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MEDITATIONS

ACTUAL STATE OF CHEISTIANITY,

THE ATTACKS WHICH ARE NOW BEING-
MADE UPON IT.

By M. GUIZOT.

TRANSLATED UNDEB THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE AUTHOB.

NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNEE & CO.,

654 BROADWAY.

G945

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PREFACE.

When 1 published, two years ago, the first
series of these Meditations, the series which had
for its object the essence of Christianity, " that
is to say, the natural problems to which Chris
tianity is the answer, the fundamental dogmas
by which it solves those problems, and the
supernatural" facts upon which those dogmas
repose," I indicated the general plan of the
work which I so commenced, and the order into
which its different parts would be distributed.
" Next to the essence of the Christian Relig
ion," I said in my Preface, " comes its history ;
and this will be the subject of a second series
of Meditations, in which I shall examine the
authenticity of the Scriptures; the primary
causes of the foundation of Christianity ; Chris
tian faith, as it has always existed throughout

4 PKEFACE.
its different ages and in spite of all its vicis
situdes; the great religious crisis in the six
teenth century, which divided the Church and
Europe between Eomanism and Protestantism;
finally, those antichristian crises which, at dif
ferent epochs and in different countries, have
set in question and imperiled Christianity it
self, but which dangers it has ever surmounted.
The third series of Meditations will be conse
crated to the study of the actual state of the
Christian religion, its internal and external con
dition. I shall retrace the regeneration of Chris
tianity which occurred among us at the com
mencement of the nineteenth century, both in
the Church of Rome and in the Protestant
Churches; the impulse imparted to it at the
same epoch by the Spiritualistic Philosophy
that then began again to flourish, and the move
ment in the contrary direction which showed
itself very remarkably soon afterward in the
resurrection of Materialism, of Pantheism, of
Skepticism, and in works of historical criticism.

PBEFAOE. 5
I shall attempt to determine the idea, and con
sequently, in my opinion, the fundamental error
of these different systems, the avowed and active
enemies of Christianity. Finally, in the fourth
series of these Meditations, I shall endeavor to
discriminate and to characterize the future des
tiny of the Christian religion, and to indicate
by what course it is called upon to conquer
completely, and to sway morally, this little
corner of the universe, termed by us our earth,
in which unfold themselves the designs and
power of God, just as, doubtless, they do in an
infinity of worlds unknown to us."
Still adhering in its entirety to the plan
which I thus proposed, I nevertheless now invert
the order. I publish the Meditations concern
ing the actual state of Christianity before
those which propose for their object its history.
I am struck by two circumstances in the actual
state of opinions upon religious questions. On
the one side, the sentiments contrary to or fa
vorable to Christianity are defining themselves

PREFACE.

each day with greater precision. Beliefs become
firmer beliefs ; opinions hostile to them receive
fuller developments. On the other side, vacil
lating minds are occupying themselves more
and more with the struggle to which they are
witnesses: minds, earnest at once and sincere,
feel the disturbing influence of the doctrines
hostile to Christianity; many again are uneasy
at these doctrines, many demand a refuge from
them, without finding it or daring to seek it in
the essential facts and principles of the Chris
tian faith. Between the adversaries of Chris
tianity and its defenders the discussion grows
each day in importance and gravity ; and with
it also grows the perplexity in the minds of the
spectators. By setting in full light this actual
state of the Christian religion, by comparing
the forces at its disposal with those of the sys
tems that it combats, I proceed thither where
the emergency is the greatest ; I betake myself
at once to the very field of battle. I shall after
ward resume the history of Christianity from

PEEFACE. 7
its first establishment down to our own time,
and then finally consider the prospect open to
it in the future.
I regard with very complicated feelings, with
feelings of great perplexity, the actual state of
my country ; its intellectual and moral state as
well as its social and its political state. I have
a mind full at once of confidence and of dis
quietude, of hope and of alarm. Whether for
good or for evil, the crisis in which the civilized
world is plunged is infinitely more serious than
our fathers predicted it would be ; more so than
even we, who are already experiencing from
it the most different consequences, believe it
ourselves to be. Sublime truths, excellent
principles, are intrinsically blended with ideas
essentially false and perverse. A noble work of
progress, a hideous work of destruction, are in
operation simultaneously in men's opinions and
in society. Humanity never so floated between
heaven and the abyss. It is especially when I
regard the generation now advancing, when I

8 PEEFACE.
hear what they affirm, when I gather a hint of
what they desire and hope for, it is especially
then that I feel at once sympathy and anxiety.
Sentiments of propriety and of generosity
abound in those young hearts; they reject,
when once convinced of their justice, neither
the ideas which they before did not admit, nor
the curb to which by the inspiration of the
divine law even human ambition does not
refuse to submit ; but by a strange and deplor
able amalgam, good instincts and evil tenden
cies exist in them simultaneously; ideas the
least reconcilable clash together, and persist in
them at the same time. The Truth does not
rid them of the error; a light indeed shines
upon them, but out of a chaotic darkness which
that light has not the power to dissipate.
In the presence of this condition of men's
minds, under the impulse of the sentiment
which it inspires, I publish this second series of
Meditations. In touching upon the great ques
tions at present under debate in the philosoph-

PEEFACE. 9
ical world, in expressing my opinion concern
ing Rationalism, Positivism, Pantheism, Mate
rialism, Skepticism, I have not for a moment
pretended to discuss these different systems
completely and scientifically. Although I am
convinced that they are no more in a condition
to support any profound examination of severe
reason than to stand the first regard of common
sense, the object which I propose to myself is
to indicate only their radical and incurable vice.
This is no treatise of Metaphysics ; it is only an
appeal addressed to upright and independent
minds ; an appeal made to induce them to sub
ject science to the test of the human conscience,
and to regard with distrust systems, which, in
the name of a pretended scientific truth, would,
between the intellectual order and the moral
order, between the thought and the life of man,
destroy the harmony established by the law of
God. Gr/rzoT.
Val-Richee, April, 1866.

CONTENTS.

PAQII
Preface  3

I. The Awakening of Christianity in France in the
Nineteenth Century  13
IL Spiritualism  218
m. Eationalism  245
rv. Positivism  261
V. Pantheism  310
VI. Materialism  330
VII. Skepticism  350
VHX Impiety, Eeoklessness, and Perplexity  369

MEDITATIONS

ON THE ACTUAL STATE Or

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

FIRST MEDITATION.

THE AWAKENING OF CHBISTIANTTY IN FRANCE
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
In 1797, La Reveilliere-Lepeaux, one of the
five Directors who then constituted the govern
ment of France, having just read to that class
of the Institut* of which he was a member
a memorial respecting Theophilanthropism, and
the forms suitable for this new worship, con
sulted Talleyrand upon the subject ; the latter
replied, "I have but a single observation to
* The class of moral and political sciences.

14 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
make: Jesus Christ, to found his religion, suf
fered himself to be crucified, and he rose
again. You should try to do as much."
Nor was it long before events justified the
ironical counsel. In 1802, hardly four years
afterward, Theophilanthropism and its apostle,
the dream and the dreamer, had disappeared
from the stage where they had been powerless
in influence, barren in consequence. The strong '
hand of Napoleon again solemnly set up in
France the religion of Christ crucified and
Christ risen, and in that same year the brilliant
genius of Chateaubriand again placed before
the eyes of his countrymen the beauties of Chris
tianity. The great politician and the great
writer bowed each of them before the Cross;
the Cross was the point from which each started
— the one to reconstruct the Christian Church
in France, the other to prove how capable a
Christian writer is of charming French society
and of stirring its emotions.
In these days, and in some parts of Christen-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 15
dom, the Concordat and the " Genie du Chris-
tianisme," the one as a political institution, the
other as a literary production, have lost some
thing of their vogue. Catholics, zealous and
sincere, criticise severely the defects of the Con
cordat ; they regard it as sometimes incomplete,
sometimes tyrannical: they reproach it with
assailing the rights of religious society, of para
lyzing its influence, and restricting its liberty.
Some go so far as to express wishes for the
separation of Church and State, and for their
entire independence of each other, the only cer
tain guarantee to either, they affirm, of a real
moral influence. Protestants, equally zealous
and sincere, entertain the same opinions and the
same wishes. Not contented with this, the
, latter have gone further, and acted ; they have
separated themselves from the Protestant Church
recognized by the State, and have founded in
dependent Churches, self-governing and self-suf
ficing; nor have they demanded anything from
the State but the liberty that is every citizen's

16 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
due. In a work recently published,* a pastor
of one of these Churches, a man distinguished
both by the elevation of his mind and the gen
erosity of his sentiments, M. Edmond de Pres-
sense, has gone still further. Not content with
defending the principle of the separation of
Church and State, he has endeavored to prove
that, in 1802, the Concordat was, on the part
of Napoleon, simply an act of tyranny and am
bition; that it was, as far as Christianity is
concerned, an untoward incident; and that if
the Christian Church, at the time spontaneously
regenerating itself, had been left free and un
controlled, it would have risen by its own prop
er strength, and would have grown in influence
and in faith far more than the Concordat has
permitted it to do. I am far from proposing
to discuss here, as a general proposition, the
system of separation of Church and State, or its
worth in a religious or social point of view;
* L'Eglise et la Revolution franoaise, histoire des relations
de l'Eglise et de l'Etat, de 1789-1802. 8vo. 1864.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 17
such a system I do not regard as the ideal of
religious society: the co-existence, I would
rather say the competition, of Churches recog
nized by the State and of Dissenting Churches
independently constituting themselves and self-
sufficing, is, in my opinion, the system most in
conformity with the nature of things, and most
favorable to the solidity and general efficiency
of rengion. That is a question rather of epoch,
time, manners, and social condition than of prin
ciple. But, however this may be, I hold it as
certain that, in 1802, the Concordat was, on the
part of Napoleon, far more an act of superior
sagacity than of arbitrary power, and that it
was for the Christian religion in France an
event as salutary as necessary. After the
anarchy and the orgies of the Revolution,
nothing but the solemn recognition of Chris
tianity by the State could have given satisfaction
to the public sentiment, and insured to the re
ligion of Christ the dignity and the stability.
the recovery of which was so essential to its
2

18 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
influence. Nothing is more liable to error
than an attempt to appreciate, with reference to
present circumstances and the actual c&idition
of men's minds, what was possible and good
sixty years ago; and I am convinced, that in
spite of his zeal for the separation of Church
and State, M. Edmond de Pressense, had he
lived in 1802, would have been as little satis
fied as France herself with a Christian Church
restored in accordance with the plan of the Abbe"
Gregoire. The Concordat was a mixed and im
perfect measure, subject to grave objections, and
the source of numberless difficulties ; but, taken
altogether, the measure was grand and salutary;
it gave at once to the Christian movement a
sanction and an impulse that no other scheme
would have been capable of imparting.
M. de Chateaubriand and the "Genie du
Christianisme " are entitled to the same justice.
I am ready, with regard to both book and
author, to concede the truth of all the objec
tions and of all the defects that the severest

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 19
critic may be able or may wish to detect ; their
grand and salutary action will not be the less a
living %,ct. It is with books as it is with men ;
it is by their qualities, whatever their faults,
that they command position and exercise sway,
and wherever superior qualities are discernible,
their efficacy remains in spite of any faults, in
spite of any defects, by which they may be ac
companied. Notwithstanding its imperfections
in a religious and literary point of view, the
" Genie du Christianisme " was in both these
respects a performance at the same time remark
able and powerful: it strongly moved men's
minds, it gave a fresh impulse to men's imagi
nations, it reanimated and placed in their prop
er rank the traditions and the early impres
sions of Christianity. No criticism, however
legitimate, can ever deprive that work of the
place that it at once assumed in the religious
and the literary history of its time and country.
Neither the Concordat nor the " Genie du
Christianisme" was, in 1802, the result of a

20 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
spirit of blind and barren reaction. Napoleon
and Chateaubriand were both of them hardy
innovators. At the side of the ancient religion
which he re-established, Napoleon firmly main
tained also the liberty of conscience, whether
in matters of worship or philosophy. At the
very instant when the Concordat was proclaimed
and the " Genie du Christianisme " was published,
the learned physiologist, Cabanis, also published
his treatise on the relations of man's physical
and moral nature, a work which characterized
man as a mere machine. And in recaEing
France to an admiration of the beauties of Chris
tian literature, Chateaubriand imaged them to
her in forms of language so novel and so orig
inal, that many among the severe guardians of
the French language treated him as an outrage
ous and barbarous writer. A new era opened
at this epoch in France for religion and for lit
erature. Christianity and systems opposed to
Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestant
ism, and Philosophy, a taste for classics, and a

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 21
tendency to romanticism, unfolded themselves
simultaneously, surprised to be living together,
and at the same time encountering one another
as ardent combatants.
I have no design to retrace here their con
tests nor to constitute myself their judge. Let
but a great arena be thrown open, and the
crowd rushes in, carrying with it its confusion
and its buzz. Happily, the tumult is not of
long duration. In this mighty movement of
men's minds in France at the commencement of
the nineteenth century I occupy myself with a
single grand fact — the Awakening of Chris
tianity, its different characteristics, its different
results. The crisis itself had illustrious wit
nesses. I will interrogate these alone.
After Napoleon and Chateaubriand, the first
whom I meet with are two Catholic writers,
who have left behind them great and' deserved
reputations. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre
hoisted the banner of Christianity valiantly, and
at an early date. But their ideas and their

22 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
writings were rather political than religious:
the exigencies of public order occupied their.
attention far more than those of man's soul,
and their works were rather attacks upon the
French Revolution than a defense of the faith
of Christians. By a coincidence very remark
able, although at the same time very natural,
the first production of each — " The Theory of
Power," by M. de Bonald, and the " Considera
tions on France," by M. de Maistre — was pub*
lished at the same moment, in 1796, and each
in a foreign land, where the authors were living
as emigrants. In the first ardor of the reaction,
and with the impassioned and vague feelings
that it suggested, each wrote against the Revo
lution that shook the world and wrecked his
own fortunes. Potent intelligences both, pro
found moralists, eminent writers; but their
philosophy is a philosophy of circumstance and
of party. Their theories they use as arms ; their
books as a discharge. M. de Bonald is a lofty-
minded original thinker, but subtle, too, and

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 23
complex; disposed to content himself with
verbal combinations and distinctions, and spar
ing no labor to contrive his vast web of ar
guments proper to entrap the unwary adver
sary. M. de Maistre, On the contrary, blasts
him with the absoluteness of his assertion, the
poignancy of his irony, the rude eloquence of
his invectives. He is a powerful, a charming
extemporizer. Both of them excel in seizing
and presenting in a striking manner one great
side, but only one of the great sides, in questions
or measures. They see not these in their variety
and in their entirety. Combatants approved
— the one tenacious, the other impetuous —
they both committed two grave faults: they
instituted a closer bond between statesmanship
and religion than is proper or suitable to either ;
they could not discover any other remedy for
anarchy than absolutism. In the natural and
never-ending conflict of the two great forces
whose co-existence imparts vital energy to
human society — authority and liberty — they

24 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
declared for the former alone, thus ignoring the
right of thought, the spirit of our times, and
the general course of Christian civilization.
When attacked in her essence, Religion should
be defended as she was founded, in herself and
for herself, setting aside every political consid
eration, and in the name alone of the prob
lems which lay siege to man's soul, and of the
relations of man's soul with God. "Render
unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and
unto God the things that are God's," said Jesus
to the Pharisees when they sought to embarrass
and to compromise him politically. Thus did
Jesus himself define the proper and paramount
characteristic of his work. He did not come
to destroy or to found any government; he
came to feed, to regulate, and to save the human
soul, leaving to time and to the natural efficacy
of events the development of the social conse
quence of his religious faith and of his religious
law. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre joined
too often together God and Cesar. They

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 25
thought too much of Cesar while defending
God. In doing this they changed and com
promised the character of that great movement,
the Awakening of Christianity, which their
conduct otherwise provoked and served.*
After these two great writers, another great
* " The dead more quick," says the poet Bilrger in his ballad
of Leonora. The men and the books I record died at a period
already distant from us; and in. spite of their fame that abides,
they are probably little known to the generation at present in
possession of the stage. I regard it, therefore, as not improper
for me to mention below the titles of their principal works, of
which I have in the text sought to determine the true character.
Those of M. de Bonald are :
1. La Theorie du pouvoir politique et religieux. 3 vols. 8vo.
Constance : 1796.
2. La Legislation primitive. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris : 1821.
3. L'Essai sur le divorce. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris.
4. Les Recherches philosophique. 2 vols. 8vo. 1818 and 1826.
5. Les Melanges litteraires et politiques. 2 vols. 8vo.
6. Pens6es et discours. 2 vols. 8vo.
All these writings, with some others, have been collected in
the complete edition of the works of M. de Bonald, in seven
volumes. 8vo. Paris: 1854.
The principal works of M. de Maistre are :
1. Considerations sur la France. 1 vol. 8vo. 1796.
2. Essai sur le principe generateur des constitutions politiques
et des autres institutions humaines. 1 vol. 8vo. 1810.
3. Du Pape. 2 vols. 8vo. 1819.

26 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
writer, (shall I term him Catholic?) the Abbe
de la Mennais, placed himself upon the same
path, but to arrive at a very different issue. He,
too, made authority alone the basis of man's
faith and of human society ; but seeking to as
certain the sign which distinguishes legitimate
authority, and which entitles it to unarguing
submission, he fixed this sign in the general and
traditional assent of mankind. "The common
consent or authority, there" said he, "we find
the natural rule of our judgment; and what
but folly can reject that rule, and listen to its
own reason in preference to the reason of all ?
. . . The search for certitude is the search for a
reason not liable to error at all, that is, for a
reason that is infallible. Now this infallible
reason must necessarily be either the reason of
4. De l'Eglise gallicane dans son rapport avec le souveraiu
pontife. 8vo. 1821.
5. Examen de la philosophie de Bacon. 2 vols. 8vo. 1836.
6. Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg. 2 vols. 8vo.
7. Lettres et opuscules inedits. 2 vols. 8vo. 1851.
8. Memoires politiques et correspondance du comte de
Maistre, publics par M. Albert Blanc. 2 vols. 8vo. 1858.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 27
each individual or the reason of all men ; in fact,
of human reason. It is not the reason of each
individual, for men contradict one another, and
nothing frequently is more discordant and more
contradictory than their judgments ; therefore it
is the reason of all."*
In holding this language in his very first
work, the Abbe de la Mennais was ah'eady for
getting that he was a Christian and a Catholic.
When a man demands here below an infallible
authority, he must not seek it from any human
source. The reason of all? (That is, the
reason of the majority of men in all the ages
of the world, for the reason of all is a fallacy.)
What is such reason, but the sovereignty of
superior numbers in the spiritual order ? Having
fixed his principle, the Abbe de la Mennais kept
it in sight everywhere. After having estab
lished an infallible authority in the name of
the reason of all, he proclaimed the absolute
* Essai sur l'indifference en matiere de religion, t. ii, p. 59,
Defense de FEssai sur l'indifference, chap, x, pp. 133-148.

28 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
sovereignty in the name of universal suffrage.
But this apostle of universal reason was at the
same time the proudest worshiper of his own
reason. Under the pressure of events without,
and of an ardent controversy, a transformation
took place in him, marked at once by its logical
deductions and its moral inconsistency: he
changed his camp without changing his prin
ciples; in the attempt to lead the supreme
authority of his Church to admit his principles
he had failed ; and from that instant the very
spirit of revolt that he had so severely rebuked
broke loose in his soul and in his writings,
finding expression at one time in an indignation
full of hatred leveled at the powerful, the rich,
and the fortunate ones of the world ; at another
time in a tender sympathy for the miseries of
humanity. The " Words of a Believer " are the
eloquent outburst of this tumult in his soul.
Plunged in the chaos of sentiments the most
contradictory, and yet claiming to be always
consistent with himself, the champion of au-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 29
thority became in the State the most baited of
i democrats, and in the Church the haughtiest
of rebels.
It is not without sorrow that I thus express
my unreserved opinion of a man of superior
talent — mind lofty, soul intense; a man in the
sequel profoundly sad himself, although haughty
in his very fall. One cannot read in their
stormy succession the numerous writings of the
Abb6 de la Mennais without recognizing in
them traces, I will not say of his intellectual
perplexities — his pride did not feel them — but
of the sufferings of his soul, whether for good
or for evil. A noble nature, but full of exag
geration in his opinions, of fanatical arrogance,
and of angry asperity in his polemics. One
title to our gratitude remains to the Abbe de la
Mennais — he thundered to purpose against the
gross and vulgar forgetfulness of the great
moral interests of humanity. His essay on indif
ference in religious questions inflicted a rude
blow upon that vice of the time, and recalled

80 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
men's souls to regions above. And thus it was
that he, too, rendered service to the great move
ment and awakening of Christians in the nine
teenth century, and that he merits his place in
that movement although he deserted it.*
At the same time that great minds were thus at
work in order to restore to the belief in Christi
anity and the belief in Catholicism its honor and
its authority, another. influence was operating in
the same direction, with less notoriety but no less
effect. The Jesuits were re-estabbshing themselves
° The principal works of the Abb6 de la Mennais are :
1. L'Essai sur l'indifference en matiere de religion, avec la
defense de l'Essai. 5 vols. 8vo. The first volume appeared
in 1817.
2. De la Religion consideree dans ses rapports avec 1'ordre
civil et politique. 1 vol. 8vo. 1825.
3. Les Paroles d'un Oroyant. 8vo. 1834.
4. Les Affaires de Rome. 8vo. 1836.
5. Esquisse d'une philosophic 4 vols. 8vo. 1841-1846.
All his works, including numerous pamphlets and articles
published in religious and political journals, have been collected
in two editions: one in 12 vols. 8vo., 1836-1837; the other in
11 vols. 8vo., 1844 and following years. Besides the above,
there are his Posthumous Works, 2 vols. 8vo., 1856, and his Cor
respondence, 2 vols. 8vo., 1858.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 31
in France — were founding houses of education
and noviciates for their order — were opening
chapels, preaching, teaching, careless of the exist
ence in France of laws proscribing them ; occu
pying themselves solely with fulfilling what they
regarded as a duty, and a duty, too, springing
from a right believed by them to be superior to
the laws. That duty for them was to uphold
the Church of Rome ; that right was the right
of preaching and teaching, according to the faith
of the Church. The Jesuits have also been con
sidered and represented as politicians in the
garb of monks, rather than genuine members of
the monastic orders. Often, in effect, in their
acts and in their words, they have appeared as
politicians, and politicians, too, with a certain
indulgence for the world and the world's
masters; but, at bottom, they have been and
they are essentially monastic — an order per
haps the most ardent of all, for they are of all
orders the order most completely devoted to the
cause of religious authority.

32 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
There are commonplaces that have to be con
tinually repeated, so apt are men to forget them.
In religious society, as well as in civil society,
there are two great moral forces — Authority
and Liberty; these coexist of necessity — have
dominion turn by turn, and have alternately
their heroes and their martyrs. Regarded either
with respect to its political or religious con
stitution, society cannot long dispense with either
Authority or with Liberty ; and each of these
two forces is liable to abuse its influence, and to
lose it by the very abuse.
When Authority has had a long dominion,
and its abuse too has been long, a reaction
occurs: Liberty has her revenge; but in her
turn is prone to compromise her interests by
abuses and by excess. It is the history of all
human society ; facts prove it quite as much as
common senseforetells it. In the bosom of this
general fact it is the peculiar character, as it is
the glory, of Christianity that it has fully ac
cepted these two rival forces; and the one in

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 33
the face of the other — authority and liberty —
both of divine origin. Christianity has con
stantly accounted them for such as they are —
the one the revealed law of God, the other the
innate right of man, whom God created free and
responsible. The history of the Jews is only
that of the intimate and continued relations be
tween God as sovereign and man as free agent;
God uttering and giving the law, man using his
liberty at one time to fulfill, at another to re
ject, the law of God. When the great day of
humanity dawned and Jesus came, it was in
liberty's name, and in claiming the right of the
soul to obey the divine law according to its
convictions, that Christianity engaged in its
primitive struggle of three centuries. Under
this banner, too, it conquered, and under it
religious society and civil society combined
without becoming identical. The tempestuous
and painful fecundity of the middle ages suc
ceeded to the tyrannical unity of the Roman
empire, so sterile in result. Hence principles
3

34 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
the most inconsistent, issues the most contra
dictory — the power of religion and the power
of the state — popes and kings now supporting,
now combating each other's ambitious pur
poses, and thwarting each other's measures,
without any regard to law or right; liberty
sometimes suffering cruelly by their alliance,
sometimes happily profiting by their dissensions ;
on some occasions popes, on others monarchs
protecting liberty against their reciprocal pre
tensions and excesses. Spiritual and temporal
princes still wavered in their maxims and in
their policy, and did not during the middle
ages systematically and on all occasions form
coalitions, of which liberty was to pay the cost.
Liberty, on the contrary, continued to subsist.
and to grow in the midst of their rivalries and
of her own sufferings. But these rivalries and
these sufferings produced a chaos which re
curred incessantly, and became ever more and
more intolerable, precisely on account of the
progress still made, and which no effort could

AWAKENING OF. CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 35
stifle. The great body of Christians at last
demanded some issue from this chaos ; then
those who wielded the religious power and the
civil power, now separately, now in concert,
endeavored to satisfy the craving of the world ;
and by their councils, pragmatic sanctions, encyc
lical letters and concordats, sought to reform the
abuses and the grievances which, as men loudly
proclaimed, existed, if not in the Church itself,
at least in the relations of the Church with the
State. Whether from want of wisdom, virtue,
courage, or sagacity in their authors, or from
their measures being too superficial, or meeting
with too much opposition, those attempts failed ;
and the reform that was to have proceeded from
Authority herself remained without accomplish
ment. Then came the reform by insurrection,
in the name of Faith and Liberty ; and as hap
pens in similar crises, whether of the Church or
the State, the supreme authority of Romanism
was attacked, not only in its abuses and its
vices, but in its principle and its veiy existence.

36 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Rome then committed the fault almost always
committed by Power when seriously menaced —
it defended itself by pushing its principle and
its right to the extreme, without holding account
of any other principle or of any other right. In
the name of Unity and Infallibility in matters
of faith, the supreme power in the Church of
Rome allied itself with the absolute power in
the State, and supported the latter in its resist
ance to liberty. Under the inspiration of their
founder and hero, Loyola, whose genius was
that of a fanatic and a mystic, but who was
adroit in organizing and realizing his design,
the order of the Jesuits sprung into existence.
This order was born of this war and for this
war — a chosen troop, charged in the name of
the faith to be the uncompromising defenders
of authority in Church and in State.
Since that epoch three centuries have passed,
and the fourth is in its turn sweeping by us ;
neither times nor chances have been wanting
to causes to produce their effects, nor to men

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 37
to accomplish their designs; principles and
events have received their development over a
vast space ; and in the light of heaven the differ
ent systems have been put to the test of suc
cesses and of reverses. Absolutism has had its
triumphs and its victories ; more than once the
faults of its adversaries have played into its
hands, and it has found able and glorious
champions. It has not succeeded in arresting
the course of a civilization full of liberty and
yet still greedy to have more. It has taken its
place in the midst of liberty as a temporary
necessity, never as a preponderating tendency.
More than this, even in the epochs when its
influence was its height, and its splendor the
greatest, Absolutism has often served the cause
hostile to its own. Louis XIY. seconded the
movement of mind and the people's progress;
Napoleon sowed in every direction the germs
of social advancement or innovation. And now,
even there, where liberty does not exist, Abso
lutism does not avow itself; it furls its banner,

38 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
and admits institutions contrary to its princi
ples, reserving to itself the right to elude, or
to render them powerless. Experience has pro
nounced its judgment ; whatever the problems
that the future will have to solve, or the trials
which the future will have to encounter, the
cause of Absolutism is a lost cause throughout
Christendom. At the commencement of this century, the
Jesuits, unfortunately for them, and yet very
naturally, were regarded as devoted to that
cause. After having served it in the eighteenth
century, they had been the first victims of its
decline; the papal and the monarchical sover
eignty had sacrificed them to the new opinions,
just as mariners in a tempest throw overboard
their heavy ordnance. When the nineteenth
century opened, all was greatly changed; the
Revolution was not only victorious, but earnestly
engaged in conciliating parties by disavowing
and making amends for its excesses. After the
commission of so many follies and crimes in the

AWAKENING OF OHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 39
pursuit of liberty, France submitted once more
with the greatest satisfaction to the voice of
authority. How would they then reconstruct that French
policy that had been at once so overthrown and
so regenerated? By what means would they
conciliate new and ancient ideas, new and an
cient interests ? Upon what terms would Au
thority and Liberty consent to be reconciled,
and to live henceforth side by side — Authority
soaring triumphant after her fall, Liberty em
barrassed with her recent excesses ; and yet both
of them more than ever necessary to society, if
society was to be healthy and strong ? This was
evidently the vital question of the new century.
God placed its solution at first in the hands
of Napoleon, the crown and the scourge of the
Revolution, the most remarkable example at
once of reaction and of progress recorded in the
history of the world.
In this condition, so new to France, the sit
uation of the Jesuits was embarrassing and

40 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
perilous. Napoleon was again re-establishing
the Church of Rome, and at the same time en
forcing the maxims of Absolutism — a double
title to their sympathy. On the other hand,
he was consolidating the Revolution, and main
taining and putting into practice some of its
essential principles, among others, that of free
dom of conscience. Napoleon arrogated also
to himself, the right of dictating and acting as
master in the Church as in the State, at Rome
as at Paris ; he was neither a serious believer
in the faith of Christ nor a sure friend of the
Papacy. In this twofold aspect, the Jesuits
could not but regard him with distrust. The
distrust was mutual : for if Napoleon was for
the Jesuits a too faithful and too ambitous heir
of the Revolution, the Jesuits were for him
Catholics too independent and too devoted to
their Church and to its chief. As far back as
1804, their establishments, scarcely disguised
under different names, had been a source of dis
quietude to Napoleon. He directed them to be

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN -FRANCE. 41
closed, enforced the laws which denied to relig
ious corporations an independent existence,
and founded the University, which at the same
time he invested with the privilege of teaching.
This system was not abolished at the Restora
tion. The Jesuits then entered into the simul
taneous possession of two forces novel to them
— the one sprang from the support of power,
the other was derived from the progress of
liberty. They had the favor of the court, and
might wield as their own arms, and in their own
interests, the liberal principles that were dear to
the people. A position excellent, had they
known how to restrict themselves to their
religious mission, keep aloof from political con
tests, and devote themselves exclusively to the
task of awakening the faith of Christians, and
arousing them to a Christian life ! Their action
upon the soul might have extended their in
fluence beyond their peculiar sphere to the
world without. Had they not then a striking
instance of such an influence even in their own

42 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
order ? To what cause, thirty years ago, did the
Pere Ravignan owe the respect and moral
authority with which he was surrounded, not
only by members of his own Church, but by
men not remarkable for their faith ? Far less to
his talent as an orator, than to the thorough
sincerity and disinterestedness of his religious
character. He was a believer, a pious Christian,
and a stranger to every mental reservation;
neither was he a partisan, but solely occupied
with the service of God, of his Church, and of
his order, at the same time that he was pro
pagating the faith and enforcing piety. He
declared himself aloud a Jesuit, but the declara
tion excited no distrust even in his adversaries.
If his order had imitated his example, it would
have obtained a similar success. Nor was the
instance new. In the seventeenth century, at
the court of Louis XIV., Bourdaloue displayed
the same virtues as the Pere Ravignan in our
own days ; and, in all certitude, did more honor
and rendered more service to his Church and

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 43
order than had ever been done or rendered by
Pere la Chaise.
I shall not attempt to examine how far the
Jesuits in effect were really engaged, or what
was the degree of their direct agency in the in
trigues of the retrograde party who were seek
ing to repossess themselves of the relics of the
ancient institutions, in the idle hope of recon
structing, the social edifice upon those ruined
foundations. I am convinced that France felt
at this epoch far too much alarm for this party
and its allies, Jesuits or no Jesuits, just as the
Monarchy itself felt too much apprehension of
the Revolutionists. No graver fault can be
committed by nations or by governments than
to give way to fears out of proportion with the
dangers which they encounter. France had no
reason under the Restoration to dread either
the triumph of Theocracy or of Absolutism ; and
yet she was alarmed at both, and the people
persisted in believing that the Jesuits were
serving this double cause — that of the ancient

44 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
regime of the Papacy, and of the ancient regime
of the Monarchy. The Jesuits had then to
struggle at once against the ideas and the pas
sions of modern society, and the traditions and
maxims of ancient France herself; they had for
adversaries, the laity, the bar, and the liberals,
respectively represented by M. de Montlosier,
M. Benjamin Constant, and M. Dupin. The
odds against them were too great; even the
Monarchy itself, however well disposed toward
them, was carried away by the movement which
attacked them, and Charles X. did not think
his own position strong enough to dispense with
treating them, by his ordonnances of the 21st
June, 1828, as Napoleon had done by his decree
of the 22d June, 1804. Throughout this whole
period the conduct of the Jesuits was feebler
than their cause. Sworn and devoted to the
defense of Authority, they had not foresight
enough to perceive by what means and on
what conditions Authority might raise and
consolidate itself. Haunted by the traditions

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 45
of past times, and having the history of their
own order continually before their minds, they
no longer regarded the future boldly or con
fidently; they failed to appreciate justly the
present; they did not believe sufficiently in
the power of Christ's faith, and they believed
too implicitly in the efficiency of worldly policy.
By this vulgar blunder they compromised, in
the case of many Christians, the full effect of
that great stirring movement of Christianity,
at the very time that, with respect to others,
they aided it materially.
The Revolution of 1830 inflicted a rude
blow upon these retrograde tendencies, and a
new element started up in the bosom of the
Church of Rome. In the midst of the grand
manifestation and progress of liberty now real-
king itself in the State, Catholics, genuine and
ardent too, conceived the hope of turning both
to the profit of the Church of Rome, and of
at last setting Catholicism at peace and in
harmony with the new social institutions

46 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
of France. Then the group, I will not say the
party, formed itself of men at once generous
and hardy, who did not hesitate to declare
themselves Ultramontanists, like the Pere de
Ravignan, Liberals like M. de la Fayette. It
consisted of priests and laymen, of men of
mature years and men in the spring-time of life
— the Abbe Lacordaire, Abbe Gerbet, M. de
Montalembert, and M. de Coux : I confine my
self to the names that at the outset gleamed on
their banners. They founded an agency for the
defense of the liberties of religion, and a journal
the Avenw, to develop its principles and its
constitution. But the association was born
under an unlucky star ; for its little army had
for its declared chief, and the object of its
passionate reverence, the Abbe de la Mennais.
In the more intimate and unrestricted relations
of life this great man appears to have exercised
extraordinarily attractive power over his friends
and disciples. Cited jointly with him on the
31st January, 1831, before the Cour d'Assises

AWAKENING OF OHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 47
of Paris to answer for the appearance of two
articles in the Avenw, the Abbe Lacordaire
said, "I stand here near the man who began
the reconciliation of Catholicism with the
world. Let me tell him how affected I am by
the part that God has made for me in giving me
him as my master and my father. Suffer these
words of filial piety to penetrate to the heart
of one so long misunderstood; suffer me to
exclaim with the poet :
" L'amitie d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux."*
The Abbe Lacordaire had soon to feel the
danger and to repel with sorrow the yoke
of this seductive friendship. The errors and
the evil passions of the Abbe de la Mennais
were not long in exploding; his was a mind
lofty and powerful, but without grasp, without
foresight, without moderation, and without
equity ; incapable of discerning the different
sides of a subject and of embracing all the
*"A great man's friendship, blessed gift of Heaven.''

