were encountered on all hands and of\nall kinds, religious and political--from the administration, from\npopular prejudices, from the distrust of the Government, from the\nhostility of the Roman Catholic clergy, from differences of\nopinion on theological points among Protestants themselves, from\nthe _amour propre_ of individuals, and the perplexed or\ntimorous ideas of subalterns in authority. The activity of the\nProtestant societies created uneasiness in bishops and priests,\nwho strove not merely to counteract their influence, but to\ninterfere with their liberty of action. Mayors of towns, judges\nof the peace, sometimes too, magistrates and administrators of\nmore elevated rank, lent their aid to these exceptionable\nproceedings. Hence arose suspicions, complaints, and struggles\nwhich retarded the new-born impulse of awakening Christianity.\n{156}\nBut the earnest perseverance of its patrons, the general wisdom\nof the supreme Government, and the authority, growing more and\nmore each day, of the principles of justice and of liberty,\ngradually surmounted all these obstacles. It was the Restoration\nthat recognized the chief Protestant societies and gave them the\nsanction of the law. Under the Government of 1830 they used their\nrights with more confidence and fewer hinderances. The equitable\nintentions of King Louis Philippe and of his counselors upon\nreligious matters could not be doubtful, whatever their caution\nnot to cause uneasiness or wound the susceptibilities of the\nRoman Catholics. The Protestants now believed it to be no longer\nnecessary to look to foreign support. Formed at Paris in 1833,\nthe Evangelical Society of France experienced a momentary impulse\nof national jealousy, the result of which was some coldness in\nits relations with the Continental Society of London; but as soon\nas the latter perceived that its direct interference was rather\nan embarrassment than a necessity to the Christian reaction in\nFrance, it withdrew its agency without withholding its sympathy,\nand handed over to the Evangelical Society of France all the\n\"stations\" and religious charities which had up to that time been\nfounded by its exertions.\n\n{157}\n\nThe awakening of Christianity among the Protestants of France had\nnow produced such results that it mattered little who the patrons\nof the movement might be; it had assumed its true character, and\nwas drawing its strength from the fountain of truth. In times of\nreligious incredulity and of religious indifference, and even in\nthe transitional times which immediately ensue, it is the error\nof many, and even of men who respect and support religion, to\nconsider it in the light of a great political institution--a\nsalutary system of moral police, however necessary to society,\nindebted for its merits and its prerogatives rather to its\npractical utility than to its intrinsic truth.\n{158}\nGrave error, misconceiving both the nature and the origin of\nreligion, and calculated to deprive it both of its empire and its\ndignity! Utility men hold as of great account, but it is only\ntruth that commands unconditional surrender. Utility enjoins\nprudence and forbearance; truth alone inspires feelings of\nconfidingness and devotion. A religion having no other guarantee\nfor its influence and its endurance than its social utility would\nbe very near its ruin. Men have need of, nay, they thirst for\ntruth in their relations with God, even more than in their\nrelations with one another; the spontaneous prayer, adoration,\nobedience, suppose faith. It was in the very name of the verity\nof the Christian religion, of that verity manifested in its\nhistory by the word and even by the presence of God, that the\nawakening of Christians was accomplished among us. The laborers\nin this great work felt the faith of Christianity, and they\ndiffused it; had they spoken only of the social utility of\nChristianity, they would never have made the conquest of a single\nhuman soul.\n\n{159}\n\nAt first sight one is tempted to attribute this success to energy\nof faith on the part of these laborers in the cause, to the\nactive and devoted perseverance of their zeal. Again a mistake!\nNot that human merit was without its share in the results; but\neven where the faith was thus propagated, the share that that\nfaith itself had in the result was infinitely greater, from its\nown proper and inherent virtue, than any share of men.\nIncredulity and indifferentism may diffuse themselves and pretend\nto dominate; they leave unsolved the problems that lie in the\ndepth of man's soul: they do not rid him of his perplexities, of\ninstinct or of reflection, as to the world's creation and man's\ncreation, the origin of good and evil, providence and fate, human\nliberty and human responsibility, man's immortality and his\nfuture state.\n{160}\nInstead of the denials and the doubts that had been thrown over\nthese unescapable questions, those who applied themselves fully\nto rouse awakened Christianity, recalled the human soul to the\nmemory of positive solutions of these questions; solutions in\naccordance with the traditions of their native land, in\naccordance with their habits as members of families, and in\nharmony with the recollections of early childhood; solutions\noften contested, never refuted; always recurring in the lapse of\nages, and century after century! It was from the intrinsic and\npermanent value of the doctrines which they were preaching, and\nnot from themselves, that the laborers in the work derived their\nforce and their credit.\n\nThey had another principle of force as well; a force born and\ndeveloped in the bosom of the Christian religion, and in that\nalone; they had the passionate desire to save human souls. Men\nare not, they never have been, struck as they ought to have been\nstruck with the beauty of this passion, or with its novelty in\nthe moral history of the world, or with the part that it has\nplayed among Christian nations.\n{161}\nBefore the era of Christianity, in times of Asiatic and European\nantiquity, pagans and philosophers busied themselves about the\ndestiny of men after the close of their earthly life, and with\ncuriosity, too, did they sound the obscurity; but the ardent\nsolicitude for the eternal welfare of human souls, the\nnever-wearying labor to prepare human souls for eternity--to set\nthem even during this existence in intimate relations with God,\nand to prepare them to undergo God's judgments;--we have in all\nthis a fact essentially Christian, one of the sublimest\ncharacteristics of Christianity, and one of the most striking\nmarks of its divine origin. God constantly in relation with\nmankind and with every man, God present during the actual life of\nevery man, and God the arbiter of his future destiny; the\nimmortality of each human soul, and the connection between his\nactual life and his future destiny; the immense value of each\nhuman soul in the eyes of God, and the immense import to the soul\nof the future that awaits it: these are the convictions and the\naffirmations all implied in the one passion alluded to, the\npassion for the salvation of men's souls, which was the whole\nlife of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which passed by his example and\nby his precepts into the life of his primitive disciples, and\nwhich, amid the diversities of age, people, manners, opinions,\nhas remained the characteristic feature and the inspiring breath\nof the genius of Christianity; breath which animated the men who\nin our days labored, and with success, to revive Christian faith\namong the Protestants of France!\n{162}\nTheir zeal was employed in a very circumscribed sphere; beyond it\ntheir names were unknown, and unknown they have remained. What\nspectators, what readers, what public knew at that time, or know\neven at this moment, what manner of men they were or what their\ndeeds--those men who called themselves Neff, Bost, Pyt, Gonthier,\nAudebez, Cook, Wilks, Haldane?\n{163}\nBut who, I would ask, in the time of Tacitus and of Pliny, knew\nwhat manner of men they were, and what the deeds of Peter, Paul,\nJohn, Matthew, Philip--the unknown disciples of the Master,\nunknown himself, who had overcome the world? Notoriety is not\nessential to influence; and in the sphere of the soul, as in the\norder of nature, fountains are not the less abundant because\ntheir springs are hidden in obscurity. The Christian missionaries\nof our time did not trouble themselves to lessen that obscurity.\nTo literary celebrity they had no pretension, nor did they seek\nthe triumph of any political idea, of any specific system of\necclesiastical organization, of any favorite plan in which their\npersonal vanity was interested: the salvation of human souls was\ntheir only passion, and their only object. They looked upon\nthemselves as humble servants commissioned to remind men of\npromises which they had forgotten--of promises of salvation by\nfaith in Jesus. \"The stir of the reaction,\" one of themselves has\nsaid, \"bore impressed upon it the character of youth, or even of\nchildhood.\n{164}\nThe humblest pastor on his circuit became a missionary; his\ntransit was regarded almost like that of a meteor. On the instant\nan assembly was convoked, it numbered twenty, thirty, fifty, a\nhundred, two hundred persons, collected to listen joyfully, as if\nit were a great novelty or miracle, to that Gospel which we know\nby heart;--alas! which we know by heart far more than we have it\nin the heart!\" [Footnote 24]\n\n    [Footnote 24: M\u00e9moires pouvant servir \u00e0 l'histoire du r\u00e9veil\n    religieux des \u00e9glises protestantes de la Suisse et de la\n    France, par A. Bost, (1854,) t. 1, p. 240.]\n\nWho could mistake, on hearing such sentiments and such language,\nthe really Christian character of the reaction?\n\nNever-ending weakness of man's nature, and inevitable\nimperfection of man's work, even when man is walking in the ways\nof God! In the midst of awakening Christianity, and of this\nfervent return to the faith of the Gospel, reappeared some of the\nancient pretensions of theology, and among others the pretension\nto penetrate the decrees of God and to define the terms of man's\nsalvation.\n\n{165}\n\nIn February, 1818, the pious and orthodox \"Doyen\" of the\nProtestant Faculty of Montauban, M. Daniel Encontre, rendering an\naccount of the work of Mr. Robert Haldane, (Emmanuel, ou vues\nScripturaires sur J\u00e9sus-Christ,) which had just appeared,\nhastened, after having justly commended it, to add: \"The\nconcluding pages of the 'Emmanuel' express sentiments which\nEvangelical Christians are far from sharing. The author lays down\nthe principle, that all men who do not believe in the perfect\nequality of the _Son_ and of the _Father_, are enemies\nalike of both _Father_ and _Son_; that they deny, and\nblaspheme against both, and cannot avoid eternal death. He\nregards the forbearance we show to them as infinitely criminal,\nand seems even inclined to condemn all who have not the courage\nto condemn them. As for me, I venture to believe that it is the\nduty of a Christian to work out his own salvation without\nallowing himself to pronounce upon the salvation of others.\n{166}\n_Judge not, that ye be not judged_, says He whom we all\nacknowledge as our Master; and St. Paul adds, '_Who art\nthou_ that condemnest another man's servant?' I seize this\nopportunity to declare to all men desirous to hear it, that I\nbelieve firmly in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that\nI adopt in every respect the Nic\u00e6an Creed. I dare to affirm\nbesides, that these sentiments are actually those of all the\nmembers of our Faculty, as they have always been those of our\nChurches. It seems to me that persons who know not Jesus Christ\nas 'God above all things, blessed eternally,' are much to be\npitied, and want the greatest of all consolations. This error\nappears the more dangerous, because it is generally followed by\nother errors; for the truths which are the objects of faith are\nso connected and riveted together, that it is impossible to\ndiscard one without shaking or overturning all the others.\n{167}\nThese truths form together a majestic edifice, to which all its\nparts are absolutely necessary, and which falls in ruins if a\nbreach be made anywhere; and particularly, if the first stone\nremoved be the keystone of the corner. But what would become of\nus all, if the erring, even when they err in good faith, had no\nhope of access to the throne of grace? Men who, as I do, feel how\nmuch they need God's mercy, and man's indulgence, feel little\ndisposition to be severe toward others.\" [Footnote 25]\n\n    [Footnote 25: Archives du Christianisme aux XIX e si\u00e8cle, t.\n    1, pp. 63-66.]\n\nIn holding this language, M. Encontre was not merely performing,\non his own account, an act of humility and of Christian charity;\nhe was touching upon one of the supreme questions which, in our\ndays, are occasioning a crisis in Christendom; and he was\nindicating its true and its sole solution. Like all passions,\n(the best are not exempt,) the passion for the salvation of man's\nsoul is full of enthusiasm and fall of blindness; it believes too\nreadily in the possibility of attaining the object; it is too\nunscrupulous and undiscriminating in the means.\n{168}\nHence sprung religious tyranny and theological intolerance: the\npowerful thought they could compel the human soul to work out its\nown salvation; the learned believed they could define the\nconditions of that salvation. Mistakes, both of them, profoundly\nantichristian! Just as no power of man has the right to strip any\nsingle soul, created by God free and responsible, of its liberty\nof conscience; so, equally, no science of man can define the laws\nand the facts that shall regulate the future state of the soul.\nLiberty is, on this earth, the principle of the moral life of\nman; man's state beyond this earth is a question between him and\nhis Maker, and to be determined by the use which man may have\nhere made of his liberty. To respect God's gift of liberty to\nman, and the mystery of God's decrees respecting man's salvation,\nis in reality the law of Christians; and it is only on this\ndouble condition that there really is either any awakening or any\nprogress of Christians.\n\n{169}\n\nNothing does more honor to the memory of M. Daniel Encontre than\nto have been one of the first to understand and to fulfill this\ndouble duty. Firmly attached to those fundamental articles of\nbelief which are Christianity itself, he was strange to every\nnarrowness or exaggeration of doctrine, to every presumptuousness\nof opinion, and to every theological intolerance; his piety was\ncomprehensive, without there being any vagueness in his faith;\nhis Christianity was that of a Liberal; nor did his attainments\nas a mathematician indispose him to remain a Christian.\n\nScarcely was M. Encontre dead, when two new men, both, like him,\neminent as pastors and professors--M. Alexandre Vinet and M.\nAdolphe Monod--appeared on the religious arena, and gave more\n\u00e9clat to the Christian reaction by using similar means, and by\nimpelling the Protestant Church of France in the same direction.\n\n{170}\n\nAlthough he was born and continually lived and wrote in\nSwitzerland, M. Alexandre Vinet was of French extraction; he\nbelongs to France as much as to Switzerland, for he knew, and\nunderstood, and loved France as much as he did Switzerland. He\nserved, too, the cause of religious liberty, and the Christian\nreaction, in France not less than in Switzerland. A delicate\nchild, son of a poor and an austere school-master, who destined\nhim to the obscure life of a village clergyman, he manifested\nfrom the commencement of his laborious career an ardent taste for\nliterature and for study, which promised him a rich reward in the\nintellectual enjoyment of the chef-d'oeuvres of ancient and\nmodern literature. He was found upon one occasion in his little\nchamber in a fit of enthusiasm and affected to tears by a perusal\nof the \"Cid.\" At the age of twenty he became Professor of French\nLiterature at B\u00e2le; and there he devoted himself to the service\nof every candidate upon the Rhine or upon the Swiss Alps who\nrequired to be taught to comprehend and admire the great writers\nof France of whatever age, and in whatever department of\nliterature.\n{171}\nPhilosophers and orators, prose-writers and poets, Christians or\nFreethinkers, Catholics or Protestants, Conservatives or\nReformers, Classicists or Romanticists--all the men who have\nconstituted the intellectual and literary glory of France,\nobtained in this fervent Methodist of the Valdenses an admirer as\nwarm as he was intelligent and impartial. The prevailing\ncharacteristic of M. Vinet's literary essays and criticisms is\ntheir geniality; and wherever he encounters any spark or trace of\nthe true or the beautiful, under whatever banner they appear, and\nhowever they may be mingled with opinions otherwise shocking to\nhis feelings, he is at once attracted and moved, and he admires\nand praises with enthusiasm. His was a mind of comprehensive\nsympathies, open to every impression, keen to appreciate, always\nready to enjoy everything that deserved to give pleasure, even\nalthough it might be only momentarily and in passing.\n\n{172}\n\nThis passionate admirer of the beautiful, this critic, so\nliberal-minded and so impartial, was a sound and uncompromising\nmoralist, as well as a pious and firm Christian. The predominant\nidea of all his literary judgments is moral; and this determines\nthe tone of his criticism, and the impression which it leaves\nbehind it, without ever rendering it either harsh, or illiberal,\nor narrow-minded. In the sphere of positive belief, without\nimporting into controversies between believer and believer any\nmicroscopic criticism of detail, M. Vinet has never, upon the\ndivine origin and the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, had the\nleast hesitation, never made the smallest concession; he grapples\ndirectly with the most specious and the most popular objections\nof his adversaries, and combats them with a conviction the\nexpression of which becomes more and more eloquent the clearer\nand the more complete its manifestation. \"To attempt to\ndistinguish morality from dogma,\" he says, \"is to attempt to\ndistinguish a river from its source.\n{173}\nThe Christian dogma is at its outset a morality, although a\nChristian one. Just as God, in the creed of Christianity, reveals\nhimself under a form that nature did not announce, Christian\nmorality, in its turn, invests itself with a character that\nnature would never have impressed upon it. Man finding his own\ninability to make himself a religion, God came to aid him in his\nweakness. It is now rather more than eighteen centuries since, in\nan obscure corner of the world, there appeared a man. I do not\nsay that a long series of prophets had announced the coming of\nthat man; that a long series of miracles had marked with the seal\nof God the nation where he was to be born, and even the prophecy\nwhich foretold him; that, in a word, an imposing mass of evidence\nsurrounds and authenticates him. I say merely that that man\npreached a religion. That religion is not natural religion; the\ndogmas of the existence of God and of the soul's immortality are\neverywhere taken for granted in his discourses--never taught,\nnever proved.\n{174}\nNeither are the ideas which he teaches deduced logically from the\nprimitive axioms of reason; that which he teaches, that which\nforms the substance of his doctrine, embraces subjects which\nconfound the reason, and to which the reason has neither way nor\naccess; he preaches a God on earth, a God man, a God poor, a God\ncrucified; he preaches wrath involving the innocent, mercy\nexempting the guilty from all condemnation, God the victim of\nman, and man forming one person with God; he preaches a new\nbirth, without which man can never be saved; he preaches the\nsovereignty of God's grace, and the plenitude of the liberty of\nman. I do not in any way qualify his teaching; I give them to you\nas they are, and without disguise; I seek not to justify them.\nYou may, if you please, feel surprise, you may take offense;\nscruple not to do so. But when you have to your heart's content\nwondered at their strangeness, I on my side will propose to you\nanother subject for your wonder.\n{175}\nThese strange dogmas conquered the world. In their very infancy\nthey invaded learned Athens, rich Corinth, haughty Rome. They\ngathered together 'Confessors' from workshops, from prisons, from\nschools, from the courts of justice, and from thrones. Conquerors\nof civilization, they triumphed over barbarism; they made to pass\nunder the same yoke the degraded Roman, the savage Sicambrian.\nThe forms of society have changed; society has been dissolved and\nmoulded afresh. They alone have endured in their integrity. No\nother doctrine, whether of philosophy or of religion, lasted:\neach had its time; each time its idea; and, as a celebrated\nwriter has said, the religious sentiment, abandoned to itself,\nchose for itself moulds in accordance with the time, which it\nbroke when the time was no longer there. But the dogma of the\nCross persisted in recurring.\n{176}\nHad it only taken possession of a certain class of persons it\nwould have been much, it would perhaps have been even\ninexplicable; but you find followers of the Cross in the camp and\nin civil life, among the rich and among the poor, among the bold\nand among the timid, among the learned and among the ignorant.\nThis dogma is good for all, everywhere, always; it never grows\nold. The religion of the Cross appears nowhere in arrear of\ncivilization; on the contrary, far as civilization may progress,\nit ever finds Christianity in advance. Suppose not that a\ncomplaisant Christianity will ever cancel any article or expunge\nany idea to accommodate itself to the age: no, it derives its\nstrength from its inflexibility, and needs not make any surrender\nto be in harmony with what is beautiful, legitimate, true; for it\nis in itself the type of them all. Still it is not a religion\nwhich flatters man; and the worldly, by keeping aloof, show\nplainly enough that Christianity is a strange doctrine. Those who\ndare not reject it strive to render it palatable. They strip it\nof what offends them--of its myths, as they are pleased to style\nthem; they almost make out of Christ's doctrine a\n_rationalism_.\n{177}\nBut, singular to say, once a rationalism it has no longer any\nforce; in this respect resembling one of the most marvelous\ncreatures in the animate world, to which it is death to lose its\nsting. The _strange_ dogmas disappear, but with them all\nzeal, fervor, sanctity, charity, disappear also; the salt of the\nearth has lost its savor, and we know not by what means to\nrestore it. But, on the other hand, do you learn that somewhere\nor other there is an awakening of Christians, that Christianity\nis resuscitating, that faith shows signs of life, that zeal\nabounds? Ask not in what soil these precious plants are\nspringing; you may pronounce yourself: it is in the rude and\nrugged soil of orthodoxy, in the shade of the mysteries which\nconfound human reason, and of which human reason would like so\nmuch to get rid, ... Some passages in the fair work of M.\nSaint-Marc Girardin upon dramatic literature might, at least I\nfear so, lead to the conclusion that Christianity is, in its\nessence, only the result of a natural progress of man's mind, a\ngradual development of ancient wisdom.\n{178}\nSuch, for instance, is the passage where the author tells us that\nthe Greeks were advancing step by step toward Christian\nspiritualism. We regret that M. Saint-Marc Girardin did not say\nin what sense he understood this, and within what limits. We hope\nthat he will not see in us the champion of a captious orthodoxy,\nif we say that nothing so much weakens the authority of\nChristianity, that nothing prejudices in men's minds its cause\nmore, than to treat it as a link in the chain, which chain in\nreality it severed. That events, that is, Providence, did\naforehand hollow a bed in the regions of the west for this divine\nriver, what believer, however rigid, would ever entertain any\nscruple in admitting? But still it is essential that we should\nnot misapprehend the source whence that river welled forth.\n{179}\nNo natural development of events, either among the Jews or among\nthe Greeks, can account for the existence of Christianity.\nWhatever the progress made by the ancients, there never was a\ntime when there existed not an infinity between their ideas, and\nthe ideas of Christianity; and infinity alone can fill up the\ngulf between. There is an end of Christianity if men agree in\nthinking the contrary--if they succeed in causing the\nSupernatural to assume a place in one of the compartments of the\nPhilosophy of History. As far as we are concerned, we would\nprefer for the Christian religion the most outrageous denial, to\nan admiration circumscribed within such limits. Christ's faith is\nnothing if not, like Melchisedek without earthly parent here\nbelow, and without genealogy.\" [Footnote 26]\n\n    [Footnote 26: Essai sur la manifestation des convictions\n    religieuses, p. 85. Premiers discours, pp. 14, 50, 53.\n    Litt\u00e9rature Fran\u00e7aise, vol. iii, p. 623.]\n\n{180}\n\nWhoever indicated with greater distinctness the keystone in the\nedifice of Christianity, or ever clung to it more closely? M.\nVinet occupied himself in turn with freedom of conscience and of\nman's thought, with the faith of Christ, and with the literature\nof France. These three subjects became the passions of his life,\nstirring his soul, though at unequal depths. But of these three\nonly one, the passion for literature, was a source to him of\ntranquil and unmitigated enjoyment. In his advocacy of man's\nliberty and of Christianity, M. Vinet had to pass not only\nthrough the ordeal of intellectual labors and combats, but\nthrough the solicitudes and sorrows of life. The defender of the\nliberty of forms of worship, crowned as such by the \"Societ\u00e9\nFran\u00e7ais de la Morale Chr\u00e9tienne,\" lived to see this liberty\nattacked in his native Switzerland, at once by popular fury and\nby civil authority. The fervent promoter of the Christian\nreaction, beheld one hundred and sixty evangelical pastors of the\nCanton of the Vaud, his companions in this pious work, forced to\nquit their \"Chairs\" in order to preserve their faith.\n{181}\nAnd it was in sickness, and at the approach of death, that M.\nVinet had to undergo all this. Neither his faith nor the\ntranquillity of his soul was disturbed. He continued, to his last\nhour, to be the active champion of liberty, the faithful servant\nof Christ, the eloquent admirer and commentator upon French\nliterature, which he followed in all its phases, whether calm or\nstormy, whether pure or defiled. \"After all,\" so he wrote in\n1845, \"I am not one of those who despair; God, without any\nviolence to our freedom of action, rather by that freedom itself,\nconducts us to the unknown shores. The ports at which we land do\nnot all of them afford secure mooring; we know something of that\neven in this little country. Our progress will be slow, and amid\nstorms; but the circle of universal truth will be completed, and\nman's sense of moral right and wrong will be improved, at the\nsame time that man's science will be enriched.\n{182}\nI should feel horror if I thought that _Some One_ is not at\nthe center of all this movement, holding all its elements in his\nhand; _Some One_ to whom, whether they know him or do not\nknow him, the aspirations of all creatures ascend in their\nsorrow, and whom they instinctively salute with the sweet\nreassuring name of 'Father.'\" [Footnote 27]\n\n    [Footnote 27: Notice sur M. Alexandra Vinet, par M. E.\n    Souvestre, published in the Magazin Pittoresque de 1848, p.\n    81.\n\n    The principal works of M. Alexandre Vinet are:\n\n    1. Trait\u00e9 et Pol\u00e9mique sur la libert\u00e9 des cultes. 1826, 1852.\n\n    2. Discours sur quelques sujets religieux. 1831, 1853.\n\n    3. Essais de philosophic et de morale religieuse. 1837.\n\n    4. Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, et\n    sur la s\u00e9paration de l'\u00c9glise et de \u00c9tat. 1842, 1858.\n\n    5. \u00c9tudes et m\u00e9ditations \u00e9vang\u00e9liques. 1847, 1849, 1851.\n\n    6. \u00c9tudes sur Pascal. 1848, 1856.\n\n    7. Chrestomathie Fran\u00e7aise, Histoire de la litt\u00e9rature\n    Fran\u00e7aise au XVIII si\u00e8cle, et \u00c9tudes sur la litt\u00e9rature\n    Fran\u00e7aise au XIX si\u00e8cle. 1829, 1849, 1853, etc.\n\n    He wrote, besides, numerous short pieces, and articles in\n    reviews and journals, suggested by topics of the day.]\n\nUpon a single point, the relations of Church and State, his usual\ncomprehensiveness of view and independence of thought appeared to\nabandon M. Vinet.\n{183}\nJustly struck and afflicted by his own experience of the\ninconveniences of a strict bond between Church and State,\ndisgusted at the servility and falsity which frequently are,\nsometimes on the part of the State, sometimes on the part of the\nChurch, its results, he concluded that in all cases all alliance\nbetween the two conditions of society is radically vicious; and\nhe declared their entire separation a general and absolute\nprinciple, the sole reasonable and just system, the sole\nefficacious guarantee of truth and of liberty in spirituals or\ntemporals. He thus ignored, it appears to me, the natural causes\nwhich produce, and the human motives which sanction, a certain\nalliance between societies civil and ecclesiastical; he ignored\nalso the inestimable advantages which, at certain times and in\ncertain circumstances, each may derive, and has actually derived,\nfrom that alliance. In the United States of America, the entire\nseparation of the State and of the different Churches was\nnecessary and salutary, for it was the spontaneous consequence of\nthe condition of men's minds, and of the position of society.\n{184}\nIn England, in spite of the acts of injustice, and the ills\nengendered by the intimate union of the state with a Church\nlegally constituted and having exclusive privileges, the\ncoexistence of the Church of England with the freedom, more and\nmore every day complete and recognized, of the Churches of the\nDissenters, was for the Christian religion a potent principle of\nlife, of force, and of durability.