48 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
elements of the problem demanding solution,
he was a haughty slave to the truth that he
served but partially, and the somber enemy of
every one who wounded his pride by contesting
his opinions. He gave to the Avenir a character
at once democratic and theocratic, imperious
and revolutionary. All the ideas contrary to
his own, all the institutions, all the govern
ments, that stood in his way, were attacked by
him with a degree of vehemence, insult, and
menace never surpassed by any political partisan,
however violent. The maxims of the Gallican
Church were, to cite his words, "an object
of disgust and horror; opinions as odious as
they were base, which, while rendering even the
conscience the accomplice of tyranny, make ser
vility a duty and brute force an independent
and just right." He demanded the separation
of Church and State as a necessity absolute and
urgent ; " for," said he, " we regard as abolished
and of no effect every particular law which
contradicts the Charter, and is incompatible

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 49
with the liberties that it proclaims. In the
event of such law, we believe that it becomes
immediately and without delay the duty of
government to come to an understanding with
the pope, and to rescind the Concordat, which
lost all the means of being executed from the
instant when, thank God, the Catholic religion
ceased to be a state religion." Four months had
scarcely elapsed since the birth of the govern
ment of July, and because the liberty of teach
ing promised by the Charter of 1830 was not
already in vigor, the Abb6 de la Mennais said
to the Catholics : " Whence comes the oppres
sion that weighs upon us? Either, in what
concerns us, the government cannot or it will
not keep its promises. If it cannot, what is this
mockery of a sovereignty, this miserable phan
tom of government, and what have we to do
with it? It is as far as we are concerned as
if it were not, and nothing remains to us but to
forget it, and seek our safety in ourselves. Let
us proclaim aloud who the powers are that
4

50 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
are hostile to us; whose servants seek only to
satisfy blindly their thirst for persecution."
What attacks leveled at a government were
ever more precipitate, more violent, and showed
a less just appreciation of facts ? What revolu
tionary party ever proclaimed with greater
audacity disobedience to the laws, and insur
rection as the first of rights and of duties ?
Side by side with these violent and insulting
invectives leveled at the government of France,
the Avenir placed a declaration of respect and
submission to the chief of the Church of Rome :
" We profess," it said, " the most complete obe
dience to the authority of the Vicar of Jesus
Christ. We will not have other faith than his
faith, other doctrine than his doctrine. All
that he approves we approve, all that he con
demns we condemn, and without the shadow
of a reservation ; we, each of us, submit to the
judgment of the Holy See all our past, all our
future writings, of what nature soever they
may be." Here, at least, the revolutionary

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 51
spirit seemed absent, or, at all events, was in a
hurry to disavow itself
I am persuaded that, in holding this language,
the Abbe de la Mennais was sincere. When
an exclusive idea or passion sways a man's
mind, nothing is more unknown to him than
his own future conduct; he knows even less
what he will do than what he is doing. The
Abbe de la Mennais no more suspected in 1831
what he would say and what he would do
a few years later, than the most violent leaders
of the French Revolution suspected in 1789
what they would be and what they would do
in 1793. The court at Rome was clearer-
sighted than its fanatical champion ; it had been
under the influence of the charm of the first
works and of the first successes of the Abbe de
la Mennais. It had not, however, failed to
perceive what pernicious and dangerous seed
might thence germinate. The Avenir occa
sioned it profound disquietude; the principles
and the yearnings of modern society found

52 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
therein a too ready acceptance ; the regime which
had governed France since 1830 was too much
the object of its attacks ; it demanded too much
liberty, and made too much noise in doing so;
for beneath that noise, and in the shadow of
that liberty, fermented the anarchical doctrines
and tendencies which in all cases and places it
is the aim and the policy of the court of Rome
to contest. Thus the Avenir and its writers
placed her in a position full of embarrassment ;
Rome was anxious neither in any way to ignore
the services that they had rendered and that
they might continue to render her, nor to lose
sight of the perils that they made her incur ;
Rome desired to preserve silence respecting
these writers — neither to avow nor disavow
them — and to leave it to time to terminate their
transport and their errors. The Abbe de la
Mennais did not, however, permit this expectant
policy; he insisted absolutely that the papacy,
by pronouncing upon his doctrines and upon
his attitude, should publicly either give him

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 53
her support or withdraw it from him. All the
world knows of the journey which he under
took in 1831 to Rome to obtain this result, and
of his stay there in company with the Abb6
Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert, "three
obscure Christians" — to use the words of the
Abbe de la Mennais — men who thought them
selves called, according to the expression of the
Abbe Lacordaire before the Cour d' Assises at
Paris, " to reconcile Catholicism with the world."
The Pope (Gregory XVI.) judged otherwise,
and by his encyclical of the 15th August, 1832,
with regret, but at the same time with as much
decision as to the substantial matters before
him as tenderness to the three pilgrims person
ally, condemned the Avenir, its doctrines, and
its tendencies. On the instant, with the con
currence of their friends, they declared, all three,
(10th September, 1832,) that, respectfully sub
mitting themselves to the authority of the Vicar
of Jesus Christ, they abandoned the lists in
which they had faithfully combated during the

54 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
past two years ; that, in consequence, the Avenir,
which had been provisionally suspended ever
since the 15th November previously, would no
longer appear, and that the General Agency
for the Defense of Religious Liberty was
dissolved. As the first declaration of the writers of the
Avenir, after their acquittal by the Cour
d' Assises at Paris, had been sincere, so was also
the declaration sincere which was published by
them immediately after their condemnation by
the papacy ; but they promised more than they
could perform. When a deep social wound has
been laid bare, and measures on a large scale
have been adopted to cure it, it is no longer in
the power of any individual to keep that wound
secret, or to stifle the hope of a remedy. How
many times in the course of this century has
not the papacy, and have not the ardent
champions of liberty, condemned and combated
the efforts made to reconcile Catholicism with
modern civilization, and to cause the Church to

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 55
accept the liberties of civil society, and the State
to recognize the rights of the Church? How
often has the Church by its censures signalized
such efforts as impious and suicidal? What
wit, what eloquence, have not been displayed
by the Liberals to declare their vanity, their
worthlessness ? To what reproaches, invectives,
and sarcasms have not their advocates had to
submit ? But no ecclesiastical censure, no wrath
of religion, no mockery of liberalism has arrest
ed the march of this great idea. It has made,
and it continues every day to force, its way in
spite of condemnations, attacks, and obstacles of
every description. Why ? For paramount rea
sons, impossible to be lost sight of. For Chris
tianity and modern civilization confront each
other ; there exists in the public a profound and
irrepressible feeling of their reciprocal right and
strength — a profound and irrepressible feeling
that their disagreement is an immense evil for
society and for men's souls; that neither the
new civil liberties nor the ancient forms of

56 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
belief and influences of Christianity can ever
perish ; that, necessary, both of them, to nations
and to individuals, they are both of them des
tined to live, and consequently to live together.
When and in what manner will this feeling
realize its object, and when will the ancient
Church and modern civilization have solved the
problem of their mutual pacification? No one
can at this moment pronounce ; but in all certi
tude, the problem will not for that cease to
weigh upon the world, or the world to strive at
its solution. Even the men who, in a spirit of
pious submission or in a paroxysm of sadness
and discouragement might wish, after having
attempted it, to renounce the work, could never
remain inactive before a necessity becoming
more and more urgent; they doubtless would
not be long before they returned to the lists
from which they might have consented to with
draw. And this is what happened to the three
eminent men who had made so precipitate a

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 57
journey to Rome, and had importuned her at an
inconvenient moment, summoning her at once to
solve the momentous questions they had raised.
They returned from Rome with the intention of
submitting to the decision of the Pope; but
slumber to such souls was impossible, and it
was not long before men saw them, the three,
resuming, although by the most contrary paths,
all the activity of their minds and of their lives.
The Abbe de la Mennais threw himself with
impetuosity into the revolt — a revolt radical
against the Church and against the State;
furiously demanding from the populace and
from revolutions the success which he could not
obtain in the bosom of order, and in concert
with the authority previously so ardently de
fended by him. Far from following in his new
and violent course, the Abbe Lacordaire and
M. de Montalembert separated from him, and
returned each to his natural and tranquil posi
tion; the one to that of a simple priest, almoner
of the convent of the Visitation, and preacher

58 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
in the chapel of the College Stanislas ; the other
to that of a young and brilliant political orator,
already a favorite in the chamber of Peers,
although its members did not always think or
vote with him. Both remained Romanists at
heart ; they zealously shared in the great move
ment of Christianity, now roused from her
slumber, but without ceasing to be Liberals in
their. Catholicism, or without arresting their
efforts to reconcile the Church with the regime
of liberty.
The position of each, and the genius of each,
determined the share that he took in the duties,
and the place that he selected for the field of
his action. The Abb6 Lacordaire, from the
pulpit of Notre Dame, developed, or rather let
me say, painted, in all their splendor, the truths,
the beauties, the moral and social excellences of
the Christian Faith and of the Catholic Church.
M. de Montalembert, in the house of Peers and
in literature, was the ardent and indefatigable
champion of the Church, of its maxims, and

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 59
of its rights. To neither was there any lack of
success any more than any lack of talent and of
zeaL A numerous auditory, young and old,
from the salons and from the schools, believers
and freethinkers, flocked round the Abbe Lacor
daire, all feeling the attraction, and almost all
the charm ; many among them yielding to the
persuasion of that eloquence so fresh and vivid,
and abundant, and unlooked for — impetuous
without rudeness, hardy yet graceful, natural
even where there was temerity of thought or of
expression, and repairing or vailing these faults
by the enchantment of candor and of origin
ality. Different, but not inferior, were the
merits and the successes of M. de Montalembert.
He was a combatant young too, a fearless Chris
tian, both in the political arena and in society ;
and he carried with him in his polemics to the
service of the State a sincerity of passion, a rich
and mobile eloquence, piquant strokes of wit, an
outpouring of indignant conviction, all of which
deeply stirred the emotions of his auditors,

60 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
whether friends or adversaries, and left in
the mind of calm spectators an impression of
approving satisfaction, however frequently a
shock might be given to their feelings of mod
eration and of fairness. In the " Conferences "
of the Abbe Lacordaire it cannot be denied
that many failings and many omissions are ob
servable; although expressed clearly and with
vivacity, his thought was often superficial;
there was in turn a singular mixture of precip
itate enthusiasm and of discretion, the former
displaying itself in his exordiums, the latter at
the close of his discourses. He announced coura
geously his opinions, but accompanied them by
more reservations than are usually expected
from one of his Church and party : thus at the
same time, that throughout all his discourses,
and in their general character, he showed him
self the friend of religious liberty, he hesitated
sometimes even when the occasion required
him to proclaim its fundamental principle
and to rebuke its violations. On his side.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 61
M. de Montalembert gave himself up entirely
to the impression and the combat of the
moment; in his legitimate ardor for free in
struction, the then chosen object of his public
life, he held obstacles, however real, of no ac
count; he ignored the time necessary for its
final triumph, as well as the real progress, al
though partial, which it had obtained, from the
co-operation or the sufferance of the govern
ment of 1830; and in his uncompromising
defense of the Church, he was more violent
against the members of the executive govern
ment than his own sentiments and his real poli
tical views would, in moments of cool reflection,
have permitted him to be. The Abbe Lacor
daire did not sound sufficiently the sources of
his opinions; M. de Montalembert did not
properly measure his attacks. But in spite of
their shortcomings and of our own, of their
faults and of our own, in all the struggles that
grew out of religious questions between us,
they rendered constantly faithful and powerful

62 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
services to their cause, which, notwithstanding
our dissentiments on other points, was really
the cause of Christ's Faith awaking to new
birth and life on the bosom of Liberty.
It is not without well reflecting that I term
that our cause. When religious liberty reigns
in a State, it is a great and a too common error
to believe that the statesmen charged with its
government have no religious belief whatever ;
that they are careless in matters of faith because
they embrace and advocate the cause of liberty
of conscience. The soul does not abdicate the
right to its proper and intimate life, because it
respects in other souls the rights of that same
life ; and nothing is more logical or more legit
imate than to sustain with fervor the princi
ple of freedom of conscience, and yet to be at
the same time a true and an earnest Christian.
I have not here to make a profession of faith
for others ; but I affirm that, from 1830 to 1848,
the Prince whom I had the honor to serve, and
the Cabinets to which I had the honor to

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 63
belong, not only always had at heart the main
tenance, however difficult, of the principle of re
ligious liberty, but that they always felicitated
themselves upon the progress made by the
Christian Faith, even when the manner of that
progress was for them a source of serious em
barrassment. In 1841 we were placed, in this
respect, in a most trying position. Great was
the general astonishment, and violent were the
attacks made upon us, when, with a devotedness
to Catholicism even bolder than had been his
conferences at Notre Dame, the Abbe Lacordaire
returned from Rome a monk, and a monk of an
order which has left more somber memories
behind it than any other, that of St. Dominic.
This is not the place to examine what the util
ity may be in our days to the Catholic Church
of the monastic orders, or to inquire whether
the services they are capable of rendering the
Church outweigh the objections and the feelings
of repulsion and uneasiness which they arouse.
No well-read man can deny their having, in

64 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
seasons of chaotic confusion, effectually served
the cause, not only of the Christian Faith, but
of civilization, of science, and even of liberty.
The condition of society and of the human
mind is now very different, and the monastic
orders cannot take the same position or produce
the same effects. But whatever we may think
of the opportuneness of their reconstruction,
of the right there can be no doubt. Under a
system sanctioning freedom of conscience and
free institutions, associations for religious pur
poses cannot be worse treated than those for
purposes of industry, commerce, or literature.
The State is required to exercise upon com
binations of every kind a. certain degree of sur
veillance ; but doubtless the union of souls and
of lives under one rule and in one costume,
with a view to eternal interests, is not a juster
cause for disquietude than a union of purses
and of labor for the purpose of economizing
both, with a view to worldly interests. In
1829, some young Catholic Liberals, MM. de

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 65
Carne, de Cazales, de Champagny, de Mont
alembert, Foisset de Meaux, Henri Gouraud,
founded a periodical, Le Correspondant, devoted
to the reconciliation of Catholicism with the
free social institutions of the age. The Cor
respondant had been suspended in 1835, but
reappeared in 1843, under the editorship of M.
Charles Lenormant, one of those friends I have
lost who retain in my memory the place they
occupied in my life. In conducting this work,
he kept ever in view the principles in which
it had originated, and among other positions,
he defended in 1845, with the frank intrepidity
both of a Catholic and of a Liberal, the rights
of those religious associations which were at the
time the object of violent debate.* The cabinet
abstained from all measures of repression, and
left the new monks freely to their chances of
success or failure. Twenty-five years have since
* Des associations religieuses dans le catholicisme ; de leur
esprit, de leur histoire et de leur avenir ; par Charles Lenor
mant, de l'lnstitut. Paris : 1845.

66 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
elapsed; the Pere Lacordaire mounted once
more, in his costume as a Dominican, his pulpit
in Notre-Dame; he resuscitated in France an
order forgotten, or the object of dread only;
and to what trouble or embarrassment, I ask,
to what complaints even, has this resuscitation
led? To what pretensions of ambition have
these monks laid claim? what turbulent dis
position have they manifested? They have
paced meekly along our streets; they have
preached eloquently in our churches ; they have
founded some houses of education ; they have
made use of their rights as freemen, without
offering in any way to infringe the liberty of
any other class of citizens. More than all this :
the sincerity of their sentiments and language
has been put to the proof; the Pere Lacordaire
resumed, as a Dominican, at Paris, at Toulouse
at Nancy, at Bordeaux, the conferences and the
preaching that had rendered him popular as a
simple priest; they became, perhaps, more
liberal even than they had been originally.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 67
When the tempest of 1848 had given birth, in
the imaginations of all men, to every kind of
dream, and had opened to every ambition every
career, the Pere Lacordaire was returned by the
popular suffrage as Deputy to the Constituent
Assembly. For a moment he thought a new
era opening for his Church — perhaps for him
self. In this arena, upon which the passions of
party were unchained amid the general dark
ness resting upon society, he soon discovered
that the priest and monk of our day was not in
his proper place ; he withdrew from it to re
sume, in his modest retreat at Soreze, his true
mission as a Christian teacher. He afterward
issued from it, but for a moment only, to express
in the French Academy his faith as a Catholic,
and his confidence in the democratic principles
of modern times. Such are the peaceable, such
the only results among us, of the re-establish
ment of the order of the Dominicans and of the
glory of its restorer.
Its only results ? Not so ; if the work of the

68 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Pere Lacordaire did not exercise any important
influence upon the laity, it was attended with
fruitful and salutary effects in the Church of
Rome itself. Like him, other priests had the
courage to brave the prejudices of the age re
specting the religious orders; like him, others
refused to suffer themselves to be subjugated
by the alarms felt by most members of their
Church at the names of Science and of Liberty;
and like him, they scrupled not to devote
themselves to a common life and a common
rule, "to work together," according to their
own expressions, "to secure the triumph of
Christian truth, and its triumph by means of
Philosophy and Science." Thus was re-estab
lished, under the direction of the pious curate
of Saint-Roch, the Pere Petetot, the congre
gation of the Oratoire — that learned and
modest society that gave to France Malebranche
and Massillon, and of which Bossuet said, two
centuries ago: "The immense love for the
Church of the Cardinal de Berulle inspired

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 69
him with the design of forming a company, to
which he desired to give no other spirit than
the very spirit of the Church, no other rule
than its canons, no other superiors than its
bishops, no other goods than its charity, no
other solemn vows than those of baptism and
the priesthood. . . . There, to form true priests,
they lead them to the fountain of truth ; they
have always in their hands the sacred volume,
to search there unceasingly its literal sense by
study, its spirit by prayer, its depth of mean
ing by retreat from the world, and its end by
charity — the termination of everything and the
treasure of Christianity — 'Christiani nominis
thesaurus,' as Tertullian terms it."* Dating
its restoration from only thirteen years ago,
the new congregation of the Oratoire is still
not numerous, and remains little known; it is
poor, and it desires to remain so; it has need
of extension and of support, but at the very
* Bossuet, Oraison funeibre du p&re Bourgoing, delivered in
1662, vol. viii, p. 271.'

70 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
outset of its new career it proved itself faithful
to its origin and worthy of the words of Bos-
suet. One of its founders, the Pere Gratry,
took his place at once in the first rank of the
Christian apologists, moralists, and writers of
the day: he is a man at once animated and
gentle, full of his peculiar ideas and sentiments,
which he carries to an enthusiastic height, but
without pride and without jealousy, and ar
dently propagating them by his books, his
lectures, and his conversation. These are all
distinguished by eloquent appeals to human
sympathies, touching even where they do not
convince, and leaving the mind always in
emotion at the prospects which they open.
Another member of the new Oratoire, the Pere
Valvoger, has given a succinct account, in a
learned work, (" Introduction historique et cri
tique aux livres du Nouveau Testament,") of
the Researches and Evidences of Christianity,
by the principal foreign theologians. Under
the strong influence of the opinions of its first

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 71
founders, and at the same time comprehending
the mind and the requirements of France at the
present day, the rising congregation of the
Oratoire does not evade examination or discus
sion; it respects science, and in the religious
truths which it teaches, and its relations with
the souls that it summons to believe, it does
not shrink from accepting fearlessly the terms
and the forms of liberty.
In the midst of this great movement of men's
minds in matters of religion, what has been
done since the opening of this century by the
chiefs of the Catholic Church of France, by their
bishops and by the clergy, called, by their
alliance with the State and by their own rights,
to assume the education and the Christian
direction of the human soul ?
They were at first and especially occupied
with the real resuscitation of that Christian
religion, now returning to French society, to its
rank there and to its mission, but returning as
exiles return — ill provided, disorganized, and to

72 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
a home that seems no home. To render back
to France, now Catholic, churches for its wor
ship, priests for its churches, seminaries to form
its priests, pupils to people those seminaries ; to
assure also to the edifice thus rising from its
ruins the time for its proper establishment and
consolidation — such, under the first empire, was
the dominant thought, almost the exclusive
thought, of the Episcopacy, of the clergy in
stituted by the Concordat. A work great and
difficult, for which neither materials nor work
men were at hand, and which required for its
accomplishment strong support and a long
period of repose. The clergy of this epoch
have been justly reproached with their uniform
obsequiousness to the Emperor Napoleon. No
doubt it was a shameful spectacle, in 1811,
which those docile bishops afforded, when they
assembled in council and were never weary of
lavishing caresses upon the despot who had
not only stripped the chief of their Church,
Pius VII., of his dominions, but was then

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 73
detaining him a prisoner at Savona, denying
his natural counselors, the cardinals, all access
to him, refusing him even a secretary to write
his letters, and charging an officer of the gen
darmerie to watch by day and by night all his
movements. Only a single fact explains and
somewhat excuses the pusillanimity of the
clergy when confronted with this tyranny:
these bishops had seen Christianity proscribed,
its churches closed, profaned, demolished, its
priests hunted and massacred, their flocks left
without any worship, any guide, any conso
lation. The chance of the recurrence of such
events filled them with horror. Who could
affirm that there was no such chance, and that
the reality of the eve was not the possibility of
the morrow ? With such causes of apprehension
a good priest might feel his conscience pro
foundly troubled; and a timid priest might
regard his weakness as justified. What sacri-
fices were not permissible, nay, even imperative,
to prevent such disasters ?

74 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
Still, the violent measures of Napoleon did
not fail to encounter, sometimes rebukes, and
occasionally resistance, on the part of the clergy ;
it was not only that some prelates* in the
council, with more courage than moderation,
censured his conduct toward the Pope: the
council itself — forgetting at last, in its anxiety
to vindicate the honor of the whole body, its
long habit of obsequiousness — voted an address
to the Emperor, an act of independence which
occasioned its abrupt dissolution. And of the
two ecclesiastics to whose counsels, from just
motives of esteem, Napoleon showed least dis-
inclination to give ear, one — the Abbe Emery,
" Superior General " of the Congregation of St.
Sulpice — had just previously, not long before
he died, openly, yet with dignity, resisted the
Emperor ;f the other, M. Duvoisin, Bishop of
* Among others M. d' Avian, Archbishop of Bordeaux, M.
de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, and M. de Broglie, Bishop of
Gaud. t Vie de M. Emery, superieur general du seminaire et de la
compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, t. ii, pp. 236-346. Paris : 1862.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 75
Nantes, dictated upon his deathbed these
powerful and affectionate lines: "I supplicate
the Emperor to restore the holy Father to lib
erty. His captivity troubles the extreme mo
ments of my life. On several occasions I had
the honor to inform the Emperor of the afflic
tion which this captivity is causing to the whole
of Christendom, and of the inconveniences
which would attend its prolongation. The
happiness of his Majesty himself, I believe,
depends upon the return of his Holiness to
Rome." Idly does Despotism excuse its arbi
trary acts, as if they resulted from the want of
foresight or the servility of its flatterers; for
the blindest have their gleams of light, and
even the most timid their intrepid moments,
during which they speak the truth, although
they speak it in vain.
Under the Restoration, it was no longer fear,
but hope — hope ill-founded, too — which misled
the French clergy, betrayed them into the com
mission of many faults, and checked the prog-

76 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
ress of roused Christendom. In the then re
action against the Revolution, ecclesiastical am
bition had its part ; partisans of the Crown and
of Rome— ardent ones — some through sincere
devotion, others from political calculation, be
lieved it to be necessary and possible to restore
to the Catholic clergy a part at least of the
social position and of the direct authority which
they had possessed before* 1789. This was
evincing a strange ignorance of the fundamental
character of French society, such as it has been
made by its history and by its great modern
Revolution. French society is essentially and
insuperably " laic ;" the separation of temporals
from spirituals, and the empire of the laity in
public affairs, are consummated and dominant
facts, not to be attacked, or even menaced, with
out occasioning throughout the whole frame
work of society an irritation and a disquietude,
perilous alike for Church and for State. Noth
ing in France at the present moment is more
fatal to the influence of religion than the chance,

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 77
or the appearance even, of ecclesiastical domi
nation. This chance and this appearance were,
under the Restoration, the plague of the Catho
lic religion and of the French clergy — a plague
the grave consequences of which are the more
to be deplored as it was neither very deep-
seated nor very formidable. It is a fact too
little remarked, that the clergy were not then
the principal authors of the faults which sub
sequently both they and religion had such
cause to rue. No doubt many inadmissible
claims, many unreasonable and offensive re
quirements, many rash expectations, proceeded
from the ranks of the clergy ; but there was in
all this more a suggestion of their past history,
or an unmeaning vanity, than a real and ardent
ambition ; even the clergy felt instinctively that
political power was not now suited to them,
and that France would no longer accept at
their hands as ministers even a Cardinal Riche
lieu or a Cardinal Mazarin. At first the contra-
revolutionary and non-ecclesiastical party in the

78 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
Chamber of 1815, and, afterward, the blind
fanatical coterie of the Court of Charles the
Tenth, hurried the clergy into their own vortex,
and compromised the cause of religion by
making its ministers instruments of their in
fluence and auxiliaries in their combats. The
ecclesiastics had not the courage to resist ; in
spite of their distaste for the new spirit which
was abroad, most of the bishops and of the
priesthood, warned by their experience in the
Revolution, would have preferred to remain out
of the sphere of politics, and to confine them
selves to the functions of their religious mis
sion, rather than to be constantly struggling
against popular opinions ; so, when any oppor
tunity presented itself to show their sympathy,
they hastened to embrace it. When, in 1824,
the bill of M. de Villele for the conversion of
the "Rentes" created a great stir among the
" Bourgeoisie " of Paris, it was the Archbishop
of Paris, M. de Quelen, who constituted himself
in the Chamber of Peers the principal organ of

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 79
the Opposition; and when, in 1828, the move
ment of public opmion and of the magistracy
against the religious congregations wrested from
the King (Charles the Tenth) the Ordonnances
of the 21st June, the Bishop of Beauvais,
M. Feutries, at that time the Minister of Eccle
siastical Affairs, did not hesitate to countersign
them. The members of the priesthood live in
close contact with the people, and cannot long
remain in ignorance of the real state of their
opinions, or long persist in holding them
lightly. The French clergy, as a whole, were
more resigned to the new state of society than
.King Charles the Tenth and his intimate
friends; the false ideas and the unreasonable
political pretensions of the monarch and of
the coterie which formed his court, far more
than the religious bigotry of the Church, occa
sioned the great faults committed under the
Restoration. At all epochs and in all parties some man is
always met with in whom are centered and per-

80 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
sonified whatever good sense, sound views, and
wise purposes there are in the party to which
he belongs. Such a man under the Restoration
and for the lay Legitimists was M. de Villele.
True to his friends, he nevertheless knew, or I
should rather say he promptly learned in public
life to understand, what France then actuaEy
was, and what qualities, to be successful, her
government should possess. If he had had
toward his party and his king as much in
dependence and firmness in action as he had
correct appreciation in thought, he might per
haps have obtained a more complete and more
lasting success. The clergy on their side also
had at this epoch a faithful representative of
whatever religious or political sagacity existed
in the French Church : it is here to the Abbe
Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis, that the
honor and the merit belong. His task was
far easier than that of M. de Villele, for he was
never put to any trial : he had no struggle to
sustain ; he remained naturally, or kept himself

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 81
voluntarily, out of the arena of events and of
parties; but it was in this precisely that he
showed his good sense, and his correct apprecia
tion of the permanent interests and the real
dispositions of the clergy of his time. Neither
as theologian, nor as orator, nor as statesman
was the Abbe Frayssinous a man of emmence, or
remarkable for power of intellect; but in the
different phases of his career, in his personal
conduct, and in his writings, he had an unerr
ing instinct of what was just and possible, and
showed no common tact in retiring with dig
nity from untenable positions, and escaping from
questions that he could not settle. Upon these
occasions he would confine himself to his mis
sion of a priest and moralist of the Christian
religion. From 1803 to 1822 he held, suspend
ed, and resumed in the Church of St. Sulpice,
his " conferences upon religious subjects ;" re
markable not only by a judicious defense of the
great truths of Christianity, but by a continuous,
although somewhat timorous, effort to place the
6

82 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
doctrines of the Church in harmony with the
principles of natural justice and of civil liberty.
He was not, like the Pere Lacordaire or M. de
Montalembert, a Catholic Liberal; he was a
priest — moderate and equitable, not from luke-
warmness in his faith, but from respect to legal
rights and human sentiments. Although his
" conferences " had not the success and popula
rity that distinguished later, in Notre-Dame,
those of the Pere Lacordaire, they attracted a
numerous auditory, and exercised material in
fluence in giving to the awakening of Chris
tianity a wider range and a firmer basis.* In
his work upon the true principles of the Gal-
lican Church, the Abbe Frayssinous manifested
the same moderate and conciliatory spirit — not
* The " conferences " of the Abbe Frayssinous at St. Sulpice
have been published under this title : Defense du Chris
tianisme, ou conferences sur la religion. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris :
1825. The Abbe Frayssinous published also in 1818 a work
with the following title : Les vrais principes de 1'eglise gal-
licane sur la puissance ecclesiastique, la Papaute, les Liberies
gallicanes, la Promotion des eveques, les trois Concordats, et
les Appels comme d'abus.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 83
always tracing principles to their sources, but
never pushing facts or ideas to their extreme
consequences; while remaining the faithful
servant of the Church he showed himself also
rather the friend of Christian peace than the
jealous advocate of ecclesiastical power. His
mode of life was as modest as his opinions ; he
never made power his aim, neither did he ever
seek for honors, whether political, ecclesiastical,
or academic ; he declined them even when with
in his reach. He joinecl the Cabinet in 1824,
as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and of Pub
lic Instruction ; he withdrew from it in 1828,
when the mounting wave of Liberalism de
manded that a more vigorous policy should be
adopted against the religious congregations
than the pupil and orator of St. Sulpice was
willing to sanction. He neither had the quali
ties necessary for governing the French clergy,
nor did he pretend to govern them; but he
represented them, nevertheless, in all their more
irreproachable and prudent opinions. Unfor-

84 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
tunately, mere common sense and prudence do
not suffice more in the Church than in the
State to save nations from the consequences of
their faults of omission and commission; for
this object, higher qualities are necessary as
well as more rude efforts.
It was one of the first effects of the Revo
lution in 1830, to make visible to all the injury
that the faults of their friends, rather than the
blows of their adversaries, had inflicted, under
the Restoration, upon the clergy, and through
the clergy upon religion. The acts of violence
which, during the revolutionary crisis from 1830
to 1832, were directed at the Churches — the
crosses thrown down, the insulting cries, and
antichristian manifestations; a little later, the
riot before the church of St. Germain l'Auxer-
rois, on the occasion of the service celebrated on
the anniversary of the death of the Duke de
Berri — the archiepiscopal palace ruined and
pillaged — the church broken into and closed —
the menaces directed at the priests — what were

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 85
all these deplorable acts but the explosion of a
popular reaction, provoked by the share a part
of the clergy had taken in favor of a retro
grade policy— of a return to the ancient regime
and to absolutism? Violent men profited by
this reaction to satisfy their impiety and licen
tiousness, but they could never have excited the
movement or made it successful had they
hoisted their own banner ; there must be some
little truth before a populace will suffer itself to
be so misled ; and the crowd who in February,
1831, so furiously rose in insurrection before
St. Germain l'Auxerrois, would have paused in
astonishment had it perceived that what it was
so brutally attacking and destroying was — not
the ancient regime, not absolutism — but reli
gion and liberty.
To put an end to this confusion, full at once
of deception and of peril, but a single thing
was required: to banish from the Church, and
from its relations with the State, worldly am
bition and influences, and to replace them by

86 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
influences of a moral description ; instead of a
political banner, they should have only hoisted
the banner of religious faith and liberty of con
science. That was the great work, or, to use a
better expression, the great progress, which
from 1830 to 1848 was aimed at and accom
plished. The efforts made and the debates instituted
at this epoch by the most eminent champions
of the Church are remarkable, because they no
longer proposed to restore any fragment of its
ancient power, but to insure to it its place and
its share in the new public institutions of
liberty. The little militant party of Catholic
Liberals quitted the arena of the ancient polit
ical regime, and took up their position on that
of the new constitution, claiming for the Church,
for its ministers, and for its faithful subjects,
the exercise of all the rights and the free devel
opment of all the power that, under the consti
tution, either belonged, or ought to belong, to
all citizens. They made no reservation of

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 87
opinion, no effort more or less covert, in further
ance of any pretensions of bygone times,
whether dynastic, aristrocratic, or theocratic;
the frank acceptance of the present age and
actual society, provided that Christian faith,
Christian morals, and Christian institutions,
might have free room to work ; such was, in the
midst of all the factions and political plottings
of this period, the constant attitude of the
Catholic Liberal party, that is, of M. de Montal
embert, the Pere Lacordaire, M. Charles Lenor-
mant, Frederic Ozanam, and of the friends in
small number grouped arottnd them.
Whoever feels astonished that their number
was so small, shows little acquaintance with our
country or our times. The enterprise which they
undertook was singularly bold and difficult ; to
drag France out of its rut of incredulity and
irreligion, and at the same time to extricate
Catholicism from its rut of impolicy, its alliance
with absolutism, its timorous immobility in the
presence of liberty; to proclaim and simulta-

88 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
neously to defend, in spirituals, the Christian
faith, and, in temporals, the regime of liberty.
Certainly in France, and in the 19th century,
the devotion of men to such a task supposes an
enthusiasm and an energy of conviction of which
few are capable; and if the new Christian
Liberals flattered themselves that success would
be easy, events must soon have disabused them.
Attacked with ardor by the opponents of all
religion, they were also assailed by Catholics
devoted to the ancient regime of the Church,
and alarmed at the new system pressed upon
their acceptance. The former of these two
attacks caused the Catholic Liberals neither
surprise nor embarrassment; but the latter
brought with it bitter annoyance and disappoint
ment, for they found directly opposed to them
members of their own faith. Soon they were
to have as their adversary a man who, by his
vigorous talents — employed with equal violence
against the incredulous of all shades of opinions,
and against the Catholic Liberals too — exercised

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANOE. 89
an influence upon a great number of Catholics,
whether of the laity or priesthood, and indis-
posed them to any reconciliation with that
modern society which he irritated still more
against them. I knew M. Veuillot at the com
mencement of his literary career, when he ac
companied General Bugeaud to the seat of his
government in Algeria. At this epoch he ad
dressed to me two memorials upon the subject
of the moral condition of the colony and of the
army. They struck me by their decided tone,
and the straightforwardness and candor with
which he expressed sentiments already distin
guished by devotion. Already he regarded the
religion of his own Church, and of it alone, as
the sure basis of human morality and social
order; but he had not yet proclaimed as his
doctrine the deplorable error that Faith enjoins
war upon Liberty. He merited a better under
standing of the cause of Christianity ; he merited
to be a better advocate of the Church at Rome
than an advocate who, although one of its most

90 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
devoted defenders, has yet most injured the
cause that he sought to serve.
These political revolutions and these domes
tic dissensions left, in the period that ensued
after 1830, the Catholic Church in a difficult
situation, but in one salutary for it and fruitful
of consequences. The clergy no longer counted
on the favor of Government, but they had at
the same time to fear from it neither violence
nor hostility. Left to themselves, they felt the
necessity of independent existence, and saw that
they must replace credit with the authorities by
influence with the country; and this influence
they were likely to obtain. If they did not
possess all the privileges which they coveted,
they had enough to enable them every day to
conquer additional powers, supposing them
willing and sagacious enough to take the
trouble and employ the right means. In my
opinion, they did not do at this epoch, in the
interest of religion and of the Church, all that
their position permitted, or all that their mis-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY" IN FEANOE. 91
sion required at their hands; but temporal or
spiritual governors, layman or priests, who ever
did, I do not say what he ought, but what he
could have done? The greater part of the
bishops and of the priests were vacillating and
timorous; the problem before them went be
yond their opinions, and the events beyond their
strength; the impetuous Liberalism of M. de
#Iontalembert and of his friends disquieted
them; they saw in him rather a valiant champion
than a representative they could rely upon.
Among those who joined with him in the
struggle for the freedom of instruction, there
were some who showed, with reference to the
Government of 1830 and the University, little
fairness or prudence: these injured the cause
rather than served it. Whether from submis
sion to orders from Rome, or from their natural
impulse, the clergy, taken as a whole, showed
little taste for liberty ; even while they demand
ed it, they were rather inclined to immobility
than progress. But whatever the fears and

92 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
hesitations of individuals, when the general
current of ideas and of popular opinions once
penetrates to the classes least disposed to enter
tain them, it never fails, whether they avow it,
or whether they even know it, to swell and to
advance. Around and among the clergy them
selves the spirit of progress and of liberty
gained ground, although by insensible degrees.
Here and there individual priests, like the Abb&"
Bautain, formerly a student with M. Jouffroy at
the Ecole Normale, and Professor of Philosophy
in the Faculty of Letters at Strasbourg, propa
gated in the Church the liberal movement,
forming for it in different places new centers of
action. The spirit which had awakened Chris
tianity manifested itself, too, in our great lay
establishments for the higher course of instruc
tion ; not always without check, but still with a
success the more conspicuous the more it was con
tested. In 1846, some disturbances, occasioned
by a thoughtless and puerile intolerance, made
by M. Lenormant, at that time my substitute

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 93
(suppleant) in the chair of Modern History at
the Faculty of Letters, determine to withdraw
from the Sorbonne, where he had made a cour
ageous avowal of his faith ; but M. Ozanam, the
worthy successor to the chair of M. Fauriel,
maintained in the same place the same prmciples
with a more successful perseverance, and with
such a depth of conviction and such a warmth
of emotion that sometimes he carried the feel
ings of his auditors away with him, and some
times commanded respectful attention even from
those most confirmed in their incredulity. And
while the spirit of Christianity was thus mani
festing itself in the free Faculty of Letters, the
teaching of the Faculty of Theology attested,
under that same roof, a notable progress in
knowledge and in Liberalism. The Abbe
Maret, in his lectures on the Dogmas of Religion,
the Abbe Frere, in his discourses on the Scrip
tures; the Abbe Dupanloup and the Abbe
Gerbet, in their lectures on Sacred Eloquence,
displayed not only a firm and active faith, but

94 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
views upon philosophy, history, and literature,
necessarily implying an aquaintance with the
works of human science, and an appreciation of
the rights of liberty. Ecclesiastics and laymen,
not members of the scientific establishments of
the State, published, under the name of the
"Universite Cathobque," a series of courses in
which philosophy, history, natural sciences,
archaeology, and the arts were explained and
taught in harmony with the dogmas and sen
timents of religious men. And even far from
Paris, in several great episcopal seminaries, clas
sical and theological studies took a wider range,
and attained a scientific value that they had
not for a long time possessed.
" Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being
alone," says the Apostle St. James. Christianity
has borne abundant fruits since its awakening
at the commencement of this century. I have
before me the "Manual des (Euvres et institu
tions de charite de Paris," pubbshed in 1862,
by order of the archbishop, M. Sibour. In-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 95
dependently of the establishments under the
direction of Government, I find in it 107 char
itable institutions or associations, of every
kind, originated and supported by zealous
Christians in the interval between 1820 and
1848. . Of these I will only cite some of the
prmcipal ones, to estabbsh their character and
their progress. In the year 1822 the idea struck
two poor servants at Lyons to make the rounds
of their parish and collect weekly one sou from
each person, in aid of the conversion of infidels.
This was the origin of the association called
"l'CEuvre de la propagation de la Foi," now
under the direction of two councils, composed
of members of the clergy and of the laity,
having their sittings, one at Lyons, the other at
Paris. The report published by this association
in June, 1824, showed for the two years, 1823
and 1824, a receipt of 80,000 fr., (3200Z.)
This association received in 1864 the sum of
5,090,041 fr. 48 cent., (203,60U 13*. 3^.,)
in which amount France alone figures for

96 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
3,479,290 fr. 65 cent., (139,1712. 12*. 6^.,) and
it divided 4,658,672 fr. 56 cent. (186,3462. 18*.
6\d.) among five hundred dioceses, and appro
priated those funds to the support of the Catho
lic missionaries in the five parts of the world.
It counted from the year 1852, 1,500,000 sub
scribers, and it distributed 170,000 copies of
its "Annals," (Annales de propagation de la
Foi,) which form a sequel to the "Lettres edi-
ficantes," and keep the Christian world informed
of their doings. In May, 1833, eight young
men, at the suggestion of Frederic Ozanam,
"wishing," said the Pere Lacordaire, "to give
one more proof of what Christianity can effect
in behalf of the poor, began to ascend to those
upper stories which were the hidden haunts of
the misery of their quarter. Men saw youths
in the flower of their age and fresh from school
regularly visiting, without any feeling of repul
sion, the most abject habitations, and conveying
to their unknown and suffering tenants a pass
ing vision of charity." Twenty years later, in

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANTTY IN FRANCE. 97
1853, Ozanam said at Florence, when on his
death-bed: "Instead of eight only, at Paris
alone we are two thousand strong, and we visit
five thousand families, that is to say, about
twenty thousand individuals, or a quarter of
the poor contained in that great city. The
conferences in France alone number five hund
red, and we have them too in England, in
Spain, Belgium, America, and even in Jeru
salem." Nine years afterward, in 1862, when
the Government, listening to mistaken counsels,
suppressed the General Council of the Con
ferences of St. Vincent de Paul, and by doing
so destroyed the central bond that kept the
society together, the latter counted more than
3000 local conferences; it consisted of about
30,000 members, who visited in their homes more
than 100,000 indigent families, and had already
introduced into the greater part of the principal
cities a system which exercised a control over
the interests of apprentices and of prisoners.
During the course of the same epoch the Sisters
7

98 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
of Charity, whose number, a century after their
foundation by St. Vincent de Paul, had not ex
ceeded 1500, already reached 18,000, of whom
16,000 were Frenchwomen ; and at this moment
they are plying throughout the world their
works of piety and charity. Another society,
"Les petites sceurs des pauvres," was founded
in 1845, in imitation of Jeanne Jugan, a poor
servant, a native of Brittany, who had been
just crowned by the French Academy. This
society receives and succors in their estabbsh-
ment nearly 20,000 aged men. Another associ
ation, "Les Freres de la doctrine Chretienne,"
which had in the year 1844, 468 schools, main
tains this year (1865) 920, and the number of
the pupils has increased from 198,188 to 335,382.
State and ecclesiastical documents attest, that
by concurring causes of encouragement on the
part of the State, of local subventions and of
private donations, ten thousand chinches have
been, during the last fifty years, built, rebuilt,
or suitably adapted for the performance of the

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 99
services of the Church of Rome. I might cite
many similar facts. In all the directions and
under all the forms in which piety and charity
manifest themselves, faith and liberty, and
faith and science have, since the awakening
of Christianity and since the cause of rebgion
has been separated from politics, drawn nearer
to one another, and faith and its manifestation
by charity have made a simultaneous advance
and a like progress.
Had the Government of 1830 remained
standing ; had State and Church each retained
reciprocally the same situation and the same
attitude, the facts to which I have just alluded
might have long remained unobserved. Society
does not, any more than individuals, render an
account to itself of the intimate relations of its
existence, or of the transformations to which
these give rise ; but Providence has its moments
when it suddenly lightens up the stage of the
world and reveals to all actors and spectators
the import and the effect of what is passing

100 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
around them. The Revolution of 1848 threw
upon the progress of the Catholic Church and
its relations with French society since 1830 the
clear light of such a revelation.
In this sudden subversion of all things, in the
presence of a republic extemporized upon the
ruins of three monarchies — the monarchy of
glory, the monarchy of tradition, and the mon
archy of pubbc opinion — in the midst of this
nation, suddenly insurgent and beyond either
its aim or expectation sovereign, what became of
the Church ? What did its ministers ? If some
of them participated in the current dreams, cer
tainly the majority were full of anguish and
alarm; they did not combat the new institu
tions ; they did not pretend to exercise any in
fluence for or against any party; they sought
only to purify the Republic by securing in it a
place for Religion; they did not stand aloof
from the people; they showed themselves, in
its great assemblages and in its fetes, planting
the cross of Jesus by the side of the tree of

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 101
liberty. Never did the Church stand so aloof
from pobtics ; never was she more modest in her
attitude; never less exacting — I will not say
more obsequious, as far as the Government or
the public was concerned ; never more absorbed
with her mission of piety and morality, what
ever the Government of France might be, and
whoever her masters.
And what in their turn was the conduct of
the people toward the Church ? I do not mean
to say that they confided in her, or showed her
much affection. The popular movement in
1848 was no doubt far from being religious;
and the ideas, acts, and language which pro
ceeded from it every instant, were well cal
culated to disturb and sadden the hearts of
Christians ; but religion and its ministers were
in no respect ill treated, insulted, or persecuted ;
their forms of worship were not interrupted:
when they showed themselves out of doors,
they were received with respect; and at the
sight of a virtuous archbishop mortally wounded

102 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
in the streets, in the very endeavor to appease
the civil war by the exhibition of the cross, a
painful stupor seized the people ; a pang of re
morse and of shame traversed those masses of
disbelievers at the sight of a martyr. It was
clear that in the interval between 1830 and
1848, although the Christian Church had not
aroused in the people either faith or sympathy,
that Church had at least won liberty and peace.
When the revolutionary fever had subsided,
when the Republic had given itself a chief, and
was waiting for a master, it was no longer in
the street, by popular impressions, but in the
Assemblies, and by the constituted authorities,
that the great questions of the day were put
and were solved. There, too, the progress,
which the Cathobc Church had made, became
immediately evident, and its gains were ascer
tained. It counted at this moment among
its most zealous servants a man new to public
affairs, who had entered political life as an ad
herent of the Legitimist Opposition to the

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 103
Monarchy of 1830, a man who accepted the
Repubbc, and had acquired in a few days a just
renown by his courageous resistance to anarchy.
By a choice, fortunate but at the same time un
foreseen, M de FaUoux became the Minister of
Pubbc Instruction and of Worship in the first
cabinet formed by the Prince President of the
Republic. The new minister immediately de
voted himself to the important measure that the
Catholic Church had had in view ever since the
year 1830, that is, to the complete establish
ment, under the sanction of the law, of the prin
ciple of liberty of instruction. He proceeded in
his task at once with intelhgence and boldness.
To prepare his project of law, he appointed a
numerous commission, and summoned to it the
most eminent men, who represented views and
interests the most diverse ; laymen and ecclesi
astics, Romanists, Protestants and philosophers,
Republicans, Legitimists, Orleanists and Bona-
partists, M. Thiers and the Abbe Dupanloup,
M. Cousin and M. de Montalembert, M. Saint

104 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
**¦
Marc Girardin and M Cochin, M. Cuvier and
the Abbe Sibour.*
M. Thiers was the president of this commis
sion, which sat during five months. It discussed
every question respecting the organization of
public instruction with a passionate ardor, and,
at the same time, with an earnest and sincere
desire to conciliate, by their resolutions, all
opinions. According to the character of the
times and the state of public sentiment, critical
and perilous situations precipitate men some
times to the commission of insane acts of
violence, and sometimes keep them within the
line of fairness and prudence. The project
of law which issued from the commission of
M. de Falloux had the merit of prudence. In
* The following is a complete list of the members of the
Commission, as given in the "Moniteur" of the 22d June,
1849: M. Thiers, president; MM. Cousin, St. Marc Girardin,
Dubois, the Abbe Dupanloup, Peupin, Janvier, Laurentie, Fres-
lon, Ballaguet, de Montalembert, Fresneau, Poulain de Bossay,
Cuvier, Michel, Armand de Melun, Henri de Eianeey, Cochin,
the Abbe Sibour, Roux-Lavergne, de Montreuil-Housset, and
Alexis Chevalier, secretary.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 105
making mutual concessions, the representa
tives of the different systems took good care to
protest that they did not renounce their peculiar
prmciples — a language which made sometimes
their resolutions have the air of a superficial
and incoherent compromise; but men could,
nevertheless, observe how conspicuous that
project was for its large and practical character,
and its respect for different rights; and they
could also see how the State, the Church, and
private estabbshments were left free to compete
in matters of public instruction. When this
project was discussed in the Legislative As
sembly, M. de Falloux was no longer minister ;
but the impulse had been given, and his measure
was out of danger ; his successor, M. de Parien,
too, gave it the support which it deserved ; and
after a discussion which occupied thirty-seven
sittings, the Assembly, by a strong majority,
passed the law, without introducing any im
portant modification. The Liberty of Instruc
tion was founded.

106 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Fifteen years have passed, and it subsists.
The State, the Church, private institutions
founded by laymen or by ecclesiastics, have
competed actively during all that period. Re
ligious congregations, Lazarists, Dominicans,
Oratorians, Jesuits, have in this struggle dis
played all the enthusiasm of faith, all the ardor
of reciprocal rivalry. The Jesuits, since the
year 1850, have opened twenty colleges for
secondary instruction, and have founded at
Paris, for courses of study preparatory to the
special schools, an estabbshment whose successes
have attracted the attention of the government
and of the pubbc; for it sends every year to
the Military Schools, the Polytechnic, Naval, or
Central, an extraordinary number of successful
candidates, who have passed with honor, al
though the competition has been extensive and
the examinations are severe. A great school,
founded by the Archbishop of Paris for the
higher branches of ecclesiastical study in the
ancient house of the Carmelites, has formed

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 107
priests who, in the public examinations and
theses, have proved themselves capable of
taking rank by the side of the best pupils of
the lay establishment of the "Ecole Normale
Superieure. " Everywhere the University has
encountered numerous and ardent rivals ; and it
has been at the same time in its own interior a
prey to painful trials. Under the pretext of an
interest for studies of a scientific and practical
nature, classical and philosophical studies have
been displaced and depreciated. At the very
moment that the University was losing its
privileges beyond, it saw its principles and its
organization shaken inside its walls.
Faithful to her 'convictions and traditions,
even while accepting the experiments and the
struggles that were forced upon her, the Uni
versity has surmounted perils from within and
rivalries from without ; on the one side, little
by little, it has returned to its system of a large
and solid teaching of the classics ; on the other,
the level of the studies in its principal establish-

108 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
ments has been raised, and the number of its
pupils has been ever on the increase. The
Lycees counted (in 1850) 19,300 ; they have
now (1865) more than 30,000 pupils. The
State has thrown open the career of instruction
to the Church, and has at the same time re
doubled its own sobcitude and success. Liberty
of instruction has calmed both the anxieties
of the rebgious party that made them demand
it, and those anxieties of the laity which that
liberty had inspired. It has given peace to the
State and to the Church, at the same time that
it has excited their emulation and stimulated
their progress.
© An incident which made some noise at the
time has, under the new regime, shown the
force of the Liberal spirit, and proved that,
when needed, it would have unforeseen defend
ers. Under the influence of a blind zeal, a
pious ecclesiastic, the Abb6 Gaume, demanded
by what right the literature of pagan antiquity
occupied the place it did in public teaching;

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 109
denounced it as "the devouring canker of
modern societies ; " and insisted that the Chris
tian classics should replace in our schools the
Greek and Latin classics. What was this but
to reject one of the great cradles of modern
civilization ; to condemn the renaissance of bt-
erature in the fifteenth century, as web as the
rebgious reform in the sixteenth century; and
to close to the minds of rising generations of
Christians the general history of the world!
This attack upon the system of public instruc
tion which had been in vigor during the last
four centuries in all the States of Christendom,
met from a part of the Romanists with a sym
pathetic reception : bishops, eminent for learning,
thanked its author; M. Veuillot constituted
himself his champion. But in the Catholic
Church itself, as web as in the University, the
fire of the defense silenced that of the attack ;
ecclesiastics, as eminent by their piety as by
their science, the Bishop of Orleans at their
head, proclaimed aloud their sympathy for the

110 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
comprehensive scheme and the liberal studies
which embrace all the fair works of man's intel
ligence. The Jesuits on this occasion set an
example of broad views and common sense;
they introduced no modification into the pro
grammes of their coUeges; the Peres Cahoux
and Daniel demonstrated their propriety, nay,
their necessity ; and the literature of the Greeks
and of the Romans has preserved in the educa
tion of Christians the place which it gained in
their history by the right of genius and by the
splendor of its productions.
Scarcely had this controversy on a bterary
and moral subject been settled, when questions
of far more gravity were raised, and more pro
foundly agitated Christian society. Christians
found themselves attacked simultaneously
upon scientific and upon pobtical grounds.
Men denied to the Christian Faith its reason
ableness and its vital sources — to the Church
of Rome its traditional and historical regime,
and the temporal power of its chief.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. Ill
Two things strike me in this double attack — ¦
on the one hand its timidity, yet gravity; on
the other, the powerful resistance which it en
counters. Nothing is less novel than a denial
of the supernatural character of Christianity, and
of its primitive facts, of its miracles, of the
divinity of its founder. The eighteenth century
carried on this war in a far more violent, rude,
and iniquitous spirit than the nineteenth cen
tury has done. M. Renan, in the attempt to
dethrone Jesus, has at least treated him with
admiration and respect; not from calculation,
I feel assured, but from the natural tone of his
mind. In our time, men have instincts and
tastes, at once inconsequent and prudent; at
the very time when they engage in a deadly
struggle they affect to carry thither the cool
impartiality of spectators; they flatter them
selves that they unite the acumen of the critic
to the feeling of the poet. The skeptic shows
no disinclination to play the mystic; and the
erudite man strives to cover with the vail of

112 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
fancy the ruin that he makes. Hume was a
more stubborn skeptic, and Voltaire an enemy
more daring. If I pass from philosophy to
pobtics, and from books to events, I observe
the war undergoing a similar transformation.
What a contrast between the attacks of the
Directory and the Emperor Napoleon the First
upon the Papacy, and the circumspect and hesi
tating treatment of which, in spite of the blows
that it receives, the Papacy is in these days the
object? Are we to conclude that the general
course of events has changed, and that the flood,
which for a century whirled Europe along, is
arrested and subsiding ? Certainly not : there
are abundant facts to prove the contrary.
Whether regarded as a rebgious or a pobtical
question, whether considered as affecting opin
ions or interests, the contest between authority
and liberty, between faith and incredulity, is
carried on more earnestly and more systemat-
icaby now than ever : principles on each side
are pushed to their extreme consequences, and

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 113
contrasted in a manner never before the case.
But experience imposes a restraint upon men
even where it does not change them. In the
years of internal order which the Empire in
sured, and in the years of liberty to which the
constitutional Monarchy gave the sanction of its
laws, the different parties learned to appreciate
the obstacles with which they had to contend,
and to measure their own strength and that of
their opponents: they now know that every
thing is not possible to them ; and necessity has
inculcated a certain amount of equity and good
sense. The experience of the past, as web as
that of each day, convinces them of their ina-
bibty to insure a complete success to their
systems and their designs. Its adversaries
thought Christianity expiring; but they soon
saw that it was still fub of life : while they
express their surprise and persevere in then
warfare, they admit its practical influence, ren
der homage to its moral value, and strive,
although they contest its rights, to appropriate

114 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
to themselves the inheritance of its blessings.
The wind has often blown from the right
quarter for Cathobc Absolutists during this
century ; they have enjoyed the favor of more
than one master, and more than once they have
requited him by devoted services. More than
once, also, they have obtained from the supreme
head of their Church official declarations, which
have been used by them against the Catholic
Liberals. The Absolutists, nevertheless, have
not succeeded in changing the tendency of
Christian societies; they have arrested the
course neither of ideas nor events ; their defeats
have cost them dearer than their victories were
worth ; and in spite of the obstinate infatuation
of parties, I doubt whether they themselves
believe in the progress of their cause. And
how often has the Papacy itself in our days
been insulted and despoiled? Has it not even
been vanquished and expebed? Still, in spite
of what it has suffered, sometimes from revo
lutions, sometimes from arbitrary power, it has

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 115
outlived not only the triumphs of its enemies,
but its own impolitic measures: and at this
day, assailed by freethinkers in spirituals, by
ambitious neighbors in temporals, menaced
with abandonment even by its protectors, it is
more energetically defended and efficaciously
supported than it ever was at the commence
ment of this century in its reverses. Pius VH.
never received such pecuniary contributions as
have been forwarded to Pius IX. in his neces
sities; and if the French bishops were now
summoned to a council, their conduct would,
beyond doubt, be more dignified and more in
fluential than was that of their predecessors in
1811. Why such changes in a situation itself in
effect unchanged? Whence these hesitating
measures, this embarrassed attitude of the ad
versaries of the Christian faith and of the Chris
tian Church? What cause at the same time
gives such boldness and even success to their
defenders ?

116 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
Each age has its own peculiar and charac
teristic mission, and one from which it cannot
escape ; • every human being has his share in it,
whether he knows it or not. As a consequence
of the truths and the errors, of the good and
evil, of the triumphs and reverses of the pre
ceding centuries, the nineteenth century has
before it a special task, which will employ all its
energies, and which wiU also, I hope, constitute
its glory. It has both in the State and in the
Church found the two supreme forces that pre
side over man's life, and over that of society,
Authority and Liberty, in violent conflict, in
turn intoxicated with victory, or vanquished,
ruined. It is the mission of the nineteenth cen
tury to make them bve together, and bve in
peace; or at least in an antagonism entailing
upon neither any mortal danger. The recogni
tion of, and respect for, authority; the accept
ance and guarantee of freedom ; these are the
imperative necessities which our age is cabed
upon to feel and to satisfy, both in State and

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 117
Church. Nor does this imply, as is often pre
tended, any inconsistency or any compromise of
principle or any pobcy of expedients ; it is not
by inconsistency that great questions are set
tled, it is not by expedients that we content the
cravings of men's souls, or calm the anxieties of
human society ; for mankind yields genuine sub
mission and feels real confidence only where it
believes in the existence of truth and justice.
The recognition, veneration, and guarantee of
the different rights which co-exist naturally
and necessarily in human societies — of the
rights, both of individuals and of the State —
of the rights of rebgious society and of civil
society — of the rights of little local societies
as web as of the grand general society — of the
rights of conscience as web as of tradition — of
the rights of the future as web as of those of
the past — these are the dominant prmciples of
which the nineteenth century has to insure the
triumph. Triumphs assured, if Liberals and
Christians are both of them determined to

118 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
accompbsh it ! Notwithstanding ab the violent
emotions of party, and of ab our differences on
intebectual and social subjects, the conscious
ness of this situation is ever before our minds ;
and whether we admit it or not, the albance of
the liberal movement with the movement of
awakened Christianity, is the grand measure
and the grand hope of the day.
A Catholic priest, now a bishop, inquiring
the origin of the actual disputes of rebgion, and
their probable issue, expresses himself as fol
lows: — "Free institutions, freedom of con
science, political liberty, civil bberty, individual
liberty, liberty of families, of education, and of
opinions, equality before the laws, the equal
division of imposts and of public charges, these
are ab points upon which we make no difficulty;
we accept them frankly ; we appeal to them on
solemn occasions of pubbc discussion; we ac
cept, we invoke the prmciples and the bberties
proclaimed in 1789; even those who combat
those principles and those liberties admit that

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 119
liberty of religion and free education have
become acknowledged, self-evident truths — (des
verites de bon sens)." *
This Cathobc, this bishop, is no timorous
priest, disposed to make every sacrifice for the
purpose of concibation. It is the same priest,
who, from the first attack made upon the con
stitution of the Catholic Church, has always
distinguished himself by the warmth and ability
with which he has defended it. The Papacy, its
rights, its temporal independence and spiritual
sovereignty never had a champion more resolute,
more opposed to weak concessions or fabacious
compromises, more constantly intrepid in the
breach than the Bishop of Orleans.
When the contest was warmest, the Pope
(Pius IX.) pubbshed his "Encyclical" of the
8th of December, 1864. Exempt from every
feeling of prejudice and hostibty, and having
no connection or relation with the Papacy to
* De la Pacification religieuse. By the Abbe Dupanloup,
pp. 2G3, 294, 306. Paris, 1845.

120 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
make me pause, I feel no hesitation in saying
what I think of this document, at once the oc
casion and the pretext for such a stir. In my
opinion the error was a grave one. Regarded
as doctrine, the " Encyclical " was dignified and
yet embarrassed, positive and yet evasive; it
confounded in the same sweeping condemnation
salutary truths and pernicious errors, the prin
ciples of liberty and the maxims of bcentious-
ness ; it made an effort to maintain, in point of
right, the ancient traditions and pretensions of
Rome, without avowing in point of fact that
the ideas and potent influences of modern civil
ization were the objects of its declared and un
ceasing hostility. In a system like that of the
present day — a system of pubbcity and freedom
of discussion — this manner of proceeding, its
inconsistencies, its reticence, its obscurities,
whether arising from instinct or premeditation
have ceased to be good policy, and in fact serve
no purpose whatever. As a measure to meet a
particular emergency, the "Encyclical" of the

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 121
8th of December 1864 did not resemble that of
Gregory XVI. in 1832 ; it was not cabed for by
such extravagances as those of the Avenir, or
those of the Abbe de la Mennais; no urgent
necessity, no pubbc exigency required that
Rome should pronounce itself; the debate be
tween the Catholic Absolutists and the Catholic
Liberals was of ancient date, and was evidently
destined to long duration; the Papacy could
not flatter itself that it could put an end to this
contest by any peremptoriness of decision ; her
indulgent consideration was as due to the one
party as to the other. Doubtless the Catholic
Liberals had not shown less zeal for her cause,
nor had the services which they had rendered
been less important; it was not a moment of
peril for Rome, and Rome was bound in justice,
without any open declaration at least, to main
tain toward them an attitude of reserve. The
party, even before the publication of the "En-
cycbcal," had earned, as it stib merits, her grati
tude and her esteem ; neither M. de Montalem-

122 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
bert, nor the Prince Albert de Broglie, nor
M. de Faboux, nor M. Cochin, nor any of their
friends had imitated the example of the Abbe
de la Mennais ; nor has one of them shown sub
sequently any irritation, or even uttered a word
of complaint ; they have maintained a respectful
silence. The Bishop of Orleans has done even
more. A man of action as web as of faith, he
thought in the midst of the storm excited by the
"Encyclical" of the 8th of December, that he
was bound to consider the perils rather than the
faults, and that it became a priest who had sup
ported liberty to support authority also when
the object of attack. He threw himself into
the arena to cover the Papacy at aU hazards
with his valiant arms : after having played the
part of a sagacious counselor, he played that of
a faithful champion, and he inflicted upon her
adversaries blows so sturdy, that the latter were
in their turn obbged to put themselves upon
their defense, even in the midst of the success
that the. " Encyclical " had insured them.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 123
The Bishop of Orleans is probably reserved
for many other struggles ; he may even be hur
ried by a warlike temperament to carry the war
into a field where it is uncabed for ; but I shab
be both surprised and grieved if he do not
always remain what he is at this moment in the
Church of France, the most enlightened repre
sentative of its mission, moral and social, as
web as the most intrepid defender of its true
and legitimate interests.
Whether the matter in debate concerns relig
ious or social affairs and contests, parties are
dable to two errors of equal gravity : they may
misapprehend their respective perils, or their
respective strength. Wisdom consists in a just
appreciation of these perils and of these forces,
and it is upon such an appreciation precisely
that success itself depends. The actual perils
to which Catholicism is exposed are evident to
all. It owes its development and its constitu
tion to times essentially different from the
present. It adapts itself with reluctance to

124 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
the principles required and the demands made
upon it in this age. Its antagonists think and
assert that it wib never so adapt itself. Most
of the lookers-on, who are indifferent or vacil
lating — and their number is great — incline to
bebeve its antagonists in the right. This is the
trial through which Catholicism is at this
moment passing. To pass through it triumph
antly, it has two great forces to rely upon ; the
one is, the reaction in favor of rebgion occasioned
by the folbes and the crimes of the Revolution,
the other is, the bberal movement that took
place among the Catholics after the faults of
the Restoration, and the new opening made for
them by the Government of 1830. The Con
cordat built up again the edifice of the Cathobc
Church ; Liberalism is laboring to penetrate its
sanctuary, and, without impairing its faith, to
obtain for it once more the sympathies of civil
government. Let sincere Cathobcs reflect web
upon their course, for here is their main stay,
here their best chance for the future ; let them

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 125
maintain with a firm hand the- strong constitu
tion of their Church, but accept frankly, and at
once claim, their share also in the bberties of
their age; let them take care of their anchors
and spread their sails, for this is the conduct
prescribed to them by the supreme interest,
which should be their law, the future interests,
I mean, of Christianity.
The time has been short, but the experiment
has been made and is successful I have now
enumerated the principal events connected with
religion which have taken place in the course
of this century in the bosom of the Catholic
Church of France. In spite of the obstacles,
the oscibations, the deviations, and the faults
that are remarkable, the awakening of Chris
tianity is evident. Under the influence of the
causes which I have pointed out, Christian faith
has evidently made progress ; Christian science,
progress ; Christian charity, as shown by works,
progress; Christian force, progress; progress
incomplete and insufficient but still progress,

126 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
real, and full of fruit, symptomatic of vital
energy and future promise. Let not the ene
mies of Christianity deceive themselves ; they are
waging a combat of life and of death, but their
antagonist is not in extremis !

II. AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
I pass without any transitional stage from
the awakening of Christianity in the Roman
Catholic Church to the awakening of Chris
tianity in the Protestant Church. What need
of a transition ? I am not quitting the Christian
Church. With respect to their claims as Chris
tians, Protestant nations have been put to the
test. They have had, like Catholic nations, to
pass through violent struggles, to combat evil
tendencies, to undergo perilous trials; but the
peculiar characteristic of Christianity, the simul
taneous action of faith and of science, of
authority and liberty, has received a glorious

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 127
development in the bosom of Protestant nations.
England and Holland, Protestant Germany,
Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United
States of America, have had their vices, their
crimes, their sufferings, and their reverses ; but,
after all, these States have in the last four cen
turies labored with effect at the solution, in a
Christian sense, of that grand problem of
human society — the moral and physical progress
of the masses, as web as the political guarantee
of their rights and bberties. And in these
days the States to which I have abuded resist
effectually the shocks — now of anarchy, now of
despotism, which alternately trouble the peace
of Christendom. As for the Christian Faith
itself, if, in Protestant countries, it does not
escape the attacks elsewhere made upon it,
neither is it without its powerful defenders and
faithful followers. In those countries, Christian
Churches are fub of adherents, and the cause of
Christianity finds every day valiant champions
to devote to its service the arms which science

128 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
and liberty supply. There is on the part of
the Romanists a puerile infatuation upon this
subject, which makes them absolutely close
their eyes to facts ; by an error fatal to them
selves, they persist in imputing the ferment
ation in society, and the abandonment of relig
ion, to the influence of the Protestant nations
— nations among whom these two scourges
are combated with at least as much resolution
and effect as elsewhere. It is not my wish to
institute disparaging comparisons, or to foment
a rivalry opposed to the spirit of Christ's re
ligion. Protestantism is not, in Christendom,
the last, neither is it the sole bulwark of Chris
tianity; but there exists none that is stronger,
that offers fewer weak points to assabants, or
that is better provided with faithful and able
defenders. At the commencement of this century, and in
the years which followed the promulgation of
the Concordat, the Protestants, like the Catho-
bcs in France, thought only of the re-establish-

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 129
ment of their worship and of the bberty of their
faith. A bberty the more precious in their
eyes, as it fobowed upon two centuries of perse
cutions and of sufferings of which we cannot, in
these days, read the accounts without mingled
sentiments of astonishment, of indignation, and
of sorrow. Faithfully should men guard the
memory of such outrages; they would be in
finitely better than they are if they had always
present to their minds the vivid pictures of the
iniquities and woes which fill the page of their
history; and evils would not so soon recur if
they were not so soon forgotten. The system
of Terrorism under the Revolution had con
founded Catholic and Protestant in a common
oppression ; it had abobshed the forms of wor
ship of each, denied ab free expression of
opinion to Christians ; and without distinction
condemned to the same scaffold the "pastors of
the desert" and the bishops of the Court of
Versaibes — Rabaut Saint-Etienne as web as the
nuns of Verdun. When this terrible regime
9

130 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
had ceased to exist, neither party had rebgiously
or politicaby any desires or pretensions that
were not extremely moderate: the one thing
regarded by ab as the sovereign good was, the
right to live without molestation and the bberty
to address their prayers to God in the light of
day. No other subject so seriously interested
them; and they heartily wished to show their
gratitude and deference to the Government,
which, while it gave security to their bodies,
permitted their souls to breathe freely. The
condition of the Protestants was in one sense
better than that of the Cathobcs, for the former
were now experiencing the joy, not only of a
deliverance but of a positive conquest ; they had
just escaped as web from the system of Terror
ism, as from the ancient regime ; they had lost
nothing to regret; no revengeful feeling made
them desire a reaction; their sole aspiration
w;Js for the consobdation of their rights, and of
their new acquisitions. " You who lived, as we
did, under the yoke of intolerance," (thus they

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 131
were addressed in 1807 by M. Rabaut-Dupuy,
formerly president of the legislative body, and
the last surviving son of one of their most es
timable pastors,) "you, the rebcs of so many
persecuted generations, behold ! compare ! It
is no longer in the desert and at the peril of
your bves that you render to the Creator the
homage which is his due. Our temples are
restored to us, and every day beholds new ones
erected. Our pastors are recognized as public
functionaries; they receive salaries from the
State ; a barbarous law no longer suspends the
sword over their heads. Alas ! to those whom
we have survived it was permitted, it is true, to
ascend Mount Nebo, and to obtain thence a
glimpse of the promised land, but it is we alone
who have taken possession."
What wonder if, on the morrow after the
Concordat, which had procured them the free
exercise of their faith and the impartiality of
the law, the Protestants acquiesced without dif
ficulty in the incomplete organization with

132 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
which the new system had left their Church,
and that they troubled themselves little with
the attacks made upon its independence and
its dignity !
But this modest enjoyment of their new priv
ileges did not render them indifferent to their
ancient belief, and they returned to the open
practice of Christ's faith simultaneously with
the acquisition of their liberty. In 1812, in the
midst of the profound silence which reigned
throughout the Empire, a professor of the
faculty of Protestant theology at Montauban,
M. Gasc, attacked, in his teaching, the dogma
of the Trinity. Earnest remonstrances were
instantly made from the general body of the
Protestants in France ; a great number of con
sistories, among others those of Nimes, of
Montpebier, Montauban, Alais, Anduze, Saint
Hippolyte, pastors and laity, addressed their
complaints, some to the " Doyen " of the faculty
of theology, others to M. Gasc himself, demand
ing, ab of them, the maintenance of the doc-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 133
trine of the Protestant Church. The grand
master of the University, M. de Fontanes,
"earnestly invited the professor not to depart
from it," and M. Gasc himself admitted that his
teaching ought to be in conformity. The spirit
which had animated the Reformation in France
in the sixteenth century was still bving in
the nineteenth ; and under the new-born sys
tem of bberty, the Awakening of Christianity
announced itself by a summons to the faith.
When, under the Restoration, France had re
gained her political liberty, it was not long
before that bberty bore its natural fruits in
French Protestantism ; it was accompanied, both
on rebgious and pobtical subjects, by the mani
festation of discordant ideas and discordant
tendencies, which were soon to struggle for vic
tory. As at epochs of great intebectual crises
eminent men emerge who represent dominant
ideas, so now M. Samuel Vincent and M. Daniel
Encontre immediately appeared in the Protest
ant Church: both were pastors, and each wor-

134 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
thily represented one of the two prmciples
which naturaby develop themselves in the bo
som of Protestantism, faith in traditions and
the right of private judgment ; principles dif
ferent without being contradictory; principles
which may subsist in peace provided they re
main respectively in their proper places, and
within the limits of their rights. M. Samuel
Vincent was a man of a mind remarkably com
prehensive and of great versatibty and fecundity;
but his habits at the same time were those of a
student, fitting him rather for intebectual medi
tation than qualifying him either for expansive
sympathies or for action ; he was versed in the
philosophy and erudite criticism of Germany, at
that time novel and rare to France ; he made
the essence of Christianity, according to»his own
expression, "to consist in the bberty of in
quiry."* He rejected aU written articles of
faith, every limited idea of religious unity, and
* Vues stir le protestantisme en France, par M. Samuel
Vincent. 3e edition, p. 15. Paris, 1859.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 135
claimed within the Church, for both pastors and
congregation, the greatest latitude in matters
of opinion and of teaching. But when he clung
closely to this view of the subject, and was
pressed to indicate the extreme point to which,
within the Church itself, the diversity of men's
individual beliefs might be carried, his embar
rassment became extreme, for he had too much
sense to admit that this diversity had no limit,
and that a Church, whether Protestant or not,
could exist without certain articles of faith
common to ab its members, and recognized by
them all. " Protestantism," said he himself,
" must not be merely a negation ; it should also
have its real and positive side ; it must be beyond
all things a religion ; that is to say, it must be
in the possession of the means to endure and of
the means- to edify men by the propagation of
a doctrine benevolent and Christian. . . . Chris
tianity is the basis of ecclesiastical teaching." *
* Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M. Samuel
Vincent, pp. 17, 22.

136 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
When, after having laid down this principle,
M. Samuel Vincent inquired how the Protestant
Church could remain a Church, and a Christian
Church, in the midst of the independence of
individual beliefs, he found no other way out
of the difficulty than "to determine," he said,
"by conventions, oral and unwritten, a certain
number of opinions that each man should, in
the interest of the general peace, be entreated
to keep to himself." * How strange a proceed
ing, how difficult of realization, to prescribe
with once voice silence and bberty ! M. Samuel
Vincent did not attempt to determine what
those opinions were which, in order to maintain
the existence of a Christian Church in the midst
of the broadest system of free inquiry, " each
man should be entreated to keep to himself."
As for himself, he professed his faith in the
supernatural, in the revelation of the Old and
of the New Testaments, in the inspiration of
the Scriptures, in the divinity of Jesus Christ ;
* Vues sur le proteetantisme en France, p. 24.

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 137
in the grand historical facts as web as in the
moral precepts of the Gospel; he was one of
the pastors, too, who signed the remonstrance
of the consistory of Nimes, for the irregularity
in preaching of which Professor Gasc had been
guilty. Did M. Samuel Vincent regard every
opinion contrary to these great evangebcal doc
trines as an opinion which each man should, in
the interest of the general peace, be entreated
to keep to himself? I doubt whether he would
have dared to engraft upon the liberty of judg
ment such a reservation; but I doubt at the
same time if he would have persisted in regard
ing as true and faithful pastors of the Protest
ant Church, men who should have openly
deserted and combated, in its most essential
foundations, that Christian faith which he
himself professed. He dreaded almost equaby
"unity defined," and "dissent declared." He
would have remained in the embarrassment
into which those inevitably fall who neither
accept one basis and manifesto of a common

138 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
faith, nor admit the moral necessity of a sepa
ration into free and distinct Churches when a
common faith does not exist.*
No such embarrassment was experienced by
M. Daniel Encontre when he began his career
to serve the movement of awakened Christianity
in the bosom of French Protestantism. I wib
not venture here to cite the precise words, harsh
and severe, employed by him on the 13th of
December, 1816, at Montauban, in his capacity
of "Doyen" of the faculty of Protestant The
ology, respecting those termed by him "the
pretended ministers of the Gospel, disbelievers
in the Gospel and in the divinity of Jesus
* The principal works of M. Samuel Vincent are :
1. Vues sur le protestantisme en France, premiere edition.
2 vols. 8vo. 1829. A second edition, in 1 vol. 12mo., was
published in 1859 by M. Prevost-Paradol.
2. Observations sur l'unite religieuse et observations sur la
voie d'autorite appliquee a la religion, (1820,) contre l'Essai
sur l'indifferance en matiere de religion de l'Abbe de la Men
nais. 3. Meditations ou recueil de sermons, 1829.
4. Melanges de religion de morale et de critique sacree. A
periodical published from 1820 to 1825.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANOE. 139
Christ." He regarded harmony of faith and
language, harmony between shepherd and flock,
as the first law of religious society. Born in a
grotto of La Vaunage, to which his mother had
fled to escape from the flames of persecution;
devoted from his birth by his father, the Pastor
Pierre Encontre, to the service of a "preacher in
the desert," M. Daniel Encontre belonged to
that class of indomitable Protestants who cling
to their faith through ab the perils, sufferings,
and sacrifices which it entabs. His first steps
in life seemed to indicate in him other aptitudes,
and to promise for him a different career.
After having studied divinity at Lausanne and
at Geneva, and been consecrated by his father
himself to the ministry of the Gospel " in an as
sembly in the desert," he seemed to doubt his
own vocation; for whbe performing the func
tions of his ministry he devoted himself to the
study of mathematics, physics, philosophy, and
the classical languages, with an enthusiasm
eager to become familiar with every depart-

140 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
ment of knowledge, and encountering no hin-
derance from internal obstacles or from precon
ceived opinions. Having estabbshed himself
at Montpebier, where his taste for science found
subjects of gratification, he led there, during the
dark days of the Revolution, a life very obscure,
and at the same time most laborious; giving
lessons to the master masons upon stone-cutting,
imparting instruction, rendering the aids of
rebgion to Protestants, celebrating the baptis
mal and marriage services, and pursuing at the
same time his labors in geometry, botany, phi
losophy, divinity, literature, and even poetry.
When order began to be re-estabbshed, he was
led by his own natural tastes and the counsel
of his friends to select as his career that of
pubbc instruction. He competed for and ob
tained, first the appointment of professor of lit-
erature at the Ecole Centrale of Montpebier;
then that of the higher mathematics, at the
Lycee and in the faculty of science, of which he
was nominated " Doyen." As his merits estab-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 141
lished themselves by repeated proofs, his repu
tation increased ; the papers of learned societies
were filled with his contributions, and the Ecole
Polytechnique with his pupils. " I have met in
our department," said Fourcroy, "two or three
heads e'qual to his, but not one superior." M. de
Candobe gladly selected him to aid him in his
"Researches respecting the Botany of the An
cients ;" and M. de Fontanes has more than once
spoken of him to me as one of the men who
most honored the University. But in him,
neither the mathematician, the botanist, nor the
philologist took precedence of the Christian.
At one time as expounder of Moses and of
Genesis,* at another as a writer defending the
Apostles, accused of being a copyist of Plato, f
* Dissertation sur le vrai systeme du monde compare avec le
recit que Mo'ise fait de la creation. Montpellier, 1807.
t Lettre a M. Combes-Dounous, auteur d'un Essai historique
sur Platon. Paris, 1811.
A remarkable essay of M. Daniel Encontre, " sur le Peche
original," was published, after his death, in 1822, and he left
a great number of manuscripts, among others a " Traite sur
l'Eglise," (600 pages,) written in Latin ; " Etudes theologiques,"

142 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
he neglected no occasion of placing his scientific
attainments at the service of Christianity ; and
when, in 1814, he was asked to quit Montpel-
lier, to abandon his habits, his tastes, and his
friends, for the chair of the professorship of
divinity at Montauban, where he was to fulfill
the functions of " Doyen," he sacrificed without
hesitation the enjoyment of his life to his relig
ious vocation, and appbed himself with unceas
ing energy to the warlike activity of a Christian
professor, until the day when, overcome by
fatigue and sickness, he accorded to himself the
melancholy satisfaction of returning to Mont
pebier, in order to die near the tomb of a be
loved daughter, who had long aided him in his
labors. a Hebrew Grammar, a " Cours de philosophie," a " Cours de
litterature Frangaise," a "Flore biblique," several "Memoires
de mathematiques transcendantes," etc. As a teacher of trans
cendental mathematics at Montpellier he had as pupil M.
Auguste Comte, the head of the " Ecole positiviste," who, in
spite of the profound diversity of their opinions, regarded it as
a duty to dedicate to him in 1856 his treatise, " Sur la Synthase
subjective," in testimony of admiration and of gratitude.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 143
The destinies of Protestantism in France
have, to a singular degree, been at once varied
and uniform, confused and simple. After
having in the sixteenth century vabantly dis
puted the victory, it was vanquished, decimated,
expebed. But it resisted, and survived not
only its defeat, but the gradual process of its
enfeeblement and its expulsion. In the course
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the
French Protestants lost the protection of the
laws, their secure sanctuaries, their great chiefs,
their great divines, their great writers; but
they preserved nevertheless their faith and their
religious honor. In the times that ensued
their successors remained faithful to the belief
and the customs of their fathers; even perse
cuted and condemned to death, having their
property confiscated, or become tenants of
prisons and laborers in the gabeys, they found
in their very sufferings a resource to confirm
them in the principles of Protestant piety.
Theological controversies died away from

144 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
among them, leaving behind them the funda
mentals of Christianity — bving and guiding
prmciples. k
Among the higher and wealthier classes, the
philosophical ideas of the eighteenth century
made also their way; the great liberal move
ment filled the Protestant section of the nation
with joy, and commanded its sympathy without
detaching it from its rebgious habits and tradi
tions. In its members faith had ceased to be
erudite ; the popular Protestant sentiment had
been always profoundly bibbcal and evan
gelical. Freer and more fortunately situated
than their fathers, the French Protestants now
anxiously desired to remain, as they had been,
Christians; and when, in 1790, Rabaut Saint-
Etienne, who succeeded the Abbe de Montes
quieu as President of the Constituent Assembly,
wrote to his aged father, the Pastor Paul
Rabaut, "The President of the National As
sembly is at your feet," he manifested to the
humble and zealous preacher in the assembbes

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 145
of the desert, the pride at once of a politi
cian, the piety of a son, and the fidelity of a
Protestant. M. Daniel Encontre was, at the commence
ment of the nineteenth century, the faithful
representative of this traditionaby religious
character of French Protestantism; just as M.
Samuel Vincent was the web-meaning and sin
cere introducer to it of the science and criticism
of the Germans. The former corresponded
more closely to the pious and national spirit of
Protestant France of the olden times; the
latter to the tendencies, at once novel and in
definitely latitudinarian, of a foreign philosophy
and a foreign erudition. Doubtless, neither
measured the range of the rebgious crisis of
which they were themselves the symptoms;
neither foresaw that within the bosom of Prot
estantism that crisis was to be marked by an
avowed struggle between Rationalism in its
progress and Christianity in its reaction.
This crisis began to manifest itself at Geneva.
10

146 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
The mocking skepticism of Voltaire, the rhetor
ical deism of Rousseau, proclaimed at its gates,
had deeply undermined the faith of Christ in
the very city of Calvin. It was not merely
some of the Calvinistic doctrines of the sixteenth
century that the pastors of Geneva doubted or
denied, but it was also the fundamental articles
of Christianity; they abandoned not only the
dogmas of predestination and salvation by
faith alone, but the dogmas of original sin,
and of the divinity of Jesus Christ. In 1810
according to some, as far back as 1802 according
to others, symptoms of an evangebcal reaction
showed themselves at Geneva among the
students in theology, some of whom afterward
became distinguished pastors or writers. It
was not long before MM. Gaussen, Malan, Gon-
thier, Bost, Merle d'Aubigne, displayed their
orthodox fervor and their abibty. In 1816 a
pious Scot, Mr. Robert Haldane, previously an
intrepid sabor, who had only quitted his calling
to devote himself entirely to the service of his

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 147
faith, went to Geneva, and contracted with the
young Methodists of that city relations of the
greatest intimacy and activity. They had meet
ings ; they discussed, they preached, they prayed,
they wrote. Mr. Haldane could hardly express
himself in French ; having his English Bible con-
tinuaby at hand, he turned over its pages inces
santly, pointed out to his friends the passages
that he regarded as decisive, invited them to
read them aloud from their French Bible, and
then commented upon them in a manner that
always commanded their favorable attention,
the conviction of the commentator had such
moving and persuasive power.*
In 1816 and 1817 the evangelical reaction
made rapid progress, and the body of Gene-
vese pastors resolved to combat it by the voice
of authority. They found, however, no better
method of doing so than by insisting upon
* Geneve religieuse au XIX si^cle : par le Baron de Goltz ;
traduit de Tallemand par C. Malan: 8vo., pp. 137-149. Geneve
et Paris. 1862.

148 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
what, twelve years later, even M. Samuel Vin
cent did not scruple to recommend; they pre
scribed silence even whilst they proclaimed
liberty. " Without " — these are their words —
"giving any judgment upon the questions
reaby involved, and without controbing in any
respect the liberty of opinions," they imposed a
solemn engagement both upon students de
manding to be consecrated to the sacred minis
try, and upon ministers candidates for pastoral
functions in the Church of Geneva. It was
conceived as fobows: "As long as we reside
and preach in the churches of the Canton of
Geneva, we promise to abstain from establishing,
either in entire discourses or in parts of dis
courses directed to this object, our opinion —
first, of the manner in which the divine nature
was incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ;
secondly, of original sin ; thirdly, of the mode
in which grace operates, or grace is efficient;
fourthly, of predestination. We promise also
not to combat, in any public discourse, the

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANOE. 149
opinion of any pastors or mmisters touching
these subjects."*
It is difficult to understand how men ever
could have flattered themselves with the hope
of re-establishing peace in the Church by the
employment of so sorry an expedient. Liberty,
that has rent asunder such heavy chains, does
not permit itself to be confined by so flimsy a
net. The immediate effect of the regulation of
the Genevese pastors was an outburst of dis
content. The more violent Methodists, MM.
Malan and Bost at their head, proclaimed aloud
their separation from the established Church;
the more moderate, among others, MM. Gaussen
and Merle d'Aubigne, persisted in remaining,
by right of their ministry, in its bosom, holding
themselves responsible representatives there of
the doctrines of the Reformation, which, in
fact, they did continue to preach and to teach.
The body of pastors at first used great for-
* Geneve religieuse au xix siecle : par le Baron de Goltz ;
p. 153.

150 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
bearanee toward them, and respected their bb
erty; and when the populace, irritated at the
agitation caused in families by the Dissenters,
and offended by the austerity of their precepts,
made hostbe demonstrations toward them, the
CouncU of Geneva had the wisdom and fairness
to use measures of repression; but, soon be
coming weary of this painful duty, the Councb
formaby forbade, without its express permission,
any book of rebgious controversy to be printed
at Geneva. The body of pastors soon pro
nounced as vehement a condemnation of the
moderate Methodists as of the ultra Dissenters.
The moderate Methodists then in their turn re
sorted to energetic measures in support of their
cause : they founded an evangelical society and
a school of theology; devoted the one to propa
gate the zeal and the other to teach the prin
ciples of the Christian reaction; and fifteen
years after the commencement of the struggle,
the chiefs of the party which had proclaimed
that the free divergence of individual bebef in

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 151
the bosom of the Church was " the great fact of
our epoch, and the great step that the Refor
mation had in our days to make" — these chiefs,
being the body of pastors, the Consistory, and
the Councb of State at Geneva, suspended M.
Gaussen from his functions of pastor in the
parish of Satigny for having taken part in the
organization of an independent form of worship,
and of a school of independent theology; "a
proceeding," they said, "incompatible with the
peace of the Church, and to be regarded as an
act of insubordination, tending to bring eccle
siastical authority into discredit." *
Such religious ferment in the primitive home
of the French Reformation, and at the very
gates of France, could not fab to exercise a
powerful influence upon the French Protestant
Church. On quitting Geneva in 1817, Mr.
Robert Haldane proceeded to Montauban,
where he formed friendships with some of the
* Geneve religieuse au XIX siecle : par le Baron de Goltz ;
pp. 379-384.

152 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Professors of the Faculty, and among others
with M. Daniel Encontre. He published there
also a work in French, which his friends hast
ened to circulate. It was styled "Emmanuel:
vues Scripturaires sur Jesus-Christ." In 1818,
a society formed in England, named the " Con
tinental Society," specially devoted itself to the
purpose of seconding on the Continent the
progress of this Christian reaction. An English
dissenter, Mr. Mark Wbks, pastor of the Amer
ican community formed at Paris, was the most
efficient agent of the societies which had this
object in view. "It might be said of Mr.
Wbks," wrote lately the Pastor Juiberat, " that
he might have governed an empire, his character
was so energetic, his mind so active and enter
prising. He brought me aid of every descrip
tion : money was required, he had money ;
pamphlets and books were wanted, no one was
better provided ; no one understood better the
details pertaining to the printing and publi
cation of papers." Several Protestant journals

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 153
and magazines, " La Voix de la Religion Chre-
tienne au XIX siecle," " Les Archives du Chris
tianisme au XIX siecle," " Les Melanges de Re
bgion, de Morale, et de Critique Sacree,"
" L'Evangebste," "La Revue Protestante," "Le
Semeur," etc., etc., were at this epoch success
ively founded and carried in different directions
throughout the scattered Protestant Church,
from its central organization, the fervor which
had there been kindled. Genuine zeal for re
ligion is not satisfied by action from a distance,
or by action upon unknown persons, or by in
direct means, as by books and by journals : it
demands direct oral communication from man
to man — the union of men's souls in common
prayer. Certain young pastors who had at
first shared in the evangelical movement at
Geneva, MM. Neff, Pyt, Bost, Gonthier, scat
tered themselves over France, some assuming
functions as local pastors, others as traveling
missionaries, attracting to their proximity
groups of zealous Protestants, animating the

154 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
lukewarm, and erecting in every place where
they made any stay bttle centers of Christianity,
which radiated to the neighboring country
around. Distinct associations, some officiaby
recognized by the State, others having no pubbc
character,* gave to the labors of isolated individ
uals the publicity, the unity, the permanence
which they required ; and a special organization
(colportage bibbque) which at its commence
ment numbered only seven, but a few years
afterward had sixty agents, ab of them, al
though obscure individuals, as zealous as their
patrons were zealous, caused the Holy Scrip
tures and rebgious tracts to penetrate into parts
of France hopelessly inaccessible to any other
method of communication and of instruction.
To a movement so earnest and so general
although propagated by a small number of per-
* La Societe biblique, la Societe pour l'encouragement de
l'instruction primaire parmi les protestants, la Societe evan-
gelique de France, la Societ6 des traites religieuse, la Societe
des missions protestantes, la Societe centrale pour les interets
protestants, la Societe d'evangelisation, etc.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 155
sons in the heart of a population itself forming
but a smab minority in the nation at large,
obstacles would inevitably occur. They were
encountered on ab hands and of ab kinds, rebg
ious and pobtical — from the administration,
from popular prejudices, from the distrust of
the Government, from the hostbity of the
Roman Catholic clergy, from differences of
opinion on theological points among Protestants
themselves, from the amour propre of indi
viduals, and the perplexed or timorous ideas of
subalterns in authority. The activity of the
Protestant societies created uneasiness in bishops
and priests, who strove not merely to counteract
their influence, but to interfere with their
liberty of action. Mayors of towns, judges of
the peace, sometimes too, magistrates and ad
ministrators of more elevated rank, lent their
aid to these exceptionable proceedings. Hence
arose suspicions, complaints, and struggles
which retarded the new-born impulse of awak
ening Christianity. But the earnest persever-

156 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
ance of its patrons, the general wisdom of the
supreme Government, and the authority, grow
ing more and more each day, of the principles
of justice and of bberty, graduaby surmounted
ab these obstacles. It was the Restoration that
recognized the chief Protestant societies and
gave them the sanction of the law. Under the
Government of 1830 they used their rights with
more confidence and fewer hinderances. The
equitable intentions of King Louis Phbippe and
of his counselors upon rebgious matters could
not be doubtful, whatever their caution not to
cause uneasiness or wound the susceptibibties
of the Roman Cathobcs. The Protestants now
believed it to be no longer necessary to look to
foreign support. Formed at Paris in 1833, the
Evangebcal Society of France experienced a
momentary impulse of national jealousy, the
result of which was some coldness in its rela
tions with the Continental Society of London;
but as soon as the latter perceived that its
direct interference was rather an embarrassment

AWAKENING OF CHEISTTANHY IN FEANCE. 157
than a necessity to the Christian reaction in
France; it withdrew its agency without with
holding its sympathy, and handed over to the
Evangebcal Society of France ab the "stations"
and rebgious charities which had up to that
time been founded by its exertions.
The awakening of Christianity among the
Protestants of France had now produced such
results that it mattered little who the patrons
of the movement might be ; it had assumed its
true character, and was drawing its strength
from the fountain of truth. In times of relig
ious incredubty and of rebgious indifference,
and even in the transitional times which imme
diately ensue, it is the error of many, and even
of men who respect and support religion, to
consider it in the light of a great political in
stitution — a salutary system of moral police,
however necessary to society, indebted for its
merits and its prerogatives rather to its practical
utibty than to its intrinsic truth. Grave error,
misconceiving both the nature and the origin

158 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
of religion, and calculated to deprive it both of
its empire and its dignity ! Utbity men hold as
of great account, but it is only truth that com
mands unconditional surrender. Utbity en
joins prudence and forbearance; truth alone
inspires feelings of confidingness and devotion.
A religion having no other guarantee for its in
fluence and its endurance than its social utbity
would be very near its ruin. Men have need of,
nay, they thirst for truth in their relations with
God, even more than in their relations with one
another; the spontaneous prayer, adoration,
obedience, suppose faith. It was in the very
name of the verity of the Christian religion, of
that verity manifested in its history by the
word and even by the presence of God, that the
awakening of Christians was accomplished
among us. The laborers in this great work
felt the faith of Christianity, and they diffused
it ; had they spoken only of the social utibty
of Christianity, they would never have made
the conquest of a single human soul.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 159
At first sight one is tempted to attribute this
success to energy of faith on the part of these
laborers in the cause, to the active" and devoted
perseverance of their zeal. Again a mistake !
Not that human merit was without its share in
the results ; but even where the faith was thus
propagated, the share that that faith itself had
in the result was infinitely greater, from its own
proper and inherent virtue, than any share of
men. Incredubty and indifferentism may dif
fuse themselves and pretend to dominate ; they
leave unsolved the problems that lie in the
depth of man's soul : they do not rid him of his
perplexities, of instinct or of reflection, as to the
world's creation and man's creation, the origin
of good and evil, providence and fate, human
liberty and human responsibbity, man's immor
tality and his future state. Instead of the
denials and the doubts that had been thrown
over these unescapable questions, those who
applied themselves fuby to rouse awakened
Christianity, recalled the human soul to the

160 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
memory of positive solutions of these questions ;
solutions in accordance with the traditions of
their native land, in accordance with their
habits as members of famines, and in harmony
with the recobections of early chbdhood ; solu
tions often contested, never refuted; always
recurring in the lapse of ages, and century after
century! It was from the intrinsic and per
manent value of the doctrines which they were
preaching, and not from themselves, that the
laborers in the work derived their force and
their credit.
They had another principle of force as web ;
a force born and developed in the bosom of the
Christian religion, and in that alone ; they had
the passionate desire to save human souls.
Men are not, they never have been, struck as
they ought to have been struck with the beauty
of this passion, or with its novelty in the moral
history of the world, or with the part that it
has played among Christian nations. Before
the era of Christianity, in times of Asiatic and

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 161
European antiquity, pagans and phbosophers
busied themselves about the destiny of men
after the close of their earthly life, and with
curiosity, too, did they sound the obscurity ; but
the ardent solicitude for the eternal welfare
of human souls, the never-wearying labor to
prepare human souls for eternity — to set them
even during this existence in intimate relations
with God, and to prepare them to undergo
God's judgments; — we have in ab this a fact
essentiaby Christian, one of the sublimest
characteristics of Christianity, and one of the
most striking marks of its divine origin. God
constantly in relation with mankind and with
every man, God present during the actual life
of every man, and God the arbiter of his
future destiny ; the* immortality of each human
soul, and the connection between his actual
life and his future destiny; the immense
value of each human soul in the eyes of God,
and the immense import to the soul of the
future that awaits it : these are the convictions
11

162 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
and the affirmations all impbed in the one pas
sion abuded to, the passion for the salvation of
men's souls, which was the whole life of our
Saviour Jesus Christ, which passed by his
example and by his precepts into the life of
his primitive disciples, and which, amid the
diversities of age, people, manners, opinions,
has remained the characteristic feature and
the inspiring breath of the genius of Christian
ity; breath which animated the men who in
our days labored, and with success, to revive
Christian faith among the Protestants of France !
Their zeal was employed in a very circum
scribed sphere; beyond it their names were
unknown, and unknown they have remained.
What spectators, what readers, what pubbc
knew at that time, or know even at this
moment, what manner of men they were or
what their deeds — those men who called them
selves Neff, Bost, Pyt, Gonthier, Audebez, Cook,
Wbks, Haldane? But who, I would ask, in
the time of Tacitus and of Pliny, knew what

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 163
manner of men they were, and what the deeds
of Peter, Paul, John, Matthew, Phbip — the un
known disciples of the Master, unknown him
self, who had overcome the world? Notoriety
is not essential to influence; and in the sphere
of the soul, as in the order of nature, fountains
are not the less abundant because their springs
are hidden in obscurity. The Christian mis
sionaries of our time did not trouble themselves
to lessen that obscurity. To literary celebrity
they had no pretension, nor did they seek the
triumph of any political idea, of any specific
system of ecclesiastical organization, of any
favorite plan in which their personal vanity
was interested: the salvation of human soibs
was their only passion, and their only object.
They looked upon themselves as humble serv
ants commissioned to remind men of promises
which they had forgotten — of promises of
salvation by faith in Jesus. " The stir of the re
action," one of themselves has said, " bore im
pressed upon it the character of youth, or even of

164 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
chbdhood. The humblest pastor on his circuit
became a missionary; his transit was regarded
almost like that of a meteor. On the instant
an assembly was convoked, it numbered twenty,
thirty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred persons,
cobected to bsten joyfully, as if it were a great
novelty or miracle, to that Gospel which we
know by heart ; — alas ! which we know by heart
far more than we have it in the heart ! " *
Who could mistake, on hearing such senti
ments and such language, the really Christian
character of the reaction?
Never-ending weakness of man's nature, and
inevitable imperfection of man's work, even
when man is walking in the ways of God ! In
the midst of awakening Christianity, and of
this fervent return to the faith of the Gospel,
reappeared some of the ancient pretensions of
theology, and among others the pretension to
*Memoires pou'vant servir a l'histoire du reveil religieux des
eglises protestantes de la Suisse et de la France, par A. Bost,
(1854,) t. 1, p. 240.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 165
penetrate the decrees of God and to define the
terms of man's salvation.
In February, 1818, the pious and orthodox
" Doyen " of the Protestant Faculty of Montau
ban, M. Daniel Encontre, rendermg an account of
the work of Mr. Robert Haldane, (Emmanuel,
ou vues Scripturaires sur Jesus-Christ,) which
had just appeared, hastened, after havmg justly
commended it, to add : " The concluding pages
of the 'Emmanuel' express sentiments which
Evangebcal Christians are far from sharing.
The author lays down the principle, that ab
men who do not believe in the perfect equality
of the Son and of the Father, are enemies abke
of both Father and Son; that they deny, and
blaspheme against both, and cannot avoid eter
nal death. He regards the forbearance we show
to them as infinitely criminal, and seems even
inclined to condemn ab who have not the cour
age to condemn them. As for me, I venture to
believe that it is the duty of a Christian to work
out his own salvation without abowing him-

106 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
self to pronounce upon the salvation of others.
Judge not, that ye be not judged, says He whom
we all acknowledge as our Master; and St. Paul
adds, ' Who art thou that condemnest another
man's servant?' I seize this opportunity to
declare to all men desirous to hear it, that I
believe firmly in the divinity of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and that I adopt in every respect the
Nicaean Creed. I dare to affirm besides, that
these sentiments are actuaby those of ab the
members of our Faculty, as they have always
been those of our Churches. It seems to me
that persons who know not Jesus Christ as
' God above ab things, blessed eternally,' are
much to be pitied, and want the greatest of ab
consolations. This error appears the more dan
gerous, because it is generaby fobowed by other
errors; for the truths which are the objects of
faith are so connected and riveted together,
that it is impossible to discard one without
shaking or overturning all the others. These
truths form together a majestic edifice, to which

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 167
ab its parts are absolutely necessary, and which
falls in ruins if a breach be made anywhere;
and particularly, if the first stone removed be the
keystone of the corner. But what would become
of us ab, if the erring, even when they err in
good faith, had no hope of access to the throne
of grace ? Men who, as I do, feel how much they
need God's mercy, and man's indulgence, feel
little disposition to be severe toward others." *
In holding this language, M. Encontre was
not merely performing, on his own account,
an act of humbity and of Christian charity; he
was touching upon one of the supreme ques
tions which, in our days, are occasioning a crisis
in Christendom ; and he was indicating its true
and its sole solution. Like ab passions, (the best
are not exempt,) the passion for the salvation
of man's soul is fub of enthusiasm and fub of
blindness ; it bebeves too readily in the possi-
bbity of attaining the object; it is too unscru
pulous and undiscriminating in the means.
* Archives du Christianisme aux XTXe siecle, t. 1, pp. 63-66.