\n\nAnd if we go back to the ancient history of Europe, who can doubt\nthat at the fall of the Roman Empire, if the State and the Church\nhad not, although distinct institutions, been allied, the\ndevelopment of Christianity would have been far less energetic,\nand its conquest of its barbarous conquerors far more\nproblematical? This is, I repeat, a question not of principle,\nbut of time, of place, of circumstance, and of condition of\nsociety. A complete separation of Church and State may be good\nand practicable; it is neither the only good system, nor is it\nalways a practicable system.\n\n{185}\n\nAn alliance of the two upon certain fixed terms has its\ninconveniences and its perils, but its effects may be also very\nsalutary; it may be essential, and does not of necessity exclude\nreligious sincerity or religious liberty. M. Vinet, in discussing\nthe subject, lost sight of the general history of human\nsocieties, and attached too much importance to the specious and\ntransient facts which he had before his eyes.\n\nIf M. Vinet were now living, he might in his own country behold\ntwo fair examples of the good results of the mixed systems which\nhe so absolutely condemned. In the Cantons of the Vaud and of\nGeneva, after the violent and painful contests to which I have\nabove referred, a dissenting Independent Church was established\nby the side of a Church recognized and supported by the State. In\nneither canton was this establishment a temporary expedient, the\nfruit of a momentary ardor; the Independent Church has\nconsolidated and developed itself; it endures and prospers. Like\nthe Establishment, it has its pastors, its churches, its\nsolemnities, its schools for general and for superior\ninstruction.\n{186}\nI have before me facts and figures which prove its vitality and\nits progress. And not only did the Established Church finally\nacquiesce in the peaceable existence of the independent Church,\nit also profited by it, and its salutary influence has been\nfrankly acknowledged by its worthiest pastors. In Switzerland, as\nin England, Scotland, and Holland, and in our days more easily\nand more promptly than in ancient times, the existence on the one\nside of a national Church recognized by the State, has given to\nthe different forms of Christian belief a stability and a dignity\nwhich have secured its permanent effects upon succeeding\ngenerations; the existence, on the other side, of independent\nChurches, and the religious emulation between the two\nestablishments, have turned in both to the profit of faith and of\npiety.\n\n{187}\n\nM. Adolphe Monod seemed, even more than M. Vinet, to promise by\nnatural bent of his character, and by the incidents of his life,\nto become the champion of an entire separation of Church and\nState. At the very commencement of his career, he suffered from a\nGovernment based upon their connection. Pastor at Lyons, in 1831,\nof the established Protestant Church, he was dismissed from these\nfunctions by the Consistory of that city, as too exacting in his\northodoxy, and as troubling by his exigencies the peace of his\nChurch. He then became the founder and pastor of a small\ndissenting and independent Church at Lyons. The energy with which\nhe expressed his convictions, and the excellence of his\npreaching, rapidly spread, and increased his renown for piety.\nNumerous Protestants manifested the desire to see him once more\nwithin the pale of the national Church. He made no objection; a\nChair becoming vacant in the Faculty of Montauban, M. Adolphe\nMonod was nominated, and from 1836 to 1847 he both lectured and\npreached at Montauban with a commanding ability that made itself\nfelt, not only among the majority of the students, but propagated\nits influences to a distance among the principal centers of\nFrench Protestantism.\n{188}\nIn 1847 he was summoned to Paris as the suffragan of another\npastor, M. Juillerat. Nor did he scruple to accept this secondary\nand precarious situation. He had full confidence in the divine\nvocation, and was firmly resolved to proceed to any place where\nthe faith of Christ might demand his services. He had, in the\nevangelical chair, even more success at Paris than at Lyons and\nMontauban. When, after the Revolution of 1848, a general assembly\nof the Reformed Churches of France assembled for the purposes of\nconsidering their institutions and discussing points of common\ninterest, a grave question was raised, and became the subject of\nwarm and lengthened debate: Should French Protestants proclaim\ntheir ancient Confession of Faith, that of Rochelle, or should\nthey proclaim a confession of new articles; or lastly, should\nthey remain passive and do nothing? some, and particularly their\npastor, M. Frederic Monod, elder brother of M. Adolphe Monod,\nannounced their determination to retire from the assembly and\nfrom the established Church, unless they adopted a Confession of\nFaith in accordance with the traditional principles of the\nReformation.\n{189}\nThe inertness of the hesitating and timid assembly was equivalent\nto a refusal, and they did in effect retire. To the great\nsurprise and great regret of his adversaries, M. Adolphe Monod,\nalthough favorable to the principles of the Confession of Faith,\ndid not follow the example by retiring; he even succeeded his\nbrother as titular pastor in the Church of Paris, and published\nto the world the motives of his conduct. [Footnote 28]\n\n    [Footnote 28: In his work entitled, Pourquoi je demeure dans\n    l'\u00c9glise \u00e9tablie.]\n\n{190}\n\nHis motives were good, such as a man of elevated character and\nenergetic purpose might conceive and might avow. In spite of\ntheir importance, the questions which concern the organization of\nthe Church and its eternal relations were, in the eyes of M.\nAdolphe Monod, only secondary considerations, subject in a\ncertain measure to time and to circumstance. For him the question\nof faith was supreme; and he occupied himself infinitely more\nwith the spiritual state of souls than with ecclesiastical\ngovernment. To the serious thinker the Christian faith is quite\ndifferent from any conception or conviction of the understanding;\nit is a general condition of the whole man; it is the very life\nof the soul; not merely its actual life, but the source and the\nguarantee of its future life. The faith in Christ Jesus, the\nRedeemer, the Saviour, makes the life of a Christian; and the\nlife of a Christian is a preparation for an eternal salvation.\nWith this faith penetrating to his very marrow, and with the\nintimate persuasion of its consequences, the duty of giving a\nvoice to that faith, and of diffusing it, was the dominant idea,\nthe permanent passion, of M. Adolphe Monod.\n{191}\nHe had not himself been always firmly settled in his religious\nconvictions; he had been a prey to great moral perplexities, and\nto attacks of profound melancholy. When he had escaped from\nthese--or rather, to use his own words, \"when God had become\nreally the master of his heart\"--he had no other thought but that\nof bringing other souls to the same state, and of rousing them to\na faith in Christ, with a view to their eternal salvation. The\nposition which he regarded as of all the most appropriate for\nhimself, was one in which he could most profitably forward this\nwork. When in 1848 the question was thus put to him, and when he\nhad been convinced both by his past observation of the Protestant\nChurch of France during the last twenty years, and by his own\nexperience of it, that the established Church offered to him in\nhis Christian purpose the vastest field of exertion, and the best\nchance of success, he did not hesitate to remain in it. \"I find\nin the situation,\" he said, \"grave disorders, of which it is my\nduty to seek unceasingly the reform; but that situation has also\nits hopeful side.\n{192}\nA long development of my ideas would be superfluous; let us\nconfine ourselves to some striking facts. Try and reckon how many\northodox pastors our Church possessed when the reaction began in\n1819, and then make a similar calculation for 1849. I do not mean\nto fix the precise numbers; but is it too much to say, that in\nthe course of a single generation the number of orthodox pastors\nis ten, fifteen, twenty times perhaps as great? This applies to\nthe clergy, of whom everywhere the immense influence is felt.\nAmong their congregations it is less easy to follows things; but\nthe attentive observer does not fail to mark similar indications.\nBehold our religious societies: are not the most popular among\nthem those which hoisted most manfully the colors of orthodoxy?\nAnd if some are in a languishing condition, is it not because\nthey offered in this respect fewest guarantees? Evidently the\nfirst condition of existence for our religious institutions of\ncharity is sound doctrine.\n{193}\nMy readers, permit me to question you still more closely. Throw\nyour eyes upon the eight or ten families best known to you,\nbeginning with your own, and compare what they are now with what\nthey were in 1819; contrast their occupations, tastes,\nsacrifices, and intercourse, the modes of education, the books\nread, friendships formed, and so on; and then declare, thankless\nones, if God has allowed you to be without encouragement.\"\n[Footnote 29]\n\n    [Footnote 29: Pourquoi je demeure dans l'\u00c9glise \u00e9tablie, par\n    M. Adolphe Monod, pp. 25-32. Paris, 1849.]\n\nM. Adolphe Monod had good reason to draw attention to this\ngeneral progress of Christianity; but there was another progress\nalso deserving notice, that which he had himself made, and which\nhe was making more and more every day, in the attainment of the\ntrue and distinguishing character of a Christian.\n\n{194}\n\nAt the commencement of his career as a minister of the Gospel, in\nhis different controversies, and especially in his controversy\nwith the Consistory of Lyons, he had shown rudeness, impatience,\nand want of foresight; he had been too precipitate in enforcing\nhis faith by arguments, and too much disposed to undervalue the\nobstacles in its way. Thanks to his genuine sincerity and the\nnatural elevation of his character, time, experience, and success\nhad given at once breadth and suppleness to his thought. Faith\nhad generated modesty, and hope patience. Contrary to the\nordinary bias of men, his liberalism had increased in the same\nmeasure as his strength. As an act of duty he made in 1848 an\navowal of the state of his mind in this respect. \"The age,\" he\nsaid, \"reproaches us with '_exclusisme_,' (exclusiveness,) a\nnew word expressly invented to denote its favorite charge; for\nfalse ideas the age has only the resource of a barbarous\nphraseology. This '_exclusisme_' is the sole thing which the\nage cannot tolerate in matters of doctrine: it is prepared, it\nsays to itself, to take everything within its pale except the\n'exclusives.'\n{195}\nThus they demand from us only one change in the profession of our\nfaith; they call upon us to substitute for our usual prefatory\nformula, 'This is the truth,' the words, 'This is my opinion.'\nAnd if they, in claiming such qualification of language, limited\ntheir demand to things which, in spite of any relative\nimportance, do not constitute the substance of the faith and of\nthe life of a Christian, we should do what they require; perhaps\nI should rather say, we do it already, as brother should do to\nbrother, and in the interest of truth itself. It is one of the\ndistinctive features of the awakening of Christians in our epoch,\nthat charitably sparing in the absolute dogmatism of which the\nsixteenth century was prodigal, they make dogmas of only a small\nnumber of fundamental doctrines. And even of these they strive to\ncontract the circle, until having reached the vital forces, the\nvery heart, so to say, of truth, they sum it up in one single\nname, Jesus Christ, and in one single word, grace.\n{196}\nWhoever is of that faith, whatever name he bears elsewhere, and\nwhatever place he occupies in the Universal Church--Lutheran,\nAnglican, Methodist, Moravian, Baptist, nay, Roman Catholic, or\nGreek Catholic, we receive that man as a brother in Christ Jesus;\nand not we only, but the whole contemporary Evangelical Church,\nwith certain exceptions becoming every day rarer, and arising\nfrom a narrow or sectarian pietism. Hence the 'Evangelical\nAlliance,' formed in our own time of more than twenty Protestant\ndenominations, the prelude only to another evangelical alliance\nwhich will exclude none who rely upon the sole merits of Jesus\nChrist, the Saviour and Lord of all.\n\n\"Our '_exclusisme_,' besides, has not for its objects\nindividuals but doctrines. Absolute affirmation is legitimate\nwhen the object is to define the faith, which is the promise of\nsalvation, for God has clearly revealed it in his word; but when\nthe object is to mark the individuals who possess that saving\nfaith, similar affirmation could not be used without temerity;\nfor God has nowhere revealed to us either the internal state of\nany man, or the final lot reserved for him.\n{197}\n_We_ exclude no man, _we_ judge no man, alive or dead;\nthe judgment of the quick and of the dead belongs to God alone.\nDoubtless we estimate, according to our ability, the spiritual\ncondition of a man by his works, as we do a tree by its fruits;\nJesus himself invites us to do so. Doubtless, when we see a man\nliving and dying in the works of the faith, we hope for him, and\nour hope may grow even to a firm assurance; and when, on the\ncontrary, we see a man living and dying in the works of\nincredulity, we have a feeling of anxiety for him--a feeling as\npainful as it is mysterious. But, after all, neither in the first\ncase nor in the second, and still less in the second than the\nfirst, are we authorized to pronounce any personal judgment; and\nbut for the paradoxical turn of the expression, I would willingly\nadopt the language of the devout Bunyan: Three things would\nastonish me in heaven; first, not to see there certain persons\nwhom I expect to see there; secondly, to see there those I do not\nexpect to see there; and thirdly, which would surprise me most,\nto see myself there.'\" [Footnote 30]\n\n    [Footnote 30: Sermon sur l'Exclusisme, ou l'unit\u00e9 de la foi,\n    in the Recueil des Sermons de M. Adolphe Monod. 3me s\u00e9rie, t.\n    ii, pp. 386-390. Paris, 1860. The sermons of M. Adolphe Monod\n    have been collected and published in four vols. 8vo. Paris,\n    1856-1860. He also wrote several small works, among others:\n\n    1. Lucile, ou la lecture de la Bible. 1841.\n\n    2. La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod, r\u00e9cit in\u00e9dit, r\u00e9dig\u00e9 par\n    luim\u00eame. 1864.\n\n    3. R\u00e9cit des conf\u00e9rences qui ont eu lieu en 1834, entre\n    quelques Catholiques Remains et M. Adolphe Monod. Paris,\n    1860.\n\n    4. Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod \u00e0 ses amis et \u00e0 l'\u00e9glise.\n    Paris, 1856.]\n\n{198}\n\nA piety so profound, and at the same time so modest and so large,\nexpressed with an eloquence which combined an impassioned\nearnestness of language with an impassioned earnestness of\nconviction, could not fail to exercise great influence. As a\npreacher, M. Adolphe Monod was powerful.\n{199}\nHe had acquired, not by careful and cold observation, but by an\nassiduous and conscientious study of the Gospels and of himself,\na remarkable knowledge of human nature, of its strength and of\nits weakness, of its deficiencies and of its aspirations. He laid\nsiege, so to speak, to the souls of men, and he pressed the siege\nardently and with skill; he assailed all their gates, and pursued\nthem to their innermost defenses, keeping constantly displayed\nthe banner of Christ, and inspiring them with the perfect\nconfidence that he was urging them to take _their_ stand,\ntoo, beneath it, not from any human motive, or any desire of\nglory to himself, but from a serious desire for their souls'\nwelfare, and from it alone. Thus did he gain over to his Divine\nMaster the hearts disposed to receive him, strongly shake the\npurpose of those not confirmed in their rebellion, and leave\nastonished and intimidated those whom he did not bring over. As\npastor also his influence was extraordinary; his life was the\nreflection and the commentary upon his preaching.\n{200}\nHe applied first to his own case the precepts of his faith, and\nthe conclusions therefrom logically deducible. As he said nothing\nthat he did not think, so he thought nothing that he did not\npractice; and without being readily impressionable, like that of\nM. Vinet, his zeal was expansive, and his piety gave him no rest\nfrom the task of diffusing by example and precept the faith and\nthe practice of Christianity. Attacked by a painful and incurable\nillness, which at last condemned him to immobility, he did not\nsuffer it to render him inactive and useless. Every Sunday during\nthe last six months of his life, his family, some pastors his\ncolleagues, and as many attached friends as his chamber could\nreceive, gathered around his bed, and his zeal surmounted his\npain. He addressed to them, to use his very words, \"sometimes the\nregret of a dying man, sometimes the results of his own\nexperiences of faith and of life.\" The devout assemblage was\nagain convoked, at his expressed wish, for the 6th April, 1856.\n{201}\nBut that day, before the hour fixed for the assembly had arrived,\nGod took to him his servant, granting the wish expressed in his\nown often repeated prayer, \"Let my life only terminate with my\nministry, and my ministry only with my life.\" [Footnote 31]\n\n    [Footnote 31: These are the words inserted in a publication\n    bearing the title \"Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod \u00e0 sa famille et\n    a l'\u00e9glise,\" in which the last exhortations and conversations\n    of this dying Christian have been piously collected. P. viii.\n    Paris, 1856.]\n\nEighteen months before the decease of M. Adolphe Monod, an\neminent pastor of the Lutheran Church of Paris, his friend and\nfellow-laborer in the work of Christianity, M. Edouard Verny,\ndied suddenly in the Evangelical Chair at Strasbourg, while\npreaching upon the words addressed by the Apostles to the\nChristians of Antioch, \"It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to\nus, to lay upon you no greater burden than these _necessary_\nthings,\" words not less liberal than pious, and faithfully\nexpressing the sentiments of the Christian orator, who died while\ncommenting upon them.\n{202}\nThe mind of M. Verny was naturally liberal and independent; his\nintellectual career had commenced with philosophical studies, and\nhe had retained a strong bias in favor of the progress of\nthought. This did not, however, prevent him from promptly and\ncalmly appreciating the opinions which he did not share. Without\npossessing either the impassioned style or the power of M.\nAdolphe Monod, he was not less devoted to the cause of\nChristianity; and he convinced those by the charms of his manner,\ninto whose minds M. Monod entered by force and as a conqueror.\n[Footnote 32]\n\n    [Footnote 32: Although M. Verny had long preached, and had\n    often written in religious reviews and journals, and\n    particularly in the \"Semeur,\" very few monuments remain of\n    his ideas and of his talents. The principal are:\n\n    1. A sermon \"Upon the Unity of the Church,\" preached in the\n    church of Bolbec in 1854.\n\n    2. Two sermons, one \"Upon the Prayer of the Canaanite Woman;\"\n    the other \"Upon Repentance;\" preached at Paris in 1843 and\n    1846.\n\n    3. The sermon \"Sur l'Ouverture solennelle de la session du\n    Consistoire sup\u00e9rieur de l'\u00c9glise de la Confession\n    d'Augsbourg,\" preached at Strasbourg on the 19th of October,\n    1854: while preaching which M. Verny died in the pulpit.\n\n    4. An \"Essai sur les droits de la science,\" inserted in the\n    \"Revue de Th\u00e9ologie et de Philosophie Chr\u00e9tienne,\" published\n    at Strasbourg by M. Colani. Vol. ix, pp. 208-248. 1854. This\n    essay was to have been followed by an \"Essai sur les devoirs\n    de la foi,\" of which the sudden death of M. Verny prevented\n    the completion.]\n\n{203}\n\nAlthough the Protestant Church of France thereby sustained an\nimmense loss, it had a striking and salutary spectacle also\npresented to it by the end of these two servants of Christ, the\none dying suddenly, in the plenitude of his strength, at the very\nmoment when from his pulpit he was maintaining with distinguished\nability the doctrines of his Master; the other, from his bed,\ngathering with pain what of breath remained to him in this world,\nto pour once more a flood of faith into the souls of his\nauditors.\n\nSuch lives, such deaths, could not remain sterile of result;\nunder their influence the Christian faith was relumed; it again\nspread itself among the Protestants of France. Nor was this that\narid cold faith which men accept to acquit their consciences, and\nto rid themselves of a trouble and a scruple; nor that vague and\ndreamy faith which feasts rather upon its own emotions, than\nnourishes itself with the truths which are the voice of God.\n{204}\nA Christian's faith is neither an act of prudent submission nor a\nparoxysm of mystic fervor. Conviction and sentiment, the firm\nadhesion of the mind, and the filial love of the heart, meet in\nthat faith in essential and intimate union. It is the light\ncoming from on high, and bringing down with it the genial\nprinciples of vital warmth and fecundity; out of which, like\nsalubrious waters from a pure source, flow freely and in\nabundance the works of human charity. I have lying before me a\nlist of the different charities to which Christianity has in our\nown days since the reaction given birth in the Protestant Church\nof France. [Footnote 33]\n\n    [Footnote 33: Expos\u00e9 des oeuvres de la charit\u00e9 protestante en\n    France, par H. de Triqueti, membre du conseil presbyt\u00e9ral et\n    du diaconat de l'\u00c9glise r\u00e9form\u00e9e de Paris. 18mo. 1863.]\n\n{205}\n\nI see there manifold associations, enterprises supposing a long\nduration of existence, unremitting efforts for the moral\ndevelopment of men; for the bodily solace of their earthly\ncondition; for the propagation and the defense of freedom of\nopinion in religious matters; for the support and diffusion of\nthe faith itself: all these objects, at once so various and so\nanalogous, are being laboriously worked out both by the\nindependent Protestant Churches, and by the Protestant Church\nestablished from the State. M. Edmond de Pressens\u00e9 and M. Eug\u00e8ne\nBersier devote their talents and their zeal to the same forms of\nChristian belief as were advocated by M. Alexandre Vinet and M.\nAdolphe Monod. In spite of the free divergence of sentiment and\nthe diversity of ecclesiastical government in French\nProtestantism, we may observe in its bosom a progress of\nChristian Faith, a progress in works of Christian Charity, a\nprogress in Christian Science, and a progress in Christian\nInfluence.\n{206}\nI use the same terms employed by me in speaking of the\ncontemporary Catholic Church of Rome, because I find before me\nsimilar facts. These facts do not announce the reconciliation of\nthe two Churches--profound differences of opinion continue to\nseparate them; but these facts are, in both Churches, signs of\nthe Awakening of Christianity.\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n    III. Awakening Of Christianity In France.\n\n\nBut the world has not changed since God at its creation delivered\nit up to the disputes of mankind; nor have the diversity and\nconflict of ideas and of passions ever ceased to be the condition\nof humanity. By the side of the movement of Christianity to which\nI refer, a movement in the contrary direction is manifesting\nitself, and is pursuing its course. Christianity at its Awakening\nis challenged to ruder combats. Philosophy refuses to its\nfundamental dogmas the marks and the rights of rational truth.\n{207}\nAn erudite criticism contests its historical evidence. The\nnatural sciences proclaim that they do not require its aid to\naccount for man and for the world. It is affirmed as a principle,\nand maintained in learned societies, that morality is entirely\nindependent of religion. Man in his aspirations for liberty, that\ngenerous passion of the age, retains a profound resentment for\nthe chains and the sufferings which, under pretext of\nChristianity, human conscience and human thought have so long\nbeen made to endure. The influence of these bitter reminiscences\nis manifesting itself in the different Christian Churches under\nvarious forms, and with different effects. Many liberals so dread\nthe prospect of the Church of Rome obtaining power over civil\nsociety that they hardly accord to this Church the rights of\ncommon liberty; or, if they do so at all, they do it reluctantly\nand little by little.\n\n{208}\n\nAmong the Protestants, some push the pretensions of liberty so\nfar as to insist that in religious society a community of faith\nshould count for nothing; that a man should be entitled to remain\na member of a Church, and even to remain its minister, although\nhe profess respecting the essential facts and dogmas of the\nChurch the most contradictory opinions, and opinions the\nstrangest to its traditions and its texts. With respect to Roman\nCatholics, the dominant question is that of liberty. Are the\nliberties of civil society to be accorded to the Church? Are\nthose of the Church to be allowed to remain intact in the bosom\nof the State? In Protestantism, on the other hand, the complete\nliberty of religion in the midst of civil society, the right of\nevery individual to avow his belief, and to solemnize his own\nforms of worship--these are all privileges already acquired, and\ncontested as little by any orthodox believer as by any\nfreethinker. The questions really here agitated are questions of\nfaith and of discipline. Are a common faith and a uniform\ninternal discipline essential to the Church? Here is the debate.\n{209}\nBut above all these special questions and these different\nsituations of the various Christian Churches rise, for Romanist\nand Protestant alike, the general question and the common\nsituation; it is Christianity itself which is engaged in the\ncontest, and its awakening spirit confronts the antichristian\nmovement.\n\nLet us not delude ourselves as to the character, the force, or\nthe danger of this antichristian movement. It is not merely a\nfeverish excitability in men's minds, a simple revolutionary\ncrisis in the religious order. No; we have here earnest\nconvictions at work, and the prospect of a long war. Impatience\nof an ancient yoke, a spirit of reaction, a love of innovation,\nfrivolous instincts not a few, as well as evil impulses, may\nclaim a share--and a large share--in the attacks of which\nChristianity is in these days the object; but what gives to these\nattacks their most formidable character is a sentiment far more\nserious, one that has made heroes and martyrs, the love of truth\nat all risk and in despite of consequence, for the sake of truth\nand for its sake alone.\n{210}\nThe feeling that makes man thirst for truth is an honor to human\nnature. If he fancies that he has found that truth, man abandons\nhimself with transport to the satisfaction of his cravings, and\ndoes not scruple to drink even to intoxication at this pure\nsource. But here he is incurring a great danger: man is not\nmerely an intelligence whose vocation during his brief transit\nthrough this world confines him only to study and science: he is\nan active, responsible being; a being engaged in a life full of\nlabors, with a future life before him full of mystery; a laborer\nin a career having a particular interest for himself, and yet\nforming part of a general scheme, of the design of which he has\nbut imperfect glimpses. Very incomplete and very imperfect is\nthat man's state of intellectual action, who restricts himself to\nthat which appears to him to be scientific truth, who does not,\nat the same time, submit his thought to all the tests to which he\nis himself subject, and who does not examine whether that thought\nbe in harmony with the laws of his nature--whether it respect or\ntransgress the limits imposed upon his means of knowledge.\n{211}\nThe danger of falling into error becomes greater in proportion as\nthis incomplete and imperfect state of his mind is in itself a\nnoble state, a state that satisfies noble impulses, and procures\nnoble means of enjoyment. The most eminent among the actual\nadversaries of Christianity believe themselves the interpreters\nand the defenders of truth; some of philosophical truth; others\nof historical truth, others again of the truth of the facts and\nlaws of the physical world. They are all proud of belonging to\nthe department of pure science, and of making of scientific truth\nthe sole object, the sole rule of their labors; but they are also\nall forgetful of some conditions--nay, the most indispensable\nones--to which science is bound to conform; some tests--and the\nmost legitimate ones--to which science is obliged to submit.\n\n{212}\n\nThey claim, too, the honor of bearing the banner of a grand and\nnoble cause, the cause of Liberty. That Christianity alone\nrestored to man, as man, and for no other reason, his rights to\nliberty, is a fact that the comparative histories of the world,\nwhether Christian or Pagan, place beyond all doubt; for confront\nthese two histories, and name the nations among whom the idea of\nthe dignity of man's liberty became a general idea, powerful in\ninfluence and fruitful in consequence! Another fact equally\nhistoric and certain is, that Christianity knew how to adapt\nitself, and did readily adapt itself, to the different states of\nsociety, and the different forms of government; that it set\nitself up and maintained its rank in republics as well as\nmonarchies, under constitutional regimes as well as in\ndespotisms, in the midst of democratical as well as\naristocratical institutions; and, beyond doubt, it was not in\nfree states that it displayed least vigor, or met with the\nsmallest success.