168 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Hence sprung religious tyranny and theological
intolerance: the powerful thought they could
compel the human soul to work out its own
salvation ; the learned believed they could de
fine the conditions of that salvation. Mistakes,
both of them, profoundly antichristian ! Just
as no power of man has the right to strip any
single soul, created by God free and responsi
ble, of its liberty of conscience ; so, equally, no
science of man can define the laws and the facts
that shab regulate the future state of the soul.
Liberty is, on this earth, the principle of the
moral life of man; man's state beyond this earth
is a question between him and his Maker, and
to be determined by the use which man may
have here made of his bberty. To respect
God's gift of liberty to man, and the mystery
of God's decrees respecting man's salvation, is in
reality the law of Christians; and it is only on
this double condition that there reaby is either
any awakening or any progress of Christians.
Nothing does more honor to the memory of

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 169
M. Daniel Encontre than to have been one of
the first to understand and to fulfib this double
duty. Firmly attached to those fundamental
articles of belief which are Christianity itself,
he was strange to every narrowness or exaggera
tion of doctrine, to every presumptuousness of
opinion, and to every theological intolerance;
his piety was comprehensive, without there
being any vagueness in his faith; his Chris
tianity was that of a Liberal; nor did his
attainments as a mathematician indispose him
to remain a Christian.
Scarcely was M. Encontre dead, when two
new men, both, like him, eminent as pastors
and professors — M. Alexandre Vinet and M.
Adolphe Monod — appeared on the rebgious
arena, and gave more eclat to the Christian
reaction by using simbar means, and by impel
ling the Protestant Church of France in the
same direction.
Although he was born and continually
bved and wrote in Switzerland, M. Alexandre

170 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Vinet was of French extraction ; he belongs to
France as much as to Switzerland, for he knew,
and understood, and loved France as much as
he did Switzerland. He served, too, the cause
of religious liberty, and the Christian reaction,
in France not less than in Switzerland. A deb-
cate chbd, son of a poor and an austere school
master, who destined him to the obscure life of
a vibage clergyman, he manifested from the
commencement of his laborious career an ardent
taste for bterature and for study, which prom
ised him a rich reward in the intellectual en
joyment of the chef-d'ceuvres of ancient and
modern literature. He was found upon one
occasion in his little chamber in a fit of enthu
siasm and affected to tears by a perusal of the
" Cid." At the age of twenty he became Pro
fessor of French Literature at Bale ; and there
he devoted himself to the service of every can
didate upon the Rhine or upon the Swiss Alps
who required to be taught to comprehend and
admire the great writers of France of whatever

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 171
age, and in whatever department of literature.
Phbosophers and orators, prose-writers and
poets, Christians or Freethinkers, Catholics
or Protestants, Conservatives or Reformers,
Classicists or Romanticists — ab the men who
have constituted the intebectual and literary
glory of France, obtained in this fervent Meth
odist of the Valdenses an admirer as warm as
he was intelligent and impartial. The prevail
ing characteristic of M. Vinet's literary essays
and criticisms is their geniality ; and wherever
he encounters any spark or trace of the true or
the beautiful, under whatever banner they ap
pear, and however they may be mingled with
opinions otherwise shocking to his feelings, he
is at once attracted and moved, and he admires
and praises with enthusiasm. His was a mind
of comprehensive sympathies, open to every
impression, keen to appreciate, always ready to
enjoy everything that deserved to give pleasure,
even although it might be only momentarily
and in passing.

172 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
This passionate admirer of the beautiful, this
critic, so liberal-minded and so impartial, was a
sound and uncompromising moralist, as web as
a pious and firm Christian. The predominant
idea of ab his bterary judgments is moral ; and
this determines the tone of his criticism, and
the impression which it leaves behind it, with
out ever rendering it either harsh, or ibiberal,
or narrow-minded. In the sphere of positive
bebef, without importing into controversies be
tween believer and bebever any microscopic
criticism of detab, M. Vinet has never, upon
the divine origin and the fundamental dogmas
of Christianity, had the least hesitation, never
made the smabest concession; he grapples
directly with the most specious and the most
popular objections of his adversaries, and com
bats them with a conviction the expression of
which becomes more, and more eloquent the
clearer and the more complete its manifestation.
"To attempt to distinguish morality from
dogma," he says, " is to attempt to distinguish a

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 173
river from its source. The Christian dogma is
at its outset a morality, although a Christian
one. Just as God, in the creed of Christianity,
reveals himself under a form that nature did
not announce, Christian morality, in its turn,
invests itself with a character that nature would
never have impressed upon it. Man finding
his own inabbity to make himself a religion,
God came to aid him in his weakness. It is
now rather more than eighteen centuries since,
in an obscure corner of the world, there
appeared a man. I do not say that a long
series of prophets had announced the coming of
that man; that a long series of miracles had
marked with the seal of God the nation where
he was to be born, and even the prophecy
which foretold him; that, in a word, an im
posing mass of evidence surrounds and authen
ticates him. I say merely that that man
preached a rebgion. That religion is not nat
ural religion; the dogmas of the existence of
God and of the soul's immortality are every-

174 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
where taken for granted in his discourses — •
never taught, never proved. Neither are the
ideas which he teaches deduced logically from
the primitive axioms of reason ; that which he
teaches, that which forms the substance of his
doctrine, embraces subjects which confound the
reason, and to which the reason has neither way
nor access ; he preaches a God on earth, a God
man, a God poor, a God crucified ; he preaches
wrath involving the innocent, mercy exempt
ing the guilty from ab condemnation, God the
victim of man, and man forming one person
with God; he preaches a new birth, without
which man can never be saved; he preaches
the sovereignty of God's grace, and the pleni
tude of the bberty of man. I do not in
any way qualify his teaching; I give them to
you as they are, and without disguise ; I seek
not to justify them. You may, if you please,
feel surprise, you may take offense ; scruple not
to do so. But when you have to your heart's
content wondered at their strangeness, 1 on my

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 175
side wib propose to you another subject for
your wonder. These strange dogmas conquered
the world. In their very infancy they invaded
learned Athens, rich Corinth, haughty Rome.
They gathered together ' Confessors ' from work
shops, from prisons, from schools, from the
courts of justice, and from thrones. Conquerors
of civilization, they triumphed over barbar
ism; they made to pass under the same yoke
the degraded Roman, the savage Sicambrian.
The forms of society have changed ; society has
been dissolved and moulded afresh. They alone
have endured in their integrity. No other
doctrine, whether of phbosophy or of religion,
lasted: each had its time; each time its idea;
and, as a celebrated writer has said, the religious
sentiment, abandoned to itself, chose for itself
moulds in accordance with the time, which it
broke when the time was no longer there. But
the dogma of the Cross persisted in recurring.
Had it only taken possession of a certain class
of persons it would have been much, it would

176 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
perhaps have been even inexpbcable ; but you
find fobowers of the Cross in the camp and
in civil life, among the rich and among the
poor, among the bold and among the timid,
among the learned and among the ignorant.
This dogma is good for ab, everywhere, always ;
it never grows old. The religion of the Cross
appears nowhere in arrear of civbization; on
the contrary, far as civbization may progress, it
ever finds Christianity in advance. Suppose not
that a complaisant Christianity wib ever cancel
any article or expunge any idea to accommodate
itself to the age: no, it derives its strength
from its inflexibility, and needs not make any
surrender to be in harmony with what is beau
tiful, legitimate, true ; for it is in itself the type
of them ab. Stib it is not a religion which
flatters man; and the worldly, by keeping aloof,
show plainly enough that Christianity is a
strange doctrine. Those who dare not reject it
strive to render it palatable. They strip it of
what offends them — of its myths, as they are

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 177
pleased to style them ; they almost make out of
Christ's doctrine a rationalism. But, singular
to say, once a rationalism it has no longer any
force; in this respect resembling one of the most
marvelous creatures in the animate world, to
which it is death to lose its sting. The strange
dogmas disappear, but with them ab zeal, fer
vor, sanctity, charity, disappear also; the salt
of the earth has lost its savor, and we know
not by what means to restore it. But, on the
other hand, do you learn that somewhere or
other there is an awakening of Christians, that
Christianity is resuscitating, that faith shows
signs of life, that zeal abounds? Ask not in
what sob these precious plants are springing;
you may pronounce yourself: it is in the rude and
rugged sob of orthodoxy, in the shade of the
mysteries which confound human reason, and
of which human reason would like so much to
get rid. . . . Some passages in the fair work
of M. Saint-Marc Girardin upon dramatic liter
ature might, at least I fear so, lead to the con-
12

178 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
elusion that Christianity is, in its essence, only
the result of a natural progress of man's mind,
a gradual development of ancient wisdom.
Such, for instance, is the passage where the
author tebs us that the Greeks were advancing
step by step toward Christian spirituabsm.
We regret that M. Saint-Marc Girardin did not
say in what sense he understood this, and with
in what limits. We hope that he wib not see
in us the champion of a captious orthodoxy, if
we say that nothing so much weakens the au
thority of Christianity, that nothing prejudices
in men's minds its cause more, than to treat it
as a link in the chain, which chain in reabty it
severed. That events, that is, Providence, did
aforehand hobow a bed in the regions of the
west for this divine river, what believer, how
ever rigid, would ever entertain any scruple in
admitting? But stib it is essential that we
should not misapprehend the source whence
that river webed forth. No natural develop
ment of events, either among the Jews or

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 179
among the Greeks, can account for the exist
ence of Christianity. Whatever the progress
made by the ancients, there never was a time
when there existed not an infinity between
their ideas, and the ideas of Christianity ; and
infinity alone can fib up the gulf between.
There is an end of Christianity if men agree
in thinking the contrary — if they succeed in
causing the Supernatural to assume a place in
one of the compartments of the Phbosophy of
History. As far as we are concerned, we would
prefer for the Christian rebgion the most out
rageous denial, to an admiration circumscribed
within such limits. Christ's faith is nothing
if not, like Melchisedek without earthly parent
here below, and without genealogy." *
Whoever indicated with greater distinctness
the keystone in the edifice of Christianity, or
ever clung to it more closely ? M. Vinet occu-
*Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, p. 85.
Premiers discours, pp. 14, 50, 53. Litterature Frangaise, vol.
iii, p. 623.

180 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
pied himself in turn with freedom of conscience
and of man's thought, with the faith of Christ,
and with the bterature of France. These three
subjects became the passions of his bfe, stirring
his soul, though at unequal depths. But of
these three only one, the passion for literature,
was a source to him of tranquil and unmiti
gated enjoyment. In his advocacy of man's
liberty and of Christianity, M. Vinet had to
pass not only through the ordeal of intebectual
labors and combats, but through the solicitudes
and sorrows of life. The defender of the bberty
of forms of worship, crowned as such by the
" Societe Francais de la Morale Chretienne," lived
to see this liberty attacked in his native Switzer
land, at once by popular fury and by civil au
thority. The fervent promoter of the Christian
reaction beheld one hundred and sixty evangel
ical pastors of the Canton of the Vaud, his com
panions in this pious work, forced to quit their
" Chairs" in order to preserve their faith. And
it was in sickness, and at the approach of death,

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 181
that M. Vinet had to undergo ab this. Neither
his faith nor the tranquibity of his soul was
disturbed. He continued, to his last hour, to
be the active champion of liberty, the faithful
servant of Christ, the eloquent admirer and
commentator upon French literature, which he
fobowed in ab its phases, whether calm or
stormy, whether pure or defiled. "After ab,"
so he wrote in 1845, "I am not one of those
who despair; God, without any violence to our
freedom of action, rather by that freedom itself,
conducts us to the unknown shores. The ports
at which we land do not ab of them afford
secure mooring; we know something of that
even in this bttle country. Our progress wib
be slow, and amid storms ; but the circle of uni
versal truth wib be completed, and man's sense
of moral right and wrong wib be improved, at
the same time that man's science wbl be enriched.
I should feel horror if I thought that Some
One is not at the center of ab this movement,
holding all its elements in his hand ; Some

182 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
One to whom, whether they know him or do
not know him, the aspirations of all creatures
ascend in their sorrow, and whom they instinct
ively salute with the sweet reassuring name of
'Father.'"* Upon a single point, the relations of Church
and State, his usual comprehensiveness of view
and independence of thought appeared to
abandon M. Vinet. Justly struck and afflicted
by his own experience of the inconveniences of
a strict bond between Church and State, dis-
* Notice sur M. Alexandre Vinet, par M. E. Souvestre, pub
lished in the Magazin Pittoresque de 1848, p. 81.
The principal works of M. Alexandre Vinet are :
1. Traite et Polemique sur la liberty des cultes. 1826, 1852.
2. Discours sur quelques sujets religieux. 1831, 1853.
3. Essais de philosophie et de morale religieuse. 1837.
4. Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, et sur
la separation de l'Eglise et de Etat. 1842, 1858.
5. Etudes et meditations evangeliques. 1847, 1849, 1851.
6. Etudes sur Pascal. 1848, 1856.
7. Chrestomathie Frangaise, Histoire de la litterature Fran
gaise au XVUl siecle, et Etudes sur la litterature Frangaise au
XIX0 siecle. 1829, 1849, 1853, etc.
He wrote, besides, numerous short pieces, and articles in re
views and journals, suggested by topics of the clay.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 183
gusted at the servibty and falsity which fre
quently are, sometimes on the part of the State,
sometimes on the part of the Church, its results)
he concluded that in ab cases ab albance be
tween the two conditions of society is radically
vicious ; and he declared their entire separation
a general and absolute principle, the sole reason
able and just system, the sole efficacious guar
antee of truth and of bberty in spirituals or
temporals. He thus ignored, it appears to me,
the natural causes which produce, and the
human motives which sanction, a certain abiance
between societies civb and ecclesiastical; he
ignored also the inestimable advantages which,
at certain times and in certain circumstances,
each may derive, and has actuaby derived, from
that abiance. In the United States of America,
the entire separation of the State and of the
different Churches was necessary and salutary,
for it was the spontaneous consequence of the
condition of men's minds, and of the position of
society. In England, in spite of the acts of

184 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
injustice, and the bis engendered by the inti- '
mate union of the state with a Church legaby
constituted and having exclusive privileges, the
coexistence of the Church of England with
the freedom, more and more every day complete
and recognized, of the Churches of the Dis
senters, was for the Christian religion a potent
principle of life, of force, and of durability.
And if we go back to the ancient history of
Europe, who can doubt that at the fab of the
Roman Empire, if the State and the Church
had not, although distmct institutions, been
allied, the development of Christianity would
have been far less energetic, and its conquest of
its barbarous conquerors far more problemat
ical ? This is, I repeat, a question not of prin
ciple, but of time, of place, of circumstance, and
of condition of society. A complete separation
of Church and State may be good and prac
ticable ; it is neither the only good system, nor
is it always a practicable system.
An abiance of the two upon certain fixed

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 185
terms has its inconveniences and its perils, but
its effects may be also very salutary ; it may be
essential, and does not of necessity exclude reli
gious sincerity or religious liberty. M. Vinet,
in discussing the subject, lost sight of the
general history of human societies, and attached
too much importance to the specious and tran
sient facts which he had before his eyes.
If M. Vinet were now living, he might in
his own country behold two fair examples of
the good results of the mixed systems which he
so absolutely condemned. In the Cantons of
the Vaud and of Geneva, after the violent and
painful contests to which I have above referred,
a dissenting Independent Church was estab
lished by the side of a Church recognized and
supported by the State. In neither canton
was this establishment a temporary expedient,
the fruit of a momentary ardor ; the Independ
ent Church has consobdated and developed it
self; it endures and prospers. Like the Estab
lishment, it has its pastors, its churches, its

186 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
solemnities, its schools for general and for
superior instruction. I have before me facts
and figures which prove its vitality and its prog
ress. And not only did the Estabbshed Church
finaby acquiesce in the peaceable existence
of the Independent Church, it also profited by
it, and its salutary influence has been frankly
acknowledged by its worthiest pastors. In
Switzerland, as in England, Scotland, and Hol
land, and in our days more easby and more
promptly than in ancient times, the existence
on the one side of a national Church recognized
by the State, has given to the'different forms
of Christian belief a stabibty and a dignity
which have secured its permanent effects upon
succeeding generations; the existence, on the
other side, of independent Churches, and the
religious emulation between the two establish
ments, have turned in both to the profit of faith
and of piety.
M. Adolphe Monod seemed, even more than
M. Vinet, to promise by natural bent of his

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 187
character, and by the incidents of his life, to
become the champion of an entire separation of
Church and State. At the very commencement
of his career, he suffered from a Government
based upon their connection. Pastor at Lyons,
in 1831, of the estabbshed Protestant Church,
he was dismissed from these functions by the
Consistory of that city, as too exacting in his
orthodoxy, and as troubling by his exigencies
the peace of his Church. He then became the
founder and pastor of a smab dissenting and in
dependent Church at Lyons. The energy with
which he expressed his convictions, and the ex-
cebence of his preaching, rapidly spread, and
increased his renown for piety. Numerous
Protestants manifested the desire to see him
once more within the pale of the national
Church. He made no objection; a Chair be
coming vacant in the Faculty of Montauban,
M. Adolphe Monod was nominated, and from
1836 to 1847 he both lectured and preached at
Montauban with a commanding ability that

188 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
made itself felt, not only among the majority
of the students, but propagated its influences
to a distance among the principal centers of
French Protestantism. In 1847 he was sum
moned to Paris as the suffragan of another
pastor, M. Juiberat. Nor did he scruple to
accept this secondary and precarious situation.
He had fub confidence in the divine vocation,
and was firmly resolved to proceed to any place
where the faith of Christ might demand his
services. He had, in the evangelical chair,
even more success at Paris than at Lyons and
Montauban. When, after the Revolution of
1848, a general assembly of the Reformed
Churches of France assembled for the purposes
of considering their institutions and discussing
points of common interest, a grave question was
raised, and became the subject of warm and
lengthened debate : Should French Protestants
proclaim their ancient Confession of Faith, that
of Rochebe, or should they proclaim a confession
of new articles; or lastly, should they remain

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 189
passive and do nothing ? some, and particularly
their pastor, M. Frederic Monod, elder brother
of M. Adolphe Monod, announced their determ
ination to. retire from the assembly and from
the estabbshed Church, unless they adopted a
Confession of Faith in accordance with the tra
ditional principles of the Reformation. The
inertness of the hesitating and timid assembly
was equivalant to a refusal, and they did in
effect retire. To the great surprise and great
regret of his adversaries, M. Adolphe Monod,
although favorable to the principles of the Con
fession of Faith, did not fobow the example by
retiring; he even succeeded his brother as
titular pastor in the Church of Paris, and pub-
bshed to the world the motives of his conduct.*
His motives were good, such as a man of
elevated character and energetic purpose might
conceive and might avow. In spite of their
importance, the questions which concern the
* In his work entitled, Pourquoi je demeure dans l'Eglise
etablie.

190 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
organization of the Church and its eternal rela
tions were, in the eyes of M. Adolphe Monod,
only secondary considerations, subject in a cer
tain measure to time and to circumstance. For
him the question of faith was supreme ; and he
occupied himself infinitely more with the spirit
ual state of souls than with ecclesiastical gov
ernment. To the serious thinker the Christian
faith is quite different from any conception or
conviction of the understanding ; it is a general
condition of the whole man ; it is the very life
of the soul ; not merely its actual life, but the
source and the guarantee of its future life. The
faith in Christ Jesus, the Redeemer, the Saviour,
makes the life of a Christian ; and the life of a
Christian is a preparation for an eternal sal
vation. With this faith penetrating to his very
marrow, and with the intimate persuasion of its
consequences, the duty of giving a voice to
that faith, and of diffusing it, was the dominant
idea, the permanent passion, of M. Adolphe
Monod. He had not himself been always firmly

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 191
settled in his religious convictions ; he had been
a prey to great moral perplexities, and to at
tacks of profound melancholy. When he had
escaped from these — or rather, to use his own
words, "when God had become reaby the
master of his heart" — he had no other thought
but that of bringing other souls to the same
state, and of rousing them to a faith in Christ,
with a view to their eternal salvation. The
position which he regarded as of ab the most
appropriate for himself, was one in which he
could most profitably forward this work. When
in 1848 the question was thus put to him, and
when he had been convinced both by his past
observation of the Protestant Church of France
during the last twenty years, and by his own
experience of it, that the estabbshed Church
offered to hun in his Christian purpose the
vastest field of exertion, and the best chance of
success, he did not hesitate to remain in it. " I
find in the situation," he said, " grave disorders,
of which it is my duty to seek unceasingly the

192 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
reform; but that situation has also its hopeful
side. A long development of my ideas would
be superfluous; let us confine ourselves to
some striking facts. Try and reckon how many
orthodox pastors our Church possessed when
the reaction began in 1819, and then make a
simbar calculation for 1849. I do not mean to
fix the precise numbers ; but is it too much to
say, that in the course of a single generation
the number of orthodox pastors is ten, fifteen,
twenty times perhaps as great ? This applies to
the clergy, of whom everywhere the immense
influence is felt. Among their congregations it
is less easy to fobows things ; but the attentive
observer does not fab to mark similar indi
cations. Behold our rebgious societies : are not
the most popular among them those which
hoisted most manfully the colors of orthodoxy ?
And if some are in a languishing condition, is it
not because they offered in this respect fewest
guarantees? Evidently the first condition of
existence for our rebgious institutions of char-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 193
ity is sound doctrine. My readers, permit me
to question you stbl more closely. Throw your
eyes upon the eight or ten fambies best known
to you, beginning with your own, and compare
what they are now with what they were in
1819 ; contrast their occupations, tastes, sacri
fices, and intercourse, the modes of education,
the books read, friendships formed, and so on ;
and then declare, thankless ones, if God has
abowed you to be without encouragement." *
M. Adolphe Monod had good reason to draw
attention to this general progress of Christianity;
but there was another progress also deserving
notice, that which he had himself made, and
which he was making more and more every day,
in the attainment of the true and distinguishing
character of a Christian.
At the commencement of his career as a
minister of the Gospel, in his different contro
versies, and especiaby in his controversy with

* Pourquoi je demeure dans l'Eglise etablie, par M. Adolphe
Monod, pp. 25-32. Paris, 1849. 13

194 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
the Consistory of Lyons, he had shown rude
ness, impatience, and want of foresight; he
had been too precipitate in enforcing his faith
by arguments, and too much disposed to under
value the obstacles in its way. Thanks to his
genuine sincerity and the natural elevation of
his character, time, experience, and success had
given at once breadth and suppleness to his
thought. Faith had generated modesty, and
hope patience. Contrary to the ordinary bias
of men, his hberalism had increased in the same
measure as his strength. As an act of duty he
made in 1848 an avowal of the state of his
mind in this respect. " The age," he said, " re
proaches us with ' excfoisisme] (exclusiveness,)
a new word expressly invented to denote its
favorite charge; for false ideas the age has
only the resource of a barbarous phraseology.
This ' exclusisme'' is the sole thing which the
age cannot tolerate in matters of doctrine : it is
prepared, it says to itself, to take everything
within its pale except the ' exclusives.1 Thus

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 195
they demand from us only one change in the
profession of our faith; they cab upon us to
substitute for our usual prefatory formula, 'This
is the truth,' the words, ' This is my opinion.'
And if they, in claiming such quabfication of
language, limited their demand to things which,
in spite of any relative importance, do not con
stitute the substance of the faith and of the life
of a Christian, we should do what they require ;
perhaps I should rather say, we do it already,
as brother should do to brother, and in the in
terest of truth itself. It is one of the distinctive
features of the awakening of Christians in our
epoch, that charitably sparing in the absolute
dogmatism of which the sixteenth century was
prodigal, they make dogmas of only a smab
number of fundamental doctrines. And even
of these they strive to contract the circle, untb
having reached the vital forces, the very heart,
so to say, of truth, they sum it up in one single
name, Jesus Christ, and in one single word,
grace. Whoever is of that faith, whatever

196 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
name he bears elsewhere, and whatever place
he occupies in the Universal Church — Lutheran,
Anglican, Methodist, Moravian, Baptist, nay,
Roman Catholic, or Greek Cathobc, we receive
that man as a brother in Christ Jesus ; and not
we only, but the whole contemporary Evan
gelical Church, with certain exceptions becoming
every day rarer, and arising from a narrow or
sectarian pietism. Hence the 'Evangebcal Al-
bance,' formed in our own time of more than
twenty Protestant denominations, the prelude
only to another evangebcal abiance which wib
exclude none who rely upon the sole merits of
Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Lord of all.
" Our ' exclusisme] besides, has not for its ob
jects individuals but doctrines. Absolute affirm
ation is legitimate when the object is to define
the faith, which is the promise of salvation, for
God has clearly revealed it in his word; but
when the object is to mark the individuals who
possess that saving faith, similar affirmation
could not be used without temerity; for God

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 197
has nowhere revealed to us either the internal
state of any man, or the final lot reserved for
him. We exclude no man, we judge no man,
alive or dead ; the judgment of the quick and
of the dead belongs to God alone. Doubtless
we estimate, according to our abbity, the spiritual
condition of a man by his works, as we do a
tree by its fruits ; Jesus himself invites us to do
so. Doubtless, when we see a man living and
dying in the works of the faith, we hope for
him, and our hope may grow even to a firm as
surance; and when, on the contrary, we see a
man bving and dying in the works of incredu
lity, we have a feebng of anxiety for him — a
feebng as painful as it is mysterious. But, after
ab, neither in the first case nor in the second,
and stib less in the second than the first, are we
authorized to pronounce any personal judgment ;
and but for the paradoxical turn of the expres
sion, I would willingly adopt the language
of the devout Bunyan : Three things would
astonish me in heaven ; first, not to see there

198 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
certain persons whom I expect to see there;
secondly, to see there those I do not expect to
see there; and thirdly, which would surprise
me most, to see myself there.' " *
A piety so profound, and at the same time so
modest and so large, expressed with an elo
quence which combined an impassioned earnest
ness of language with an impassioned earnest
ness of conviction, could not fab to exercise
great influence. As a preacher, M. Adolphe
Monod was powerful. He had acquired, not
by careful and cold observation, but by an
* Sermon sur l'Exclusisme, ou l'unite de la foi, in the
Recueil des Sermons de M. Adolphe Monod. 3me serie, t. ii, pp.
386-390. Paris, 1860. The sermons of M. Adolphe Monod
have been collected and published in four vols. 8vo. Paris,
1856-1860. He also wrote several small works, among others :
1. Lucile, ou la lecture de la Bible. 1841.
2. La Destitution d' Adolphe Monod, recit inedit, redige par
luimeme. 1864.
3. Recit des conferences qui ont eu lieu en 1834, entre
quelques Catholiques Romains et M. Adolphe Monod. Paris
1860. 4. Les adieux d' Adolphe Monod a ses amis et a Feglise.
Paris, 1856.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 199
assiduous and conscientious study of the Gos
pels and of himself, a remarkable knowledge of
human nature, of its strength and of its weak
ness, of its deficiencies and of its aspirations.
He laid siege, so to speak, to the souls of men,
and he pressed the siege ardently and with
skbl ; he assabed ab their gates, and pursued
them to their innermost defenses, keeping con
stantly displayed the banner of Christ, and
inspiring them with the perfect confidence that
he was urging them to take their stand, too,
beneath it, not from any human motive, or any
desire of glory to himself, but from a serious
desire for their souls' welfare, and from it alone.
Thus did he gain over to his Divine Master the
hearts disposed to receive him, strongly shake
the purpose of those not confirmed in their
rebellion, and leave astonished and intimidated
those whom he did not bring over. As pastor
also his influence was extraordinary; his life
was the reflection and the commentary upon
his preaching. He applied first to his own

200 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
case the precepts of his faith, and the con
clusions therefrom logically deducible. As he
said nothing that he did not think, so he thought
nothing that he did not practice; and without'
being readby impressionable, like that of M.
Vinet, his zeal was expansive, and his piety
gave him no rest from the task of diffusing by
example and precept the faith and the practice
of Christianity. Attacked by a painful and
incurable illness, which at last condemned him
to immobibty, he did not suffer it to render him
inactive and useless. Every Sunday during the
last six months of his life, his family, some
pastors his cobeagues, and as many attached
friends as his chamber could receive, gathered
around his bed, and his zeal surmounted his pain.
He addressed to them, to use his very words,
"sometimes the regret of a dying man, some
times the results of his own experiences of faith
and of life." The devout assemblage was again
convoked, at his expressed wish, for the 6th
April, 1856. But that day, before the hour

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 201
fixed for the assembly had arrived, God took to
him his servant, granting the wish expressed
in his own often repeated prayer, "Let my bfe
only terminate with my ministry, and my min
istry only with my bfe." *
Eighteen months before the decease of M.
Adolphe Monod, an eminent pastor of the
Lutheran Church of Paris, his friend and febow-
laborer in the work of Christianity, M. Edouard
Verny, died suddenly in the Evangebcal Chair
at Strasbourg, whbe preaching upon the
words addressed by the Apostles to the Chris
tians of Antioch, " It seemed good to the Holy
Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater
burden than these necessary things," words not
less liberal than pious, and faithfully express
ing the sentiments of the Christian orator, who
died whbe commenting upon them. The mind
of M Verny was naturaby liberal and independ-
* These are the words inserted in a publication bearing the
title " Les adieus d' Adolphe Monod a sa famille et a l'eglise,"
in which the last exhortations and conversations of this dying
Christian have been piously collected. P. viii. Paris, 1856.

202 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
ent; his intellectual career had commenced
with phbosophical studies, and he had retained
a strong bias in favor of the progress of thought.
This did not, however, prevent him from
promptly and calmly appreciating the opinions
which he did not share. Without possessing
either the impassioned style or the power of
M. Adolphe Monod, he was not less devoted to
the cause of Christianity; and he convinced
those by the charms of his manner, into whose
minds M. Monod entered by force and as a
conqueror. *
* Although M. Verny had long preached, and had often
written in religious reviews and journals, and particularly in
the " Semeur," very few monuments remain of his ideas and of
his talents. The principal are :
1. A sermon "Upon the Unity of the Church,'' preached in
the church of Bolbec in 1854.
2. Two sermons, one " Upon the Prayer of the Canaanite
Woman ; " the other " Upon Repentance ; " preached at Paris in
1843 and 1846.
3. The sermon " Sur l'Ouverture solennelle de la session du
Consistoire superieur de l'Eglise de la Confession d'Augs-
bourg," preached at Strasbourg on the 19th of October, 1854 :
while preaching which M. Verny died in the pulpit.
4. An "Essai sur les droits de la science," inserted in the

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 203
Although the Protestant Church of France
thereby sustained an immense loss, it had a
striking and salutary spectacle also presented to
it by the end of these two servants of Christ,
the one dying suddenly, in the plenitude of his
strength, at the very moment when from his
pulpit he was maintaining with distinguished
abibty the doctrines of his Master ; the other,
from his bed, gathering with pain what of
breath remained to him in this world, to pour
once more a flood of faith into the souls of his
auditors. Such lives, such deaths, could not remain
sterbe of result ; under their influence the Chris
tian faith was relumed; it again spread itself
among the Protestants of France. Nor was
this that arid cold faith which men accept to
acquit their consciences, and to rid themselves
" Revue de Theologie et de Philosophie Chretienne," published
at Strasbourg by M. Colani. Vol. ix, pp. 308-248. 1854.
This essay was to have been followed by an "Essai sur les
devoirs de la foi," of which the sudden death of M. Verny
prevented the completion.

204 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
of a trouble and a scruple ; nor that vague and
dreamy faith which feasts rather upon its own
emotions, than nourishes itself with the truths
which are the voice of God. A Christian's
faith is neither an act of prudent submission
nor a paroxysm of mystic fervor. Conviction
and sentiment, the firm adhesion of the mind,
and the filial love of the heart, meet in that
faith in essential and intimate union. It is the
light coming from on high, and bringing down
with it the genial principles of vital warmth
and fecundity; out of which, like salubrious
waters from a pure source, flow freely and in
abundance the works of human charity. I have
lying before me a list of the different charities
to which Christianity has in our own days since
the reaction given birth in the Protestant
Church of France. *
I see there manifold associations, enterprises
* ExposS des ceuvres de la charite protestante en France, par
H. de Triqueti, membre du conseil presbyteral et du diaconat
de l'Eglise reformee de Paris. 18mo. 1863.

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 205
supposing a long duration of existence, unremit
ting efforts for the moral development of men ;
for the bodby solace of their earthly condition ;
for the propagation and the defense of freedom
of opinion in religious matters ; for the support
and diffusion of the faith itself: ab these objects,
at once so various and so analogous, are being
laboriously worked out both by the independ
ent Protestant Churches, and by the Protestant
Church estabbshed from the State. M. Edmond
de Pressense and M. Eugene Bersier devote
their talents and then? zeal to the same forms
of Christian belief as were advocated by M.
Alexandre Vinet and M. Adolphe Monod. In
spite of the free divergence of sentiment and
the diversity of ecclesiastical government in
French Protestantism, we may observe in its
bosom a progress of Christian Faith, a progress
in works of Christian Charity, a progress in
Christian Science, and a progress in Christian
Influence. I use the same terms employed by
me in speaking of the contemporary Catholic

206 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Church/ of Rome, because I find before me
simbar facts. These facts do not announce the
reconcbiation of the two Churches — profound
differences of opinion continue to separate
them; but these facts are, in both Churches,
signs of the Awakening of Christianity.

III. AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
But the world has not changed since God at
its creation delivered it up to the disputes of
mankind ; nor have the diversity and conflict of
ideas and of passions ever ceased to be the con
dition of humanity. By the side of the move
ment of Christianity to which I refer, a move
ment in the contrary direction is manifesting
itself, and is pursuing its course. Christianity
at its Awakening is chabenged to ruder com
bats. Phbosophy refuses to its fundamental
dogmas the marks and the rights of rational
truth. An erudite criticism contests its histor-

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANOE. 207
ical evidence. The natural sciences proclaim
that they do not require its aid to account for
man and for the world. It is affirmed as a
principle, and maintained in learned societies,
that morabty is entirely independent of rebgion.
Man in his aspirations for liberty, that generous
passion of the age, retains a profound resent
ment for the chains and the sufferings which,
under pretext of Christianity, human conscience
and human thought have so long been made to
endure. The influence of these bitter reminis
cences is manifesting itself in the different
Christian Churches under various forms, and
with different effects. Many liberals so dread
the prospect of the Church of Borne obtaining
power over civb society that they hardly ac
cord to this Church the rights of common
liberty; or, if they do so at ab, they do it
reluctantly and little by little.
Among the Protestants, some push the pre
tensions of liberty so far as to insist that in re
ligious society a community of faith should

208 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
count for nothing ; that a man should be enti
tled to remain a member of a Church, and even
to remain its minister, although he profess
respectmg the essential facts and dogmas of the
Church the most contradictory opinions, and
opinions the strangest to its traditions and its
texts. With respect to Roman Cathobcs, the
dominant question is that of bberty. Are the
bberties of civb society to be accorded to the
Church ? Are those of the Church to be abowed
to remain intact in the bosom of the State ? In
Protestantism, on the other hand, the complete
bberty of rebgion in the midst of civil society,
the right of every individual to avow his bebef,
and to solemnize his own forms of worship —
these are ab privileges already acquired, and
contested as bttle by any orthodox believer as
by any freethinker. The questions reaby here
agitated are questions of faith and of discipline.
Are a common faith and a uniform internal
discipline essential to the Church % Here is the
debate. But above ab these special questions

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 209
and these different situations of the various
Christian Churches rise, for Romanist and Prot
estant alike, the general question and the com
mon situation; it is Christianity itself which
is engaged in the contest, and its awakening
spuit confronts the antichristian movement.
Let us not delude ourselves as to the charac
ter, the force, or the danger of this antichris
tian movement. It is not merely a feverish ex-
citabihty in men's minds, a simple revolutionary
crisis in the religious order. No ; we have here
earnest convictions at work, and the prospect
of a long war. Impatience of an ancient yoke,
a spirit of reaction, a love of innovation, frivo
lous instincts not a few, as well as evil impulses,
may claim a share — and a large share — in the
attacks of which Christianity is in these days
the object; but what gives to these attacks
their most formidable character is a sentiment
far more serious, one that has made heroes and
martyrs, the love of truth at all risk and in
despite of consequence, for the sake of truth
14

210 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
and for its sake alone. The feebng that makes
man thirst for truth is an honor to human
nature. If he fancies that he has found that
truth, man abandons himself with transport to
the satisfaction of his cravings, and does not
scruple to drink even to intoxication at this
pure source. But here he is incurring a great
danger: man is not merely an intelligence
whose vocation during his brief transit through
this world confines him only to study and
science : he is an active, responsible being ; a
being engaged in a bfe fub of labors, with a
future life before him full of mystery ; a laborer
in a career having a particular interest for him
self, and yet forming part of a general scheme,
of the design of which he has but imperfect
glimpses. Very incomplete and very imperfect
is that man's state of intebectual action, who re
stricts himself to that which appears to him to
be scientific truth, who does not, at the same
time, submit his thought to ab the tests to
which he is himself subject, and who does not

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 21 1
examine whether that thought be in harmony
with the laws of his nature — whether it respect
or transgress the limits imposed upon his
means of knowledge. The danger of fabing
into error becomes greater in proportion as this
incomplete and imperfect state of his mind is
in itself a noble state, a state that satisfies noble
impulses, and procures noble means of enjoy
ment. The most eminent among the actual ad
versaries of Christianity believe themselves the
interpreters and the defenders of truth ; some
of phbosophical truth; others of historical
truth, others again of the truth of the facts and
laws of the physical world. They are ab proud
of belonging to the department of pure science,
and of making of scientific truth the sole object,
the sole rule of their labors ; but they are also
ab forgetful of some conditions — nay, the most
indispensable ones — to which science is bound
to conform; some tests — and the most legit-
imate ones — to which science is obliged to
submit.

212 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
They claim, too, the honor of bearing the
banner of a grand and noble cause, the cause
of Liberty. That Christianity alone restored to
man, as man, and for no other reason, his
rights to bberty, is a fact that the comparative
histories of the world, whether Christian or
Pagan, place beyond ab doubt; for confront
these two histories, and name the nations
among whom the idea of the dignity of man's
bberty became a general idea, powerful in in
fluence and fruitful in consequence ! Another
fact equaby historic and certain is, that Chris
tianity knew how to adapt itself, and did
readby adapt itself, to the different states of
society, and the different forms of government ;
that it set itself up and maintained its rank in
republics as web as monarchies, under constitu
tional regimes as web as in despotisms, in the
midst of democratical as web as aristocratical
institutions; and, beyond doubt, it was not in
free states that it displayed least vigor, or met
with the smabest success. These two great

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE. 213
facts are nowadays lost sight of. Christianity
is accused of being hostbe to Liberty and in
compatible with the spirit of modern societies ;
and this is, indeed, the chief charge laid to
its score. True it is, that the charge is not with
out deriving countenance from the history of
Europe in modern times; worldly mterests,
selfish passions, events complex and obscure, in
which moral order and social order have been
compromised, have as it were suspended in cer
tain countries the liberal action of Christianity,
and enlisted momentarily the cause of Liberty
under a banner not Christian. The error is
profound, but transient; the traditional influ
ences of ages wib resume their empire, the
grand events their course ; Christ's religion and
man's bberty wib once more remember that
each stands in need of the other, and that then
abiance in the bosom of order is their natural
and necessary condition. That they do mis
understand each other occasions the most serious
crisis at this moment in modern society.

214 AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FRANCE.
Here, too, is the gravest peril which the
Christian religion has in our days to surmount.
Appreciate the force of the two sentiments to
which I just now referred, the love of science
and the love of bberty; understand through
what phases of degeneration and of deceptive
transformation those sentiments may, in the
ardor of pursuit and of combat, have to pass ;
reckon up, if reckon you can, aU the false ideas,
the chimerical hopes, which they may suggest ;
and then add to the amount, and as their con
sequences, the immoral and anarchical passions
which may make those sentiments their pretext
and their tools; and in doing this, you wib
find that you have passed in review the forces
of that enemy now waging an implacable war
against Christianity, although a war to which
Christianity is cabed upon to put an end.
I do not in any respect underrate the forces
of that army. I disparage no more their qual
ity than their numbers. To maintain the com
bat worthby and efficaciously we should, at the

AWAKENING OF CHRISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 215
onset, accord to our adversaries the whole
amount of their merits as web as of their
strength, and then attack them in their strong
est entrenchments. I have charged the enemies
of Christianity with puerile presumptousness
when they refuse to see the energy and the
progress of the awakening of Christianity. It
is of infinite importance to Christians, on their
side, not to be blind to the ardor and the
effects which that Antichristian demonstration
is producmg, of which their Faith and their
Church are the aim. I am firmly convinced
that in this war Christianity wib conquer ; but
it wib leave its enemies with arms still in their
hands. It wib no more gain over them any
complete or definitive victory than it wib be
able to conclude with them any serious or dur
able peace. In the actual state of men's minds
and of society, the struggle will go on between
the fobowers and the opponents of Christianity;
the two armies wib continue to deploy their forces
in the face each of the other ; and that of the

216 AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE.
Christians, in order to defend and to extend its
domain, wbl be incessantly cabed upon to watch
and to combat the movements of its enemy.
Whbe combating them it wbl be also obliged
to comply with the terms that truth exacts,
and the conditions that liberty imposes. From
these exigencies and these conditions Chris
tianity has nothing to dread — that is, if it accepts
them boldly, and in its turn imposes them upon
its enemies. Let man's science, labors, and
systems be submitted to the same tests, and
handled with the same freedom of examination,
as are being applied to the foundations and the
doctrines of Christian faith; this is ab that
Christians are entitled to, ab that they need to
demand. Thus far I have explained the actual state of
the Christian religion in France, the sources of
its strength and of its weakness, its awakening
and its perbs. It is my intention now to ex
amine the actual state of those doctrines and
systems which repudiate, or which more or less

AWAKENING OF CHEISTIANITY IN FEANCE. 217
deny and combat Christianity. When I have
passed the hostbe army in review, I wbl once
more confront Christianity with its adversaries,
and endeavor to distinguish, by contrasting them,
on which side the truth is, on which side the
right, and on which side the hope of future
success.

SECOND MEDITATION.

SPmiTTJALISM.
I witnessed the birth — not, certainly, the birth
of Spiritualism, for this was, like its twin brother
Materiabsm, born in the cradle of Phbosophy,
and whbe the steps of Phbosophy were stbl those
of an infant — but the birth of the spirituahstic
school of the nineteenth century. This birth
was a national reaction against the Sensuabsm
of the eighteenth century — just as the Christian
Awakening was a reaction against the impiety
of the same epoch. Theories do not escape the
influence of events : after the ideas come the
facts, to pour upon those ideas floods of light,
and to reveal the vices, whether of phbosophy
or of pobcy, in ab their practical consequences.
The Sensualism — that is to say, to style it by its

SPIEITUALISM. 219
true name, the Materialism — of the eighteenth
century, did not pass triumphantly through this
test : it stbl reigned in France at the commence
ment of the nineteenth century, but it was the
reign of an antiquated sovereign in decline — a
sovereign of whom the public know the defects,
and whose successor is at hand.
M. Royer-Cobard was the first who had the
merit and the honor of bringing back Spiritual
ism into the teaching of philosophy and into
the minds of the people ; "his was a return sim
ply to the spiritualistic doctrines of the seven
teenth century; but stbl a real progress, effected
by a novel route, and a reaby scientific method.
M. Royer-Cobard was neither a philosopher by
profession nor the disciple of any master, nor
was his mind a mind disposed to take up with
systems — he observed, he read, he studied and
reflected, as a looker on, and an earnest judge
of the world and of men. In philosophy and
his professional chair, as later in politics and in
the chamber, he was an original and profound

220 SPIRITUALISM.
thinker. His mind united good sense with loft-
mess of sentiment, circumspection with self-
respect; he was thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of his tunes, at the same time that he
refused to accept its yoke. In his grave and
independent course of instruction, he treated
phbosophical questions as they presented them
selves step by step, each on its own account,
without troubling himself about anything but
the discovery of the truth; and stbl less with
any zealous endeavor to set together or resolve
ab the questions upon a general system, the re
sult of any learned premeditation. Those who
had opportunities of listening to him, and even
those whose only means of judgment are the
fragments pubbshed by M. Jouffroy* character
ize his lessons as directed, each of them, toward
some special questions web determined before
hand, and they regard them as models of
analysis and of phbosophical criticism, scrupu-
* In his "Traduction des oeuvres completes de Reid," vol. iii,
pp. 299-149, vol. iv, pp. 273^51.

SPIRITUALISM. 221
lously confined by the lecturer to the facts and
the results that the inductive process discovers
in the facts themselves. He had been a great
reader of the writings of the Scotch philoso
phers, held them in high esteem, and walked in
then? steps; his views were, however, loftier,
and his footing firmer, although not less pru
dent. He had in his short philosophical career
two rare pieces of good fortune : one was, that
he had a, friend in M. Maine de Biran, a pro
found and enthusiastic observer of the human
soul in his own soul — a subtle metaphysician,
almost a mystic, whom I would, if I dared,
name the Saint Theresa of phbosophy ; his other
advantage was, that he had for his disciple M.
Cousin, the congenial rival and eloquent inter
preter of the great phbosophers of ab ages. M.
Cousin, in his turn, has been fortunate in having
for his disciple M. Jouffroy — a disciple, of mind
original and independent, fobowing a master
accomplished in the art of observing intellectual
and moral facts, and of describing them and

222 SPIRITUALISM.
ordering them, without altering their essential
character. Sometimes, it is true, M. Cousin
yields to the ambition of his thought, or is
swayed by the intebectual current of opinions
in vogue; but very soon his common sense
checks, or at least sets him on his guard — a com
mon sense that finds lucid expression, and is dis
tinguished by probity of intent. Such are the
founders and the glorious chiefs of the spiritual
istic school of the nineteenth century.
Nor have they fabed to find disciples and
heirs worthy of such predecessors. For some
years past it has been the custom, in certain
regions of the learned world, to demand, frivo
lously enough, and in a tone not free from irony,
" What has become of the spmtuahstic school
— what can it be about?" I wbl not answer
for it as Tertubian did to the Pagans, "We
are only of yesterday, and we are everywhere —
in your domams, your cities, your isles, your
fortresses, your communes, your councbs, your
camps, your tribes, your 'decuries,' in the

SPIRITUALISM. 223
palace, the senate, the forum; we only leave you
your temples.* The modern Spiritualists had
no such conquests to make, and it is fitting for
phbosophers to be more modest; but however
short my experience may have taught me that
the human memory may in simbar cases some
times be, I am astonished that men should so
forget facts, and facts, too, that are recent and
patent. What school of phbosophy ever fur
nished in half a century so many men and so
many works, some of eminence, ab of them of dis
tinguished merit ? I wib cite only a few names :
MM. de Remusat, Damiron, Adolphe Garnier,
Franck, Jules Simon, Barthelemy, Samt-Hbaire,
Saisset, Caro, Bersot, Leveque, Boubber, Janet,
some of whom have scarcely disappeared from
the stage of the world, and others are only just
arrived there — they belong ab to the spiritual
istic school, to which they have ab done honor
by important works on philosophy, whether
speculative, historical, political economic, or
* Tertullian Apologet., ch. xxxvii.

224 SPIRITUALISM.
practicaL Their doctrines, it is true, have now
been for some time hotly attacked, and the wind
of the day does not blow into their sabs. They
have, besides, in my opmion, been wrong in this
respect, that they have not directed sufficient
attention to these polemics; that they have
combated in a manner too indirect, or with too
little energy ; the ideas in whose name their own
have been assabed; a certain share of languor and
of embarrassment is at this moment the malady
of the best minds and of the sincerest convic
tions. But in spite of the blows which it re
ceives and returns, although with insufficient
sturdiness, the spirituahstic school, if we judge
it by the names and the works which belong
to it, by their talent, and their fame, remains
in our century in possession of the domain and
of the banner of phbosophy.
Its merits wbl present themselves stib more
clearly if we examine closely the results of its
labors. The first and the most important result, in a

SPIRITUALISM. 225
point of view purely phbosophical, is, that the
Spiritualists of our days have given to then-
researches and to their ideas a character reaby
scientific : they have introduced into the study
of man and of the intebectual world, the method
practiced with so much success in the study of
man and of the material world — that is to say,
they have taken the observation of facts as the
point of departure and the constant guide of
their investigations. Are there in man and in
the intebectual world, as there are in man and
in the material world, facts capable of being
observed, seized, described, classified, general
ized? This is the question which the spiritual
istic school proposed and discussed at the out
set. I have no hesitation in saying, that it
resolved it in the affirmative, and that, thanks
to this school, psychology has assumed its rank
among the positive sciences, just as physiology
did. Like physiology, geology, or botany,
psychology has its special object, its determined
domain, in which it proceeds absolutely accord-
15

226 SPIRITUALISM.
ing to the same method observed by the physical
sciences in them domain. That this method,
the observation of facts, of their value and their
laws, is in psychology more difficult to be fol
lowed than in the physical sciences, is certain ;
but this certainly does not deprive psychology
either of its domain or of its scientific character.
It is a science by the same right and upon the
same conditions as all the others are so. The la
bors of the spiritualistic school, and particularly
those of M Jouffroy, have given it a sobd found
ation : and this has been formaby recognized by
several even among the adversaries of this school,
among others by M. Taine and M. Berthelot*
It is in the name of science and by the pro
cesses of science that the Spiritualists of the
* I read in the Metaphysique et la Science of M. Vacherot :
" The Metaphysician :
" In his denial of psychology, I stop at once the author of
the ' positive philosophy,' and I demand of him by what right
he thus banishes from the domain of the experimental sciences
a science of observation.
" The man of learning :
" It constitutes in effect a ' hiatus ' in this philosophy, and a

SPIRITUALISM. 227
nineteenth have combated the Sensuabsts of the
eighteenth century. They have not, it is true,
absolutely crushed Materiabsm, that chbd and
legitimate heir of Sensuabsm; but whbe de
throning the parent, they have compebed the
chbd sometimes to avow himself boldly, some
times to transform himself, and to assume other
features and other arms than those of his cradle.
I wbl only cite the lecture of M. Cousin on the
" Sensuabstic Phbosophy in the Eighteenth Cen
tury," and the essay of the Duke de Broglie on
the " Existence of the Soul," * written on the
hiatus which all the sound minds of the positive school are be
ginning to admit. M. Littre, for example, may make his reser
vations of opinion as to the manner in which our psychologists
understand psychology, and as to the method which they apply
to it ; but he has too much sense not to admit that the intelli
gence — all that constitutes man's identity, the moral man — is
the object of a peculiar study, of which many previous works
have shown the possibility, and many practical results prove
the high and vital interest." — Vacherot, la Metaphysique et la
Science, vol. iii, p. 181.
* This essay, first inserted in 1828 in the Revue Frangaise,
has been reprinted in the " Ecrits et discours divers " of the
Duke de Broglie, collected and published in 1863.

228 SPIRITUALISM.
occasion of the work of M. Broussais: "De
1'Irritation et de la Folie." Whoever, after hav
ing read them, would stbl persist in maintaining
the Sensuabsm of Locke and of Condblac, or in
refusing to see the consequences to which Sen
sualism leads, would prove, in my opinion, that
he has not understood either the question put,
or the doctrine combated and refuted. We
have here a result acquired for the science of
the intebectual world, and we owe the result
to the polemics of the spirituahstic school.
That school has obtained another result more
important stbl, and which belongs no longer to
the polemics of simple negation, but to positive
doctrine; it has set in the broad light of day
the real and fundamental principle of morals,
the distinction as to the essentials of moral good
and evb, as web as the law of obbgation, that
" categorical imperative," the sole refuge which
Kant found against Skepticism. Neither the
interest web defined of each mdividual, nor the
interest of the greater numbers, nor any senti-

SPIRITUALISM. 229
mental sympathy, nor any system of positive
written law, can, for the future, be considered
as the basis of morals. An attempt is made in
the present day to estabbsh another thesis, and
to represent morality as absolutely independent
of religion. Grave error, which discards from
morality, if not its principle, at least its source
and its object, its author and its future; an
error, however, very different from those errors
which dispense even with the principle of
morals, and assign as the rule for the conduct of
men, motives having in themselves nothing
moral, nothing absolute. The fact that man's
conscience and man's reason recognize the dis
tinction of moral good and evb, and at the same
time the duty of practicing that good as the
law of human actions, is a fact which we may
now regard as acquired to phbosophy. The
treatise " Du Bien," in the work of M. Cousin
upon " Le Vrai, le Beau, et le Bien," the preface
of M Jouffroy to the " Outlines of Moral Phi
losophy," by Dugald Stewart, and the " Essia

230 SPIRITUALISM.
sur la Morale," in the "Melanges Phboso-
phiques," which M. Jouffroy published in 1833,
the book of M. Jules Simon upon "Le Devoir,"
these are ab solid and brbbant works, by which
the spiritualistic school has victoriously estab
lished the truth to which I have referred.
And in establishing it, it has paid a remark
able act of homage to another fact, and rendered
an immense service by enforcing a truth, with
which are intimately connected man's rights in
this world, as web as his prospects beyond this
world: I mean the fact of man's bberty. This
is no question of pure theory and scientific
curiosity ; but a vital question, whose solution
has for man, in time present and time future,
the most important practical consequences.
Upon what grounds would the claim of man
to liberty in the social state rest, what would
become of his hopes and fears of a future
eternity, if man were not a being moraby free
and responsible for the decisions which determ
ine his acts ? The civil liberty of man during

SPIRITUALISM. 231
his bfe on earth, and his future destiny after his
bfe on earth, closely depend upon the fact of
his free vobtion and upon the responsibbity
which accompanies it. Without free volition
man fabs in this world, without rights, under
the yoke of whatever force may take possession
of him, or use him as its instrument; what
remains for man, then, but to tremble at the
destiny which awaits him beyond this world by
virtue of the unknown decree of his Sovereign
Master ? To the spirituahstic school belongs
the honor of having firmly estabbshed and
rendered plain the psychological fact of the
freedom of the human wib ; nor in doing so has
it abowed itself to be troubled and blinded by
the ontological questions which that fact sug
gests, or by the difficulty attending the solu
tion of these questions. Consequently, it has
accepted upon this point the limits of man's
science, and at the same time maintained the
rights of man's nature. It has laid in man's
liberty and man's responsibility the legitimate

232 SPIRITUALISM.
foundation of pobtical liberty, as web as that of
the personal morabty of man and of man's future.
Thus, then, the spiritualistic school of the
nineteenth century is at once scientific, moral,
bberal. Eminent merits, rare combmation in
any time, and stbl more so in our time !
With these great merits, and in spite of them,
two omissions are stbl remarkably striking.
The spirituabstic school, our contemporary,
has halted abruptly before the sovereign prob
lems which weigh upon the human soul, and
which, in the first series of these "Medita
tions," I styled natural problems ; * it has in
no respect furthered their solution according to
reason, or accepted their solution according to
Christianity; its "Theodicy" has remained far
in arrear of its Psychology. Halted it has,
also, before any practical solution of these same
problems; nor has it eliminated either any
faith or any law which suffices for man's soul
or man's conduct in life — in short, any rebgion.
* Meditations on the Essence of the Christian Religion.

SPIRITUALISM. 233
M. Jules Simon, in his work entitled " La Relig
ion Naturebe," MM. Saisset and De Remusat, in
their " Essais de Phbosophie Rebgieuse," have
striven, irrespectively of ab positive revelation,
to give to man's soul and to man's conduct that
satisfaction and that religious rule which both
require. I doubt then counting much upon the
success of their attempts ; I doubt their bebev-
ing that their natural religion, or their religious
phbosophy, are sufficient substitutes for Chris
tianity. Far other things than such drops of
science are required to appease the thirst of
humanity for rebgion.
Whence, in the spiritualistic school, this double
hiatus — this twofold weakness, whence?
In my opinion, the causes are themselves
twofold. The spiritualistic school has been at
once too timid and too proud. It has not seen
in the psychological facts which it was observ
ing and describing, all that they contain and
reveal upon the subject of the great natural
problems of man and of the world ; it has

234 SPIRITUALISM.
neglected the cosmological facts and the his
torical facts which concur to throw bght upon
those problems; its psychology has remained
isolated and incomplete. It has, at the same
time, fabed to see the limits of psychology and
of human science in general; not having suc
ceeded in advancing the torch of science into
the regions where access to it is denied, it has
refused to accept the light descending upon man
by another way than that of science.
- Like Plato, Descartes, Leibnitz, Reid, and
Kant, M. Cousin, now the most eminent repre
sentative of the spiritualistic school, establishes,
by virtue of psychological observation, these
two great facts : first, that there exist universal
and necessary prmciples manifesting themselves
in the human mind, and reigning there without
being capable of being subverted, which are
cabed into action by sensations coming from
the external world; secondly, that these sensa
tions, so coming from the external world, do not
in any way supply the human mind with these

SPIRITUALISM. 235
universal and necessary prmciples, and that
they can explain neither their presence nor their
origin. Such, for instance, are the principles,
that everything which begins to appear has
a cause — that every quabty belongs to a
substance ! * Sensuabsm is not in a position to
account in any way for these two prmciples,
or to find them among those facts that form all
its psychology.
I am not cabed upon to develop or to discuss
this idea, which, for my part, I fuby admit ;
enough that I mention it as a fundamental doc
trine of the spiritualistic school.
The phbosophers, who have admitted the
existence of these universal and necessary prin
ciples, have assigned them different names, and
have enumerated and classified them differently ;
but whether they style them " ideas," or " innate
ideas," or " laws," or " forms," or " categories of
the understanding" — whether they enlarge or
limit their number — they agree as to their
"Do Vrai, du Beau, et du Bien, pp. 19-66. 1857.

236 SPIRITUALISM.
nature, and declare them inherent in the human
mind itself, which appbes them, so to say, as its
own peculiar property in its appreciation of the
external world ; so far is the mmd from borrow
ing them from that world !
These universal and necessary principles once
admitted and characterized, some of the phbos-
ophers who so admit and characterize them, the
Scotch phbosophers for instance, go no further,
and adhere to the psychological fact without
examining its value or its consequences in an
ontological sense. Others, like Kant, refuse to
that psychological fact ab ontological value,
and are of opinion that nothing authorizes us in
affirming that those prmciples, inherent in the
internal existence of the human mind, are true
in the domain beyond the human mind, or that
they regulate the realities of the external world,
as they regulate our intebectual activity.
Others, finally, M. Cousin, with Plato, Des
cartes, Leibnitz, Fenelon, and Bossuet, see the
work of God, and consequently God himself, in

SPIRITUALISM. 237
the universal and necessary principles which
preside over the intebectual existence of man;
and they recognize God as the infinite and
sovereign being in whom the necessary prm
ciples reside ; and they regard these as the man
ifestations of him, and think that he placed them
in the intebigence of man when he placed man
himself in the middle of the world.
To this doctrine I firmly adhere; but why
does the spiritualistic school so stop short, why
does it not advance to the very end of the path
upon which it has entered ? It admits God as
the being in whom these necessary prmciples
reside, and from whom man has received them ;
what does this mean but that it recognizes in
God the author and instructor of man? And
to recognize in God the author and the in
structor of man, what is this but to recognize
the fact of the creation, and the fact of the
primitive revelation inherent in the fact of the
creation ? These two truths are involved in the
fact that the necessary principles exist in the

238 SPIRITUALISM.
mind of man, and that man derives them, not
from his relations with the external world, but
from himself, and from the source whence he
himself emanates — from God, his Creator. God
has created man armed at ab points, as web in
the order of the intebect as of matter, complete
in his soul as in his body: that is to say, God
has given to him at his creation the necessary
principles of his intebectual life, just as he
has given him the necessary mechanism of his
physical organization. Scientific psychology
thus mounts up to that supreme point where
it meets Christian revelation. There is, on its
part, inconsistency or timidity in not recognizing
and proclaiming the existence of that light to
which it so attains.
What was the import, what the form, of that
primitive revelation ? Has the revelation itself
been renewed at any epoch subsequent to the
creation ? If so, by what instruments and with
what incidents has it been renewed? These
are questions to which I shall recur, but which

SPIRITUALISM. 239
for the moment I do not approach; I wish here
only to estabbsh the fact of the divine revela
tion in the sphere and in the terms of scientific
psychology. Facts in cosmogony lead to the same conclu
sion. I repeat here what I said in the first
series of these Meditations, when speaking of
the dogma of the creation :
"The only serious opponents of the dogma
of the creation are those who maintain that the
universe, the earth, and man upon the earth,
have existed from all eternity, and, cobectively,
in the state in which they now are. No one,
however, can hold this language, to which facts
are invincibly opposed. How many ages man
has existed on the earth is a question that has
been largely discussed, and is stbl under discus
sion. The inquiry in no way affects the dogma
of the creation itself; it is a certain and recog
nized fact that man has not always existed on
the earth, and that the earth has for long pe
riods undergone different changes incompatible

240 SPIRITUALISM.
with man's existence. Man, therefore, had a
beginning : man has come upon the earth." *
He did not come there by spontaneous gen
eration — that is to say, by any creative force or
organizmg power inherent in matter. Scientific
observation overturns more and more, every
day, this hypothesis, which, in other respects
also, it is impossible to admit as any explana
tion of the first appearance upon the earth of
the complete man, the man in a condition to
survive. " Another delusion of which we must
rid ourselves," said, lately, a member of the
Academy of Sciences, as he quitted the lecture-
room where M. Pasteur had been throwing
upon .this subject the bght of his luminous and
scrupulous criticism. The hypothesis of the
progressive transformation of species does not
explain better the existence of man, such as we
now see him upon the earth. This hypothesis
is also rejected by the exact student of facts;
* Meditations on the Essence of the Christian Religion,
page 18.

SPIRITUALISM. 241
even if admitted, it would stbl leave existing
the same problems; for, whence came these
primitive types, whose successive transforma
tions have, as supposed, produced the existing
species ? God is as necessary to create the ape
or the primitive type of the ape as he is neces
sary to create man himself. Scientific cosmology
accords with scientific psychology. God, the
creator and instructor of man, is the grand fact
which each of these sciences encounters at the
summit of its labors.
The whole current of history contains the
same teaching. I admit that error abounds
in history, that it is fub of false assertions, of
recitals tortured from the truth, facts mutilated,
legends invented by men as imaginations. It is
not, for ab that, the less certain that in a great
part the truth stbl remains there, that certain
historical events are authenticated and attested
by undeniable testimony. I mention here only
two, because connected with the subject which
engages me. It is a general bebef, a universal
is

242 SPIRITUALISM.
tradition in the history of nations, that, either
at the moment of the creation, or at some
epoch subsequent to creation, the God, or the
gods, whom those nations respectively adored,
had had direct relations with man ; had become
manifest to him by different acts or under dif
ferent forms, and had assumed a place and
exercised an active influence upon man's desti
nies. The idea of a single revelation, or of a
succession of revelations — revelations character
ized at one time by a strange grossness, at
another by a subtle mysticism, is a thing ever
recurring in the history of humanity. The
tradition of the special revelation, proclaimed
first by the Hebrews, and after them by the
Christians, is equaby undeniable ; criticism may
apply itself to the volumes that contain the
accounts ; may contest the authenticity or exact
itude or date of particular books; but so far
from ever negativing, it wib not even weaken
the evidence of the existence and the powerful
influence of the religious tradition which gave

SPIEITUALISM. 243
birth to Judaism and to Christianity. We
have here a remarkable historical fact, manifest
ing at once the natural faith of mankind in the
divine revelation, and in the relations of the
Creator with his creatures.
If the spiritualistic school refused from its
very origin to admit these facts, drawn from
cosmogony and from man's history, into the
sphere of its labors ; if it limited psychology to
its pecubar scientific object — the study of the
human soul — I am far from making such refu
sal matter of reproach : for the Spirituahsts did
thereby nothing but what they were entitled
and cabed upon to do. But they have faben
into a twofold error. Whbe observing and de
scribing psychological facts, they did not perceive
nor accept ab that they imported : they saw in
the intebigent man the work and the trace of
God; but they did not see what was implied
in that man besides — that is, revelation as web
as creation. They did not leave pure psychology
to demand of kindred sciences, such as cosmology

244 sprR.rnTAT.TSM.
and history, whether their results accorded or
did not accord with the results that they had
deduced from psychology. In short, on the one
side they stopped short of the limits of the
domain of psychology ; and on the other, they
confined themselves to it too exclusively.
From this twofold error sprang another stbl
more serious. Spiritualism gave birth to Ration
alism — a transformation as unnatural as unfor
tunate, which has rendered the science of man
and of the intebectual world still more inexact
and incomplete !

THIRD MEDITATION.