\n{213}\nThese two great facts are nowadays lost sight of. Christianity is\naccused of being hostile to Liberty and incompatible with the\nspirit of modern societies; and this is, indeed, the chief charge\nlaid to its score. True it is, that the charge is not without\nderiving countenance from the history of Europe in modern times;\nworldly interests, selfish passions, events complex and obscure,\nin which moral order and social order have been compromised, have\nas it were suspended in certain countries the liberal action of\nChristianity, and enlisted momentarily the cause of Liberty under\na banner not Christian. The error is profound, but transient; the\ntraditional influences of ages will resume their empire, the\ngrand events their course; Christ's religion and man's liberty\nwill once more remember that each stands in need of the other,\nand that their alliance in the bosom of order is their natural\nand necessary condition. That they do misunderstand each other\noccasions the most serious crisis at this moment in modern\nsociety.\n\n{214}\n\nHere, too, is the gravest peril which the Christian religion has\nin our days to surmount. Appreciate the force of the two\nsentiments to which I just now referred, the love of science and\nthe love of liberty; understand through what phases of\ndegeneration and of deceptive transformation those sentiments\nmay, in the ardor of pursuit and of combat, have to pass; reckon\nup, if reckon you can, all the false ideas, the chimerical hopes,\nwhich they may suggest; and then add to the amount, and as their\nconsequences, the immoral and anarchical passions which may make\nthose sentiments their pretext and their tools; and in doing\nthis, you will find that you have passed in review the forces of\nthat enemy now waging an implacable war against Christianity,\nalthough a war to which Christianity is called upon to put an\nend.\n\n{215}\n\nI do not in any respect underrate the forces of that army. I\ndisparage no more their quality than their numbers. To maintain\nthe combat worthily and efficaciously we should, at the onset,\naccord to our adversaries the whole amount of their merits as\nwell as of their strength, and then attack them in their\nstrongest entrenchments. I have charged the enemies of\nChristianity with puerile presumptuousness when they refuse to\nsee the energy and the progress of the awakening of Christianity.\nIt is of infinite importance to Christians, on their side, not to\nbe blind to the ardor and the effects which that Antichristian\ndemonstration is producing, of which their Faith and their Church\nare the aim. I am firmly convinced that in this war Christianity\nwill conquer; but it will leave its enemies with arms still in\ntheir hands. It will no more gain over them any complete or\ndefinitive victory than it will be able to conclude with them any\nserious or durable peace. In the actual state of men's minds and\nof society, the struggle will go on between the followers and the\nopponents of Christianity; the two armies will continue to deploy\ntheir forces in the face each of the other; and that of the\nChristians, in order to defend and to extend its domain, will be\nincessantly called upon to watch and to combat the movements of\nits enemy.\n{216}\nWhile combating them it will be also obliged to comply with the\nterms that truth exacts, and the conditions that liberty imposes.\nFrom these exigencies and these conditions Christianity has\nnothing to dread--that is, if it accepts them boldly, and in its\nturn imposes them upon its enemies. Let man's science, labors,\nand systems be submitted to the same tests, and handled with the\nsame freedom of examination, as are being applied to the\nfoundations and the doctrines of Christian faith; this is all\nthat Christians are entitled to, all that they need to demand.\n\nThus far I have explained the actual state of the Christian\nreligion in France, the sources of its strength and of its\nweakness, its awakening and its perils. It is my intention now to\nexamine the actual state of those doctrines and systems which\nrepudiate, or which more or less deny and combat Christianity.\n{217}\nWhen I have passed the hostile army in review, I will once more\nconfront Christianity with its adversaries, and endeavor to\ndistinguish, by contrasting them, on which side the truth is, on\nwhich side the right, and on which side the hope of future\nsuccess.\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n{218}\n\n            Second Meditation.\n\n              Spiritualism.\n\n\nI witnessed the birth--not, certainly, the birth of Spiritualism,\nfor this was, like its twin brother Materialism, born in the\ncradle of Philosophy, and while the steps of Philosophy were\nstill those of an infant--but the birth of the spiritualistic\nschool of the nineteenth century. This birth was a national\nreaction against the Sensualism of the eighteenth century--just\nas the Christian Awakening was a reaction against the impiety of\nthe same epoch. Theories do not escape the influence of events:\nafter the ideas come the facts, to pour upon those ideas floods\nof light, and to reveal the vices, whether of philosophy or of\npolicy, in all their practical consequences.\n{219}\nThe Sensualism--that is to say, to style it by its true name, the\nMaterialism--of the eighteenth century, did not pass triumphantly\nthrough this test: it still reigned in France at the commencement\nof the nineteenth century, but it was the reign of an antiquated\nsovereign in decline--a sovereign of whom the public know the\ndefects, and whose successor is at hand.\n\nM. Royer-Collard was the first who had the merit and the honor of\nbringing back Spiritualism into the teaching of philosophy and\ninto the minds of the people; his was a return simply to the\nspiritualistic doctrines of the seventeenth century; but still a\nreal progress, effected by a novel route, and a really scientific\nmethod. M. Royer-Collard was neither a philosopher by profession\nnor the disciple of any master, nor was his mind a mind disposed\nto take up with systems--he observed, he read, he studied and\nreflected, as a looker on, and an earnest judge of the world and\nof men. In philosophy and his professional chair, as later in\npolitics and in the chamber, he was an original and profound\nthinker.\n{220}\nHis mind united good sense with loftiness of sentiment,\ncircumspection with self-respect; he was thoroughly imbued with\nthe spirit of his times, at the same time that he refused to\naccept its yoke. In his grave and independent course of\ninstruction, he treated philosophical questions as they presented\nthemselves step by step, each on its own account, without\ntroubling himself about anything but the discovery of the truth;\nand still less with any zealous endeavor to set together or\nresolve all the questions upon a general system, the result of\nany learned premeditation. Those who had opportunities of\nlistening to him, and even those whose only means of judgment are\nthe fragments published by M. Jouffroy, [Footnote 34]\ncharacterize his lessons as directed, each of them, toward some\nspecial questions well determined beforehand, and they regard\nthem as models of analysis and of philosophical criticism,\nscrupulously confined by the lecturer to the facts and the\nresults that the inductive process discovers in the facts\nthemselves.\n\n  [Footnote 34: In his \"Traduction des oeuvres compl\u00e8tes de\n  Reid,\" vol. iii, pp. 299-449, vol. iv, pp. 273-451.]\n\n{221}\n\nHe had been a great reader of the writings of the Scotch\nphilosophers, held them in high esteem, and walked in their\nsteps; his views were, however, loftier, and his footing firmer,\nalthough not less prudent. He had in his short philosophical\ncareer two rare pieces of good fortune: one was, that he had a\nfriend in M. Maine de Biran, a profound and enthusiastic observer\nof the human soul in his own soul--a subtle metaphysician, almost\na mystic, whom I would, if I dared, name the Saint Theresa of\nphilosophy; his other advantage was, that he had for his disciple\nM. Cousin, the congenial rival and eloquent interpreter of the\ngreat philosophers of all ages. M. Cousin, in his turn, has been\nfortunate in having for his disciple M. Jouffroy--a disciple, of\nmind original and independent, following a master accomplished in\nthe art of observing intellectual and moral facts, and of\ndescribing them and ordering them, without altering their\nessential character.\n{222}\nSometimes, it is true, M. Cousin yields to the ambition of his\nthought, or is swayed by the intellectual current of opinions in\nvogue; but very soon his common sense checks, or at least sets\nhim on his guard--a common sense that finds lucid expression, and\nis distinguished by probity of intent. Such are the founders and\nthe glorious chiefs of the spiritualistic school of the\nnineteenth century.\n\nNor have they failed to find disciples and heirs worthy of such\npredecessors. For some years past it has been the custom, in\ncertain regions of the learned world, to demand, frivolously\nenough, and in a tone not free from irony, \"What has become of\nthe spiritualistic school--what can it be about?\" I will not\nanswer for it as Tertullian did to the Pagans, \"We are only of\nyesterday, and we are everywhere--in your domains, your cities,\nyour isles, your fortresses, your communes, your councils, your\ncamps, your tribes, your 'decuries,' in the palace, the senate,\nthe forum; we only leave you your temples.\" [Footnote 35]\n\n    [Footnote 35: Tertullian Apologet., ch. xxxvii.]\n\n{223}\n\nThe modern Spiritualists had no such conquests to make, and it is\nfitting for philosophers to be more modest; but however short my\nexperience may have taught me that the human memory may in\nsimilar cases sometimes be, I am astonished that men should so\nforget facts, and facts, too, that are recent and patent. What\nschool of philosophy ever furnished in half a century so many men\nand so many works, some of eminence, all of them of distinguished\nmerit? I will cite only a few names: MM. de R\u00e9musat, Damiron,\nAdolphe Garnier, Franck, Jules Simon, Barth\u00e9lemy, Saint-Hilaire,\nSaisset, Caro, Bersot, L\u00e9v\u00eaque, Bouillier, Janet, some of whom\nhave scarcely disappeared from the stage of the world, and others\nare only just arrived there--they belong all to the\nspiritualistic school, to which they have all done honor by\nimportant works on philosophy, whether speculative, historical,\npolitical, economic, or practical.\n{224}\nTheir doctrines, it is true, have now been for some time hotly\nattacked, and the wind of the day does not blow into their sails.\nThey have, besides, in my opinion, been wrong in this respect,\nthat they have not directed sufficient attention to these\npolemics; that they have combated in a manner too indirect, or\nwith too little energy; the ideas in whose name their own have\nbeen assailed; a certain share of languor and of embarrassment is\nat this moment the malady of the best minds and of the sincerest\nconvictions. But in spite of the blows which it receives and\nreturns, although with insufficient sturdiness, the\nspiritualistic school, if we judge it by the names and the works\nwhich belong to it, by their talent, and their fame, remains in\nour century in possession of the domain and of the banner of\nphilosophy.\n\nIts merits will present themselves still more clearly if we\nexamine closely the results of its labors.\n\n{225}\n\nThe first and the most important result, in a point of view\npurely philosophical, is, that the Spiritualists of our days have\ngiven to their researches and to their ideas a character really\nscientific: they have introduced into the study of man and of the\nintellectual world, the method practiced with so much success in\nthe study of man and of the material world--that is to say, they\nhave taken the observation of facts as the point of departure and\nthe constant guide of their investigations. Are there in man and\nin the intellectual world, as there are in man and in the\nmaterial world, facts capable of being observed, seized,\ndescribed, classified, generalized? This is the question which\nthe spiritualistic school proposed and discussed at the outset. I\nhave no hesitation in saying, that it resolved it in the\naffirmative, and that, thanks to this school, psychology has\nassumed its rank among the positive sciences, just as physiology\ndid. Like physiology, geology, or botany, psychology has its\nspecial object, its determined domain, in which it proceeds\nabsolutely according to the same method observed by the physical\nsciences in their domain.\n{226}\nThat this method, the observation of facts, of their value and\ntheir laws, is in psychology more difficult to be followed than\nin the physical sciences, is certain; but this certainly does not\ndeprive psychology either of its domain or of its scientific\ncharacter. It is a science by the same right and upon the same\nconditions as all the others are so. The labors of the\nspiritualistic school, and particularly those of M. Jouffroy,\nhave given it a solid foundation: and this has been formally\nrecognized by several even among the adversaries of this school,\namong others by M. Taine and M. Berthelot. [Footnote 36]\n\n    [Footnote 36: I read in the M\u00e9taphysique et la Science of M.\n    Vacherot:\n\n    \"_The Metaphysician:_\n\n    \"In his denial of psychology, I stop at once the author of\n    the 'positive philosophy,' and I demand of him by what right\n    he thus banishes from the domain of the experimental sciences\n    a science of observation.\n\n    \"_The man of learning:_\n\n    \"It constitutes in effect 'hiatus' in this philosophy, and a\n    hiatus which all the sound minds of the positive school are\n    beginning to admit. M. Littr\u00e9, for example, may make his\n    reservations of opinion as to the manner in which our\n    psychologists understand psychology, and as to the method\n    which they apply to it; but he has too much sense not to\n    admit that the intelligence--all that constitutes man's\n    identity, the moral man--is the object of a peculiar study,\n    of which many previous works have shown the possibility, and\n    many practical results prove the high and vital interest.\"--\n    Vacherot, la M\u00e9taphysique et la Science, vol. iii, p. 181.]\n\n{227}\n\nIt is in the name of science and by the processes of science that\nthe Spiritualists of the nineteenth have combated the Sensualists\nof the eighteenth century. They have not, it is true, absolutely\ncrushed Materialism, that child and legitimate heir of\nSensualism; but while dethroning the parent, they have compelled\nthe child sometimes to avow himself boldly, sometimes to\ntransform himself, and to assume other features and other arms\nthan those of his cradle. I will only cite the lecture of M.\nCousin on the \"Sensualistic Philosophy in the Eighteenth\nCentury,\" and the essay of the Duke de Broglie on the \"Existence\nof the Soul,\" [Footnote 37] written on the occasion of the work\nof M. Broussais: \"De l'Irrritation et de la Folie.\"\n\n    [Footnote 37: This essay, first inserted in 1828 in the Revue\n    Fran\u00e7aise, has been reprinted in the \"Ecrits et discours\n    divers\" of the Duke de Broglie, collected and published in\n    1863.]\n\n{228}\n\nWhoever, after having read them, would still persist in\nmaintaining the Sensualism of Locke and of Condillac, or in\nrefusing to see the consequences to which Sensualism leads, would\nprove, in my opinion, that he has not understood either the\nquestion put, or the doctrine combated and refuted. We have here\na result acquired for the science of the intellectual world, and\nwe owe the result to the polemics of the spiritualistic school.\n\nThat school has obtained another result more important still, and\nwhich belongs no longer to the polemics of simple negation, but\nto positive doctrine; it has set in the broad light of day the\nreal and fundamental principle of morals, the distinction as to\nthe essentials of moral good and evil, as well as the law of\nobligation, that \"categorical imperative,\" the sole refuge which\nKant found against Skepticism.\n229\nNeither the interest well defined of each individual, nor the\ninterest of the greater numbers, nor any sentimental sympathy,\nnor any system of positive written law, can, for the future, be\nconsidered as the basis of morals. An attempt is made in the\npresent day to establish another thesis, and to represent\nmorality as absolutely independent of religion. Grave error,\nwhich discards from morality, if not its principle, at least its\nsource and its object, its author and its future; an error,\nhowever, very different from those errors which dispense even\nwith the principle of morals, and assign as the rule for the\nconduct of men, motives having in themselves nothing moral,\nnothing absolute. The fact that man's conscience and man's reason\nrecognize the distinction of moral good and evil, and at the same\ntime the duty of practicing that good as the law of human\nactions, is a fact which we may now regard as acquired to\nphilosophy.\n{230}\nThe treatise \"Du Bien,\" in the work of M. Cousin upon \"Le Vrai,\nle Beau, et le Bien,\" the preface of M. Jouffroy to the \"Outlines\nof Moral Philosophy,\" by Dugald Stewart, and the \"Essia sur la\nMorale,\" in the \"M\u00e9langes Philosophiques,\" which M. Jouffroy\npublished in 1833, the book of M. Jules Simon upon \"Le Devoir,\"\nthese are all solid and brilliant works, by which the\nspiritualistic school has victoriously established the truth to\nwhich I have referred.\n\nAnd in establishing it, it has paid a remarkable act of homage to\nanother fact, and rendered an immense service by enforcing a\ntruth, with which are intimately connected man's rights in this\nworld, as well as his prospects beyond this world: I mean the\nfact of man's liberty. This is no question of pure theory and\nscientific curiosity; but a vital question, whose solution has\nfor man, in time present and time future, the most important\npractical consequences. Upon what grounds would the claim of man\nto liberty in the social state rest, what would become of his\nhopes and fears of a future eternity, if man were not a being\nmorally free and responsible for the decisions which determine\nhis acts?\n{231}\nThe civil liberty of man during his life on earth, and his\nfuture destiny after his life on earth, closely depend upon the\nfact of his free volition and upon the responsibility which\naccompanies it. Without free volition man falls in this world,\nwithout rights, under the yoke of whatever force may take\npossession of him, or use him as its instrument; what remains for\nman, then, but to tremble at the destiny which awaits him beyond\nthis world by virtue of the unknown decree of his Sovereign\nMaster? To the spiritualistic school belongs the honor of having\nfirmly established and rendered plain the psychological fact of\nthe freedom of the human will; nor in doing so has it allowed\nitself to be troubled and blinded by the ontological questions\nwhich that fact suggests, or by the difficulty attending the\nsolution of these questions. Consequently, it has accepted upon\nthis point the limits of man's science, and at the same time\nmaintained the rights of man's nature. It has laid in man's\nliberty and man's responsibility the legitimate foundation of\npolitical liberty, as well as that of the personal morality of\nman and of man's future.\n\n{232}\n\nThus, then, the spiritualistic school of the nineteenth century\nis at once scientific, moral, liberal. Eminent merits, rare\ncombination in any time, and still more so in our time!\n\nWith these great merits, and in spite of them, two omissions are\nstill remarkably striking.\n\nThe spiritualistic school, our contemporary, has halted abruptly\nbefore the sovereign problems which weigh upon the human soul,\nand which, in the first series of these \"Meditations,\" I styled\nnatural problems; [Footnote 38] it has in no respect furthered\ntheir solution according to reason, or accepted their solution\naccording to Christianity; its \"Theodicy\" has remained far in\narrear of its Psychology.\n\n    [Footnote 38: Meditations on the Essence of the Christian\n    Religion.]\n\nHalted it has, also, before any practical solution of these same\nproblems; nor has it eliminated either any faith or any law which\nsuffices for man's soul or man's conduct in life--in short, any\nreligion.\n{233}\nM. Jules Simon, in his work entitled \"La Religion Naturelle,\" MM.\nSaisset and De R\u00e9musat, in their \"Essais de Philosophie\nReligieuse,\" have striven, irrespectively of all positive\nrevelation, to give to man's soul and to man's conduct that\nsatisfaction and that religious rule which both require. I doubt\ntheir counting much upon the success of their attempts; I doubt\ntheir believing that their natural religion, or their religious\nphilosophy, are sufficient substitutes for Christianity. Far\nother things than such drops of science are required to appease\nthe thirst of humanity for religion.\n\nWhence, in the spiritualistic school, this double hiatus--this\ntwofold weakness, whence?\n\nIn my opinion, the causes are themselves twofold. The\nspiritualistic school has been at once too timid and too proud.\nIt has not seen in the psychological facts which it was observing\nand describing, all that they contain and reveal upon the subject\nof the great natural problems of man and of the world; it has\nneglected the cosmological facts and the historical facts which\nconcur to throw light upon those problems; its psychology has\nremained isolated and incomplete.\n{234}\nIt has, at the same time, failed to see the limits of psychology\nand of human science in general; not having succeeded in\nadvancing the torch of science into the regions where access to\nit is denied, it has refused to accept the light descending upon\nman by another way than that of science.\n\nLike Plato, Descartes, Leibnitz, Reid, and Kant, M. Cousin, now\nthe most eminent representative of the spiritualistic school,\nestablishes, by virtue of psychological observation, these two\ngreat facts: first, that there exist universal and necessary\nprinciples manifesting themselves in the human mind, and reigning\nthere without being capable of being subverted, which are called\ninto action by sensations coming from the external world;\nsecondly, that these sensations, so coming from the external\nworld, do not in any way supply the human mind with these\nuniversal and necessary principles, and that they can explain\nneither their presence nor their origin.\n{235}\nSuch, for instance, are the principles, that everything which\nbegins to appear has a cause--that every quality belongs to a\nsubstance! [Footnote 39] Sensualism is not in a position to\naccount in any way for these two principles, or to find them\namong those facts that form all its psychology.\n\n    [Footnote 39: Du Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien, pp. 19-66. 1857.]\n\nI am not called upon to develop or to discuss this idea, which,\nfor my part, I fully admit; enough that I mention it as a\nfundamental doctrine of the spiritualistic school.\n\nThe philosophers, who have admitted the existence of these\nuniversal and necessary principles, have assigned them different\nnames, and have enumerated and classified them differently; but\nwhether they style them \"ideas,\" or \"innate ideas,\" or \"laws,\" or\n\"forms,\" or \"categories of the understanding\"--whether they\nenlarge or limit their number--they agree as to their nature, and\ndeclare them inherent in the human mind itself, which applies\nthem, so to say, as its own peculiar property in its appreciation\nof the external world; so far is the mind from borrowing them\nfrom that world!\n\n{236}\n\nThese universal and necessary principles once admitted and\ncharacterized, some of the philosophers who so admit and\ncharacterize them, the Scotch philosophers for instance, go no\nfurther, and adhere to the psychological fact without examining\nits value or its consequences in an ontological sense. Others,\nlike Kant, refuse to that psychological fact all ontological\nvalue, and are of opinion that nothing authorizes us in affirming\nthat those principles, inherent in the internal existence of the\nhuman mind, are true in the domain beyond the human mind, or that\nthey regulate the realities of the external world, as they\nregulate our intellectual activity.\n{237}\nOthers, finally, M. Cousin, with Plato, Descartes, Leibnitz,\nF\u00e9n\u00e9lon, and Bossuet, see the work of God, and consequently God\nhimself, in the universal and necessary principles which preside\nover the intellectual existence of man; and they recognize God as\nthe infinite and sovereign being in whom the necessary principles\nreside; and they regard these as the manifestations of him, and\nthink that he placed them in the intelligence of man when he\nplaced man himself in the middle of the world.\n\nTo this doctrine I firmly adhere; but why does the spiritualistic\nschool so stop short, why does it not advance to the very end of\nthe path upon which it has entered? It admits God as the being in\nwhom these necessary principles reside, and from whom man has\nreceived them; what does this mean but that it recognizes in God\nthe author and instructor of man? And to recognize in God the\nauthor and the instructor of man, what is this but to recognize\nthe fact of the creation, and the fact of the primitive\nrevelation inherent in the fact of the creation?\n{238}\nThese two truths are involved in the fact that the necessary\nprinciples exist in the mind of man, and that man derives them,\nnot from his relations with the external world, but from himself,\nand from the source whence he himself emanates--from God, his\nCreator. God has created man armed at all points, as well in the\norder of the intellect as of matter, complete in his soul as in\nhis body: that is to say, God has given to him at his creation\nthe necessary principles of his intellectual life, just as he has\ngiven him the necessary mechanism of his physical organization.\nScientific psychology thus mounts up to that supreme point where\nit meets Christian revelation. There is, on its part,\ninconsistency or timidity in not recognizing and proclaiming the\nexistence of that light to which it so attains.\n\nWhat was the import, what the form, of that primitive revelation?\nHas the revelation itself been renewed at any epoch subsequent to\nthe creation? If so, by what instruments and with what incidents\nhas it been renewed? These are questions to which I shall recur,\nbut which for the moment I do not approach; I wish here only to\nestablish the fact of the divine revelation in the sphere and in\nthe terms of scientific psychology.\n\n{239}\n\nFacts in cosmogony lead to the same conclusion. I repeat here\nwhat I said in the first series of these Meditations, when\nspeaking of the dogma of the creation:\n\n  \"The only serious opponents of the dogma of the creation are\n  those who maintain that the universe, the earth, and man upon\n  the earth, have existed from all eternity, and, collectively,\n  in the state in which they now are. No one, however, can hold\n  this language, to which facts are invincibly opposed. How many\n  ages man has existed on the earth is a question that has been\n  largely discussed, and is still under discussion. The inquiry\n  in no way affects the dogma of the creation itself; it is a\n  certain and recognized fact that man has not always existed on\n  the earth, and that the earth has for long periods undergone\n  different changes incompatible with man's existence. Man,\n  therefore, had a beginning: man has come upon the earth.\"\n  [Footnote 40]\n\n    [Footnote 40: Meditations on the Essence of the Christian\n    Religion, page 18.]\n\n{240}\n\nHe did not come there by spontaneous generation--that is to say,\nby any creative force or organizing power inherent in matter.\nScientific observation overturns more and more, every day, this\nhypothesis, which, in other respects also, it is impossible to\nadmit as any explanation of the first appearance upon the earth\nof the complete man, the man in a condition to survive. \"Another\ndelusion of which we must rid ourselves,\" said, lately, a member\nof the Academy of Sciences, as he quitted the lecture-room where\nM. Pasteur had been throwing upon this subject the light of his\nluminous and scrupulous criticism. The hypothesis of the\nprogressive transformation of species does not explain better the\nexistence of man, such as we now see him upon the earth.\n{241}\nThis hypothesis is also rejected by the exact student of facts;\neven if admitted, it would still leave existing the same\nproblems; for, whence came these primitive types, whose\nsuccessive transformations have, as supposed, produced the\nexisting species? God is as necessary to create the ape or the\nprimitive type of the ape as he is necessary to create man\nhimself. Scientific cosmology accords with scientific psychology.\nGod, the creator and instructor of man, is the grand fact which\neach of these sciences encounters at the summit of its labors.\n\nThe whole current of history contains the same teaching. I admit\nthat error abounds in history, that it is full of false\nassertions, of recitals tortured from the truth, facts mutilated,\nlegends invented by men as imaginations. It is not, for all that,\nthe less certain that in a great part the truth still remains\nthere, that certain historical events are authenticated and\nattested by undeniable testimony. I mention here only two,\nbecause connected with the subject which engages me.\n{242}\nIt is a general belief, a universal tradition in the history of\nnations, that, either at the moment of the creation, or at some\nepoch subsequent to creation, the God, or the gods, whom those\nnations respectively adored, had had direct relations with man;\nhad become manifest to him by different acts or under different\nforms, and had assumed a place and exercised an active influence\nupon man's destinies. The idea of a single revelation, or of a\nsuccession of revelations--revelations characterized at one time\nby a strange grossness, at another by a subtle mysticism, is a\nthing ever recurring in the history of humanity. The tradition of\nthe special revelation, proclaimed first by the Hebrews, and\nafter them by the Christians, is equally undeniable; criticism\nmay apply itself to the volumes that contain the accounts; may\ncontest the authenticity or exactitude or date of particular\nbooks; but so far from ever negativing, it will not even weaken\nthe evidence of the existence and the powerful influence of the\nreligious tradition which gave birth to Judaism and to\nChristianity.