RATIONALISM.
" A man of a mind as unprejudiced as rare, pne
who wbl never be suspected of any undue bias
for Christianity, M. Sainte-Beuve, avowing to
me recently the high esteem with which M.
Alexandre Vinet inspired him, borrowed an
expression of Pascal's: "The heart has its
reasons, which the reason does not compre
hend." *
I only admit half of what is impbed in this
concbiatory phrase ; and these are my reasons.
True rebgious faith, or, to cab things by
their real names, Christian faith, is founded
* Between this phrase and that of Pascal there is a slight
difference. Pascal said, " Le cceur a des raisons que la raison
ne connait point : " " The heart has reasons that the reason
knows not at all." Pensees de Pascal, edition of M. Faugere,
1844, vol. ii, p. 172.

246 RATIONALISM.
upon instincts and upon sentiment at the same
time that it is founded upon reasons. If reason
do not accept the sentiments of the heart, on
which side is the fault ? Is the fault with the
heart, that it feels them, or is it with the reason,
that it does not comprehend them ?
My reply to this question is easy. I reject
the distinction made. I admit no such persons
as are respectively styled the heart, the reason.
Here is only an attempt at a psychological
anatomy; no true enunciation of a real fact.
Man, the human being, is essentially one, and
single: he has the faculty of self-observation
and self-study, but in exercising it he does not
destroy the unity of his nature; it is not his
mere reason, it is himself, and his whole self,
that makes himself the object of his observation
and of his study, and that cannot but recognize
himself and accept himself in his entirety. He
has no right to say, with an air of scientific dis
dain, " My reason comprehends not the reasons
of my heart." He must perforce say : " I com-

RATIONALISM. 247
prehend not myself; " he must perforce proclaim,
not the incoherency of his being, but the insuf
ficiency or the incompetency of what he styles
his reason.
Phbosophy, bke poetry, is fub of personi
fications that mislead; the one personifies by
images, the other by abstractions. Both have
need of them — the one for its creations, the
other for its studies ; I am far from seeking to
deny their respective use. All that I contend
for is, that we must not misconceive the real
import of these expedients of human language;
we must not, by taking them for realities, lose
sight of or destroy what are reaby and genu
inely realities, the entities of divine creation.
I insist the more on this error, because in the •
phbosophy of our time it is a common and a
potent error, and the source too of other errors,
deplorable as well in a scientific as in a moral
and practical point of view. Condblac and his
disciples had set apart and speciaby studied in
man the faculty of sensation, and they were

248 RATIONALISM.
thereby led to make out of this faculty, and out
of it alone, man himself and the whole man.
Kant and his school considered particularly in
man the faculty of the reason and judgment,
and very soon reason came with them to con
stitute the whole man. I am far from intend
ing to examine in its fundamental principles and
its entirety the system of Kant, the greatest
philosophical work upon the human under
standing that any man has produced since the
time of Plato. I single out this fact, that it
treats the reason as the proper, special and par
amount object of phbosophy. Warned by his
profound, scrupulous genius, Kant did not limit
himself to a point of view so narrow, although
so lofty; he studied man's reason under its dif
ferent aspects, he constituted himself the critic
of pure reason, the critic of practical reason, the
critic of aesthetic reason — that is, of reason ap
plied to the discrimination of the beautiful ; he
decomposed, so to say, the reason itself into as
many different faculties as he found different

RATIONALISM. 249
phases in the intebectual and moral bfe of man;
but the faculty that he styled the reason re
mained the basis of his study and of his system.
It became in his school, and in the schools akin
to it, pre-eminently the intebectual substance,
the basis of man and of phbosophy; and the
human being himself, in his personal unity,
with ab his bfe and his free wbl, entirely dis
appeared from their teaching.
As results of this system I wbl cite only
two facts, very different in then* nature, both
very foreign to the founder of the system and
his disciples, but which serve the better to
reveal that system's faultmess, as these facts
are, although its indirect, remote, and involun
tary, nevertheless, its undeniable consequences.
When, in 1793, the frenzied men who dis
posed, as masters, of the destinies of France,
abobshed the Christian religion and Christian
worship, they resolved, nevertheless, to give to
men an object to adore. They instituted the
worship of reason. The church of Notre-

250 RATIONALISM.
Dame at Paris was metamorphosed into a
temple of reason; a young woman was made
to figure there as the goddess of reason ; and
the orator of the National Convention, Chau-
mette, cried aloud as he pointed her out to the
people, "Behold bving Reason; we celebrate
here to-day the sole true worship, the worship
of Liberty and of Reason."
At the distance of three quarters of a century
from the date of these revolutionary orgies, in
1865, not in France but in England, a man of
earnest intentions, superior mmd, and extensive
learning, whose sincerity is evident, and his
sentiments moral at once and moderate, writes
a book entitled, "Rationalism in Europe;" and
the object of this book is to establish, that all
the good effected in Europe since the fall of the
Roman empire, all the progress made by states
in justice, in humanity, in bberty, and general
happiness — whether in the sphere of science or
of practical industry — is due to the influence of
Rationalism, to its developments and its con-

RATIONALISM. 251
quests. Mr. Lecky is not a metaphysician; he
attaches no precise and phbosophical meaning
to the word "Rationabsm;" he does not
trouble himself about the system of Kant, nor
the place occupied in it by the pure, the practi
cal, or the aesthetic reason ; he only retraces the
intebectual and social history of Europe, and
ab the happy results that this history com
memorates, ab the salutary consequences of the
activity of the human mind, of the liberty of
man's thought, of the ameboration of human
institutions and manners, he sums up ab in a
single name, attributes them to a single cause,
and assigns ab the honor to the progress of
Rationalism !
Arrived, nevertheless, at the conclusion of his
work, a single reflection disquiets Mr. Lecky:
he asks himself whether, in extolling the happy
effects of what he styles Rationalism, he has
not gone too far, said too much, and hoped too
much: "Utbity is perhaps the highest motive
to which reason can attain. ... It is from the

252 RATIONALISM.
moral or rebgious faculty alone that we obtain
the conception of the purely disinterested. . . .
The substitution of the phbosophical conception
of truth for its own sake, for the theological con
ception of the gubt of error, has been in this
respect a clear gam; and the pobtical move
ment which has resulted chiefly from the intro
duction of the spirit of Rationabsm into pobtics,
has produced, and is producmg, some of the
most splendid instances of self-sacrifice. On the
whole, however, the general tendency of these
influences is unfavorable to enthusiasm, and
both in actions and in speculations this tendency
is pamfuby visible. With a far higher level of
average excebence than in former times, our age
exhibits a marked decline in the spirit of self-
sacrifice, in the appreciation of the more poetical
or religious aspect of our nature. The history
of self-sacrifice during the last eighteen hundred
years has been mainly the history of the action
of Christianity upon the world. Ignorance and
error have, no doubt, often directed the heroic

RATIONALISM. 253
spirit into wrong channels, and have sometimes
even made it a cause of great evil to mankind ;
but it is the moral type and beauty, the enlarged
conception and persuasive power of the Chris
tian faith, that have chiefly cabed it into being,
and it is by their influence alone that it can be
permanently sustained. . . .
"This is the shadow resting upon the other
wise brbbant picture the history of Rationalism
presents. The destruction of the belief in witch
craft and of religious persecutions ; the decay of
those ghastly notions concerning future punish
ments, which for centuries diseased the imagina
tions and embittered the character of mankind ;
the emancipation of suffermg nationabties ; the
abolition of the belief in the gubt of error,
which paralyzed the intebectual, and of the
asceticism which paralyzed the material prog
ress of mankind, may be justly regarded as
among the greatest triumphs of civbization;
but when we look back to the cheerful alacrity
with which, in some former ages, men sacrificed

254 RATIONALISM.
ab their material and intebectual mterests to
what they bebeved to be right, and when we
realize the unclouded assurance that was their
reward, it is impossible to deny that we have
lost something in our progress." *
But to leave England and Mr. Lecky, and
to return once more to France. I turn to the
pages of a rationalistic phbospher more pro
found, and more profoundly troubled, too, in
his sentiments than Mr. Lecky. I find there, in
an essay of M. Edmond Scherer, entitled " The
Crisis of Protestantism,"! the fobowing passage :
"That which is reaby imperiled is not so
much Protestantism; it is Christianity, it is
very rebgion. As for natural rebgion, that
exists only in books. Religions which have vital
force and influence are positive religions ; that is,
rebgions which have a Church, and particular
* History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rational
ism in Europe, by W. E. H. Lecky, vol. ii, 1866, third edition,
pp. 408-409.
t Melanges d'histoire religieuse. Pp. 250-254. 1864,

RATIONALISM. 255
rites, and dogmas. What are these dogmas?
Taken in their intimate meaning, they are the
solutions of the great problems which have
ever disquieted the mind of man — the origin
of the world, and of evil ; the expiation ; the
future of humanity. The doctrines of religion
are a sort of revealed metaphysics.
" Considered in its form, dogma is the super
natural — not merely because rebgions were born
at an epoch when the" imagination was greedy
of miracles, and when the imagination, in her
naivete, associated herself with everything; but
also because, as may be readily understood, it is
impossible for a positive rebgion to have any
other origin than a revelation ; it is necessarily
a history of the intervention of God in the
destinies of man, the account of acts by which
God created and saved the world — it is that or
it is nothing. We see then at once that in re
ligion everything is not religious. There is in
every rebgion a multitude of elements, histor
ical, physical, and metaphysical, as to which its

256 RATIONALISM.
dogmas may come into conflict with science.
Nevertheless, it is not of this antagonism that I
would here speak. The rebgious sentiment has
also its critical action; it also may enter into a
struggle with religion.
"As long as the authority of the priest or
of the book preserves its prestige, the bebever
receives his rebgion ready made for him, with
out himself making distinctions ; but as soon as
that authority is shaken, a man, if he do not
entirely reject his first belief, wbl at least no
longer accept it without reservations. He only
retains so much of it as enlightens or touches
him, so much as commends itself to his under
standing or to his heart ; so much, in a word, as
gives a satisfaction to his religious requirements.
" Thus it is that religious sentiment becomes
the measure of rebgious truth. It receives ab
in religion that addresses itself to the soul ab
that nourishes and fortifies the soul, ab that
raises the soul to the infinite and the ideal, ab
that unites the soul to God. Religious senti-

RATIONALISM. 257
ment appropriates it ab, but it appropriates
nothing more. Let but a thing become indif-
ferent, and it feels it as an importunity, and
looks upon it in the light of an element strange,
useless, arbitrary. It rejects, for this reason,
doctrmes purely speculative as well as facts
purely marvelous. Man requires his religion
to be entirely rebgious ; that is to say, to be in
ab respects in direct relation with piety, and,
so to speak, to be vertical to his conscience.
The more his faith purifies itself, the more a
man ebminates from his religion dogmas which,
having no root either in the divine nature or
man's nature, appear on that very account to
have no ground to exist at ab.
" At first sight this gradual emancipation of
faith and this corresponding progress of rebgion
in the ways of Spiritualism, seem a natural pro
cess by means of which religious opinion and
the human mind contrive to maintain them
selves in a state of constant equilibrium. We
imagine ab difficulties removed, and fancy that
17

258 EATIONALISM.
we catch a glimpse of the religious future of
humanity in a sort of Christian Rationalism,
a rational Christianity not excluding fervor of
devotion, but leaving ab its bberty to man's
thought. " I demand nothing better as far as I am con
cerned ; but I cannot refrain from asking, not
without anxiety, whether Christian Rationalism
is really a religion. What remains in the cru
cible after the operation just detailed ? Is the
residue reaby the essence of the positive dog
mas, or is it but a caput mortuumf When
Christianity is rendered translucent to man's
mind, conformable to man's reason and man's
moral appreciation of things, does it stbl
possess any great virtue? Does it not very
much resemble Deism, and is it not equaby
lean and sterile? Does not the potent in
fluence of religious belief reside in its dog-
matic formulas and marvelous legends just as
much as in anything more essentiaby religious
that it possesses ? Is there not even somewhat

RATIONALISM. 259
of superstition in genuine piety, and is it
possible for piety to dispense with that popular
system of metaphysics, that attractive mythol
ogy, which men strive to eliminate from it?
Do not the elements which you pretend to
abstract from religion constitute the aboy, with
out which the precious metal becomes unsuit
able for the rough usages of life ? In short,
when criticism shab have succeeded in over
throwing the supernatural as useless, and dog
mas as irrational ; when the religious sentiment
on the one side, and a scrupulous reason on the
other, shall have penetrated man's bebef, assim-
bated and transformed it; when no other au
thority shab remain standing, save that of the
personal conscience of each individual; when,
in a word, man having torn every vab and
penetrated every mystery, shab behold that
God face to face to whom he aspires, wib it
not be discovered that that God is, after all,
nothing else than man himself, the conscience
and the reason of humanity personified ? Wib

260 EATIONALISM.
not religion, in the very attempt to become
more rebgious, have ceased to exist ? "
Such, according to the views of its most
eminent representatives, are the potent influ
ences and the final results of Rationabsm.
After having confusedly attributed to it ab the
progress of man's thought and of man's civil
ization, Mr. Lecky expresses the apprehension
that he has lowered the nature of man, by de
priving him (these are his very words) " of our
noblest quabty, of the divine spark, the prin
ciple in us of everything that is heroic," the
complete and pure devotedness of Christian
faith. M. Scherer asks himself sadly if in re
jecting ab dogma and ab positive revelation, in
obhging rebgious sentiment to be seK-sufficing,
and to feed itself with its own and single virtue,
rational criticism does not inflict a deadly blow
upon religion itself; and M. Sainte-Beuve, in the
same perplexity, contents himself with saying, as
resignedly, though more coldly, " The heart has
its reasons, which the reason comprehends not."

EATIONALISM. 261
Nothing is so affecting to me, but nothing,
at the same time, throws such light upon the
subject of my meditations as this involuntary,
this mvincible anxiety observable in men of
lofty sentiments and profound convictions,
when confronting the chasms in their system,
and dealing with the incoherences of their
own convictions. However profound, however
different my own conviction may be, I have no
desire to engage, either with them or against
them, in any direct or prolonged controversy.
I have been engaged all my life in frequent and
ardent polemics. Those could not be well
avoided by a man like myself, forced not merely
to combat human opinions, but to grapple with
human affairs; and called upon to resolve, upon
the instant, practical and urgent questions. But
whbe I voluntarily submitted to the necessity of
precipitate and unforeseen struggles, experience
has taught me their inconveniences and their
perils. The combatants on each side are prone
to make use of weapons of too offensive

262 EATIONALISM.
a nature ; men involve themselves for party
interests and party honor, and push their con
clusions with obstinate pertinacity beyond the
strictness of truth, sometimes even beyond their
own intentions. I do not wish in the arena of
phbosophy to run the risk of striking upon any
simbar rock ; but avoiding ab personal polemics,
ab controversy of detab, I wbl express upon the
essence of Rationalism, although only in a gen
eral manner, my sincere and intimate convictions.
There are in Rationabsm two fundamental
errors. First, it mutbates man whbe it studies
him ; it holds as of no account several of the
constituent elements and essential facts of
human nature, of which it ignores the meaning
and the import. Secondly, Rationabsm extends
the pretensions of human science beyond its
rights, and beyond its legitimate limits.
The instincts, the sentiments, of humanity are
certainly not sufficient reasons for scientific con
viction, nor conclusive proofs in support of any
particular system whatever. The instinctive

EATIONALISM. 263
belief of the human race in one or more super
natural forces is no demonstration of the reality
of the supernatural ; and the aspirings of man's
soul for a bfe beyond this terrestrial one does
not rationaby prove the soul's immortality.
Error may occur in human instincts or sen
timents just as much as in human ideas. But
when these instincts and these sentiments are
universal, permanent, indestructible, encoun
tered in ab ages and in all countries — when they
resist and survive ab attacks, all doubts of
reason or science — they are, beyond ab question,
considerable facts, and facts which the human
understanding cannot but recognize and respect.
If these instincts and sentiments do not solve
the problems which trouble man's under
standing, at least they demand imperiously
some solution ; if they throw no light upon his
road to science, they oblige him to see that that
road has its mysteries. Rationalism mutbates
humanity when it ignores such facts, regarding
them as vain ibusions because it cannot explain

264 RATIONALISM.
them; and when, after this mutilation, it
assigns the entire empire to a single portion of
the human nature, to a single faculty, called by
it reason, as if reason constituted the entire
man, Rationalism does in the intebectual world
what it would be doing in the physical world
did it deny the reabty of night because it only
sees the day clearly.
Rationalism is the more wrong in thus dis
carding facts which it does not explain, that in
its proper domain simbar facts occur, and that
its science of reason arrives also finally at
mysteries. I mentioned it before, as a truth
acquired to phbosophy, that there exist in the
human mind certain universal and necessary
principles, neither furnished to the mind by
impressions derived from the external world,
nor created by the mind itself; and that those
principles are inherent in the nature of the
mind, and come to it from another source than
that of sensation, or any discovery of man's own
thought. We have here a psychological fact

EATIONALISM. 265
which, after the profound studies of the spiritual
istic school from the time of Plato down to M.
Cousin, Rationabsm is obliged to admit. To
what does this fact tend, and what is its logical
consequence? What but God, creation, revela
tion, and the relations of God with man ? Wbl
Rationabsm give any better explanation of
these divine laws of the human mind than it
has given of the instincts and of the sentiments
of the human heart ? or wbl it ignore the one
result as it has ignored the other ?
But now to touch upon the radical and per
manent error of Rationabsm. It regards ab
things as accessible to the researches and to the
methods of human science. When Spultualism
has recognized and proclaimed the essential and
necessary facts which constitute the mtebectual
and moral being by it styled man, it halts
abruptly; it hesitates also to recognize and
proclaim the mysterious facts in that sanctuary
the very door of which it has reached ; it does
not resign itself to adore what lies behind the

266 EATIONALISM.
vail; it is inconsequent and timid, although
respectful and modest. Rationalism, on the
contrary, is presumptuous and audacious;
its ambition is to see clearly, to touch what is
in the center of the sanctuary, as it sees and
touches what is on its outside. Its pretension
is that it may study and know, by its ordinary
processes, as web the invisible world, its Sover
eign and its laws, as the visible world in which
man is now placed; and it wars ujoon Chris
tianity because Christianity admits no such
pretension. But Christianity here encounters
another adversary, Positivism. Positivism ar
rests its progress, saying: "I do not know,
nobody knows, if an invisible world be or be
not a reaby existing thing. It is a mere loss
of time to think of it, for nothing can be known
about it with certainty. Ab religion, ab meta
physics, are chimerical and vain sciences ; there
is no science but the science of the physical
world, of its facts and of its laws !"

FOURTH MEDITATION.

POSITIVISM.
I seek no quarrel with words, even when
they provoke it. Positivism is a word, in lan
guage a barbarism, in phbosophy a presump
tion. Unlike Geology, Ideology, Theology,
Physics, it qualifies a doctrme, not by its
object, but by its supposed merit. Ab science
pretends to positiveness — that is, to be founded
upon fact and truth. But " Positivism " alone
arrogates to itself this quality. It is an arro
gance, in my opinion, radicaby unjustifiable.
I knew its founder, M. Auguste Comte, per
sonally. I had some communication with him
in the period from 1824 to 1830. I then was
struck by the elevation of his sentiments and
by the vigor of his mind. In October, 1832,

268 positivism.
at the moment when I was entering upon my
functions as Minister of Public Instruction, he
came to me and formaby demanded that I
should create for him in the " College of France"
a professorship of general history for the phys
ical and mathematical sciences. I see no cause
to express myself here otherwise than I have
already done in my " Memoirs " as to the im
pression produced upon me by his conversation
and his personal bearing. "He explained to
me drearily and confusedly his views upon
man, society, civbization, rebgion, phbosophy,
history. He was a man single-minded, honest,
of profound convictions, devoted to his own
ideas, in appearance modest, although at heart
prodigiously vain; he sincerely bebeved that
it was his cabing to open a new era for the
mind of man and for human society. Whbe
listening to him, I could hardly refrain from
expressing my astonishment that a mind so
vigorous should at the same tune be so narrow
as not even to perceive the nature and bearing

positivism. 269
of the facts with which he was dealing, and the
questions which he was authoritatively decid
ing; that a character so disinterested should
not be warned by his own proper sentiments —
which were moral in spite of his system — of its
falsity and its negation of morabty. I did not
even make any attempt at discussion with M.
Comte: his sincerity, his enthusiasm, and the
delusion that blinded him, inspired me with
that sad esteem that takes refuge in sbence.
Had I even judged it fitting to create the chair
which he demanded, I should not for a moment
have dreamed of assigning it to him." *
I should have been as sbent and stib more
sad if I had then known the trials through
which M Auguste Comte had already passed.
He had been, in 1823, a prey to a violent at
tack of mental alienation, and in 1827, during
a paroxysm of gloomy melancholy, he had
* " Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de mon temps," t. iii,
pp. 125-7. In the sixth volume of these Memoires I have
rectified an error inadvertently committed by me as to the
epoch of my first relations with M. Auguste Comte.

270 POSITIVISM.
thrown himself from the Pont des Arts into
the Seine, but had been rescued by one of
the king's guard. More than once, in the
course of his subsequent bfe, this mental
trouble seemed upon the point of recurring.
Many wbl be tempted to demand how a man
so bttle master of himself, and whose mmd was
under so little government, could ever have suc
ceeded in producmg a doctrine so considerable,
and in exercising such real influence upon the
phbosophical world. The fact is nevertheless
beyond question. Whether the cause is to be
referred to the merit of M Comte and of his
doctrine, or to the state of men's minds at the
time, it is certain that not only in France but in
Europe, and particularly in England, numerous
and honorable disciples came over to his ideas,
and that Positivism became a school wanting
neither in sincerity nor credit. When such men
as M. Littre, at Paris, and Mr. J. Stuart Mib, in
London, declare themselves his adherents, the
doctrine has claims to a serious examination.

POSITIVISM. 271
M. Auguste Comte lived constantly, as far as
ne was individuaby concerned, under the
empire of a fixed idea, which occasioned him
many a painful disappointment; and he bved,
as far as his system was concerned, under the
empire of a false idea, which associated with
views just in themselves and sometimes grand,
one pervading and permanent error.
His fixed personal idea consisted in his think
ing himself cabed to regenerate human science
and human society by the single virtue of his
doctrine. Besides their share in the presump-
tuousness which is the common character of
mankind, minds that are inventive and fond of
systematizmg are particularly prone to extend
beyond their legitimate bearings — nay, beyond
ab bounds — the pretensions and the hopes
which their ideas suggest. M. Auguste Comte
was one of the most striking instances, as well
as one of the most honest victims, of this intel
lectual intoxication — the noblest although not
the least fantastic form of human pride. The

272 POSITIVISM.
Christian religion has its apostles and it has its
missionaries, speaking in the name of a Master
other than themselves, and preaching a faith
they did not themselves originate. M. Auguste
Comte was his own proper apostle — the invent
or and missionary of his own proper faith. Of
profound convictions, with no selfish, worldly
views, he aspired to the entire empire of the
intebect, bebeving both the mterests of social
order and the honor of the human mind
involved in the triumph of his doctrine; he
ardently desired not only its propagation, but
its organization as a permanent and potent in
stitution, to insure and perpetuate his triumph.
The real and practical government of nations,
according to him, was only, as it ought to be
only, a sort of stewardship, charged with the
duty of realizing and carrying into effect' the
ideas of thinking men. " The systematic sepa
ration of the two elementary forces, the Spiritual
and the Temporal," so he wrote to Mr. J. Stuart
Mill, " constitutes certainly the principal condi-

POSITIVISM. 273
tion for a denouement of the actual situation. I
admit that the special requirements of a situa
tion where those two forces are confounded may
authorize, and sometimes obbge, phbosophers, in
the interest of a final regeneration, to participate,
by way of exception, in actual pobtical life,
although an inclination for such a life exposes
them to the danger of many a quicksand, and
demands that their principles should be firmly
settled, to avoid the risk of a real deviation.
To embody my thought upon this subject in a
palpable example relative to a great occurrence,
I blame the phbosopher Condorcet for having
suffered himself to be returned as member to
our glorious Convention, in which men of action
were leaders, and properly so, whereas Condor
cet could never be so placed as to regard things
from the same point of view; hence that false
position for which in the sequel he had so crueby
to suffer. But on the contrary, I should have
regarded it as very natural for him to develop a
great activity in the club of the Jacobins; for,
18

274 positivism.
placed beyond the sphere of the government,
properly so cabed, that club constituted at that
time a sort of spiritual power, in that remark
able and so bttle comprehended combination of
things which characterized the revolutionary
regime. ... I have learned with much satisfac
tion," he added, stbl addressing Mr. Mill, "that
the wise energy of your resistance has succeeded
in triumphing over the blind persistence of your
friends who urge you toward a parbamentary
career. I shab propose in my last volume, and
in direct terms, the institution, by individual
efforts, of an European committee, charged per
manently with the direction of a common move
ment of philosophical regeneration, when once
Positivism shab have planted its standard — that
is, its lighthouse, I should term it — in the midst
of the disorder and confusion that reigns ; and I
hope that this wib be the result of the pubbca-
tion of my work in its complete state." *
* Letters of the 20th November, 1841, and 4th March, 1842
published in the work of M. Littre, entitled, " Auguste Comte
and the Positive Philosophy," pp. 424, 425, 427, 429.

POSITIVISM. 275
One can scarcely refrain from a smbe when
he contemplates these dreams reduced to the
form of system, ignoring every sentiment of
reality, and expounded with the confidence of
fanaticism in the name of a science called Pos
itive. Here it is that we find the fixed and
dominant idea that pervaded and compromised
the whole life of M. Auguste Comte. Whoever
did not accept his doctrine and his system, was
for him either a retrogradist full of prejudice,
or an ignoramus without scientific education, or
an interested and jealous enemy. Whoever, on
the other hand, lent himself to his views on any
point, or for any time, however short, became
, in the eyes of M. Comte his conquest and his
property, his phbosophical serf, as it were, bound
to his master by the tenure of duty, and the
render of services from which he could never
hope to enfranchise himself, without the risk of
being treated upon the instant as a deserter or
a rebel, and of seeing at once broken the closest
and most approved bonds of intimacy and friend-

276 POSITIVISM.
ship. He had so entire a confidence in his own
intebectual superiority, and in the rights which
it conferred, that he expressed it sometimes with
a nawete amounting almost to idolatry. One
day, believing that he had won over to his ideas
M. Armand Marrast, then the editor of the
National, he wrote thus to his wife : " Marrast
no longer feels any repugnance in admitting the
indispensable fact of my intellectual superiority;
he is in this respect, in my opinion, especiaby
influenced by Mbl, whom he holds, and with
reason, in high account. To speak plainly and
in general terms, I believe that, at the point at
which I have now arrived, I have no occasion
to do more than to continue to exist ; the kind
of preponderance which I covet cannot, hence
forth, fail to devolve upon me." *
Shortly after the date of this letter, M Comte
was separated from his wife and embrobed with
Mr. Mbl himself, who had not, as the former
?Letter of the 3d December, 1842: "Auguste Comte et la
philosophie positive ; " p. 324

positivism. 277
fancied, fulfilled toward him ab the duties of
an accepted and loyal disciple.
I pass from the fixed idea of the man to the
false idea of his system; it appears over and
over again at each step in the " Cours de phi
losophic positive" of M. Auguste Comte* and
in the imposing biography consecrated to his
memory by his most accompbshed disciple,
M. Littre.f I extract from different parts of
these volumes the passages in which the fun-
damental doctrme is most clearly expressed :
"Positive phbosophy is the whole body of
human knowledge. Human knowledge is the
result of the study of the forces belonging to
matter, and of the conditions or laws governing
those forces." %
" The fundamental character of positive phi
losophy is, that it regards all phenomena as
subjected to invariable natural laws, and con-
* Six volumes 8vo., published in the interval from 1830 to
1842 inclusive.
f Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive. 8vo. 1863.
J Ibid., p. 42.

278 POSITIVISM.
siders as absolutely inaccessible to us, and as
having no sense for us, every inquiry into what
is termed either primary or final causes." *
" The scientific path, in which I have, ever since
I began to think, continued to walk, the labors
that I obstinately pursue to elevate social theories
to the rank of physical science are evidently,
radically, and absolutely opposed to everything
that has a religious or metaphysical tendency." f
" My positive phbosophy is incompatible with
every theological or metaphysical phbosophy,
and consequently equaby so with every corre
sponding system of pobcy." J
" M. Comte," says M Littre, " made it a duty
to speak in pubbc without any reticence, to
deduce his positive truths, and to confront them
with the conceptions of Theology and of Meta
physics. . . . 'Rehgiosity' is in his eyes not
?Cours de philosophie positive, by M. Auguste Comte,
vol. i, p. 14.
t Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, by M. Littre,
p. 194.
t Ibid., p. 210.

positivism. 279
only a weakness, but an avowal of want of
power." *
"The 'positive state' is that state of the
mmd in which it conceives that phenomena are
governed by constant laws, from which prayer
and adoration can demand nothing, but to
which intebigence and science may address their
demands ; so that, by fambiarizing himself with
those laws more and more, and by conforming
to them more and more, man acquires an ever
growing empire over nature and over himself,
which empire is the sum of all civbization. The
' theological state,' on the contrary, is that state
of the mind which conceives that phenomena are
the results of vobtion, or, if the social develop
ment has arrived at Monotheism, that they are
the results of a single, ab-wise, and ab-power-
ful wbl. This providence, essentiaby cobective
where Polytheism is supposed, essentiaby single
in the case of Monotheism, governs the world, dis
penses its good and its evb, lays its finger upon
?Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littre, pp. 198-255.

280 posirrvrsM.
human events, and regards the destiny of each
individual man. Such is the contrast between
the two doctrines. . . . Profiting by the instruc
tion of the blustrious De Maistre, our French
priests at last comprehended that ultramontan-
ism was the only logical consequence deducible
from their essential principles. The more the
positive school defines the real character of its
progress, the more must we see this retrograde
concentration also develop itself; which wib in
volve at some later epoch Deists themselves,
as Positivism proceeds to gain complete ascend
ancy ; an ascendancy, in other respects, far more
bkely to be furthered than retarded by such co
ordination of its adversaries, for this wib tend to
give at last to the struggles of phbosophy a de
cisive character; but the Positivists wib alone
succeed in prevailing (at least as far as specula
tive doctrines are concerned) over the coalition
of ab the phbosophical forces of the ancient
school, whether metaphysical or theological." *
?Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littre, pp. 370, 434.

POSITIVISM. 281
M. Comte had even more aversion for Meta
physics than for Theology. He took particular
offense at the contemporary spiritualistic school,
and the scientific psychology of MM. Royer,
Cobard, Maine de Biran, Cousin, and Joiiffroy-
" In no view," said he, " is there any room for
this blusory psychology ; this final transforma
tion of a theology, which men strive, nowadays,
so idly to reanimate ; for — without troubling
itself either with the physiological study of our
intebectual organs, or with the observation of
those rational processes, which in effect direct
our different scientific researches — Psychology
pretends to arrive at the discovery of the
fundamental laws of the human mind by con
templating that very mind — that is to say, by
making complete abstraction both of causes
and of effects."*
Even while absolutely rejecting Theology,
M. Comte treated it with more esteem than
?Cours de philosophie positive, by M. Auguste Comte,
vol. i, p. 34.

282 positivism.
Metaphysics. " We are," he said, " too dis
posed, nowadays, to ignore the immense bene
fits due to religious influence. The positive
phbosophy, however paradoxical it may be to
claim for it such a peculiarity, is virtuaby the
only phbosophy capable of worthby appre
ciating ab the participation of the spirit of
rebgion in the whole grand development of
humanity. Is it not directly evident that, as
by an invincible organic necessity, moral efforts
have almost always to combat to some degree
or other the most energetic impulses of our
nature ; the theological spirit was imperatively
cabed upon to furnish to social discipline that
general basis which was quite indispensable at
a time when human foresight, whether of men
in masses or of men as mdividuals, was certain
ly far too limited to offer any sufficient point
d'appui to influences purely rational ? "
..." When the positive philosophy shall
have acquired that character of universality
which it is stbl without, it wbl be capable of

positivism. 283
replacing entirely, with ab its native superior
ity, that theological philosophy and that meta
physical phbosophy of which this universabty is
in these days the sole real pecubarity, and
which, deprived of this motive for preference,
wbl have for our successors nothing but an his
torical existence." *
I do not pause to notice in how many respects
this language is superficial, confused, and inco
herent. I only draw attention to the funda
mental idea which it manifests — matter, the
forces of matter, and its laws; these are the
sole objects of human knowledge, the sole
domain of the human mind. Aware of, and
embarrassed by the objections which the idea
has from the beginning of tune excited, M. Lit
tre has striven to rid himself of them by an
admission, sincere no doubt, bke everything that
he thinks, and everything that he says, but fub
in its turn of confusion and incoherence. " The
? Cours de philosophie positive, by M. Comte, vol. v, p. 73 ;
vol. i, p. 23.