\n{243}\nWe have here a remarkable historical fact, manifesting at once\nthe natural faith of mankind in the divine revelation, and in the\nrelations of the Creator with his creatures.\n\nIf the spiritualistic school refused from its very origin to\nadmit these facts, drawn from cosmogony and from man's history,\ninto the sphere of its labors; if it limited psychology to its\npeculiar scientific object--the study of the human soul--I am far\nfrom making such refusal matter of reproach: for the\nSpiritualists did thereby nothing but what they were entitled and\ncalled upon to do. But they have fallen into a twofold error.\nWhile observing and describing psychological facts, they did not\nperceive nor accept all that they imported: they saw in the\nintelligent man the work and the trace of God; but they did not\nsee what was implied in that man besides--that is, revelation as\nwell as creation. They did not leave pure psychology to demand of\nkindred sciences, such as cosmology and history, whether their\nresults accorded or did not accord with the results that they had\ndeduced from psychology.\n{244}\nIn short, on the one side they stopped short of the limits of the\ndomain of psychology; and on the other, they confined themselves\nto it too exclusively.\n\nFrom this twofold error sprang another still more serious.\nSpiritualism gave birth to Rationalism--a transformation as\nunnatural as unfortunate, which has rendered the science of man\nand of the intellectual world still more inexact and incomplete!\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n{245}\n\n             Third Meditation.\n\n               Rationalism.\n\n\nA man of a mind as unprejudiced as rare, one who will never be\nsuspected of any undue bias for Christianity, M. Sainte-Beuve,\navowing to me recently the high esteem with which M. Alexandre\nVinet inspired him, borrowed an expression of Pascal's: \"The\nheart has its reasons, which the reason does not comprehend.\"\n[Footnote 41]\n\n    [Footnote 41: Between this phrase and that of Pascal there is\n    a slight difference. Pascal said, \"Le c\u0153ur a des raisons que\n    la raison ne conna\u00eet point:\" \"The heart has reasons that the\n    reason knows not at all.\" Pens\u00e9es de Pascal, edition of M.\n    Faug\u00e8re, 1844, vol. ii, p. 172.]\n\nI only admit half of what is implied in this conciliatory phrase;\nand these are my reasons.\n\n{246}\n\nTrue religious faith, or, to call things by their real names,\nChristian faith, is founded upon instincts and upon sentiment at\nthe same time that it is founded upon reasons. If reason do not\naccept the sentiments of the heart, on which side is the fault?\nIs the fault with the heart, that it feels them, or is it with\nthe reason, that it does not comprehend them?\n\nMy reply to this question is easy. I reject the distinction made.\nI admit no such persons as are respectively styled the heart, the\nreason. Here is only an attempt at a psychological anatomy; no\ntrue enunciation of a real fact. Man, the human being, is\nessentially one, and single: he has the faculty of\nself-observation and self-study, but in exercising it he does not\ndestroy the unity of his nature; it is not his mere reason, it is\nhimself, and his whole self, that makes himself the object of his\nobservation and of his study, and that cannot but recognize\nhimself and accept himself in his entirety. He has no right to\nsay, with an air of scientific disdain, \"My reason comprehends\nnot the reasons of my heart.\"\n{247}\nHe must perforce say: \"I comprehend not myself;\" he must perforce\nproclaim, not the incoherency of his being, but the insufficiency\nor the incompetency of what he styles his reason.\n\nPhilosophy, like poetry, is full of personifications that\nmislead; the one personifies by images, the other by\nabstractions. Both have need of them--the one for its creations,\nthe other for its studies; I am far from seeking to deny their\nrespective use. All that I contend for is, that we must not\nmisconceive the real import of these expedients of human\nlanguage; we must not, by taking them for realities, lose sight\nof or destroy what are really and genuinely realities, the\nentities of divine creation.\n\nI insist the more on this error, because in the philosophy of our\ntime it is a common and a potent error, and the source too of\nother errors, deplorable as well in a scientific as in a moral\nand practical point of view. Condillac and his disciples had set\napart and specially studied in man the faculty of sensation, and\nthey were thereby led to make out of this faculty, and out of it\nalone, man himself and the whole man.\n{248}\nKant and his school considered particularly in man the faculty of\nthe reason and judgment, and very soon reason came with them to\nconstitute the whole man. I am far from intending to examine in\nits fundamental principles and its entirety the system of Kant,\nthe greatest philosophical work upon the human understanding that\nany man has produced since the time of Plato. I single out this\nfact, that it treats the reason as the proper, special, and\nparamount object of philosophy. Warned by his profound,\nscrupulous genius, Kant did not limit himself to a point of view\nso narrow, although so lofty; he studied man's reason under its\ndifferent aspects, he constituted himself the critic of pure\nreason, the critic of practical reason, the critic of \u00e6sthetic\nreason--that is, of reason applied to the discrimination of the\nbeautiful; he decomposed, so to say, the reason itself into as\nmany different faculties as he found different phases in the\nintellectual and moral life of man; but the faculty that he\nstyled the reason remained the basis of his study and of his\nsystem.\n{249}\nIt became in his school, and in the schools akin to it,\npre-eminently the intellectual substance, the basis of man and of\nphilosophy; and the human being himself, in his personal unity,\nwith all his life and his free will, entirely disappeared from\ntheir teaching.\n\nAs results of this system I will cite only two facts, very\ndifferent in their nature, both very foreign to the founder of\nthe system and his disciples, but which serve the better to\nreveal that system's faultiness, as these facts are, although its\nindirect, remote, and involuntary, nevertheless, its undeniable\nconsequences.\n\nWhen, in 1793, the frenzied men who disposed, as masters, of the\ndestinies of France, abolished the Christian religion and\nChristian worship, they resolved, nevertheless, to give to men an\nobject to adore. They instituted the worship of reason.\n{250}\nThe church of Notre-Dame at Paris was metamorphosed into a temple\nof reason; a young woman was made to figure there as the goddess\nof reason; and the orator of the National Convention, Chaumette,\ncried aloud as he pointed her out to the people, \"Behold living\nReason; we celebrate here to-day the sole true worship, the\nworship of Liberty and of Reason.\"\n\nAt the distance of three quarters of a century from the date of\nthese revolutionary orgies, in 1865, not in France but in\nEngland, a man of earnest intentions, superior mind, and\nextensive learning, whose sincerity is evident, and his\nsentiments moral at once and moderate, writes a book entitled,\n\"Rationalism in Europe;\" and the object of this book is to\nestablish, that all the good effected in Europe since the fall of\nthe Roman empire, all the progress made by states in justice, in\nhumanity, in liberty, and general happiness--whether in the\nsphere of science or of practical industry--is due to the\ninfluence of Rationalism, to its developments and its conquests.\n{251}\nMr. Lecky is not a metaphysician; he attaches no precise and\nphilosophical meaning to the word \"Rationalism;\" he does not\ntrouble himself about the system of Kant, nor the place occupied\nin it by the pure, the practical, or the aesthetic reason; he\nonly retraces the intellectual and social history of Europe, and\nall the happy results that this history commemorates, all the\nsalutary consequences of the activity of the human mind, of the\nliberty of man's thought, of the amelioration of human\ninstitutions and manners, he sums up all in a single name,\nattributes them to a single cause, and assigns all the honor to\nthe progress of Rationalism!\n\n{252}\n\nArrived, nevertheless, at the conclusion of his work, a single\nreflection disquiets Mr. Lecky: he asks himself whether, in\nextolling the happy effects of what he styles Rationalism, he has\nnot gone too far, said too much, and hoped too much:\n\n  \"Utility is perhaps the highest motive to which reason can\n  attain. ... It is from the moral or religious faculty alone\n  that we obtain the conception of the purely disinterested. ...\n  The substitution of the philosophical conception of truth for\n  its own sake, for the theological conception of the guilt of\n  error, has been in this respect a clear gain; and the political\n  movement which has resulted chiefly from the introduction of\n  the spirit of Rationalism into politics, has produced, and is\n  producing, some of the most splendid instances of\n  self-sacrifice. On the whole, however, the general tendency of\n  these influences is unfavorable to enthusiasm, and both in\n  actions and in speculations this tendency is painfully visible.\n  With a far higher level of average excellence than in former\n  times, our age exhibits a marked decline in the spirit of\n  self-sacrifice, in the appreciation of the more poetical or\n  religious aspect of our nature. The history of self-sacrifice\n  during the last eighteen hundred years has been mainly the\n  history of the action of Christianity upon the world.\n{253}\n  Ignorance and error have, no doubt, often directed the heroic\n  spirit into wrong channels, and have sometimes even made it a\n  cause of great evil to mankind; but it is the moral type and\n  beauty, the enlarged conception and persuasive power of the\n  Christian faith, that have chiefly called it into being, and it\n  is by their influence alone that it can be permanently\n  sustained. ...\n\n  \"This is the shadow resting upon the otherwise brilliant\n  picture the history of Rationalism presents. The destruction of\n  the belief in witchcraft and of religious persecutions; the\n  decay of those ghastly notions concerning future punishments,\n  which for centuries diseased the imaginations and embittered\n  the character of mankind; the emancipation of suffering\n  nationalities; the abolition of the belief in the guilt of\n  error, which paralyzed the intellectual, and of the asceticism\n  which paralyzed the material progress of mankind, may be justly\n  regarded as among the greatest triumphs of civilization; but\n  when we look back to the cheerful alacrity with which, in some\n  former ages, men sacrificed all their material and intellectual\n  interests to what they believed to be right, and when we\n  realize the unclouded assurance that was their reward, it is\n  impossible to deny that we have lost something in our\n  progress.\" [Footnote 42]\n\n    [Footnote 42: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit\n    of Rationalism in Europe, by W. E. H. Lecky, vol. ii, 1866,\n    third edition, pp. 403-409.]\n\n{254}\n\nBut to leave England and Mr. Lecky, and to return once more to\nFrance. I turn to the pages of a rationalistic philosopher more\nprofound, and more profoundly troubled, too, in his sentiments\nthan Mr. Lecky. I find there, in an essay of M. Edmond Scherer,\nentitled \"The Crisis of Protestantism,\" [Footnote 43] the\nfollowing passage:\n\n    [Footnote 43: M\u00e9langes d'histoire religieuse. Pp. 250-254.\n    1864.]\n\n{255}\n\n  \"That which is really imperiled is not so much Protestantism;\n  it is Christianity, it is very religion. As for natural\n  religion, that exists only in books. Religions which have vital\n  force and influence are positive religions; that is, religions\n  which have a Church, and particular rites, and dogmas. What are\n  these dogmas? Taken in their intimate meaning, they are the\n  solutions of the great problems which have ever disquieted the\n  mind of man--the origin of the world, and of evil; the\n  expiation; the future of humanity. The doctrines of religion\n  are a sort of revealed metaphysics.\n\n  \"Considered in its form, dogma is the supernatural--not merely\n  because religions were born at an epoch when the imagination\n  was greedy of miracles, and when the imagination, in her\n  _n\u00e4ivet\u00e9_, associated herself with everything; but also\n  because, as may be readily understood, it is impossible for a\n  positive religion to have any other origin than a revelation;\n  it is necessarily a history of the intervention of God in the\n  destinies of man, the account of acts by which God created and\n  saved the world--it is that or it is nothing. We see then at\n  once that in religion everything is not religious. There is in\n  every religion a multitude of elements, historical, physical,\n  and metaphysical, as to which its dogmas may come into conflict\n  with science. Nevertheless, it is not of this antagonism that I\n  would here speak. The religious sentiment has also its critical\n  action; _it_ also may enter into a struggle with religion.\n\n{256}\n\n  \"As long as the authority of the priest or of the book\n  preserves its prestige, the believer receives his religion\n  ready made for him, without himself making distinctions; but as\n  soon as that authority is shaken, a man, if he do not entirely\n  reject his first belief, will at least no longer accept it\n  without reservations. He only retains so much of it as\n  enlightens or touches him, so much as commends itself to his\n  understanding or to his heart; so much, in a word, as gives a\n  satisfaction to his religious requirements.\n\n  \"Thus it is that religious sentiment becomes the measure of\n  religious truth. It receives all in religion that addresses\n  itself to the soul, all that nourishes and fortifies the soul,\n  all that raises the soul to the infinite and the ideal, all\n  that unites the soul to God.\n{257}\n  Religious sentiment appropriates it all, but it appropriates\n  nothing more. Let but a thing become indifferent, and it feels\n  it as an importunity, and looks upon it in the light of an\n  element strange, useless, arbitrary. It rejects, for this\n  reason, doctrines purely speculative as well as facts purely\n  marvelous. Man requires his religion to be entirely religious;\n  that is to say, to be in all respects in direct relation with\n  piety, and, so to speak, to be vertical to his conscience. The\n  more his faith purifies itself, the more a man eliminates from\n  his religion dogmas which, having no root either in the divine\n  nature or man's nature, appear on that very account to have no\n  ground to exist at all.\n\n  \"At first sight this gradual emancipation of faith and this\n  corresponding progress of religion in the ways of Spiritualism,\n  seem a natural process by means of which religious opinion and\n  the human mind contrive to maintain themselves in a state of\n  constant equilibrium.\n{258}\n  We imagine all difficulties removed, and fancy that we catch a\n  glimpse of the religious future of humanity in a sort of\n  Christian Rationalism, a rational Christianity not excluding\n  fervor of devotion, but leaving all its liberty to man's\n  thought.\n\n  \"I demand nothing better as far as I am concerned; but I cannot\n  refrain from asking, not without anxiety, whether Christian\n  Rationalism is really a religion. What remains in the crucible\n  after the operation just detailed? Is the residue really the\n  essence of the positive dogmas, or is it but a _caput\n  mortuum?_ When Christianity is rendered translucent to man's\n  mind, conformable to man's reason and man's moral appreciation\n  of things, does it still possess any great virtue? Does it not\n  very much resemble Deism, and is it not equally lean and\n  sterile? Does not the potent influence of religious belief\n  reside in its dogmatic formulas and marvelous legends just as\n  much as in anything more essentially religious that it\n  possesses?\n{259}\n  Is there not even somewhat of superstition in genuine piety,\n  and is it possible for piety to dispense with that popular\n  system of metaphysics, that attractive mythology, which men\n  strive to eliminate from it? Do not the elements which you\n  pretend to abstract from religion constitute the alloy, without\n  which the precious metal becomes unsuitable for the rough\n  usages of life? In short, when criticism shall have succeeded\n  in overthrowing the supernatural as useless, and dogmas as\n  irrational; when the religious sentiment on the one side, and a\n  scrupulous reason on the other, shall have penetrated man's\n  belief, assimilated and transformed it; when no other authority\n  shall remain standing, save that of the personal conscience of\n  each individual; when, in a word, man having torn every vail\n  and penetrated every mystery, shall behold that God face to\n  face to whom he aspires, will it not be discovered that that\n  God is, after all, nothing else than man himself, the\n  conscience and the reason of humanity personified? Will not\n  religion, in the very attempt to become more religious, have\n  ceased to exist?\"\n\n{260}\n\nSuch, according to the views of its most eminent representatives,\nare the potent influences and the final results of Rationalism.\nAfter having confusedly attributed to it all the progress of\nman's thought and of man's civilization, Mr. Lecky expresses the\napprehension that he has lowered the nature of man, by depriving\nhim (these are his very words) \"of our noblest quality, of the\ndivine spark, the principle in us of everything that is heroic,\"\nthe complete and pure devotedness of Christian faith. M. Scherer\nasks himself sadly if in rejecting all dogma and all positive\nrevelation, in obliging religious sentiment to be self-sufficing,\nand to feed itself with its own and single virtue, rational\ncriticism does not inflict a deadly blow upon religion itself;\nand M. Sainte-Beuve, in the same perplexity, contents himself\nwith saying, as resignedly, though more coldly, \"The heart has\nits reasons, which the reason comprehends not.\"\n\n{261}\n\nNothing is so affecting to me, but nothing, at the same time,\nthrows such light upon the subject of my meditations as this\ninvoluntary, this invincible anxiety observable in men of lofty\nsentiments and profound convictions, when confronting the chasms\nin their system, and dealing with the incoherences of their own\nconvictions. However profound, however different my own\nconviction may be, I have no desire to engage, either with them\nor against them, in any direct or prolonged controversy. I have\nbeen engaged all my life in frequent and ardent polemics. Those\ncould not be well avoided by a man like myself, forced not merely\nto combat human opinions, but to grapple with human affairs; and\ncalled upon to resolve, upon the instant, practical and urgent\nquestions. But while I voluntarily submitted to the necessity of\nprecipitate and unforeseen struggles, experience has taught me\ntheir inconveniences and their perils.\n{262}\nThe combatants on each side are prone to make use of weapons of\ntoo offensive a nature; men involve themselves for party\ninterests and party honor, and push their conclusions with\nobstinate pertinacity beyond the strictness of truth, sometimes\neven beyond their own intentions. I do not wish in the arena of\nphilosophy to run the risk of striking upon any similar rock; but\navoiding all personal polemics, all controversy of detail, I will\nexpress upon the essence of Rationalism, although only in a\ngeneral manner, my sincere and intimate convictions.\n\nThere are in Rationalism two fundamental errors. First, it\nmutilates man while it studies him; it holds as of no account\nseveral of the constituent elements and essential facts of human\nnature, of which it ignores the meaning and the import. Secondly,\nRationalism extends the pretensions of human science beyond its\nrights, and beyond its legitimate limits.\n\n{263}\n\nThe instincts, the sentiments, of humanity are certainly not\nsufficient reasons for scientific conviction, nor conclusive\nproofs in support of any particular system whatever. The\ninstinctive belief of the human race in one or more supernatural\nforces is no demonstration of the reality of the supernatural;\nand the aspirings of man's soul for a life beyond this\nterrestrial one does not rationally prove the soul's immortality.\nError may occur in human instincts or sentiments just as much as\nin human ideas. But when these instincts and these sentiments are\nuniversal, permanent, indestructible, encountered in all ages and\nin all countries--when they resist and survive all attacks, all\ndoubts of reason or science--they are, beyond all question,\nconsiderable facts, and facts which the human understanding\ncannot but recognize and respect. If these instincts and\nsentiments do not solve the problems which trouble man's\nunderstanding, at least they demand imperiously some solution; if\nthey throw no light upon his road to science, they oblige him to\nsee that that road has its mysteries.\n{264}\nRationalism mutilates humanity when it ignores such facts,\nregarding them as vain illusions because it cannot explain them;\nand when, after this mutilation, it assigns the entire empire to\na single portion of the human nature, to a single faculty, called\nby it reason, as if reason constituted the entire man,\nRationalism does in the intellectual world what it would be doing\nin the physical world did it deny the reality of night because it\nonly sees the day clearly.\n\nRationalism is the more wrong in thus discarding facts which it\ndoes not explain, that in its proper domain similar facts occur,\nand that its science of reason arrives also finally at mysteries.\nI mentioned it before, as a truth acquired to philosophy, that\nthere exist in the human mind certain universal and necessary\nprinciples, neither furnished to the mind by impressions derived\nfrom the external world, nor created by the mind itself; and that\nthose principles are inherent in the nature of the mind, and come\nto it from another source than that of sensation, or any\ndiscovery of man's own thought.\n{265}\nWe have here a psychological fact which, after the profound\nstudies of the spiritualistic school from the time of Plato down\nto M. Cousin, Rationalism is obliged to admit. To what does this\nfact tend, and what is its logical consequence? What but God,\ncreation, revelation, and the relations of God with man? Will\nRationalism give any better explanation of these divine laws of\nthe human mind than it has given of the instincts and of the\nsentiments of the human heart? or will it ignore the one result\nas it has ignored the other?\n\nBut now to touch upon the radical and permanent error of\nRationalism. It regards all things as accessible to the\nresearches and to the methods of human science. When Spiritualism\nhas recognized and proclaimed the essential and necessary facts\nwhich constitute the intellectual and moral being by it styled\nman, it halts abruptly; it hesitates also to recognize and\nproclaim the mysterious facts in that sanctuary the very door of\nwhich it has reached; it does not resign itself to adore what\nlies behind the vail; it is inconsequent and timid, although\nrespectful and modest.\n{266}\nRationalism, on the contrary, is presumptuous and audacious; its\nambition is to see clearly, to touch what is in the center of the\nsanctuary, as it sees and touches what is on its outside. Its\npretension is that it may study and know, by its ordinary\nprocesses, as well the invisible world, its Sovereign and its\nlaws, as the visible world in which man is now placed; and it\nwars upon Christianity because Christianity admits no such\npretension. But Christianity here encounters another adversary,\nPositivism. Positivism arrests its progress, saying: \"I do not\nknow, nobody knows, if an invisible world be or be not a really\nexisting thing. It is a mere loss of time to think of it, for\nnothing can be known about it with certainty. All religion, all\nmetaphysics, are chimerical and vain sciences; there is no\nscience but the science of the physical world, of its facts and\nof its laws!\"\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n{267}\n\n          Fourth Meditation.\n\n              Positivism.\n\n\nI seek no quarrel with words, even when they provoke it.\nPositivism is a word, in language a barbarism, in philosophy a\npresumption. Unlike Geology, Ideology, Theology, Physics, it\nqualifies a doctrine, not by its object, but by its supposed\nmerit. All science pretends to positiveness--that is, to be\nfounded upon fact and truth. But \"Positivism\" alone arrogates to\nitself this quality. It is an arrogance, in my opinion, radically\nunjustifiable.\n\nI knew its founder, M. Auguste Comte, personally. I had some\ncommunication with him in the period from 1824 to 1830. I then\nwas struck by the elevation of his sentiments and by the vigor of\nhis mind.\n{268}\nIn October, 1832, at the moment when I was entering upon my\nfunctions as Minister of Public Instruction, he came to me and\nformally demanded that I should create for him in the \"College of\nFrance\" a professorship of general history for the physical and\nmathematical sciences. I see no cause to express myself here\notherwise than I have already done in my \"Memoirs\" as to the\nimpression produced upon me by his conversation and his personal\nbearing. \"He explained to me drearily and confusedly his views\nupon man, society, civilization, religion, philosophy, history.\nHe was a man single-minded, honest, of profound convictions,\ndevoted to his own ideas, in appearance modest, although at heart\nprodigiously vain; he sincerely believed that it was his calling\nto open a new era for the mind of man and for human society.\nWhile listening to him, I could hardly refrain from expressing my\nastonishment that a mind so vigorous should at the same time be\nso narrow as not even to perceive the nature and bearing of the\nfacts with which he was dealing, and the questions which he was\nauthoritatively deciding; that a character so disinterested\nshould not be warned by his own proper sentiments--which were\nmoral in spite of his system--of its falsity and its negation of\nmorality.\n{269}\nI did not even make any attempt at discussion with M. Comte: his\nsincerity, his enthusiasm, and the delusion that blinded him,\ninspired me with that sad esteem that takes refuge in silence.\nHad I even judged it fitting to create the chair which he\ndemanded, I should not for a moment have dreamed of assigning it\nto him.\" [Footnote 44]\n\n    [Footnote 44: \"M\u00e9moires pour servir a l'histoire de mon\n    temps,\" t. iii, pp. 125-7. In the sixth volume of these\n    M\u00e9moires I have rectified an error inadvertently committed by\n    me as to the epoch of my first relations with M. Auguste\n    Comte.]\n\n{270}\n\nI should have been as silent and still more sad if I had then\nknown the trials through which M. Auguste Comte had already\npassed. He had been, in 1823, a prey to a violent attack of\nmental alienation, and in 1827, during a paroxysm of gloomy\nmelancholy, he had thrown himself from the Pont des Arts into the\nSeine, but had been rescued by one of the king's guard. More than\nonce, in the course of his subsequent life, this mental trouble\nseemed upon the point of recurring.\n\nMany will be tempted to demand how a man so little master of\nhimself, and whose mind was under so little government, could\never have succeeded in producing a doctrine so considerable, and\nin exercising such real influence upon the philosophical world.\nThe fact is nevertheless beyond question. Whether the cause is to\nbe referred to the merit of M. Comte and of his doctrine, or to\nthe state of men's minds at the time, it is certain that not only\nin France but in Europe, and particularly in England, numerous\nand honorable disciples came over to his ideas, and that\nPositivism became a school wanting neither in sincerity nor\ncredit. When such men as M. Littr\u00e9, at Paris, and Mr. J. Stuart\nMill, in London, declare themselves his adherents, the doctrine\nhas claims to a serious examination.\n\n{271}\n\nM. Auguste Comte lived constantly, as far as he was individually\nconcerned, under the empire of a fixed idea, which occasioned him\nmany a painful disappointment; and he lived, as far as his system\nwas concerned, under the empire of a false idea, which associated\nwith views just in themselves and sometimes grand, one pervading\nand permanent error.\n\nHis fixed personal idea consisted in his thinking himself called\nto regenerate human science and human society by the single\nvirtue of his doctrine. Besides their share in the\npresumptuousness which is the common character of mankind, minds\nthat are inventive and fond of systematizing are particularly\nprone to extend beyond their legitimate bearings--nay, beyond all\nbounds--the pretensions and the hopes which their ideas suggest.\nM. Auguste Comte was one of the most striking instances, as well\nas one of the most honest victims, of this intellectual\nintoxication--the noblest although not the least fantastic form\nof human pride.\n{272}\nThe Christian religion has its apostles and it has its\nmissionaries, speaking in the name of a Master other than\nthemselves, and preaching a faith they did not themselves\noriginate. M. Auguste Comte was his own proper apostle--the\ninventor and missionary of his own proper faith. Of profound\nconvictions, with no selfish, worldly views, he aspired to the\nentire empire of the intellect, believing both the interests of\nsocial order and the honor of the human mind involved in the\ntriumph of his doctrine; he ardently desired not only its\npropagation, but its organization as a permanent and potent\ninstitution, to insure and perpetuate his triumph. The real and\npractical government of nations, according to him, was only, as\nit ought to be only, a sort of stewardship, charged with the duty\nof realizing and carrying into effect the ideas of thinking men.\n\"The systematic separation of the two elementary forces, the\nSpiritual and the Temporal,\" so he wrote to Mr. J. Stuart Mill,\n\"constitutes certainly the principal condition for a\n_denouement_ of the actual situation.\n{273}\nI admit that the special requirements of a situation where those\ntwo forces are confounded may authorize, and sometimes oblige,\nphilosophers, in the interest of a final regeneration, to\nparticipate, by way of exception, in actual political life,\nalthough an inclination for such a life exposes them to the\ndanger of many a quicksand, and demands that their principles\nshould be firmly settled, to avoid the risk of a real deviation.\nTo embody my thought upon this subject in a palpable example\nrelative to a great occurrence, I blame the philosopher Condorcet\nfor having suffered himself to be returned as member to our\nglorious Convention, in which men of action were leaders, and\nproperly so, whereas Condorcet could never be so placed as to\nregard things from the same point of view; hence that false\nposition for which in the sequel he had so cruelly to suffer.\n{274}\nBut on the contrary, I should have regarded it as very natural\nfor him to develop a great activity in the club of the Jacobins;\nfor, placed beyond the sphere of the government, properly so\ncalled, that club constituted at that time a sort of spiritual\npower, in that remarkable and so little comprehended combination\nof things which characterized the revolutionary r\u00e9gime. ... I\nhave learned with much satisfaction,\" he added, still addressing\nMr. Mill, \"that the wise energy of your resistance has succeeded\nin triumphing over the blind persistence of your friends who urge\nyou toward a parliamentary career. I shall propose in my last\nvolume, and in direct terms, the institution, by individual\nefforts, of an European committee, charged permanently with the\ndirection of a common movement of philosophical regeneration,\nwhen once Positivism shall have planted its standard--that is,\nits lighthouse, I should term it--in the midst of the disorder\nand confusion that reigns; and I hope that this will be the\nresult of the publication of my work in its complete state.\"\n[Footnote 45]\n\n    [Footnote 45: Letters of the 20th November, 1841, and 4th\n    March, 1842, published in the work of M. Littr\u00e9, entitled,\n    \"Auguste Comte and the Positive Philosophy,\" pp. 424, 425,\n    427, 429.]\n\n{275}\n\nOne can scarcely refrain from a smile when he contemplates these\ndreams reduced to the form of system, ignoring every sentiment of\nreality, and expounded with the confidence of fanaticism in the\nname of a science called Positive. Here it is that we find the\nfixed and dominant idea that pervaded and compromised the whole\nlife of M. Auguste Comte. Whoever did not accept his doctrine and\nhis system, was for him either a retrogradist full of prejudice,\nor an ignoramus without scientific education, or an interested\nand jealous enemy. Whoever, on the other hand, lent himself to\nhis views on any point, or for any time, however short, became in\nthe eyes of M. Comte his conquest and his property, his\nphilosophical serf, as it were, bound to his master by the tenure\nof duty, and the render of services from which he could never\nhope to enfranchise himself, without the risk of being treated\nupon the instant as a deserter or a rebel, and of seeing at once\nbroken the closest and most approved bonds of intimacy and\nfriendship.\n{276}\nHe had so entire a confidence in his own intellectual\nsuperiority, and in the rights which it conferred, that he\nexpressed it sometimes with a _n\u00e4ivet\u00e9_ amounting almost to\nidolatry. One day, believing that he had won over to his ideas M.\nArmand Marrast, then the editor of the _National_, he wrote\nthus to his wife: \"Marrast no longer feels any repugnance in\nadmitting the indispensable fact of my intellectual superiority;\nhe is in this respect, in my opinion, especially influenced by\nMill, whom he holds, and with reason, in high account. To speak\nplainly and in general terms, I believe that, at the point at\nwhich I have now arrived, I have no occasion to do more than to\ncontinue to exist; the kind of preponderance which I covet\ncannot, henceforth, fail to devolve upon me.\" [Footnote 46]\n\n    [Footnote 46: Letter of the 3d December, 1842: \"Auguste Comte\n    et la philosophic positive;\" p. 324.]\n\n{277}\n\nShortly after the date of this letter, M. Comte was separated\nfrom his wife and embroiled with Mr. Mill himself, who had not,\nas the former fancied, fulfilled toward him all the duties of an\naccepted and loyal disciple.\n\nI pass from the fixed idea of the man to the false idea of his\nsystem; it appears over and over again at each step in the \"Cours\nde philosophie positive\" of M. Auguste Comte, [Footnote 47] and\nin the imposing biography consecrated to his memory by his most\naccomplished disciple, M. Littr\u00e9. [Footnote 48]\n\n    [Footnote 47: Six volumes 8vo., published in the interval\n    from 1830 to 1842 inclusive.]\n\n    [Footnote 48: Auguste Comte et la philosophic positive. 8vo.\n    1863.]\n\nI extract from different parts of these volumes the passages in\nwhich the fundamental doctrine is most clearly expressed:\n\n  \"Positive philosophy is the whole body of human knowledge.\n  Human knowledge is the result of the study of the forces\n  belonging to matter, and of the conditions or laws governing\n  those forces.\" [Footnote 49]\n\n    [Footnote 49: Ibid., p. 42.]\n\n  \"The fundamental character of positive philosophy is, that it\n  regards all phenomena as subjected to invariable natural laws,\n  and considers as absolutely inaccessible to us, and as having\n  no sense for us, every inquiry into what is termed either\n  primary or final causes.\" [Footnote 50]\n\n    [Footnote 50: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Auguste\n    Comte, vol. i, p. 14.]\n\n{278}\n\n  \"The scientific path, in which I have, ever since I began to\n  think, continued to walk, the labors that I obstinately pursue\n  to elevate social theories to the rank of physical science are\n  evidently, radically, and absolutely opposed to everything that\n  has a religious or metaphysical tendency.\" [Footnote 51]\n\n    [Footnote 51: Auguste Comte et la philosophic positive, by M.\n    Littr\u00e9, p. 194.]\n\n  \"My positive philosophy is incompatible with every theological\n  or metaphysical philosophy, and consequently equally so with\n  every corresponding system of policy.\" [Footnote 52]\n\n    [Footnote 52: Ibid., p. 210.]\n\n  \"M. Comte,\" says M. Littr\u00e9, \"made it a duty to speak in public\n  without any reticence, to deduce his positive truths, and to\n  confront them with the conceptions of Theology and of\n  Metaphysics. . . . 'Religiosity' is in his eyes not only a\n  weakness, but an avowal of want of power.\" [Footnote 53]\n\n    [Footnote 53: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littr\u00e9,\n    pp. 198-255.]\n\n{279}\n\n  \"The 'positive state' is that state of the mind in which it\n  conceives that phenomena are governed by constant laws, from\n  which prayer and adoration can demand nothing, but to which\n  intelligence and science may address their demands; so that, by\n  familiarizing himself with those laws more and more, and by\n  conforming to them more and more, man acquires an ever-growing\n  empire over nature and over himself, which empire is the sum of\n  all civilization. The 'theological state,' on the contrary, is\n  that state of the mind which conceives that phenomena are the\n  results of volition, or, if the social development has arrived\n  at Monotheism, that they are the results of a single, all-wise,\n  and all-powerful will. This providence, essentially collective\n  where Polytheism is supposed, essentially single in the case of\n  Monotheism, governs the world, dispenses its good and its evil,\n  lays its finger upon human events, and regards the destiny of\n  each individual man.\n{280}\n  Such is the contrast between the two doctrines. ... Profiting\n  by the instruction of the illustrious De Maistre, our French\n  priests at last comprehended that ultramontanism was the only\n  logical consequence deducible from their essential principles.\n  The more the positive school defines the real character of its\n  progress, the more must we see this retrograde concentration\n  also develop itself; which will involve at some later epoch\n  Deists themselves, as Positivism proceeds to gain complete\n  ascendancy; an ascendancy, in other respects, far more likely\n  to be furthered than retarded by such coordination of its\n  adversaries, for this will tend to give at last to the\n  struggles of philosophy a decisive character; but the\n  Positivists will alone succeed in prevailing (at least as far\n  as speculative doctrines are concerned) over the coalition of\n  all the philosophical forces of the ancient school, whether\n  metaphysical or theological.\" [Footnote 54]\n\n    [Footnote 54: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littr\u00e9,\n    pp. 370, 434. ]\n\n{281}\n\nM. Comte had even more aversion for Metaphysics than for\nTheology. He took particular offense at the contemporary\nspiritualistic school, and the scientific psychology of MM.\nRoyer, Collard, Maine de Biran, Cousin, and Jouffroy.\n\n  \"In no view,\" said he, \"is there any room for this illusory\n  psychology; this final transformation of a theology, which men\n  strive, nowadays, so idly to reanimate; for--without troubling\n  itself either with the physiological study of our intellectual\n  organs, or with the observation of those rational processes,\n  which in effect direct our different scientific\n  researches--Psychology pretends to arrive at the discovery of\n  the fundamental laws of the human mind by contemplating that\n  very mind--that is to say, by making complete abstraction both\n  of causes and of effects.\" [Footnote 55]\n\n    [Footnote 55: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Auguste\n    Comte, vol. i, p. 34.]\n\n{282}\n\nEven while absolutely rejecting Theology, M. Comte treated it\nwith more esteem than Metaphysics.\n\n  \"We are,\" he said, \"too disposed, nowadays, to ignore the\n  immense benefits due to religious influence. The positive\n  philosophy, however paradoxical it may be to claim for it such\n  a peculiarity, is virtually the only philosophy capable of\n  worthily appreciating all the participation of the spirit of\n  religion in the whole grand development of humanity. Is it not\n  directly evident that, as by an invincible organic necessity,\n  moral efforts have almost always to combat to some degree or\n  other the most energetic impulses of our nature; the\n  theological spirit was imperatively called upon to furnish to\n  social discipline that general basis which was quite\n  indispensable at a time when human foresight, whether of men in\n  masses or of men as individuals, was certainly far too limited\n  to offer any sufficient _point d'appui_ to influences\n  purely rational?\"\n\n{283}\n\n  ... \"When the positive philosophy shall have acquired that\n  character of universality which it is still without, it will be\n  capable of replacing entirely, with all its native superiority,\n  that theological philosophy and that metaphysical philosophy of\n  which this universality is in these days the sole real\n  peculiarity, and which, deprived of this motive for preference,\n  will have for our successors nothing but an historical\n  existence.\" [Footnote 56]\n\n    [Footnote 56: Cours de philosophic positive, by M. Comte,\n    vol. v, p. 73; vol. i, p. 23.]\n\nI do not pause to notice in how many respects this language is\nsuperficial, confused, and incoherent. I only draw attention to\nthe fundamental idea which it manifests--matter, the forces of\nmatter, and its laws; these are the sole objects of human\nknowledge, the sole domain of the human mind. Aware of, and\nembarrassed by the objections which the idea has from the\nbeginning of time excited, M. Littr\u00e9 has striven to rid himself\nof them by an admission, sincere no doubt, like everything that\nhe thinks, and everything that he says, but full in its turn of\nconfusion and incoherence.\n\n{284}\n\n  \"The positive philosophy,\" says he, \"is at once a system which\n  comprehends all that is known of the world of man and of\n  society, and also a general method, containing in itself all\n  the ways by which men have come to learn all these things. What\n  is beyond, whether, materially speaking, that space without\n  limit, or intellectually that concatenation of never-ending\n  causes, all this is absolutely inaccessible to the human mind.\n  By inaccessible is not meant null or non-existent. Immensity in\n  matter, as in intellect, is connected by a close band with what\n  we know, and it is only by such an alliance that it becomes an\n  idea positive in itself, and of the same order; what I mean is,\n  that by so touching and bordering what we know, immensity\n  appears under the double character of reality and of\n  inaccessibility. It is an ocean which dashes upon our shores,\n  and for which we have nor bark nor sail, but the clear vision\n  of which is as salutary as it is formidable.\" [Footnote 57]\n\n    [Footnote 57: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littr\u00e9,\n    p. 519.]\n\n{285}\n\nThe vision so admitted by M. Littr\u00e9 is not clear, and neither is\nit salutary; but vague, and without result. The imagery does not\ndestroy the system which it seeks to vail from us. Every\nreligious belief, every spiritual doctrine, God and the human\nsoul, are discarded by Positivism, and treated as arbitrary and\ntransitory hypotheses, which, however they may have conduced to\nthe development of humanity, ought now to be rejected by human\nreason, just as the foot may throw down the ladder which has\nenabled it to mount to the summit. To call things by their proper\nnames, Positivism is Materialism and Atheism, with more or less\nexplicitness, confidently or hesitatingly, accepted as the last\nterm of human science, and when hard pressed, taking refuge in\nthe darkness of skepticism.\n\nWhat are the foundations upon which Positivism rests? What facts,\nwhat proofs, does M. Auguste Comte adduce in support of his\nprinciples, that matter, its forces, and its laws, constitute the\nsole object of human knowledge, the sole domain of the human\nmind?\n\n{286}\n\nHe appeals to two arguments--the one metaphysical, the other\nhistorical; the one derived from the mind of man itself, the\nother from the history of humanity.\n\nI cannot here follow M. Comte in his long and complex explanation\nof the two orders of proofs to which he appeals in support of his\nsystem; what I shall say will, I think, suffice to demonstrate\nthat neither can stand any serious examination.\n\nAs a metaphysician--for metaphysician he must permit himself to\nbe called, since he makes use of metaphysics, whatever his\nantipathy for philosophers who bear that name;--as\nmetaphysician, I repeat, M. Auguste Comte belongs to the\nsensualistic school, He thinks with Locke and Condillac, that man\ndeduces all his ideas and all his knowledge from impressions\nreceived by him from the outer world, and from the reflections\nwhich he makes upon those impressions.\n{287}\nHe takes, therefore, as his starting point, the maxim of that\nschool which proclaims that \"there is nothing in the intelligence\nwhich has not first been in the sense.\" Nevertheless, whether by\nan act of proper and remarkable sagacity, or struck by the reply\nof Leibnitz, \"unless the intelligence itself,\" he admits that\nsensation does not account for all that passes and develops\nitself in the mind of the observer of the external world. \"If,\"\nhe says, \"on the one side every positive theory must necessarily\nbe founded upon observation, it is, on the other side, equally\nplain that to apply itself to the task of observation, our mind\nhas need of some 'theory.' If, in contemplating the phenomena, we\ndo not immediately attach them to certain principles, not only\nwould it be impossible for us to combine these isolated\nobservations, so as to draw any fruit therefrom; but we should be\nentirely incapable of retaining them, and in most cases the facts\nwould remain before our eyes unnoticed.\n{288}\nThe need at all times of some 'theory' whereby to associate\nfacts, combined with the evident impossibility of the human mind\nat its origin forming 'theories' out of observations, is a fact\nwhich it is impossible to ignore.\" [Footnote 58]\n\n    [Footnote 58: Cours de philosophic positive, par M. Auguste\n    Comte, vol. i. p. 8.]\n\nThis fact, thus proved by M. Comte himself; this necessary part\nof the human mind, indispensable to enable it to acquire\nknowledge of the external world; this \"theory,\" anterior to all\nobservation, which man requires for the purpose himself of\nobserving, what are they else than those universal and necessary\nprinciples proclaimed by the spiritualistic school, and to which\nI recently referred?--principles inherent in the human mind,\nwhich it applies as from its own stores in taking cognizance of\nthe external world, and by virtue of which, just as one mounts a\nriver up to its source, man mounts and mounts up to God, and up\nto the relations of man with God.\n\n{289}\n\nBut, admitting the same fact, M. Comte does not explain it in\nthis way. This \"theory;\" these principles anterior to external\nobservation, and which the mind absolutely requires in order to\nbe able to observe, are, according to him, pure inventions of the\nhuman mind itself, temporary instruments which the mind creates\nand employs in its labors until it can obtain better. \"Between,\"\nsays he, \"two difficulties, pressed on the one hand by the\nnecessity of observing in order to form 'theories,' and on the\nother by the no less imperious necessity of creating 'theories'\nin order to be able to deliver itself up to a series of coherent\nobservations, the human mind at its birth would find itself shut\nin by a vicious circle from which it would never have had any\nmeans of escaping, had it not succeeded in opening a natural\nissue by the spontaneous development of theological conceptions,\nwhich presented a point to which his efforts might be\nconcentrated, and which might furnish aliment for his activity.\n{290}\nIt is, in effect, very remarkable, that questions the most\nradically inaccessible to our capacities, the intimate nature of\nbeing, the origin and the end of all phenomena, should be\nprecisely those which the intelligence propounds to itself, as of\nparamount importance in that primitive condition, all the other\nproblems really admitting of solution being almost regarded as\nunworthy of serious meditation. The reason of this it is not\ndifficult to discover, for experience alone could have given us\nthe measure of our strength; and if man had not begun by\nentertaining an exaggerated opinion of that strength, it would\nnever have been capable of acquiring all the development of which\nit is susceptible. So much does our organization exact.\"\n[Footnote 59]\n\n    [Footnote 59: Cours de philosophie positive, par M. Auguste\n    Comte, vol. i, pp. 9, 10.]\n\n{291}\n\nStrange error of a man, whose supreme pretension it is to found\nall human knowledge upon the observation of facts! At his very\nfirst step, at the first difficulty which he encounters, M. Comte\nobserves inexactly and incompletely, does not see in the facts\nall that the facts contain, and only explains them by assigning\nto the human mind, in its primitive and spontaneous operations, a\nhypothesis, the hypothesis of \"theological conceptions.\" God, and\nman's relations with God, is a human invention, destined to\nsupport man at the commencement of his career as an intelligent\nbeing, and to occupy provisionally the place of science!\n\nThe source of this misapprehension, the capital error of\nPositivism in its metaphysical argument, is, that it ignores the\nnature and the limits of science.\n\nThe famous \"enthym\u00eame\" of Descartes, \"I think, therefore I am,\"\nis a pleonasm. As soon as the human being says to itself \"I,\" the\nhuman being affirms its own existence, and distinguishes itself\nfrom that external world whence it derives impressions of which\nit is not the author.\n{292}\nIn this primary fact are revealed the two primary objects of\nhuman knowledge: on the one side the human being himself, the\nindividual person that feels and perceives, that feels himself\nand perceives himself; on the other side, the external world that\nis felt and perceived: the subject and the object, (the\n_moi_ and the _non-moi_.) Such is the twofold field, at\nthe beginning of his intellectual existence, opened to the\nknowing faculty of man.\n\nIn each of these fields, whether the human being makes himself or\nwhether he makes the external world the object of his\ncontemplation, he proceeds by the same method; he considers\nparticular facts, classes these under more general facts which\nserve as their summary, and recognizes laws that govern them,\nthese laws being themselves facts. When this method of\nobservation and of generalization is applied to the outer world,\nunderstanding by that world the human body also, it gives birth\nto the sciences of physics and of physiology.\n{293}\nWhen such method is applied to the human being, regarded as\ndistinct from the body in which he lives and by which he acts, it\ngives birth to the science of psychology, logic, and morals. It\nis not here my intention to propose a classification of the\nsciences, but only to determine the domain of science properly so\ncalled--that is to say, the field in which the human mind by\nobservation gets directly at facts and at the laws of facts.\n\nPhilosophers, in their study of man and of the world, do not\nsufficiently consult language, the general language, the common\nlanguage, that instinctive expression of the activity of the\nhuman mind. I interrogate our native language upon the question\nwhich now occupies me, and I find it reflecting the greatest\nlight. It has, to express the results of the intellectual process\nwhich takes place in man, when regarded as the spectator of the\nuniverse and of himself, many different words: \"conna\u00eetre,\"\n\"savoir,\" \"croire,\" \"connaissance,\" \"science,\" \"croyance,\" \"foi.\"\n{294}\nThese are not mere different names to express the same idea and\nthe same fact, they are signs of different facts and of diverse\nstates of the human soul. If we interrogate the languages of\ncivilized nations, ancient or modern, we find in all of them,\nwith more or less abundance, precision or subtlety, a similar\nvariety of terms corresponding to a similar diversity of facts.\n\nTalleyrand said once in the chamber of Peers, \"There is somebody\nwho has more intellect than Napoleon, more intellect than\nVoltaire; that somebody is the Public.\" I also say, there is a\nmore profound observer than Bacon, a greater philosopher than\nKant; it is mankind. Mankind is right when it distinguishes in\nits languages knowledge from science and from belief, science\nfrom belief and from faith. Bossuet wrote a book entitled \"De la\nConnaissance de Dieu et de soi-m\u00eame;\" the idea would never have\noccurred to him of entitling it \"De la science de Dieu et de\nsoi-m\u00eame;\" it would have shocked his good sense as much as his\npiety.\n{295}\nThe child believes the smile and the speech of its mother; in its\nbelief there is certainly no scientific appreciation (no science)\nof the relations which unite it to its mother, and of the reasons\nwhich make it believe in her. Knowledge, science, belief, and\nfaith, are facts essentially distinct, although all equally\nnatural to the human soul; and it is impossible to confound them,\nto take one for the other, to annul one in favor of the other, or\nto attempt to reduce them to one term, without ignoring\nrealities, and falling into enormous errors.\n\nSuch has been the constant error of M. Auguste Comte, and such is\nthe radical vice of Positivism. M. Comte ignores the natural and\npermanent diversity in the intellectual states through which a\nman may pass in his ardent pursuit of truth. He refuses here to\nrecognize any state as legitimate and definitive except the\nscientific state. He regards intuitive knowledge and instinctive\nbelief as preparatory and transitory states, states without any\nrational authority; as, in short, simple steps on the way to that\nscientific state which alone sets man in possession of the truth.\n{296}\nPositivism is thus led to extend the pretensions of science\nbeyond its proper domain, that is, beyond the finite world, its\nfacts and its laws; and as science finds itself incapable of\nobserving and of defining infinity, Positivism is, perforce,\nreduced either to deny infinity, or to declare infinity\nabsolutely inaccessible to the human mind, and so to pass it over\nin silence.\n\nThis negation discovers another immense error of the school and\nof its chief. Convinced, and with reason, that the observation of\nfacts is the natural and constant process of the human\nunderstanding in its labor after knowledge, M. Auguste Comte has\nill understood, and incompletely understood, the results of this\nlabor. He failed to perceive that it was observation itself,\ncarried on and accomplished by the process, no less natural and\nno less legitimate, of induction, which was revealing to the mind\nits peculiar facts and its peculiar laws, as well as the facts\nand the laws of the external world, within which that mind is\nplaced.\n{297}\nM. Comte ended by ignoring or denying the elements _\u00e0\npriori_ of human knowledge; that is to say, the universal and\nnecessary principles by which man raises himself to God, and has\nrelations with God. Thus M. Comte mutilates the human mind,\nbecause he fails to observe it and to recognize it in its\nentirety.\n\nHe is impelled by his system to another and still more serious\nmutilation of human nature. After having declared matter, its\nforces and its laws, to be the single object of human knowledge,\nand these laws to be inherent in matter, eternal and invariable,\nwhat is to be said of human liberty? What place is to be assigned\nto human liberty in this world, in which it is powerless to\ncreate anything or to change anything, and in which there exists\nno power from which it can demand anything or obtain anything?\n{298}\nEvidently, in such a system human liberty is a chimera, an idle\nluxury of human nature; man, with all his faculties, has nothing\nto do but to study matter carefully, its forces and its laws, to\nadapt himself to them, and to make the best use he can of them,\nwith a view to his welfare and to the satisfaction of his\ndesires. Fatalism is the law of man as of the world within which\nhe lives!\n\nThe moral instincts, and the naturally lofty mind of M. Comte\nrevolted at this consequence, although it flowed imperiously from\nhis system. The respect which he felt for the method of\nobservation, and for the facts which it attains to, did not\npermit him absolutely to ignore or expressly to deny the\npsychological fact of man's liberty. Sometimes he attempts to\nfind it a place in that sum of external facts and fixed laws\nwhich is, in his opinion, the sole field for man's activity and\nfor man's science.\n{299}\nBut such is the want of coherence of idea, that M. Comte is\nvisibly embarrassed; consequently, in his works--more especially\nin his \"Cours de philosophie positive,\"--the most solid and\nconsistent of all his writings in its fundamental principles--he\nsets almost completely aside the essential fact of human liberty,\nand of free will in the individual man; and in those books in\nwhich he treats of social organization, when he finds himself\nface to face with the wants and the rights of political liberty,\nthat natural consequence of individual free will and of the\nresponsibility attaching to it, he struggles to elude questions\nof this kind, feeling the impossibility of reconciling the\nprinciple of moral order with the despotism and the fatalism of\nthe material world; and when he explains his views as to the\ngovernment of human societies, it is easy to see that, although\nwriting \"I am, head and heart Republican,\" [Footnote 60] he is,\nin his dreams, rather substituting a scientific domination for a\ntheocratic domination than instituting any liberal _r\u00e9gime_.\n\n    [Footnote 60: Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littr\u00e9,\n    p. 251.]\n\n{300}\n\nAfter metaphysics comes history. M. Comte appeals to the annals\nof all nations and all ages in confirmation of his system of the\nworld and of humanity. This history is to be divided, according\nto him, into three successive states, the theological state, the\nmetaphysical state, and the scientific state. In the theological\nstate and epoch, the human mind and social institutions are under\nthe empire of pretended supernatural powers, of several such or\nof only one such, invented by man for the solution of the natural\nproblems which lay siege to man, and for the determination of the\nlaws, with which the social order cannot dispense. In the\nmetaphysical epoch and state, vain abstractions essay to replace\nthe supernatural powers of the theological state, and only end in\nan anarchy, both of opinions and society. The third epoch is\ndestined to be the reign of positive science, founded solely upon\nobservation and respect for the facts, the forces, and the laws\nof that external world which is the theater of man's existence.\nThe first two states are, according to him, essentially\nirrational and transitory. They are the first steps of that which\nM. Comte styles the grand evolution of humanity, of which the\n_r\u00e9gime_ of science is the end and the summit.\n\n{301}\n\nIt would be difficult more entirely to deform, difficult to show\ngreater ignorance of man's general history. That which M. Comte\nregards as three successive states in the history of the human\nrace is only the complex and permanent condition of humanity,\nagitated by movements swaying in different directions, according\nas it meets with the successes or encounters the reverses, the\nhopes, or the fears to which different nations and generations\nare subject. That theological conceptions and metaphysical\nmeditations are only transitory facts, \"which,\" according to the\nexpression of M. Comte, \"will have henceforth only an historical\nexistence,\" is an assertion no more true of such facts than of\nthose that the study of physics supplies. These different\nyearnings of the mind, and their different labors, are the very\nessence--the indestructible and indivisible essence--of human\nnature.\n{302}\nAt no time and in no country have men more ceased, or will they\nmore cease, to pray to God, and to strive to comprehend him, than\nthey will cease to study the physical world, and to make it\nsubserve their interests. Nations and generations of individuals,\nin different ages, have advanced more or less in one or other of\nthese careers of intellectual activity; and so they will continue\nto advance. Religious faith, metaphysical meditation, and\nscientific inquiry have their alternations of enthusiasm and of\nlanguor, of glory and of sterility; they appear and they prosper,\nsometimes separately, sometimes simultaneously. If India plunged\nherself deep among the symbols of mythology and amid the void of\nPantheism, Greece cultivated with like success the metaphysical\nand the natural sciences--Aristotle was the contemporary of\nPlato. Where other nations fluctuated variously between\ntheological conceptions, metaphysical abstractions, and\nscientific studies, the Hebrew people continued, in the\ntheological state, Monotheists.\n{303}\nIn the sixteenth century, when the spirit of free inquiry and of\nindependence was awakened, and made its influence felt far and\nwide, Christian faith, at the same time, was resuscitated and\nconfirmed; and the eighteenth century founded at once the\npolitical liberty of Protestant England and the philosophical and\nliterary glory of Catholic France. The human mind has, according\nto time and place, its favorite labors and its favorite impulses;\nbut it subsists always one and entire; it never renounces any one\nof its grand hopes or of its grand operations; and those men\nstrangely mutilate and debase it who represent the mind as\nhaving, during ages, lost itself in the vain effort to attain a\nknowledge of God and of its own nature, and who condemn it\nhenceforth to take up its quarters in the science of matter--of\nits forces--of its laws.\n\n{304}\n\nWhy need I appeal to history for a proof of the simultaneous and\nindestructible co-existence of these different conditions of\nhumanity, among which M. Auguste Comte refuses to admit more than\none as rational and definitive? M. Comte has himself\nundertaken--he alone--to furnish me with this proof. This\nintractable adversary of all religious belief and tendency could\nnot, even for the short space of this life, himself remain\nindifferent to such belief and tendency; during this brief period\nhe traversed, and in the inverse order of his own theories, each\nof the different intellectual states which he had assigned as the\nsuccessive stages of the human race. He had placed the\ntheological state at the beginning and the scientific state at\nthe close of the career of humanity; after having made his own\n_d\u00e9but_ by the scientific state, it was as impossible for\nhim, as it is for the human race, to content himself with that,\nand he himself ended there, where, according to him, mankind had\ncommenced, namely, with the theological state. He had declared\nhis positive philosophy to be \"in radical and absolute\ncontradiction to every kind of religious or metaphysical\ntendency.\"\n{305}\nHe had separated with _\u00e9clat_ from the Saint-Simonians, \"for\nthey will soon,\" he said, \"sink themselves in ridicule and\ncontempt. Only imagine, their heads are turned to such a degree,\nthat they propose nothing less than the establishment of a real,\nnew religion, a sort of incarnation of the divinity in the person\nof Saint-Simon.\" [Footnote 61]\n\n    [Footnote 61: Letter of the 9th December, 1828, to M. Gustave\n    d'Eichthal. Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, by M.\n    Littr\u00e9, p. 173.]\n\nAnd some years after holding this language, and while still in\nthe plenitude of bodily vigor and thought, M. Comte in his turn\nlaunched into a theological career; he took it upon him to\ntransform Positivism into a religion. By the most violent of all\npersonified abstractions, he made out of humanity the great\nbeing, the real being, sovereign and adorable, and he placed that\nbeing in the place of God, declaring himself at the same time to\nbe his chief priest.\n{306}\nHe had more than once proclaimed that all religion was\nessentially founded upon the supernatural; and yet a religion all\nnatural--the religion of humanity, the worship of humanity, the\nchurch of humanity, were summoned by him to succeed to the\nChristian religion and to the Church of Christ. On the 19th of\nOctober, 1851, when terminating his third philosophical course on\nthe general histories of humanity, M. Comte summed it up in these\nwords: \"In the name of the past and of the future, the\ntheoretical servitors and the practical servitors of humanity are\nabout to assume worthily the direction of the general affairs of\nthis world, in order to construct, at last, the true providence,\nmoral, intellectual, and material, at the same time excluding\nirrevocably from political supremacy all the different slaves of\nGod--Catholics, Protestants, or Deists--as being at once in\narrear of the age and its perturbators.\" The positivist religion\nthus proclaimed, a positivist catechism and a positivist\ncalendar--these last both composed by M. Comte--reduced his\nprinciples to practice.\n{307}\nIn a series of conversations between \"The Priest and the Woman,\"\nthe catechism first establishes and explains the dogma, then the\nworship, of the new religion, its internal order and its external\norder, its private worship and its public worship. And the\ncalendar, by a retrospective chronology, determines for any given\nyear of thirteen months, and for the seven days of the week, the\nnames of the grand servitors in every department of humanity, who\nare to replace the Christian saints: three hundred and sixty-four\nnames, men and women, with one hundred and sixty-five additional\nnames, are inscribed upon this list, which begins with Moses and\nends with Bichat, passing through Homer, Aristotle, Archimedes,\nC\u00e6sar, Saint Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Gutenburg, Shakspeare,\nDescartes, and Frederic the Second!\n\nA chaos is a sorry sight; a chaos of the soul a still sorrier\nspectacle than a chaos of worlds! Epochs of moral and social\ncrises, even while they bring on and prepare for mankind eras of\nmighty progress, throw also great and potent intellects into\nchaos.\n{308}\nUnder the seduction of a noble ambition, and the delusion of a\npartial success, they enthusiastically attach themselves to some\nspecial subject, some incomplete idea; vain of their shallow and\nconfused systems, or rather of the brilliant coloring in which\nthey invest them, they pretend to explain and regulate man and\nthe world, and yet are nothing more than their superficial and\npresumptuous observers. Among these \"great lost ones of\nhumanity,\" (I borrow a phrase of their own,) M. Comte was one of\nthe most disinterested and the most sincere. The sincerity and\nthe courage evinced by him in expressing his convictions led him\non from inconsequence to inconsequence; in his benighted course\nhe caught glimpses occasionally of grand ideas, and of these he\napprehended neither the scope nor the connection: first it was an\nidea of a science excluding all idea of religion; and then a\ncertain idea of a religion reconciled with and intimately united\nwith the idea of science; turn by turn he gave himself up to the\none and to the other with a blind and a daring devotedness.\n{309}\nHad he appeared in Greece at the great era of philosophy, or in\nFrance in the seventeenth century, in the midst of the great\nChristian controversy, he would have been taxed with insanity--at\nthe one epoch, not only by Plato but by Aristotle; at the other,\nnot only by Bossuet but by Spinoza. In our days he has been more\nfortunate: he attached himself passionately to the method of\nobservation of facts, which is the very character of science, and\nalthough his observations were superficial, inexact, and\nincomplete--although he fell into the strangest\ninconsistencies--the fundamental principle of his system, and the\ncoincidence of his primary ideas with the method and the tendency\nof the physical sciences, the darling study of our age, have\ngiven him more importance and more influence than were really his\ndue.\n\n-------------------------------\n\n{310}\n\n          Fifth Meditation.\n\n             Pantheism.\n\n\nNo two essays at philosophy are more dissimilar--I should indeed\nsay more contradictory--than Pantheism and Positivism. What\nPositivism declares to be impossible, Pantheism seeks to\naccomplish; what Positivism forbids man to seek, Pantheism\npromises to give him. It is the fundamental principle of\nPositivism to confine the human mind to the finite world, its\nfacts and its laws; Pantheism aspires at a knowledge and a\ncomprehension of Infinity, and of the relations of the finite\nwith Infinity. \"I have explained God, God's nature and his\nattributes,\" says Spinoza. [Footnote 62]\n\n    [Footnote 62: Ethics, 1st part; of God: Appendix, vol. i, p.\n    39. French translation by M. Saisset.]\n\n{311}\n\nI hasten to explain, in order to prevent misconstruction; it is\nto Pantheism, properly so called--to the sole system that merits\nthe name--that my remarks are here applicable. \"We must,\" says\nM. Cousin, \"it seems, distinguish two kinds of Pantheism. The\nassertion that this visible universe, indefinite or infinite,\nsuffices to itself, and that there is nothing to be sought for\nbeyond, is the Pantheism of Diderot, Helvetius, de la Mettrie,\nd'Holbach. This Pantheism is clearly Atheism, and it would not be\nvery easy to comprehend the complacent indulgence that should\nspare it that name of Atheism--a name, unfortunately, of ancient\ndate, which would then have no longer any object to fit it, and\nwould need to be erased from our dictionary. But is it possible\nfor a similar Pantheism to be imputed to Spinoza? With the French\nEncyclopedists, things exist in particularity and individuals\nsingly: the universe is an assemblage of individuals--an\nassemblage without unity, or of which the sole unity is a\npresumed primary matter, which the philosopher admits or which he\ndoes not admit, but with which his thought has no business, to\noccupy itself.\n{312}\nWith Spinoza, on the contrary, the single substance is all, and\nthe individuals are nothing. This substance is not the nominal\nunity of the assemblage of individuals, each of which exists\nsingly, but is the single really existing substance, and in the\npresence of that substance the world and man are but shadows; so\nthat from the 'Ethics' may be gathered an exaggerated Theism\nwhich leaves no individual existing as such. Rigorously, and at\nbottom, there is here perhaps only one and the same system, but a\nsystem, nevertheless, with two very different forms--the one,\nwhere God is nothing but the Universe; the other, where the\nUniverse exists only in God.\" [Footnote 63]\n\n    [Footnote 63: Histoire g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de la philosophie, p. 433,\n    ed. 1863.]\n\n{313}\n\nI think, with M. Cousin, that, rigorously and at bottom, there is\nhere but one and the same system, but in appearance, and I say\nbesides, in the opinion of its authors, the difference is great,\nand requires to be noticed. I postpone for the subject\n\"Materialism,\" all that I have to say upon the subject of the\nso-called Pantheism, which admits no other existence than either\nthat of the individualities that people the visible universe, or\nthat of the primary matter whence they have issued. I occupy\nmyself, at this moment, solely with the idealistic Pantheism.\n\nDo we wish to behold a spectacle of how weak the human mind\nreally is in the midst of all its grandeur, and of the limits\nwhich must finally and abruptly check its progress, however high\nits flight, we will read Plotinus, Spinoza, and Hegel, three\nmartyrs to intellectual ambition, differing very much according\nto the difference of the eras and the nations to which they\nrespectively belong, but similar in this point at least, that\nthey ignore the visible world, and leave it behind them, to enter\nthat world which dazzles their sight, where they plunge into a\nvoid in quest of what they call \"Being!\"\n\n{314}\n\nTwo passions have impelled, are impelling, and will, probably,\nstill occasionally impel men of eminent powers of mind to\nPantheism: the passionate craving for an universal science, and\nthe passionate longing for universal unity--feelings noble both,\nbut illegitimate and incapable of satisfaction.\n\n\"I have resolved,\" said Spinoza, \"to search if there exist a real\nGood, a Good capable, singly, of filling the entire soul after it\nshall have rejected all the rest--in a word, a Good that gives\nthe soul, when the soul finds it and possesses it, the eternal\nand supreme happiness. ... Man is essentially a being that\nthinks, and the highest degree of human knowledge ought to be the\nhighest degree of human felicity. ... My sources of enjoyment\nconsist in the exercise of the reason.\" [Footnote 64]\n\n    [Footnote 64: \u0152uvres de Spinoza, French translation of M.\n    Emile Saisset, vol. i, pp. 15, 16.]\n\n{315}\n\nWhat obliviousness of man's nature and of man's life! Man is not\nmerely a being that thinks, but a being that feels, wills, and\nacts, a being moral and responsible for his acts, at the same\ntime that he is a being of intelligence, and a being insatiate of\nknowledge. It is by his thought that he accounts to himself for\nhis sentiments, and for the motives of his acts, but it is not\nfrom his thought that he derives either his sentiments or his\nliberty, neither does knowledge constitute his sole enjoyment.\nSpinoza mutilates man strangely when he places \"the highest\ndegree of human felicity in the highest degree of human\nknowledge.\" Man is more exacting than the philosopher, and it\nrequires infinitely more to satisfy the most modest human soul\nthan to satisfy the proudest mind. Infinitely more in respect of\nhappiness, infinitely less in respect of science! Not that I\nwould make their intellectual ambition a reproach to\nphilosophers, even when it leads them astray.\n{316}\nIt is an honor to the human mind that it aspires higher than it\ncan attain, that it torments itself in the struggle to carry its\nscience into that invisible world, which it instinctively feels\nby anticipation, just as it does into that visible world that it\nsees. God granted to man this privilege; he implanted in his soul\nthe ardent desire to know him and to possess him fully. But at\nthe same time, God granted to men in general certain instincts\nand spontaneous beliefs which adequately satisfy this desire\nwithout the necessity of any profound study. What would have\nbecome of the human race if, in order to believe in God, to hope\nin him, and to pray to him, man had been obliged to wait until\nphilosophers had resolved the problems which still weigh upon\n_their_ genius? As God, in creating man free, took care that\nthe maintenance of the general order in this world should not be\ncompletely abandoned to the disputes of men, so did he provide\nfor the spiritual nourishment of mankind, without denying to the\ngreat ambitious ones of the earth either the prospect of a\nsatisfaction more complete, or the right to search for it.\n\n{317}\n\nLet us never tire of repeating, this is the mystery of man's\nmixed nature--an indication of a destiny in store for him\nsuperior to his actual condition. He carries within him the ideas\nof infinity, of perfection, and yet here below he is nothing but\na finite being, imperfect, equally incapable of sufficing to\nhimself and of satisfying himself, either in the domain of\nthought or of actual life. \"There are more things in heaven and\nupon earth than philosophy--than even the philosophy 'of the\nabsolute'--can explain. ... To comprehend God, it needs to be\nGod. A child might have said as much to Hegel.\" These words I\nborrow from M. Edmond Scherer's exposition of the doctrine of\nHegel. [Footnote 65]\n\n    [Footnote 65: Melanges d'histoire religieuse, pp. 366, 341.\n    1864.]\n\nJesus in effect said, eighteen centuries ago: \"I praise thee,\nFather, Lord of heaven and of earth, that thou hast hidden these\nthings from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto\nbabes.\"\n\n{318}\n\nPantheists are entirely of the opinion of M. Scherer, for to\nenable man to comprehend God, they have found no other expedient\nthan to make of man himself the God that man is desirous of\ncomprehending. The passion for an universal science has ended by\nreceiving no being as God but man.\n\nThe passion for universal unity has led to the same result. That\ntruth is one--that is to say, that all truths, whatever their\nobject, are in harmony with one another--the very word truth\nimplies and proclaims. From the unity of truth the Pantheists\npassed, with a single bound, to the unity of being. They\nidentified idea and reality, science and existence, confounding\nall things in order to reduce them to one single thing, and\nabolishing all beings in order to concentrate them all in one and\nthe same being, which, after all, is nothing more than an\nimpersonal notion and a barren name, falling in its turn into the\nvoid.\n\n{319}\n\nBy what path did the Pantheists arrive at this abyss? What was\nthe process employed by men of eminent powers of mind to\nconstruct a system so singularly factitious and hypothetical, and\nyet pretending, at the same time, to be so necessary and so\nrigorously philosophical?\n\nLike some great men of antiquity, (and their number is\nconsiderable,) who sought to explain nature and the physical\nworld by incomplete and precipitate hypotheses and systems,\ninvented irrespectively of either facts or their laws, the\nPantheists by similar means proceeded--nay, are proceeding--to\nexplain man, the universe, and God; the Infinite and the finite.\nThe method which for three centuries has constituted the glory of\nthe natural sciences, and made their progress lasting, the exact\nstudy of facts and their relations; that method so long strange\nnot only to general philosophy but to the special sciences\nthemselves--I may at once call it by its proper name, the\nscientific method--was formerly, and remains still, strange to\nthe Pantheists; to Spinoza as to Plotinus, to Hegel as to\nSpinoza.\n{320}\nWhether Plotinus plunges into an _ecstacy_ to arrive at and\ncomprehend God in uniting man to God by the virtue of\ncontemplation; or Spinoza, defining _substance_, makes it\nthe principle from which to deduce his theory of the universe and\nof its unity; or Hegel, speaking of _idea_ in order to\narrive at the same result as Spinoza, seeks to obtain from his\nterm _substance_--it is the same defect that appears in the\nlabors of all these potent intelligences, not only in their\ndevelopment, but in the very point from which they start; for\nobservation of facts and of their laws they substitute the\naffirmation and the definition of an axiom, and the deduction,\nlogical, it is true, of its consequences. They disdain and set\naside all study of the realities of the universe, believing\nthemselves to be in possession of a key to open its secrets.\n\n{321}\n\nThey see not that their key is a deception, that at each step\nfacts evident, indestructible, give the flattest denial to their\ninferences, and that to maintain their arbitrary and insufficient\nprinciple they are forced to ignore and to deny other facts,\nthemselves evident, indestructible.\n\nPsychological observation proves and irresistibly establishes\nthree facts, however the consequences of these facts themselves\nmay lead to questions and controversies.\n\n1. Man believes in his own existence, and in his own personality.\nHe feels himself and perceives himself to be a being, real and\ndistinct from every other being.\n\n2. Man feels himself and knows himself to be a free agent. Of the\nfreedom of his resolves, whatever the motives and deliberations\nwhich precede them, man has an intimate and assured\nconsciousness.\n\n3. Good and evil exist in man, and exist in the world; moral good\nand evil as well as physical good and evil. Whatever may be\nthought of their origin, the mixture and the struggle of good and\nof evil, in the moral order and in the physical order, are facts\nevident in themselves, and attested by the conscience and by the\nexperience of the human race.\n\n{322}\n\nPantheism sometimes ignores and omits, sometimes formally denies,\nthese facts, which psychology attests and proves. There is,\nhowever, a notable difference in this point in the three great\nrepresentatives of Pantheism. Thanks to the Platonic school, from\nwhich he sprang, Plotinus, in treating the different questions of\nman's liberty and of the reality of good and of evil, soars in an\nelevated region where the truth now shines in splendor, now\nobscures itself and disappears in the labyrinth in which the\nphilosopher himself is entangled as soon as he attempts to\nexplain the one and infinite Being and that Being's relations\nwith nature and with man. Spinoza is more consequent and plainer.\nHe formally denies all individuality, all human liberty.\nSubstance, \"_the being_\" is single and universal.\n{323}\nAll act of man, as every fact of nature, is produced by fated\nlaws and causes: \"Free will is a chimera, flattering to our pride\nand in reality founded upon our ignorance. All that I can say to\nthose who believe that they can, by virtue of any free decision\nof the soul, speak or be silent--or, to use a single word,\nact--is that they dream with their eyes open.\" [Footnote 66]\n\n    [Footnote 66: \u0152uvres de Spinoza, French translation of M. E.\n    Saisset, vol. i, Introduction, p. clii.]\n\n... \"Nothing,\" adds he, \"is bad in itself. Good and evil indicate\nnothing positive in things considered in themselves, and are\nnothing but manners of thinking. Not only has every man the right\nto seek his good, his pleasure, but he cannot do otherwise. ...\nThe measure of each man's right is his power. ... He who does not\nyet know reason, or who, having not as yet contracted the habit\nof virtue, lives according to the laws only of his appetites, is\nas much in his right as he who regulates his life according to\nthe laws of reason.\n{324}\nIn other words, just as the sage has an absolute right to do all\nthat his reason dictates to him, or to live according to the laws\nof his reason, in the same manner has the ignorant man and the\nmadman a right to everything that his appetite impels him to\ntake; in other words, the right to live according to the laws of\nappetite. ... And he is no more obliged to live according to the\nlaws of good sense than a cat is obliged to live under the laws\nthat govern the nature of a lion. ... Hence we conclude that a\ncompact has only a value proportioned to its utility; where the\nutility disappears the compact disappears too with it, and loses\nall its authority. There is, then, folly in pretending to bind a\nman forever to his word; unless, at least, man so contrive that\nthe breach of the compact shall entail for him that violates it\nmore danger than profit.\" [Footnote 67]\n\n    [Footnote 67: \u0152uvres de Spinoza, vol. i, pp. clix, clx.]\n\n{325}\n\nHegel is less absolute and less blind. Of a mind large, and from\nits greatness naturally just, he escaped at moments the yoke of\nhis system. Struck by the particular truths, moral, historical,\n\u00e6sthetic, that offered themselves to his view in the theater of\nthe universe, he admitted them without very well knowing what\nplace he should assign to them. \"He was,\" said one of his most\nintelligent disciples, \"a conciliator in his philosophy. His\nphilosophy stands midway between Theism and Pantheism; between\nhistorical right, as the expression of actual reason, and the\nabsolute right to liberty and equality, as the end of universal\nhistory. His system seems to sanction the most profound piety,\nand to regard Christianity as the true and absolute religion, at\nthe very time when it appears also as its negation; just as in\npolitics it presents itself as at one and the same moment\nconservative and progressive, favorable to existing rights and\nyet revolutionary.\"  [Footnote 68]\n\n    [Footnote 68: Histoires de la philosophie allemande depuis\n    Kant jusqu'a Hegel, by S. Willm: a work crowned by the\n    Institute: vol. iv, p. 337.]\n\n{326}\n\n\"It is impossible,\" says M. Edmond Scherer, \"to read Hegel\nwithout asking ourselves if he, be serious. He falls incessantly\ninto a style of images and personifications; and one would\nsuppose one's self, in perusing his writings, to be present at\nthe formation of a mythology, at the development of a world like\nthat of the ancient Gnostics, in which notions assumed forms and\nmarched on, passing through all kinds of adventures.\" [Footnote\n69]\n\n    [Footnote 69: Melanges d'histoire religieuse, pp. 298, 838.]\n\nM. Edmond Scherer's is a mind hard to please, which is ever\nstruck and offended by incoherence of objects, futility of\nartificial combinations, and vain play upon words, even where he\nrecognizes or admires the genius. The philosophical \"rout\" is not\nembarrassed for so slight a cause; it marches straight to the\nobject toward which the dominant idea, once adopted, gives the\nimpulse. In spite of its complexities and of its craving for the\nreconciliation of religion and of politics, the Pantheism of\nHegel has borne its natural fruits.\n{327}\nA school has resulted from it, which, in accordance with its\nproper and independent manifestations, a learned and moderate\njudge, M. Willm, characterizes in these words: \"The new German\nphilosophy, of which Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Arnold R\u00fcge are\nthe principal chiefs, comes, in its ultimate results, in contact\nwith the _Humanism_ of M. Pierre Leroux, the\n_Positivism_ of M. Auguste Comte, and the _Atheism_ of\nM. Proudhon. It tends to substitute for the ancient worship the\nworship of humanity, and to found a new worship dispensing with\nGod, and with morality properly so called. ... There is no such\nthing as _theology_ but only _anthropology_; for the\nmind of humanity is the divine mind realized. There is no longer\nany other piety than devotedness to the objects of humanity; no\nlonger any other prayer than the contemplation of the human mind.\n... Man accomplishes every reasonable object if he accomplishes\nhis own peculiar object, and he cannot do better than employ all\nhis faculties to realize his own objects. _Man's will be\ndone:_ such is the principle of the new law.\" [Footnote 70]\n\n    [Footnote 70: Histoire de la philosophie allemande, depuis\n    Kant jusqu'a Hegel: by S. Willm: vol. iv, pp. 624, 626.]\n\n{328}\n\nSuch is the inevitable result at which Pantheism, even that kind\ntermed idealistic Pantheism, ultimately arrives, whatever the\nelevation of mind and the morality of intent in its first\nauthors. This is no scientific doctrine, founded upon the\nobservation of facts and their laws; it is an hypothesis framed\nby dint of violent abstractions, verbal commutations and\nreasoning, in the blindness of a thought drunk with itself. Under\nthe breath of Pantheism all beings--real and personal\nbeings--vanish, and are replaced by an abstraction becoming in\nits turn the Being _par excellence;_ the sole being,\nalthough without personality and without volition, swallowing up\nall things in a bottomless abyss, which absorbs that being, too,\nafter it has already absorbed everything that it has sought so to\nexplain.\n\n{329}\n\nWas there ever, in the conceptions of mythology, or in the\nmystical dreams of the human imagination, anything so artificial,\nanything so vain, as this hypothesis, which at its very\nbeginning, as well as throughout its entire course, loses sight\nof the best attested facts respecting man and the world; and,\nshocking equally science and common sense, departs as much from\nthe method of philosophy as from the spontaneous instincts of\nmankind?\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n{330}\n\n           Sixth Meditation.\n\n             Materialism.\n\n\nMaterialistic Pantheism is more consistent and more intelligible.\nI must at once restore to it its genuine name; it has no right to\nthat of Pantheism: it sees God neither in the universe nor in\nman; the eternal world and ephemeral individuals are, in its\neyes, only combinations and different forms of matter. It is\nMaterialism in its principle, and Atheism in its consequences.\n\nTwo things strike me in the actual state of men's minds; the\nprogress that Materialism is making, and its constant timidity in\nthat very progress.\n\n{331}\n\nThe progress of Materialism is evident; progress in the learned\nworld and in the unlearned world, in the name of the scientific\nstudies and of popular tendencies. A contemporary spiritualistic\nphilosopher, as distinguished by intellectual probity as by the\nindependence and the moderation of his opinions, of whom the Duke\nde Broglie, on learning his death, exclaimed, \"We have lost a\nsage\"--M. Damiron I mean--published eight years ago his\n\"M\u00e9moires pour servir \u00e0 l'histoire de la philosophie au 18\nsi\u00e8cle;\" he had read it in successive parts to the _Acad\u00e9mie\ndes Sciences Morales et Politiques_. He said in his preface,\n\"Men are disposed a second time to have Sensualism; they insist\nupon something that they may oppose to and substitute for pure\nand simple Spiritualism: be it so; but then let them at least\nwell understand what it is that they are asking for.\n{332}\nIt is not merely Locke, the moderate chief of the school, nor is\nit d'Alembert, nor Saint-Lambert, nor even Helvetius; these keep\nthemselves relatively within bounds: it is Diderot who has so\nlittle moderation, it is d'Holbach, it is Naigeon, it is Lalande,\nand de la Mettrie; it is a whole order of minds, not very\neminent, but very decided and very consistent and logical in\ntheir materialism; materialists in all and for all, from the soul\nup to God--not forgetting, be it remembered, liberty, duty, a\nfuture life, etc. ... These men, with their heads in the air and\ntheir masks in their hand, with a confidence in themselves and a\nfaith almost confounding itself with religion, profess openly as\ntruth, fatalism, egotism, and atheism. This is what men want, and\nwhat, if they wish to be logical, men must want, when, closely or\nremotely, they adhere to a philosophy that reduces everything to\nsensation, and that which is the object of sensation. Let there\nthen be no illusion upon this subject; all the principles of\nmorals and of religion are at stake. Sensualism _is_ what it\nis, and _can_ be nothing else. It was made a complete system\nin the eighteenth century; nothing remains in it that can be\neither made or remade; and if men recur to it in our days, the\nmechanism and the form may be altered--for these are\nvariable--but not the essential substance, for that is _not_\nso.\n{333}\nThere are not two manners of being consequent any more in this\nsystem than in any other; however the attempt may be made, men\ncan never by any reproduction render it what it is not, and what\nits nature prevents it from ever being; so we must take it or we\nmust leave it alone; we cannot change its principles.\" [Footnote\n71]\n\n    [Footnote 71: Memoires pour servir \u00e0 l'histoire de la\n    philosophie au 18 si\u00e8cle, by Ph. Damiron, member of the\n    Institute; vol. i, p. xiv. 1858.]\n\nWhat M. Damiron eight years ago felt would occur, has been\naccomplished rapidly. Sensualism, in its true nature as\nMaterialism, has resumed its activity and returned to the stage;\nnow tacitly admitted by sober, studious men, now loudly professed\nand loudly proclaimed by the \"enfants terribles\" of the school;\nprofessed and proclaimed not only with all its principles, but\nwith all its consequences.\n\n{334}\n\nA profound sentiment of hesitation and embarrassment clings,\nnevertheless, to the doctrine of Materialism. The most\ndistinguished of its adepts struggle to give explanations that\nlook like disavowals, and many repudiate the charge of being\nMaterialists as if it were an insult. \"I have never,\" says M. de\nRemusat, \"observed without astonishment the testy sensibility of\nphilosophers upon this point. Who is there that has not witnessed\nthe indignation manifested by the followers of the philosophy of\nsensation when they hear retraced to them the positive\nconsequences of this doctrine? It seems just as if their rightful\nclaims were being disavowed, or as if they were being denounced;\nas if the Inquisition were still at hand, with its tortures and\nits auto-da-f\u00e8s; or as if their refuters were sending them to\nmartyrdom. A general timidity reigns throughout their school;\nthey seem to think freedom of opinions never sufficiently\nassured, and society never tolerant enough, for their philosophy\nto declare and avow itself for such as it is.\n{335}\nWhether from shame or from fear, Materialism asks to be tenderly\nhandled, suspects that every one who defines her has the designs\nof a persecutor, makes protestations of her good intentions, and\nis alarmed at her very faith. She defends herself from the\nimputation of believing only in the senses, even while making\nsensation the one universal fact. It might be said that she\nblushes at matter just as persons infirm of faith blush at the\nname of Jesus. Perhaps this may be an indirect proof of the\ndistrust which their cause inspires in Materialists, and an\ninvoluntary avowal that the human mind belongs not to them.\"\n[Footnote 72]\n\n    [Footnote 72: Essais de philosophie, by Charles de Remusat:\n    vol. ii, p. 179.]\n\nWhence arise, what signify, these two contradictory facts: on the\none side, the perseverance and the facility with which, in our\ndays, Materialism reproduces and propagates itself; on the other\nside, the uneasiness and the timidity which it inspires in many\nof those even who admit it?\n\n{336}\n\nMaterialism is the doctrine of appearances. \"Specious doctrine,\"\nsays M. Vacherot, \"to those whose conception of things depends\nsolely upon their ability to picture them to themselves.\"\n[Footnote 73]\n\n    [Footnote 73: La m\u00e9taphysique et la science, vol. i, p. 171.]\n\nIt is by their material appearances that, at the outset, the\nexternal world and man himself manifest themselves to the human\nmind. It is only by reflection and by a process of observation\nwithin itself that it penetrates beyond mere appearances, and\ndiscovers what appearances alone would never enable it to see. To\nminds at once active and superficial, inquisitive, impatient to\nacquire science, although not very nice as to the kind,\nMaterialism is a commodious and apparently clear solution of\ncertain difficult and obscure questions which fasten irresistibly\nupon the human understanding.\n\n{337}\n\nBesides all this, these questions, and the different solutions of\nwhich they are susceptible, have their epochs of ardor or\nlanguor, of favor or discredit. In our days, the fruitful\nactivity and the brilliant progress of the sciences of the\nmaterial world, come in aid of the doctrine of Materialism. This\nprogress is, however, far from being as exclusive of other\nprogress as is often said. Although less popular than a few years\nago, Spiritualism has not ceased to be an active and influential\ndoctrine in the elevated region of philosophy, and the Christian\nawakening persists and develops itself energetically in the face\nof the adversaries of Christianity. The times in which we live\nare entitled to more justice than men accord to them;\nintellectual labors are now very extensive and very varied; the\nmost different tendencies coexist, and pursue their independent\ncareer. Even in this, Materialism is again the doctrine of\nappearances; it is neither so strong nor so near its triumph as\nit has the air of being.\n\n{338}\n\nNothing proves this better than the hesitation and persistent\nembarrassment of the most distinguished among its adherents. The\ncircumstance noticed by M. de Remusat twenty-five years ago, is\nrecurring at the present day as plainly as ever. Sometimes we\nfind disavowals of the consequences of the principle of\nMaterialism, and attempts of all kinds to escape from those\nconsequences; sometimes we find efforts made to disguise the\nprinciple itself under purer colors. A general and enduring\ninstinct in man persists in protesting against the appearances\nupon which Materialism is founded. Man does not believe either\nhimself or the universe to be exclusively matter. The distinction\nbetween matter and mind is a natural and spontaneous, a primitive\nand permanent, belief of the human race.\n\nAnd is this, then, merely an instinct and an aspiration, a proud\npretension of human nature? Is it not, on the contrary, the\ninnate sentiment, the intimate knowledge of that essential fact\nin humanity of which observation recognizes and evidences the\nexistence?\n\n{339}\n\nThe fact to which I allude is the following: As soon as a\nconsciousness of life is awakened in man--as soon as he feels and\nperceives what is taking place within him--he has a perception of\nhimself as of a real, personal, and distinct being. He gives\nvoice to this feeling and this perception as soon as he uses the\nword \"I,\" and he does so before he has any clear knowledge in\ndetail of the being whose existence he so recognizes and affirms.\n\nWhen, in the natural development of life, man thus makes himself\nas a real and personal being, the object of his own observation,\nhe recognizes in himself as such real and personal being certain\nfacts in their nature essentially different. On the one side, he\nrecognizes a body inherent in his being, which forms part of his\nbeing, and through which he communicates with the external world,\neither by the impressions which he receives from that world, or\nby the modes in which he acts upon that world.\n{340}\nOn the other side, whether he regard himself as, so to say, the\ntheater of action, or as the very actor, he recognizes himself to\nbe a single being, a being permanent and abiding, ever the same\nin the midst of the variety of his personal impressions or of his\nactions upon the world beyond him; and this, too, in spite of the\ncomplications and incessant transformations of his body, the\norgan and the medium of those impressions and actions.\n\nThus it is that in man's consciousness there is a manifestation\nand proof at once of the unity and of the complex nature of the\nhuman being; that is, in accordance with the spontaneous language\nof mankind, at once of the distinction and of the union of the\nsoul and of the body. This is the primitive and essential fact of\nman in his actual life.\n\n{341}\n\nIn proportion as the human being develops himself, as he extends\nthe circle of his observations upon the world and upon himself,\nspecial facts confirm the general truth of which I have just\ngiven a summary, and prove the essential distinction of the soul\nand the body by the essential diversity of the properties of\neach. Thus the body, in its organization and in its life, is\nsubject to fixed and pre-established laws, over which man's will\nhas no control or power; whereas the soul is essentially free,\nand capable of determining itself and of acting from motives\nforeign to the laws which govern the body. Fatality is the\ncondition of the human being in corporeal existence; liberty is\nhis privilege in his moral life. I say in his moral life, and the\nexpression reveals between the soul and the body another\nessential and ineffaceable difference. The body is strange to\nevery idea of morality, abandoned to the exigencies of its\nnecessities and its appetites; it has no aspiration, no tendency\nbut to satisfy them.\n{342}\nThe soul has needs and desires of quite a different kind, and\nthey are often contrary to those of the body; and however often\nthe soul may yield to the tendencies of the body, not seldom also\ndoes it withstand and surmount them; and this both in persons of\nobscure condition, and in those who stand in the public gaze of\nmen. When the body is dominant in man, man tends toward\nMaterialism; when he listens to the aspirations of soul it is, on\nthe contrary, to Spiritualism that his nature rises. The\ncomplexity of his nature manifests itself in the development of\nhis life as in the first instinct of his consciousness; at\nwhatever epoch he is the subject either of his own or of our\nobservation he cannot be called exclusively body, matter, without\nfacts giving his assertion at each step the flattest\ncontradiction.\n\nWhence comes this essential and primordial fact--the fact of the\ncomplexity and yet unity of the human being? How is this union of\nsoul and body accomplished? their mutual influences exercised,\nhow? Here, according to religion, is the mystery; here, for\nphilosophy, lies the problem.\n\n{343}\n\nMaterialism is but an hypothesis adopted for the explanation of\nthis great fact, and the hypothesis consists not in the solution\nof the problem, but in its suppression by the denial of the fact\nitself. What need, they say, to seek to explain how the union of\nsoul and body is accomplished? Neither this complexity of the\nhuman being nor his unity in that complexity is a reality. Man is\nonly a product and an ephemeral form of matter!\n\nI shall not refuse myself the pleasure of refuting this\nhypothesis by the mouth of a contemporary philosopher, whom I\nshall soon myself have to combat. \"Nothing,\" says M. Vacherot,\n\"proves that the hypothesis of Materialism is true; on the\ncontrary, positive facts evidence its falsity. ... If the soul be\nonly the result of the play of the organs, how is it that the\nsoul is able to resist the impressions and the appetites of the\nbody, to direct, concentrate, and govern its faculties? If the\nwill be but the instinct in a different form, how explain its\nempire over the instinct?\n{344}\nThis fact is an irresistible argument; it is the rock upon which\nMaterialism has always wrecked itself, and upon which it will\ncontinue to do so. ... The wisdom of the ancients pronounced its\ndecree more than two thousand years ago. 'Do we not see,' says\nSocrates, according to Plato, 'that the soul governs all the\nelements of which it is pretended that it is composed? that the\nsoul resists them throughout the whole course of life, and\nsubdues them in every way, repressing some harshly and painfully,\nas where the gymnastic or the medical method is resorted to;\nrepressing others more gently, rebuking these, warning those,\nspeaking to desires, to anger, to fear, as to things of a nature\nalien to its own? So Homer, in the \"Odyssey,\" represents Ulysses\nas\n\n  \"Smiting his breast, and chiding thus his heart:\n   Bear this, O heart, thou that hast worse endured.\" [Footnote 74]\n\n    [Footnote 74:\n    \u03a3\u03c4\u1fc6\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c0\u03bb\u03b7\u03be\u1f70\u03c2, \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03b4\u03af\u03b7\u03bd \u1f20\u03bd\u03af\u03c0\u03b1\u03c0\u03b5 \u03bc\u03cd\u03b8\u1ff3,\n    \u03a4\u03ad\u03c4\u03bb\u03b1\u03b8\u03b9 \u03b4\u1f72, \u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03b4\u03af\u03b7. \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03ba\u03cd\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf \u03c0\u03bf\u03c4\u1fbf \u1f14\u03c4\u03bb\u03b7\u03c2.\n    Odyssey, Book xx, v. 17.]\n\n{345}\n\n\"'Do you think,' adds Socrates, 'that Homer would have so\nexpressed himself had, in his conception, the soul been a mere\nharmony, necessarily governed by the passions of the body? Did he\nnot rather think that the soul ought to govern and master those\npassions, and that the soul is something far more divine than any\nharmony?'\" [Footnote 75]\n\n    [Footnote 75: La M\u00e9taphysique et la science, by M. Vacherot,\n    vol. i, p. 174; Plato, Ph\u00e6d, xliii.]\n\nMaterialists themselves have felt the feebleness of their\nhypothesis; to support it they have invented a second hypothesis.\n\"No force without matter, no matter without force,\" [Footnote 76]\nsays Dr. Buchner, at the present day one of the most resolute\ninterpreters of the doctrine. That is to say, not being able to\nexplain facts by matter alone, as matter is observed and\nconceived naturally by the human mind, they endow matter with\nwhat they term _force_, a principle of movement and of\nproduction.\n\n    [Footnote 76: Le Materialisme contemporain en Allemagne, by\n    M. Paul Janet, of the Institute, p. 20. 1864.]\n\n{346}\n\n\"Matter and force are,\" it is now said, \"inseparable; both have\nexisted from all eternity.\" Thus, imperiously urged by instinct\nand by their observation of facts, they begin again by\ndistinguishing and naming separately matter and force; then, all\nat once, they confound them, treat them as united in their\nessence and from all eternity, and conclude by believing that\nthey have succeeded in giving an explanation of man and of the\nworld!\n\nIn this, what do they more than add an abstraction to an\nabstraction, and an hypothesis to an hypothesis? We are here in\nthe presence of facts that are certain and yet perplexing; in\npresence of an external world, which evidently has not always\nbeen such as it is, which had a beginning, which is continuing to\ndevelop itself according to certain laws, and which is tending to\ncertain ends; in the presence, too, of man, evidently a being at\nonce one and complex, identical and yet variable. The ancients\ngave names and explanations to those incontestible facts, but the\nnames and explanations are now rejected!\n{347}\nStill, names and explanations are needed; man must put something\nin the place of God, Creator, and Providence--in the place of\nmind, and matter, and soul, and body. It is not for the first\ntime that man finds himself confronted by this necessity, or that\nhe essays to satisfy it; many abstractions, many words, have been\nalready employed for this purpose. _God_ was replaced by\n_nature_, by _substance_, by _cause_; the _human\nsoul_ was transformed into _vital principle_; the vital\nprinciple was elevated to the dignity of soul. It seems that\nthese words, these abstractions, have had their time and lost\ntheir credit; and so now it is _force_ which replaces\n_them_; _force_ is mind, _force_ is soul,\n_force_ creates, _force_ is God. It is enough now that\nthey incorporate force with body; the problem no longer exists;\nman and the universe are laid bare!\n\n{348}\n\nWhen Leibnitz, to combat the Idealism of Descartes, and the\nPantheism of Spinoza, developed the idea of force, he did not\nforesee that that very notion would be one day made use of to\nreduce to nonentities God, the human soul, all real and personal\nbeing, all first and final cause; to reduce, in short, everything\nto a medley of mechanics and dynamics incarnate in matter!\n\nHowever specious it may appear to superficial minds, or to minds\nprejudiced in its favor by the peculiar nature of their studies\nand of their habitual labors, Materialism, like Pantheism, is\nonly an hypothesis--an hypothesis constructed by dint of mere\nabstractions and purely verbal assertions. These not only\ndisregard or suppress the facts which they pretend to explain,\nbut are in direct contradiction with facts themselves recognized\nand proved by psychological observation. It is, in effect, an\nhypothesis, (I am forced here to repeat what I before affirmed of\nPantheism,) equally revolting to true science and to common\nsense.\n\n{349}\n\nThe hypothesis of Materialism has but a single merit; it is more\nconsistent than those of the other systems. But even to this\nmerit Materialism loses its title whenever it shrinks from\npushing its principles boldly to their consequences, whether\nphilosophical or practical: that is to say, whenever it shrinks\nfrom denying man's liberty, a moral law, the necessary principles\nof the human mind--whenever, in short, it shrinks from\nproclaiming its ultimate results, which are, as M. Damiron puts\nthem, Fatalism, Egotism, Atheism. Philosophers are right in\nseeking for truth and in respecting truth for itself and at every\nrisk; but there are some consequences which are the clearest\nevidence of a vice in principle; and this vice, in Materialism,\nis the blind forgetfulness of the best proved facts and the most\nessential elements of human nature.\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n{350}\n\n           Seventh Meditation.\n\n              Skepticism.\n\n\nThere are two kinds of Skepticism, experimental Skepticism and\nsystematic Skepticism. Experimental Skepticism is the result of\nthe incertitude which arises in men's minds from the spectacle of\nthe infinite variety, discordance, and mobility of human\nopinions. Systematic Skepticism, on the other hand, challenges\nthe power itself of the human understanding, and declares it\nincapable of knowing things in their essence--reality in itself.\nThe one is doubt applied in practice; the other is doubt affirmed\nas a principle.\n\n{351}\n\nIn an essay on Skepticism, written in 1830, M. Jouffroy treated\nexperimental and practical skepticism with great contempt: this\nskepticism \"founds itself,\" says he, \"only upon the apparent\ncontradictions of human judgment. To prove that there is a\ncontradiction either between the results at which each faculty of\nthe mind when taken separately arrives, or between the final\nresults attained by different faculties, as by the sense and by\nthe reason; to establish that there is a contradiction of a like\nnature between the opinions received by different men or by\ndifferent nations, or between those opinions themselves, which,\nat different epochs, have variously for a time contented\nhumanity; then to conclude from all this that the human\nintelligence regards in turn as true things which are\ncontradictory, and that consequently there is for that\nintelligence no truth at all: such is all the mechanism in which\nthis second-rate skepticism consists which has fascinated, and\nstill continues to fascinate, whole hosts of little minds. Long\nago this skepticism was refuted, and at all its points; long ago\nthe unity of human truth was demonstrated, after having been\nadmitted _\u00e0 priori_ in all ages by their leading minds.\n{352}\nThis kind of skepticism is a theme upon which men will long\ncontinue to dilate; the darling subject for wits, it merits not\nto arrest the attention of philosophers.\"\n\nBy way of amends, however, for these remarks, M. Jouffroy makes\nan immense concession to the systematic skepticism which declares\nthe human mind incapable of knowing things as they really are in\nthemselves, for he admits this skepticism to be rationally\nlegitimate; \"the foundation of all belief,\" says he, \"is an act\nof faith, blind but irresistible. In effect there is no\ncontradiction between faith and skepticism; for man believes by\ninstinct and doubts by reason. ... Skeptics fall into no\ncontradiction when, in the practice of life, they believe their\nsenses, their consciousness, their memory, and when they act in\nconsequence; they obey the laws of their instinctive nature by so\nbelieving, and they obey their rational natures by confessing\nthat their beliefs are illegitimate.\n{353}\nSo we equally excuse humanity which believes, and skepticism\nwhich doubts; but we cannot equally excuse the philosophers who\nhave combated skepticism by striving to demonstrate the rational\nlegitimacy of human belief. When men affirm that mankind\nbelieves, and that skeptics do so with mankind, they affirm a\nfact in itself incontestable; when they add that mankind believes\nitself right in believing, that is to say, virtually admits that\nthe human intelligence sees things as they are, this is true too,\nand skeptics do not deny it; but when, grappling with skepticism\nitself, men pretend to show that the human intelligence really\nsees things as they are, this is a pretension which I cannot\nunderstand. What! do they not perceive that this pretension is\nnothing less than the pretension of demonstrating the human\nintelligence by the human intelligence, which has been, is, and\nwill be eternally impossible? We believe skepticism forever\ninvincible, because we regard skepticism as the final word of the\nreason concerning the reason itself.\" [Footnote 77]\n\n    [Footnote 77: M\u00e9langes philosophique, pp. 238-240.]\n\n{354}\n\nI do not agree with M. Jouffroy in his disdain for experimental\nand practical skepticism. This is not, it is true, a system which\nphilosophers are called upon to refute, but a fact which ought to\noccupy an important place with them, for by showing to us how\nincomplete human science is, and human error how frequent, it\nsets us on our guard against all presumptuous confidence in our\nown ideas, and against intolerance toward the ideas of others--two\nof the most dangerous infirmities to which human intelligence\nand society are liable. But as for the reasoning which impels M.\nJouffroy to accept the systematic and definitive skepticism as to\nthe intrinsic reality of things, I repudiate it altogether. If\nthat were, as he says, \"the final word of the reason respecting\nthe reason itself,\" it would be the negation, or to use a better\nexpression, the suicide, of man's reason and of the human\nintelligence.\n\n{355}\n\nIn his discourse which he pronounced in 1813, on resuming his\nfunctions at the \"Facult\u00e9 des Lettres,\" M. Royer-Collard summed\nup his conclusions upon this fundamental question--conclusions\nvery different, more different essentially than even apparently\nthey are, from those arrived at by M. Jouffroy. Whereas M.\nJouffroy believes systematic skepticism forever invincible,\n\"because he regards it as the final word of the reason concerning\nthe reason,\" M. Royer-Collard, on the contrary, ends his\ndiscourse with these words: \"We cannot divide man; we cannot\nassign a part only to skepticism; as soon as skepticism once\npenetrates into the understanding, in [it?] invades it\nthroughout.\" I would confirm this conclusion of M. Royer-Collard,\nby carrying still further the reasoning which led him to it.\n\n{356}\n\n\"The most general result,\" says he, \"presented by the history of\nmodern philosophy--its most striking characteristic when\ncontrasted with ancient philosophy--is its skepticism with\nrespect to the existence of the external world; that world in\nwhich mankind has so long believed, which begins to reveal itself\nin us with our existence itself, and in the bosom of which we are\nforced to perceive ourselves as mere fragments of its immensity.\n... I am not here to reason in favor of the received opinion;\nthat opinion needs neither proofs nor defenders; it is rooted\ndeeply enough in our most intimate nature to brave all attack. It\nis not the world that risks anything at the hands of the\nphilosophers; it is rather the honor of philosophy which suffers\nsome discredit; it is rather philosophy that relieves the vulgar\nfrom a part of the respect which philosophy yet demands at its\nhands, when it gives birth to paradoxes bearing, seemingly, the\nvery impress of folly.\n{357}\nMoreover, whether the material world really exist or not, is not\na matter in controversy; this question would resolve itself into\none still more general--whether all those facilities of ours, of\nwhich the authority is indivisible, are organs of truth or organs\nof falsehood; and upon this point we shall ever be driven to\naccept the testimony of those very organs. The sole question\nwhich belongs to philosophical analysis, consists in examining if\nit be certain that our faculties attest to us the existence of an\nexternal world, and if the human race believes in this existence;\nfor if it believes in it, this universal belief becomes a fact in\nour intellectual constitution; and whether this fact be a\nprimitive one, or a deduction from any anterior fact--whether it\nbe the immediate teaching of nature or an acquisition by\nreasoning--it is entitled to its place unmutilated in the\nsynthetic table of science. Has it disappeared? Then the man of\nphilosophy is not the man of nature; science is false, and\nconsequently, the analysis without fidelity; and one may rest\nassured that philosophers have inserted in the understanding some\nprinciple, or some fact, which was not there before; or that they\nhave not collected with care all the principles and facts which\nare actually there.\"\n\n{358}\n\nHaving thus formalized the question, M. Royer-Collard follows it\nup with an inquiry as exact as it is profound, of the\npsychological fact of the perception of the external world which\naccompanies the fact of sensation: this inquiry leads him to this\nconclusion:\n\n  \"Sensation has no object; sensation is merely relative to the\n  sentient being; if not perceived, sensation does not exist. But\n  the perception, which affirms an external existence, supposes\n  two things--the mind which perceives, and the object which is\n  perceived; the being that thinks, and the being that is the\n  subject-matter of thought. Just as the sensation is relative to\n  the mind, so is the act of the perception relative to it also,\n  and just so does it suppose the mind; the object, on the\n  contrary, supposes neither the mind nor the mind's perception.\n{359}\n  The object does not exist because we perceive it; but we\n  perceive it because it exists--because we are endowed with the\n  faculty of perception. In a city inhabited no longer, there\n  remain no sensation, no idea, no judgment; the houses remain,\n  and even the streets, and with them nature, with all nature's\n  laws, which are not suspended in their course. To the universe,\n  the energetic presence of its Creator suffices; it does not\n  require our presence; the absence of spectators would not make\n  it languish; it existed before us, it will exist after us; its\n  reality is independent of us and of our thoughts--it is\n  absolute. The authority which persuades us of this is no less\n  than that of the consciousness itself; it is the authority of\n  the primitive laws of thought, and to man's mind those laws are\n  absolute laws of truth. The same draught may convey the\n  impression of sweetness and of bitterness, because sensation is\n  relative to the variable state of sensibility, and sensibility\n  itself is relative to organization; but the laws of the mind\n  are an immutable standard.\n{360}\n  The imperfection of knowledge does not render it uncertain, and\n  although it admits of degrees, it does not admit of\n  contradiction. Our limited faculties do not, it is true,\n  perceive all that there is in things; but still, what they do\n  perceive, is in effect there just as they perceive it. ...\n  If a man call upon me to prove this by reasoning, I shall, in\n  my turn, demand of him, too, that he first prove to me by\n  reasoning that reasoning is more convincing than perception;\n  that he at least prove that the memory, without which there is\n  no such thing as reasoning, is a faculty more to be relied upon\n  than those faculties whose testimony they reject.\n\n  \"Intellectual life is an uninterrupted succession, not merely\n  of ideas, but of beliefs, explicit or implicit. The beliefs of\n  the mind are the force of the soul and the moving incentives of\n  the will. Whatever determines us to believe we call _evidence_.\n  ... Reason renders no account of what is evident; to condemn it\n  to do so is to annihilate it, for it also has need of an\n  evidence peculiar to itself.\n{361}\n  Did not reasoning rest upon principles anterior to the reason,\n  analysis would be without end, and synthesis without\n  commencement. The fundamental laws of belief constitute the\n  intelligence itself; and as those laws all flow from the same\n  source, they have the same authority; they judge by the same\n  right; there is no appeal from the tribunal of one to that of\n  another. Whoever revolts against any single one of these laws,\n  revolts against them all, and so abdicates all his nature. Are\n  there weapons of legitimate use against that faculty by which\n  we perceive the external world? These same weapons may be\n  turned against the conscience, the memory, the moral sense,\n  against reason itself. ... Let but, in any single point, the\n  nature of knowledge--the nature, I say, and not the degree--be\n  made subordinate to our means of knowing, and all certitude is\n  at an end; nothing is true, nothing is false. But it is not\n  enough to say this; for all is true and false altogether, since\n  truth and falsehood no longer differ from sweet and bitter.\n{362}\n  The void itself is then deprived of its absolute nullity: it\n  enters into the domain of the relative; it is something,\n  nothing, according to the conformation of the spectator's eye.\n  The useful is the sole subject that the understanding\n  contemplates, the sole subject for which the heart has to make\n  its laws. A legislation capricious and without efficacy, which\n  applies only shifting rules to actions, and which has none for\n  the intentions and for the desires. This is not mere\n  declamation; all these consequences have been deduced from\n  skeptical doctrines with an exactitude leaving nothing to be\n  either desired or contested. It is then a fact that public and\n  private morality, the order of society and the happiness of\n  individuals, are directly at stake in the controversy between\n  true philosophy and false philosophy respecting the reality of\n  knowledge. For when existences themselves become problems, what\n  force remains to the bond that unites them? We cannot divide\n  the entire man; we cannot assign a part only to skepticism; as\n  soon as skepticism once penetrates into the understanding it\n  invades it throughout.\" [Footnote 78]\n\n    [Footnote 78: Fragments de M. Royer-Collard, in the works of\n    Reid, translation of M. Jouffroy, vol. iv, pp. 426-451.]\n\n{363}\n\nI retrench nothing, change nothing in these remarkable words that\nexpress so energetically the conclusions of the common sense of\nmankind. I would only render them still more complete, by\nillustrating in its primitive and indestructible unity the fact\nupon which they are founded. \"We cannot divide man,\" says M.\nRoyer-Collard. Here is precisely the risk that philosophical\nscience incurs, and to which it too often succumbs. It divides\nman in order to study him; and after having so studied him, when\nit seeks to deduce from its laborious operation what man in his\ncomplete and living reality is, we find the result a strange\nmisapprehension, because science has neglected to re-establish\nthe unity which it broke.\n{364}\nIt puts together, it is true, the scattered members, but the\nbeing itself has disappeared; and then it is that philosophers\nknow not how to solve the problems or to extricate themselves\nfrom the doubts by which they are confronted. Entire, living,\none, the human being explained himself; mutilated and severed\ninto distinct parts, that being loses all power and falls into\nobscurity.\n\nWhat is sensation, what perception, judgment, reasoning, reason,\nwill, consciousness? They are the human being, feeling,\nperceiving, judging, reasoning, willing, and observing what is\npassing within him. This is no troop of actors playing, each his\npart, in a complex drama; but a being single and alive, actor and\nsole spectator in the drama of his proper life.\n\nWhat is this one and single being doing when he feels, perceives,\njudges, reasons, wills, and watches what is occurring within\nhimself? He is taking cognizance at once of himself, and what is\nnot himself.\n{365}\nHis own existence and the existence of that which is not himself,\nreveal themselves to him from the very first in those diverse\nfacts and acts which philosophical science discriminates, and\ncalls by the particular names of sensation, perception, judgment,\nreason, will, consciousness. The primitive and essential fact at\nthe root of all, is the fact itself of the cognizance which man\ntakes of himself, and of what is not himself. A cognizance, at\nfirst confused, and always incomplete, but at the same time\ndirect and certain. Not by way of deduction, nor as a mere\nappearance, but by way of immediate intuition, and as a positive\nreality, does the human being become aware of his own existence\nand of that existence which is not his. This fact is lost sight\nof, or at least is not characterized exactly and as it is in\nitself, when it is said that man believes naturally and\ninevitably in his own existence, and in that of the external\nworld. This is a very different thing from _belief:_ it is\n_knowledge_ itself of that double reality, internal and\nexternal, called by the name of Man and World.\n{366}\nPhilosophers ignore, and they change the nature of this fact,\nwhen, merely playing with verbal distinctions and reasonings,\nthey condemn the human mind not to issue forth from itself, when\nthey refuse to it the right to affirm as real, out of the mind\nand in itself, that which, in the mind and for the mind, the mind\nyet admits to be true.\n\nThe human being may deceive himself, and often does deceive\nhimself in such or such a special affirmation as to external\nrealities; it has of them only a knowledge incomplete, and liable\nto error; but its general and permanent affirmation as to their\nexistence is still folly justified and legitimate; it knows them\nas it knows itself, by the same proof and by the same natural\nprocess. M. Royer-Collard expresses admirably this great fact\nwhen he says: \"The universe does not exist because we perceive\nit; but we perceive it because it exists. ... It needs not our\npresence; the absence of spectators would not make it languish\naway; it was before us, it will still be after us; its reality is\nindependent of us: it is absolute.\"\n\n{367}\n\nSystematic skepticism is not, like Materialism and Pantheism, an\nhypothesis invented, although unsuccessfully invented, in order\nto solve the grand problem of soul and body, of finite and\ninfinite; its error is not less considerable, although of a\ndifferent character. It consists in a defective examination of\nthe primitive fact of the human mind, and in the misapprehension\nof the nature and the import of that fact. This fact is by no\nmeans, as M. Jouffroy affirms, \"a faith blind and irresistible,\"\ndisavowed by rational science; it is really the natural\nknowledge, and the earliest knowledge acquired by the human being\nwhen it enters into activity; a knowledge, confused and\nincomplete, either of itself or of what is not itself; but still\na knowledge direct and certain of the existence of itself, and of\nthe existence of what is not itself. \"Man believes by instinct\nand doubts by reason,\" adds M. Jouffroy; \"skeptics obey the law\nof their instinctive nature when they believe, like the mass of\nmankind, in their senses, their consciousness, their memory, and\nwhen they act in consequence; so also they obey their rational\nnature when they confess that their beliefs are illegitimate.\"\n\n{368}\n\nThis is strangely to _ignore_--I permit myself the use of\nthis, here, incorrect expression--at once the reality of facts,\nand the value of words. What M. Jouffroy terms _instinct_,\nis the intuitive consciousness of internal reality and of\nexternal reality, and this consciousness the human being acquires\ndirectly by the complete and indivisible exercise of all his\nfaculties; what he terms _reason_ is the result of the\nisolated operation of one of the faculties of the human being,\nwho virtually forgets, when he decomposes himself for his own\nstudy, what he really is. Skepticism is not the \"final word of\nthe reason respecting the reason;\" it is the suicide of the\nreason by a negation falsely termed scientific, of natural\nevidence, and of the common sense of mankind.\n\n---------------------------------------\n\n{369}\n\n            Eighth Meditation.\n\n  Impiety, Recklessness, And Perplexity.\n\n\nThe different systems, of each of which I have endeavored to show\nthe essential and characteristic vice, do not remain confined to\nlearned regions, or to the classes to which, from profession or\nfrom taste, man and the world are a special object of study. The\nbreath of science penetrates to a distance, and pervades, unseen\nitself, places even where ignorance reigns. How often in remote\ncities and even rural districts, among a population alien to\nevery kind of study, have I met with and discovered the traces of\nRationalism, of Positivism, of Pantheism, Materialism,\nSkepticism; and yet these had been imported, imperceptibly and in\nmanner that the sense could not detect, like a noxious miasma,\ninto places where their very names were unknown; and yet they\nbore everywhere their natural fruits!\n{370}\nThere is a contagion in the intellectual as well as in the moral\norder; and the facility, the rapidity, the universality of\ncommunication, which contribute so much to the force and the\ngrandeur of modern civilization, are as much at the disposal of\nevil as of good, of error as of truth.\n\nThe effects of this intellectual contagion vary with the social\nregions into which it penetrates, and the dispositions that it\nthere encounters. When the systems of philosophy present\nthemselves confusedly to minds in which ambitious and passionate\nfeelings are fermenting, and these feelings are capable of being\naided by those systems, their action is prompt and forcible. At\nepochs and among classes where pride and ambition of intellect\nreign without bounds, Rationalism and Pantheism are received with\nfavor. In those, on the other hand, conspicuous for the almost\nexclusive study of the material world, or for the ardor with\nwhich men thirst after physical enjoyments, Positivism and\nMaterialism seem very readily to prevail.\n{371}\nAfter long perturbations of society, and in the midst of the\ndisappointments and the jaded feelings that they leave behind\nthem, many minds fall involuntarily into skepticism, or make it\neven their refuge. These different social facts, and the\ninfluence which they give to the different systems of philosophy,\nmanifest themselves in our days in the state of men's minds, and\nthey do so whether men be learned or unlearned, demonstrative or\ntaciturn.\n\nThree dispositions of the mind are very observable and very\ngeneral--impiety, recklessness as to religion, and religious\nperplexity.\n\nI feel no difficulty in thus ranging side by side things which\nare coexisting, and developing themselves simultaneously although\ncontrary in their nature. There are epochs when a great current\nrises and hurries society toward a single object and by a single\nway.\n{372}\nOthers there are where different currents cross and combat one\nanother, and impel society at the same moment toward different\nobjects. The spirit of authority and of faith was very\npredominant in the seventeenth century; the spirit of\nindependence and of innovation in the eighteenth. The nineteenth\ncentury is sweeping on its way under the empire of tendencies\nvarious but simultaneous in their power and their activity; the\ndifferent principles and elements of our society, good or the\nreverse, confront one another, awaiting the moment when they may\nagain be harmonized. I retraced the awakening of Christianity and\nits progress; I seek in no respect to qualify any remark that I\nhave made, either as to that important movement or as to the\nconfidence with which it inspires me; but I, at the same time,\nbelieve also in the forcible influence of the antichristian\ndemonstrations which are taking the form of impiety or of\nrecklessness; nor can I disregard the force of that religious\nperplexity into which this great struggle throws so many men of\nfeeble purpose, and even some men of eminent powers of mind.\n\n{373}\n\nIn our days impiety is spreading, and assuming serious\ndevelopment, more especially among the operative classes, and in\nthat young generation that issues from the middle classes, and is\ndestined to follow the liberal professions. Not that the\ninfection is universal even there; on the contrary, those classes\nshow also the most different tendencies; among them, too, the\nprogress of the Christian awakening has made itself felt, and\nreligious belief is treated with more respect. There, however, it\nis that the evil of impiety has its focus and its center of\nexpansion. Sometimes it manifests itself under gross and cynical\nforms, sometimes with a pretension to thought and learning; now\nby the brutal licentiousness of its behavior, now by the arrogant\nyet embarrassed expression of its opinions.\n{374}\nLast year I received an invitation to attend the great congress\nof students assembled at Li\u00e8ge; an invitation which, although I\nexpressed for the purpose of this assemblage a real and a sincere\ninterest, I declined. When I learned what the ideas were that had\nbeen there loudly expressed--when I read that the question had\nthere been put as one between God and man, and that the idolatry\nof man had been proclaimed in the place of the adoration of\nGod,--I experienced two sentiments the most contradictory, a\nlively satisfaction that I had held myself aloof from such a\nscene, and a profound regret, at the same time, that I had not\nbeen present to protest against such an invasion of Pantheism and\nof Atheism into young souls, upon whom my thoughts only rest with\nsentiments of affectionate hopefulness. I have grown old, I have\nhad to undergo painful disappointments, but in spite of all, my\nfirst impulse has ever been to believe in the prompt efficacy of\ntruth when it knocks unhesitatingly at the door of the mind; nor\nis it without reluctance that I bring myself to wait for time and\nexperience to unvail what is error.\n{375}\nOf the two kinds of impiety which I have just alluded to, the\nimpiety which is gross and cynical, which springs from immorality\nand which produces immorality, is undoubtedly the more fatal to\nthe human soul, to its dignity and its future lot; but systematic\nimpiety--impiety that establishes itself into doctrine--is the\nmore dangerous for human societies; for, enamored of itself, it\ntakes its pride in self-glorification and self-propagation. The\nambitious ones of impiety obtain more credit than those, the\nchief characteristic of whose impiety is licentiousness.\nRecklessness in religion is in our days a more widely spread evil\nthan impiety. I do not here speak of that indifferentism with\nrespect to religious subjects that the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais so\neloquently attacked; that sentiment may be profound, and it may\nbe frivolous; it may spring from Materialism, from Skepticism,\nfrom a thoughtful impiety, as well as from a gross forgetfulness\nof the paramount questions which exercise the human mind.\n{376}\nThe recklessness now so common gives no thought at all to these\nsubjects, does not picture to itself that there is any ground for\nso doing; where this tendency prevails, man's thought confines\nitself to its terrestrial, its actual life; the business and the\ninterests of this life alone occupy him, alone content him; there\nis, as it were, a sleep of all those instincts and requirements\nof the human soul which go beyond this low region, and if not a\ncomplete abdication, at least a sluggish torpor of the heavenly\npart of our nature.\n\nLet not the friends of a religious life and of the Christian\nfaith deceive themselves; it is here that they have the greatest\nobstacles to encounter, the deadest weight to lift and to remove.\nAggression provokes resistance; a struggle leads to the\nmarshaling of the different hostile forces; nor does the learning\nof the believer dread to enter the arena with the learning of the\nincredulous.\n{377}\nBut recklessness in religion is like a vast Dead Sea in which no\nbeing lives, an immense barren desert in which no vegetation\npushes. It is, if not the most revolting, at least the most\nformidable evil of the day. It is against this evil that\nChristians are bound, more especially, to direct their energies,\nfor there are a world and an entire population here to be\nconquered.\n\nNor will _points d'appui_ or means of action fail them in\nthis great work. For if religious recklessness is in our days\ndeplorably common, neither is perplexity as to religious matters\na stranger among us. It springs from sentiments and out of\ninterests very different in their natures, sometimes merely on\nthe surface, sometimes in the depths of the soul. There is a kind\nof perplexity founded upon the dictates of common sense, and\nentitled to every respect, but to which I do not accord,\nnevertheless, the epithet of religious; this perplexity is\ngenerated by the instinct or the experience of the utility of\nreligion for the maintenance of order in society, not merely in\nthe great public society, but also in the smaller domestic\nsocieties, that is, in the state as well as in families.\n{378}\nA man of distinguished mental capacity and of an honorable\ncharacter, \"el\u00e8ve\" of the \"Ecole politechnique,\" and \"ing\u00e9nieur\nen chef\" in one of our great departments, was one day speaking to\nme with sorrow of the attacks leveled at Christianity. \"It is\nnot,\" he said, \"on my own account that I regret these attacks;\nyou know I am a 'Voltairean;' but I ask for regularity and peace\nin my own household; I felicitate myself that my wife is a\nChristian, and I mean my daughters to be brought up like\nChristian women. These demolishers know not what they are doing;\nit is not merely upon our Churches, it is upon our houses, our\nhomes and their inmates, that their blows are telling!\"\n\n{379}\n\nThere is a perplexity more serious and more profound--a\nperplexity really religious--one suggested not merely by the\nnecessity of social order, but by that of moral security, of\nharmony, of confidence, and of intimate hopefulness in the\npresence of the problems and of the chances that weigh upon man.\nThis perplexity takes place not merely in the minds of thinking\nmen--of men who render to themselves an account of their internal\ntroubles, and who avow them undisguisedly; it causes agitation\nand spreads desolation among multitudes of single-minded, modest,\nand silent men, who suffer from the antichristian _malaria_\nspread around them. What framer of statistics shall count their\nnumber? what philosopher minister successfully to their disease?\n\nI go further still. I listen to contemporary philosophers\nthemselves, and I find in the cases of some of the more eminent\nan intellectual perplexity, showing itself clearly through\nopinions the most systematic, and the furthest removed from the\nChristian religion. I shall name but two--M. Vacherot and M.\nEdmond Scherer.\n{380}\nI have no intention of entering here into a special examination\nof their ideas; I seek only to show the state of their minds and\nof their souls, as it results from the tenor of their works.\n\nI have read, and read over again, with scrupulous attention, the\ntwo principal philosophical treatises of M. Vacherot, _La\nM\u00e9taphysique et la Science ou Principes de Philosophie\nPositive,_ [Footnote 79] and the _Essais de Philosophie\nCritique_. [Footnote 80]\n\n    [Footnote 79: Second edition, three vols. 12mo., 1863.]\n\n    [Footnote 80: One vol. 8vo., 1864.]\n\nM. Vacherot does not desire to be, nor is he really, in his\nconscience and in his own eyes, an advocate either of\nMaterialism, or Positivism, or Pantheism, or Atheism, or\nSkepticism.\n{381}\nHe analyzes and he refutes successively these different systems,\nas conceived and expounded by their most distinguished\nrepresentatives; he defends himself, and with warmth, from the\ncharge of adhering to them: \"a man,\" he says, \"is not an Atheist,\na Materialist, a Pantheist, an Idealist, because he does not\nbelieve in God, soul, mind, matter, world--in all these\nmetaphysical words taken in a given acceptation. The true\n_Atheist_, if such a one exists, is he whose mind is grossly\nempirical, and wanting in the sense of what is intelligible,\nideal, and divine. The true _Pantheist_ is he who identifies\ntruth and reality, God and the world, whether, like Spinoza and\nGoethe, he deifies the world, or like the Stoics, he materializes\nGod. The true _Materialist_ is he who degrades man to the\nbeast, either by denying him his superior and really human\nfaculties, or by deriving these from animal faculties. The true\n_Idealist_, like Berkeley, is he who rejects all external\nreality as an illusion, whatever the conception of that reality;\nwhether it be as a thing made up of forces and of laws, or as\nconsisting of extended matter. ... All these words require to be\ndefined and explained, or they necessarily occasion mysteries,\ncontradictions, and absurdities. In their vague complexities they\ndo not express ideas of sufficient simplicity, nor do they answer\nto ideas sufficiently precise for science to adopt them\nunreservedly and without distinction. ...\n{382}\nA chosen few exist whose sympathy is dear to me; I remain\nprofoundly attached to all the truths which they, with reason,\nregard as constituting the strength, life, and honor of\nphilosophy. I remain, like them, a Spiritualist, an Idealist, a\nTheist, although with other methods, another language, and also,\nbeyond a doubt, with notable reservations.\" [Footnote 81]\n\n    [Footnote 81: La M\u00e9taphysique et la science; in the\n    Introduction and the Preface, vol. i., pp. xvi, xxxiv.]\n\nNor is M. Vacherot more of a Skeptic than of a Materialist and a\nPantheist; he believes firmly in absolute truth, in scientific\nmetaphysics, and in the universal and essential principles which\nform their bases. \"Metaphysics,\" he says, \"have nothing to dread\nfrom analysis; it is a test from which they can only issue with\nhonor. The truths _\u00e0 priori_ upon which the science rests,\nwill inspire no more doubt so soon as it comes to be well\nunderstood that those truths are founded upon the ordinary\nprinciples of demonstration, like all the truths _\u00e0 priori_\nof the other sciences.\n{383}\nMetaphysics have, and will ever have for their object, the Being\ninfinite, necessary, absolute, and universal. Now the ideas of\nbeing, infinite, necessary, absolute, universal, are so involved\nin the notion of appearance, finite, contingent, relative,\nindividual, that it is impossible for the human mind to separate\nthem. Accordingly, in order to be entitled to deny Metaphysics,\nand the truths which are peculiar to them, we must first mutilate\nthe human mind, and reduce it to the pure faculties of sensation\nand imagination which are common to it with animals. From the\nmoment when the reason, the thought, the faculty peculiar to the\nhuman intelligence, enters the field, it brings necessarily with\nit the object of sensation and of imagination, under the\ncategories of quantity, quality, being, relation, unity.\n{384}\nThen it is that appear to the mind the distinction, and afterward\nthe logical connection, of the two terms corresponding to each\ncategory, of the finite and the infinite, of the contingent and\nthe necessary, of the individual and the universal, of the\nrelative and the absolute, of appearance and being. The thought\nenters then perforce, whether it is conscious of it or not, upon\nthe peculiar ground of Metaphysics. Nothing but a gross and, so\nto say, an animal empiricism, has the right to deny the\nconceptions and the truths of this science, and the denial is a\ndenegation of the higher faculties of the intelligence.\"\n[Footnote 82]\n\n    [Footnote 82: La M\u00e9taphysique et la science; Preface, vol. i,\n    p. xlviii.]\n\nIt is impossible to disavow more indignantly Materialism,\nAtheism, Skepticism, with their principles and their\nconsequences. But after all these declarations and these\ndisavowals, when M. Vacherot has to draw his conclusions, and has\nto set the affirmation of his own ideas by the side of his\ncriticism of the ideas of other writers; when he, in his turn,\nundertakes to explain God and the world, this twofold object of\nMetaphysics, the perplexity of the thinker becomes at once\napparent, and he falls, in spite of himself, into the very paths\nfrom which he proposed to escape.\n\n{385}\n\n\"What do you understand by God?\" says he; \"the perfect Being? He\nis the God of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz;\nhe is the God of all the theologians with whom _Divinity_\nand _Perfection_ are synonyms. That God is our God too. But\nif, of this God, immutable in his perfection, elevated beyond\ntime, space, the movement of universal life, you make anything\nelse than an ideal of the thought, I confess I no longer\ncomprehend him. ... These ideas, all equally reducible to the\nidea of the _Perfect_, as understood by Plato, Descartes,\nMalebranche, F\u00e9n\u00e9lon, Leibnitz, can have no _objective\nreality_, and only exist in the ideal order of pure thought;\nabsolutely in the same manner as the figures of geometry do,\nwhich lose all the vigorousness and all the exactitude of their\ndefinition elsewhere than in the domain of the understanding. ...\n{386}\nPerfection exists, can only exist, in the thought. It is of the\nessence of perfection to be purely ideal; and the remark applies\nas truly to the Perfect Being of Descartes and of Leibnitz as to\nthe 'intelligible world' of Plato and of Malebranche. A 'perfect\nGod,' or a 'real God?' Theology must make its choice. A perfect\nGod is only an ideal God.\" [Footnote 83]\n\n    [Footnote 83: La M\u00e9taphysique et la science; vol. i, pp. xii,\n    1, vol. iii, p. 247.]\n\nThat is to say, that for Metaphysics to admit God, the\n_Being_ God must vanish, and remain only a conception, a\nnotion, an idea. It may be that to a philosopher or two this may\nseem still Theism; to the human soul, and to the human race, it\nis Atheism, and nothing else.\n\nGod thus made to vanish, what becomes in its turn of the world?\n\n{387}\n\nHere God reappears. \"As for the _real_ God,\" says M.\nVacherot, \"he lives, he develops himself in the immensity of\nspace and in the eternity of time; he appears to us under the\ninfinite variety of forms which are his manifestations--he is\n_Cosmos_. ... The world _thought of_ is something else\nthan the world _imagined_. Imagination represents to us the\nworld as an immense mass of dispersed matter, as an infinite\ncollection of forces disseminated in the vast fields of space.\nThe idea does not occur to men of vulgar minds, nor even to our\nmen of learning, that this image of universal life cannot for an\ninstant support the glance of reason; they do not perceive that\n_void_ is synonymous with _nothing_, that the atom is\nan unintelligible hypothesis; that _being_ is always and\neverywhere, without any possible solution of continuity, either\nin time or in space; that the universal life is one in its\napparent dispersion; and finally, that the world is a\n_being_, and not merely a _whole_.\" [Footnote 84]\n\n    [Footnote 84: La M\u00e9taphysique et la science, vol. iii, p.\n    247; vol. i, p. lii.]\n\nWhat is this if it be not Pantheism?\n\n{388}\n\nAnd these incoherences, these contradictions, these relapses of\nM. Vacherot into systems that he disavows, and that he has just\ncombated, what are they but striking evidences of the vanity of\nhis efforts, like those of so many others, to explain, unaided by\nGod, God and the universe?\n\nOf another nature is the perplexity of M. Edmond Scherer; his is\nthe disquietude of the critic, not the embarrassment of the\nmetaphysician. M. Edmond Scherer was a believing Christian, a\nbeliever zealous in his faith, and active in its cause. The\nexamination of systems and of facts, historical criticism and\nphilosophical criticism, impelled him to skepticism; not to that\nskepticism which is indifferent and strange to all personal\nconviction. M. Scherer believes in truth and in the rights of\ntruth; but where that truth? He seeks it, he finds it not; he\nwanders among systems and facts as in a labyrinth, discovering at\neach step that his path is the wrong one, and from it\nnevertheless finding no issue. He is still aware that humanity\ncannot live in a labyrinth, that it requires--nay, absolutely\nrequires--to issue forth, to behold, or at least to catch\nglimpses of, the light of day.\n{389}\nHe has a sentiment of the moral requirements of human nature, of\nman's life; and he sees well that the negations and the doubts of\nthe different systems of philosophy can never satisfy those\nrequirements. I have already cited, in the course of these\n_Meditations_, some of the passages in which this perplexity\nstrikingly manifests itself; a perplexity full at once of pride\nand sadness, which, although it does not shake M. Scherer in his\nconvictions, makes him nevertheless see their vanity. [Footnote\n85] He knows that its own thought suffices not for the human\nsoul; perhaps it is his own soul suggests to him that knowledge.\n\n    [Footnote 85: See particularly the passage cited in the Third\n    Meditation (Rationalism) of this volume, p. 256, etc., and in\n    the \"Meditation on the Essence of the Christian Religion,\"\n    (Third Meditation, the Supernatural,) p. 119.]\n\n{390}\n\nWhy is it that Christianity, in spite of all the attacks which it\nhas had to undergo, and all the ordeals through which it has been\nmade to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied infinitely\nbetter the spontaneous instincts and invincible cravings of\nhumanity? Is it not because it is pure from the errors which\nvitiate the different systems of philosophy just passed in\nreview? because it fills up the void that those systems either\ncreate or leave in the human soul? because, in short, it conducts\nman higher to the fountain of light? Question paramount, to which\nthese _Meditations_ are intended as the prelude, and which I\nshall essay to solve, by confronting, as I before said, [Footnote\n86] Christianity with its opponents, and by showing that, if it\nsucceeds where they fail, the reason is, that, sprung from a\nhigher source than man, it alone has the right to succeed, for it\nalone knows man rightly as he is--as one entire being; it alone\nsatisfies man by furnishing him with a rule for his guidance\nthrough life.\n\n    [Footnote 86: First Meditation, p. 200.]\n\n\n\n                The End.","title":"Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity, and on the Attacks Which Are Now Being Made Upon It.","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":64894}