284 positivism.
positive phbosophy," says he, "is at once a
system which comprehends ab that is known
of the world of. man and of society, and also a
general method, containing in itself ab the ways
by which men have come to learn all these
things. What is beyond, whether, materiaby
speaking, that space without limit, or intel-
lectuaby that concatenation of never-ending
causes, ab this is absolutely inaccessible to the
human mmd. By inaccessible is not meant
nub or non-existent. Immensity in matter, as
in intebect, is connected by a close band with
what we know, and it is only by such an abi
ance that it becomes an idea positive in itself,
and of the same order; what I mean is, that by
so touching and bordering what we know, im
mensity appears under the double character of
reality and of inaccessibbity. It is an ocean
which dashes upon our shores, and for which we
have nor bark nor sab, but the clear vision of
which is as salutary as it is formidable." *
* Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littre, p. 519.

posmviSM. 285
The vision so admitted by M. Littre is not
clear, and neither is it salutary ; but vague, and
without result. The imagery does not destroy
the system which it seeks to vab from us.
Every religious belief, every spiritual doctrme,
God and the human soul, are discarded by
Positivism, and treated as arbitrary and trans
itory hypotheses, which, however, they may
have conduced to the development of humanity,
ought now to be rejected by human reason, just
as the foot may throw down the ladder which
has enabled it to mount to the summit. To
cab things by their proper names, Positivism is
Materiabsm and Atheism, with more or less
explicitness, confidently or hesitatingly, accepted
as the last term of human science, and when
hard pressed, taking refuge in the darkness of
skepticism. What are the foundations upon which
Positivism rests? What facts, what proofs,
does M Auguste Comte adduce in support of
his principles, that matter, its forces, and its

286 positivism.
laws, constitute the sole object of human knowl
edge, the sole domain of the human mind ?
He appeals to two arguments — the one meta
physical, the other historical; the one derived
from the mind of man itself, the other from the
history of humanity.
I cannot here fobow M. Comte in his long
and complex explanation of the two orders of
proofs to which he appeals in support of his
system ; what I shab say wbl I think, suffice to
demonstrate that neither can stand any serious
examination. As a metaphysician — for metaphysician he
must permit himself to be cabed, since he
makes use of metaphysics, whatever his antip
athy for phbosophers who bear that name; —
as metaphysician, I repeat, M. Auguste Comte
belongs to the sensuabstic school. He thinks
with Locke and Condblac, that man deduces ab
his ideas and ab his knowledge from impres
sions received by him from the outer world,
and from the reflections which he makes upon

POSITIVISM. 287
those impressions. He takes, therefore, as his
starting point, the maxim of that school which
proclaims that "there is nothing in the intel
ligence which has not first been in the sense."
Nevertheless, whether by an act of proper and
remarkable sagacity, or struck by the reply of
Leibnitz, "unless the intelbgence itself," he
admits that sensation does not account for all
that passes and develops itself in the mind of
the observer of the external world. "If," he
says, "on the one side every positive theory
must necessarily be founded upon observation,
it is, on the other side, equaby plain that to
apply itself to the task of observation, our mind
has need of some ' theory.' If, in contemplating
the phenomena, we do not immediately attach
them to certain principles, not only would it
be impossible for us to combine these isolated
observations, so as to draw any fruit therefrom ;
but we should be entirely incapable of retain
ing them, and in most cases the facts would
remain before our eyes unnoticed. The need at

288 positivism.
ab times of some ' theory ' whereby to associate
facts, combined with the evident impossibbity
of the human mind at its origin forming
' theories ' out of observations, is a fact which it
is impossible to ignore." *
This fact, thus proved by M. Comte himself;
this necessary part of the human mind, indis
pensable to enable it to acquire knowledge of
the external world; this " theory," anterior to ab
observation, which man requires for the purpose
himself of observing, what are they else than
those universal and necessary principles pro
claimed by the spiritualistic school, and to
which I recently referred ? — principles inherent
in the human mind, which it applies as from its
own stores in taking cognizance of the external
world, and by virtue of which, just as one
mounts a river up to its source, man mounts
and mounts up to God, and up to the relations
of man with God.
? Cours de philosophie positive, par M. Auguste Comte, vol.
i. p. 8.

positivism. 289
But, admitting the same fact, M. Comte does
not explain it in this way. This " theory ; " these
prmciples anterior to external observation, and
which the mind absolutely requires in order to
be able to observe, are, according to him, pure
inventions of the human mind itself, temporary
instruments which the mind creates and employs
in its labors until it can obtain better. "Be
tween," says he, "two difficulties, pressed on
the one hand by the necessity of observing
in order to form 'theories,' and on the other
by the no less imperious necessity of creating
' theories ' in order to be able to deliver it
self up to a series of coherent observations, the
human mind at its birth would find itself shut
in by a vicious circle from which it would never
have had any means of escaping, had it not suc
ceeded in opening a natural issue by the spon
taneous development of theological conceptions,
which presented a point to which his efforts
might be concentrated, and which might furnish
aliment for his activity. It is, in effect, very
19

290 POSITIVISM.
remarkable, that questions the most radicaby
inaccessible to our capacities, the ultimate nature
of being, the origin and the end of all phe
nomena, should be precisely those which the
intelbgence propounds to itself, as of paramount
importance in that primitive condition, ab the
other problems reaby admitting of solution
being almost regarded as unworthy of serious
meditation. The reason of this it is not difficult
to discover, for experience alone could have
given us the measure of our strength ; and if
man had not begun by entertaining an exag
gerated opmion of that strength, it would never
have been capable of acquiring ab the develop
ment of which it is susceptible. So much does
our organization exact." *
Strange error of a man, whose supreme pre
tension it is to found ab human knowledge
upon the observation of facts ! At his very
first step, at the first difficulty which he
? Cours de philosophie positive, par M. Auguste Comte, vol.
i, pp. 9, 10.

POSITIVISM. 291
encounters, M. Comte observes inexactly and
incompletely, does not see in the facts ab that
the facts contain, and only explains them by
assigning to the human mind, in its primitive
and spontaneous operations, a hypothesis, the
hypothesis of "theological conceptions." God,
and man's relations with God, is a human inven
tion, destined to support man at the commence
ment of his career as an intelligent being, and
to occupy provisionaby the place of science !
The source of this misapprehension, the
capital error of Positivism in its metaphysical
argument, is, that it ignores the nature and the
limits of science.
The famous " enthymeme " of Descartes, " I
think, therefore I am," is a pleonasm. As soon
as the human being says to itself "I," the
human being afiirms its own existence, and
distinguishes itself from that external world
whence it derives impressions of which it is not
the author. In this primary fact are revealed
the two primary objects of human knowledge :

292 positivism.
on the one side the human being himself,
the individual person that feels and perceives,
that feels himself and perceives himself; on the
other side, the external world that is felt and
perceived : the subject and the object, (the moi
and the non-moi.) Such is the twofold field, at
the beginning of his mtebectual existence,
opened to the knowing faculty of man.
In each of these fields, whether the human
being makes himself or whether he makes the
external world the object of his contemplation,
he proceeds by the same method ; he considers
particular facts, classes these under more
general facts which serve as their summary, and
recognizes laws that govern them, these laws
being themselves facts. When this method of
observation and of generalization is applied to
the outer world, understanding by that world
the human body also, it gives birth to the
sciences of physics and of physiology. When
such method is applied to the human being,
regarded as distinct from the body in which he

positivism. 293
bves and by which he acts, it gives birth to the
science of psychology, logic, and morals. It is
not here my intention to propose a classification
of the sciences, but only to determine the
domain of science properly so cabed — that is to
say, the field in which the human mind by
observation gets directly at facts and at the
laws of facts.
Phbosophers, in their study of man and of
the world, do not sufficiently consult language,
the general language, the common language,
that instinctive expression of the activity of the
human mind. I interrogate our native lan
guage upon the question which now occupies
me, and I find it reflecting the greatest light.
It has, to express the results of the intebectual
process which takes place in man, when
regarded as the spectator of the universe and of
himself, many different words: "connaitre,"
" savoir," " croire," " connaissance," " science,"
" croyance," " foi." These are not mere different
names to express the same idea and the same

294 positivism.
fact, they are signs of different facts and of
diverse states of the human soul If we inter
rogate the languages of civilized nations, ancient
or modern, we find in ab of them, with more or
less abundance, precision or subtbty, a simbar
variety of terms corresponding to a simbar
diversity of facts.
Tabeyrand said once in the chamber of Peers,
"There is somebody who has more intebect
than Napoleon, more intebect than Voltaire;
that somebody is the Pubbc." I also say, there
is a more profound observer than Bacon, a
greater phbosopher than Kant ; it is mankind.
Mankind is right when it distinguishes in its
languages knowledge from science and from
bebef, science from bebef and from faith. Bos-
suet wrote a book entitled "De la Connais
sance de Dieu et de soi-meme;" the idea would
never have occurred to him of entitling it " De
la science de Dieu et de soi-meme;" it would
have shocked his good sense as much as his
piety. The chbd believes the smile and the

positivism. 295
speech of its mother ; in its bebef there is cer
tainly no scientific appreciation (no science) of
the relations which unite it to its mother, and
of the reasons which make it bebeve in her.
Knowledge, science, bebef, and faith, are facts
essentiaby distmct, although all equally natural
to the human soul ; and it is impossible to con
found them, to take one for the other, to annul
one in favor of the other, or to attempt to
reduce them to one term, without ignoring
realities, and fabing into enormous errors.
Such has been the constant error of M.
Auguste Comte, and such is the radical vice of
Positivism. M. Comte ignores the natural and
permanent diversity in the intebectual states
through which a man may pass in his ardent
pursuit of truth. He refuses here to recognize
any state as legitimate and definitive except the
scientific state. He regards intuitive knowl
edge and instinctive belief as preparatory and
transitory states, states without any rational
authority ; as, in short, simple steps on the way

296 positivism.
to that scientific state which alone sets man in
possession of the truth. Positivism is thus led
to extend the pretensions of science beyond its
proper domain, that is, beyond the finite world,
its facts and its laws ; and as science finds itself
incapable of observing and of defining infinity,
Positivism is, perforce, reduced either to deny
infinity, or to declare infinity absolutely inacces
sible to the human mind, and so to pass it over
in sbence.
This negation discovers another immense
error of the school and of its chief. Convinced,
and with reason, that the observation of facts is
the natural and constant process of the human
understanding in its labor after knowledge,
M. Auguste Comte has bl understood, and
incompletely understood, the results of this
labor. He fabed to perceive that it was ob
servation itself, carried on and accomplished by
the process, no less natural and no less legiti
mate, of induction, which was revealing to the
mind its peculiar facts and its peculiar laws

POSITIVISM. 297
as web as the facts and the laws of the external
world, within which that mind is placed.
M. Comte ended by ignoring or denying the
elements a priori of human knowledge ; that
is to say, the universal and necessary principles
by which man raises himself to God, and has
relations with God. Thus M. Comte mutbates
the human mind, because he fabs to observe it
and to recognize it in its entirety.
He is impelled by his system to another and
still more serious mutilation of human nature.
After having declared matter, its forces and its
laws, to be the single object of human knowl
edge, and these laws to be inherent in matter,
eternal and invariable, what is to be said of
human liberty ? What place is to be assigned
to human bberty in this world, in which it is
powerless to create anything or to change any
thing, and in which there exists no power from
which it can demand anything or jobtain any
thing? Evidently, in such a system human
liberty is a chimera, an idle luxury of human

298 positivism.
nature ; man, with all his faculties, has nothing
to do but to study matter carefully, its forces
and its laws, to adapt himself to them, and to
make the best use he can of them, with a view
to his welfare and to the satisfaction of his
desires. Fatalism is the law of man as of the
world within which he bves !
The moral instincts, and the naturally lofty
mind of M. Comte revolted at this consequence,
although it flowed imperiously from his system.
The respect which he felt for the method of
observation, and for the facts which it attains
to, did not permit him absolutely to ignore
or expressly to deny the psychological fact of
man's bberty. Sometimes he attempts to find
it a place in that sum of external facts and
fixed laws which is, in his opinion, the sole
field for man's activity and for man's science.
But such is the want of coherence of idea, that
M Comte is visibly embarrassed ; consequently,
in his works — more especially in his " Cours de
phbosophie positive," — the most solid and con-

positivism. 299
sistent of all his writings in its fundamental
prmciples — he sets almost completely aside the
essential fact of human liberty, and of free wbl
in the individual man; and in those books in
which he treats of social organization, when he
finds himself face to face with the wants and
the rights of pobtical liberty, that natural
consequence of individual free wib and of the
responsibbity attaching to it, he struggles to
elude questions of this kind, feeling the impos-
sibbity of reconciling the principle of moral
order with the despotism and the fatabsm of
the material world ; and when he explains his
views as to the government of human societies,
it is easy to see that, although writing " I am,
head and heart Republican,"* he is, in his
dreams, rather substituting a scientific domina
tion for a theocratic domination than instituting
any bberal regime.
After metaphysics comes history. M. Comte
appeals to the annals of all nations and ab ages
?Auguste Comte et la phil. pos., by M. Littre, p. 251.

300 POSITIVISM.
in confirmation of his system of the world and
of humanity. This history is to be divided,
according to him, into three successive states,
the theological state, the metaphysical state,
and the scientific state. In the theological state
and epoch, the human mind and social institu
tions are under the empire of pretended super
natural powers, of several such or of only one
such, invented by man for the solution of the
natural problems which lay siege to man, and
for the determination of the laws, with which
the social order cannot dispense. In the meta
physical epoch and state, vain abstractions
essay to replace the supernatural powers of the
theological state, and only end in an anarchy,
both of opinions and society. The third epoch
is destined to be the reign of positive science,
founded solely upon observation and respect for
the facts, the forces, and the laws of that extern
al world which is the theater of man's exist
ence. The first two states are, according to him,
essentially irrational and transitory. They are

POSITIVISM. 301
the first steps of that which M. Comte styles
the grand evolution of humanity, of which the
regime of science is the end and the summit.
It would be difficult more entirely to deform,
difficult to show greater ignorance of man's
general history. That which M. Comte regards
as three successive states in the history of the
human race is only the complex and permanent
condition of humanity, agitated by movements
swaying in different directions, according as it
meets with the successes or encounters the re
verses, the hopes, or the fears to which different
nations and generations are subject. That theo
logical conceptions and metaphysical meditations
are only transitory facts, " which," according to
the expression of M. Comte, "wib have hence
forth only an historical existence," is an assertion
no more true of such facts than of those that
the study of physics supplies. These different
yearnings of the mind, and their different labors,
are the very essence — the indestructible and
indivisible essence — of human nature. At no

302 POSITIVISM.
tune and in no country have men more ceased,
or wbl they more cease, to pray to God, and' to
strive to comprehend him, than they wbl cease
to study the physical world, and to make it
subserve their mterests. Nations and genera
tions of mdividuals, in different ages, have
advanced more or less in one or other of these
careers of mtebectual activity; and so they wbl
continue to advance. Rebgious faith, meta
physical meditation, and scientific mquiry have
their alternations of enthusiasm and of languor,
of glory and of sterility ; they appear and they
prosper, sometimes separately, sometimes simul
taneously. If India plunged herself deep
among the symbols of mythology and amid
the void of Pantheism, Greece cultivated with
bke success the metaphysical and the natural
sciences — Aristotle was the contemporary of
Plato. Where other nations fluctuated variously
between theological conceptions, metaphysical
abstractions, and scientific studies, the Hebrew
people continued, in the theological state, Mon-

POSITIVISM. 303
otheists. In the sixteenth century, when the
spirit of free inquiry and of independence was
awakened, and made its influence felt far and
wide, Christian faith, at the same time, was
resuscitated and confirmed; and the eighteenth
century founded at once the pobtical liberty of
Protestant England and the phbosophical and
literary glory of Cathobc France. The human
mind has, according to time and place, its
favorite labors and its favorite impulses; but
it subsists always one and entire ; it never
renounces any one of its grand hopes or of its
grand operations; and those men strangely
mutbate and debase it who represent the mind
as having, during ages, lost itself in the vain
effort to attain a knowledge of God and of its
own nature, and who condemn it henceforth to
take up its quarters in the science of matter —
of its forces — of its laws.
Why need I appeal to history for a proof of
the simultaneous and indestructible co-exist
ence of these different conditions of humanity,

304 POSITIVISM.
among which M. Auguste Comte refuses to ad
mit more than one as rational and definitive?
M. Comte has himself undertaken — he alone —
to furnish me with this proof. This intractable
adversary of ab religious belief and tendency
could not, even for the short space of this life,
himself remain indifferent to such belief and
tendency ; during this brief period he traversed,
and in the inverse order of his own theories,
each of the different intebectual states which
he had assigned as the successive stages of the
human race. He had placed the theological
state at the beginning and the scientific state
at the close of the career of humanity; after
having made his own debut by the scientific
state, it was as impossible for him, as it is for
the human race, to content himself with that,
and he himself ended there, where, according to
him, mankind had commenced, namely, with
the theological state. He had declared his
positive philosophy to be "in radical and abso
lute contradiction to every kind of religious or

POSITIVISM. 305
metaphysical tendency." He had separated
with eclat from the Saint-Simonians, " for they
wbl soon," he said, " sink themselves in ridicule
and contempt. Only imagine, their heads are
turned to such a degree, that they propose noth
ing less than the establishment of a real, new
religion, a sort of incarnation of the divinity in
the person of Saint-Simon." * And some years
after holding this language, and whbe stib in
the plenitude of bodily vigor and thought,
M. Comte in his turn launched into a theolog
ical career; he took it upon him to transform
Positivism into a religion. By the most violent
of ab personified abstractions, he made out of
humanity the great being, the real being, sov
ereign and adorable, and he placed that being
in the place of God, declaring himself at the
same time to be his chief priest. He had more
than once proclaimed that ab religion was
?Letter of the 9th December, 1828, to M. Gustave d'Eich-
thal. Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, by M. Littre,
p. 173. »
20

306 POSITIVISM.
essentiaby founded upon the supernatural;
and yet a religion ab natural — the rebgion of
humanity, the worship of humanity, the church
of humanity, were summoned by him to suc
ceed to the Christian rebgion and to the Church
of Christ. On the 19th of October, 1851, when
terminating his third phbosophical course on
the general histories of humanity, M. Comte
summed it up in these words : "In the name of
the past and of the future, the theoretical servi
tors and the practical servitors of humanity are
about to assume worthily the direction of the
general affairs of this world, in order to con
struct, at last, the true providence, moral intel
lectual, and material, at the same time excluding
irrevocably from political supremacy all the
different slaves of God — Catholics, Protestants,
or Deists — as being at once in arrear of the age
and its perturbators." The positivist religion
thus proclaimed, a positivist catechism and a
positivist calendar — these last both composed
by M. Comte — reduced his principles to practice.

POSITIVISM. 307
In a series of conversations between "The
Priest and the Woman," the catechism first
establishes and explains the dogma, then the
worship, of the new rebgion, its internal order
and its external order, its private worship and
its pubbc worship. And the calendar, by a
retrospective chronology, determines for any
given year of thirteen months, and for the seven
days of the week, the names of the grand servi
tors in every department of humanity, who are
to replace the Christian saints: three hundred
and sixty-four names, men and women, with one
hundred and sixty-five additional names, are in
scribed upon this list, which begins with Moses
and ends with Bichat, passing through Homer,
Aristotle, Archimedes, Csesar, Saint Paul, Char
lemagne, Dante, Gutenburg, Shakspeare, Des
cartes, and Frederic the Second !
A chaos is a sorry sight; a chaos of the soul
a stib sorrier spectacle than a chaos of worlds !
Epochs of moral and social crises, even while
they bring on and prepare for mankind eras of

308 POSITIVISM.
mighty progress, throw also great and potent
intebects into chaos. Under the seduction of a
noble ambition, and the delusion of a partial
success, they enthusiasticaby attach themselves
to some special subject, some incomplete idea;
vain of their shabow and confused systems, or
rather of the brbbant coloring in which they
invest them, they pretend to explain and regu
late man and the world, and yet are nothing
more than their superficial and presumptuous
observers. Among these "great lost ones of
humanity," (I borrow a phrase of their own,)
M. Comte was one of the most disinterested
and the most sincere. The sincerity and the
courage evinced by him in expressing his con
victions led him on from inconsequence to in
consequence ; in his benighted course he caught
glimpses occasionally of grand ideas, and of
these he apprehended neither the scope nor the
connection: first it was an idea of a science ex
cluding all idea of religion ; and then a certain
idea of a religion reconciled with and intimately

POSITIVISM. 309
united with the idea of science; turn by turn
he gave himself up to the one and to the other
with a blind and a daring devotedness. Had
he appeared in Greece at the great era of
phbosophy, or in France in the seventeenth
century, in the midst of the great Christian
controversy, he would have been taxed with
insanity — at the one epoch, not only by Plato
but by Aristotle; at the other, not only by
Bossuet but by Spinoza. In our days he
has been more fortunate : he attached himself
passionately to the method of observation of
facts, which is the very character of science,
and although his observations were superficial,
inexact, and incomplete — although he feb into
the strangest inconsistencies — the fundamental
principle of his system, and the coincidence of
his primary ideas with the method and the tend
ency of the physical sciences, the darling study
of our age, have given him more importance
and more influence than were reaby his due.

FIFTH MEDITATION.

PANTHEISM.
No two essays at phbosophy are more dissim-
bar — I should indeed say more contradictory
— than Pantheism and Positivism. What Posi
tivism declares to be impossible, Pantheism
seeks to accompbsh; what Positivism forbids
man to seek, Pantheism promises to give him.
It is the fundamental prmciple of Positivism to
confine the human mind to the finite world, its
facts and its laws; Pantheism aspires at a
knowledge and a comprehension of Infinity, and
of the relations of the finite with Infinity. " I
have explained God, God's nature and his
attributes," says Spinoza.*
? Ethics, 1st part ; of God : Appendix, vol. i, p. 39. French
translation by M. Saisset.

PANTHEISM. 311
I hasten to explain, in order to prevent mis
construction ; it is to Pantheism, properly so
cabed — to the sole system that merits the name
— that my remarks are here applicable. "We
must," says M. Cousin, "it seems, distinguish
two kinds of Pantheism. The assertion that
this visible universe, indefinite or infinite,
suffices to itself, and that there is nothing
to be sought for beyond, is the Pantheism of
Diderot, Helvetius, de la Mettrie, d'Holbach.
This Pantheism is clearly Atheism, and it
would not be very easy to comprehend the
complacent indulgence that should spare it that
name of Atheism — a name, unfortunately, of
ancient date, which would then have no longer
any object to fit it, and would need to be erased
from our dictionary. But is it possible for a
similar Pantheism to be imputed to Spinoza?
With the French Encyclopedists, things exist
in particularity and mdividuals singly: the
universe is an assemblage of individuals — an
assemblage without unity, or of which the sole

312 PANTHEISM.
unity is a presumed primary matter, which the
philosophei" admits or which he does not admit,
but with which his thought has no business to
occupy itself. With Spinoza, on the contrary,
the single substance is ab, and the individuals
are nothing. This substance is not the nominal
unity of the assemblage of mdividuals, each of
which exists singly, but is the single reaby
existing substance, and in the presence of that
substance the world and man are but shadows ;
so that from the 'Ethics' may be gathered an
exaggerated Theism which leaves no individual
existing as such. Rigorously, and at bottom,
there is here perhaps only one and the same
system, but a system, nevertheless, with two
very different forms — the one, where God is
nothing but the Universe ; the other, where the
Universe exists only in God." *
I think, with M. Cousin, that, rigorously and
at bottom, there is here but one and the same
system, but in appearance, and I say besides, in
* Hiatoire generate de la philosophie, p. 433, ed. 1803.

PANTHEISM. 313
the opinion of its authors, the difference is
great, and requires to be noticed. I postpone
for the subject " Materialism," all that I have to
say upon the subject of the so-called Pantheism,
which admits no other existence than either
that of the individualities that people the
visible universe, or that of the primary matter
whence they have issued. I occupy myself, at
this moment, solely with the idealistic Pan
theism. Do we wish to behold a spectacle of how
weak the human mind reaby is in the midst of
ab its grandeur, and of the limits which must
finaby and abruptly check its progress, however
high its flight, we wib read Plotinus, Spinoza,
and Hegel, three martyrs to intellectual ambi
tion, differing very much according to the
difference of the eras and the nations to which
they respectively belong, but similar in this
point at least, that they ignore the visible
world, and leave it behind them, to enter that
world which dazzles their sight, where they

314 PANTHEISM.
plunge into a void in quest of what they cab
"Being!" Two passions have impebed, are impelling,
and wbl, probably, stbl occasionaby impel men
of eminent powers of mind to Pantheism : the
passionate craving for an universal science, and
the passionate longing for universal unity —
feelings noble both, but ibegitimate and inca
pable of satisfaction.
" I have resolved," said Spinoza, " to search if
there exist a real Good, a Good capable, singly,
of filling the entire soul after it shab have re
jected ab the rest^-in a word, a Good that
gives the soul, when the soul finds it and pos
sesses it, the eternal and supreme happiness.
. . . Man is essentiaby a being that thinks, and
the highest degree of human knowledge ought
to be the highest degree of human febcity. . . .
My sources of enjoyment consist in the exercise
of the reason." *
? (Euvres de Spinoza, French translation of M. Emile Saisset,
vol. i, pp. 15, 16.

PANTHEISM. 315
What obliviousness of man's nature and of
man's bfe! Man is not merely a being that
thinks, but a being that feels, wills, and acts,
a being moral and responsible for his acts, at
the same time that he is a being of intebigence,
and a being insatiate of knowledge. It is by
his thought that he accounts to himself for his
sentiments, and for the motives of his acts, but
it is not from his thought that he derives either
his sentiments or his liberty, neither does knowl
edge constitute his sole enjoyment. Spinoza
mutbates man strangely when he places "the
highest degree of human febcity in the highest
degree of human knowledge." Man is more
exacting than the philosopher, and it requires
infinitely more to satisfy the most modest
human soul than to satisfy the proudest mind.
Infinitely more in respect of happiness, infinitely
less in respect of science ! Not that I would
make their intebectual ambition a reproach to
phbosophers, even when it leads them astray.
It is an honor to the human mind that it

316 PANTHEISM.
aspires higher than it *can attain, that it
torments itself in the struggle to carry its
science into that invisible world, which it in
stinctively feels by anticipation, just as it does
mto that visible world that it sees. God
granted to man this privilege ; he implanted in
his soul the ardent desire to know him and to
possess him fully. But at the same time, God
granted to men in general certain instincts and
spontaneous beliefs which adequately satisfy
this desire without the necessity of any
profound study. What would have become
of the human race if, in order to bebeve in
God, to hope in him, and to pray to him, man
had been obbged to wait untb phbosophers
had resolved the problems which stbl weigh
upon thevr genius? As God, in creating man
free, took care that the maintenance of the gen
eral order in this world should not be completely
abandoned to the disputes of men, so did he
provide for the spiritual nourishment of man
kind, without denying to the great ambitious

PANTHEISM. 317
ones of the earth either the prospect of a satisfac
tion more complete, or the right to search for it.
Let us never tire of repeating, this is the
mystery of man's mixed nature — an mdication
of a destiny in store for him superior to his
actual condition. He carries within him the
ideas of infinity, of perfection, and yet here
below he is nothing but a finite being, imper
fect, equaby incapable of. sufficing to himself
and of satisfying himself, either in the domain
of thought or of actual bfe. "There are more
things in heaven and upon earth than phboso
phy — than even the philosophy ' of the absolute '
— can explain. . . . To comprehend God, it needs
to be God. A chbd might have said as much to
Hegel." These words I borrow from M. Edmond
Scherer's exposition of the doctrine of Hegel*
Jesus in effect said, eighteen centuries ago: "I
praise thee, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth,
that thou hast hidden these things from the wise
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."
* Melanges cPhistoire religiefse, pp. 366, 341. 1864.

318 PANTHEISM.
Pantheists are entirely of the opinion of
M. Scherer, for to enable man to comprehend
God, they have found no other expedient than
to make of man himself the God that man is
desirous of comprehending. The passion for
an universal science has ended by receiving no
being as God but man.
The passion for universal unity has led to
the same result. That truth is one — that is to
say, that ab truths, whatever their object, are
in harmony with one another — the very word
truth implies and proclaims. From the unity
of truth the Pantheists passed, with a single
bound, to the unity of being. They identified
idea and reality, science and existence, con
founding ab things in order to reduce them to
one single thing, and abobshing all beings in
order to concentrate them ab in one and the
same being, which, after ab, is nothing more
than an impersonal notion and a barren name,
fabing in its turn into the void.
By what path did the Pantheists arrive at

PANTHEISM. 319
this abyss? What was the process employed
by men of eminent powers of mind to con
struct a system so singularly factitious and
hypothetical, and yet pretending, at the same
time, to be so necessary and so rigorously
phbosophical ?
Like some great men of antiquity, (and their
number is considerable,) who sought to explain
nature and the physical world by incomplete
and precipitate hypotheses and systems, in
vented irrespectively of either facts or their
laws, the Pantheists by simbar means pro
ceeded — nay, are proceeding — to explain man,
the universe, and God; the Infinite and the
finite. The method which for three centuries
has constituted the glory of the natural sciences,
and made their progress lasting, the exact study
of facts and their relations ; that method so long
strange not only to general phbosophy but to
the special sciences themselves — I may at once
cab it by its proper name, the scientific method
— was formerly, and remains stbl, strange to

320 PANTHEISM.
the Pantheists ; to Spinoza as to Plotinus, to
Hegel as to Spinoza. Whether Plotinus
plunges into an ecstacy to arrive at and com
prehend God in uniting man to God by the
virtue of contemplation; or Spinoza, defining
substance, makes it the principle from which to
deduce his theory of the universe and of its
unity ; or Hegel speaking of idea in order to
arrive at the same result as Spinoza, seeks to
obtain from his term substance — it is the same
defect that appears in the labors of ab these
potent intebigences, not only in their develop
ment, but in the very point from which they
start ; for observation of facts and of their laws
they substitute the affirmation and the defini
tion of an axiom, and the deduction, logical,
it is true, of its consequences. They disdain
and set aside ab study of the realities of the
universe, bebeving themselves to be in posses
sion of a key to open its secrets.
They see not that their key is a deception,
that at each step facts evident, indestructible,

PANTHEISM. 321
give the flattest denial to then? inferences, and
that to maintain their arbitrary and insufficient
principle they are forced to ignore and to deny
other facts, themselves evident, indestructible.
. Psychological observation proves and irresist
ibly establishes three facts, however the conse
quences of these facts themselves may lead to
questions and controversies.
1. Man bebeves in his own existence, and in
his own personality. He feels himself and per
ceives himself to be a being, real and distmct
from every other being.
2. Man feels himself and knows himself to be
a free agent. Of the freedom of his resolves,
whatever the motives and deliberations which
precede them, man has an ultimate and assured
consciousness. 3. Good and evil exist in man, and exist in
the world ; moral good and evb as web as phys
ical good and evil. Whatever may be thought
of their origin, the mixture and the struggle of
good and of evil, in the moral order and in the
21

322 PANTHEISM.
physical order, are facts evident in themselves,
and attested by the conscience and by the ex
perience of the human race.
Pantheism sometimes ignores and omits,
sometimes formaby denies, these facts, which
psychology attests and proves. There is, how
ever, a notable difference in this point in
the three great representatives of Pantheism.
Thanks to the Platonic school, from which he
sprang, Plotinus, in treating the different ques
tions of man's liberty and of the reality of good
and of evil, soars in an elevated region where
the truth now shines in splendor, now obscures
itself and disappears in the labyrinth in which
the phbosopher himself is entangled as soon as
he attempts to explain the one and mfinite
Being and that Being's relations with nature
and with man. Spinoza is more consequent and
plainer. He formaby denies all individuality,
all human liberty. Substance, " the being" is
single and universal. Ab act of man, as every
fact of nature, is produced by fated laws and

PANTHEISM. 323
causes: "Free wbl is a chimera, flattering to
our pride and in reabty founded upon our igno
rance. All that I can say to those who believe
that they can, by virtue of any free decision of
the soul, speak or be sbent — or, to use a single
word, act — is that they dream with their eyes
open."* . . . "Nothing," adds he, "is bad in
itself. Good and evil indicate nothing positive
in things considered in themselves, and, are
nothing but manners of thinking. Not only
has every man the right to seek his good, his
pleasure, but he cannot do otherwise. . . . The
measure of each man's right is his power. . . .
He who does not yet know reason, or who, hav
ing not as yet contracted the habit of virtue,
bves according to the laws only of his appetites,
is as much in his right as he who regulates his
bfe according to the laws of reason. In other
words, just as the sage has an absolute right to
do all that his reason dictates to him, or to live
? CEuvres de Spinoza, French translation of M. E. Saisset,
vol. i, Introduction, p. clii.

324 PANTHEISM.
according to the laws of his reason, in the same
manner has the ignorant man and the madman
a right to everything that his appetite impels
him to take ; in other words, the right to live
according to the laws of appetite. . . . And he
is no more obliged to bve according to the laws
of good sense than a cat is obbged to live under
the laws that govern the nature of a bon. . . .
Hence we conclude that a compact has only a
value proportioned to its utibty; where the
utbity disappears the compact disappears too
with it, and loses ab its authority. There is,
then, foby in pretending to bind a man for
ever to his word; unless, at least, man so
contrive that the breach of the compact shab
entab for him that violates it more danger
than profit."*
Hegel is less absolute and less blind. Of a
mind large, and from its greatness naturally
just, he escaped at moments the yoke of his
system. Struck by the particular truths, moral,
? CEuvres de Spinoza, vol. i, pp. clix, clx.

PANTHEISM. 325
historical, aesthetic, that offered themselves to
his view in the theater of the universe, he ad
mitted them without very web knowing what
place he should assign to them. "He was,"
said one of his most intelligent disciples, "a
concbiator in his phbosophy. His phbosophy
stands midway between Theism and Pantheism;
between historical right, as the expression of
actual reason, and the absolute right to liberty
and equality, as the end of universal history.
His system seems to sanction the most profound
piety, and to regard Christianity as the true
and absolute religion, at the very tune when
it appears also as its negation; just as
in politics it presents itself as at one and
the same moment conservative and progress
ive, favorable to existing rights and yet revo
lutionary." *
"It is impossible," says M. Edmond Scherer,
? Histoires de la philosophie allemande depuis Kant jusqu'a
Hegel, by S. Willm : a work crowned by the Institute : vol. iv,
p. 337.

326 PANTHEISM.
' to read Hegel without asking ourselves if he,
be serious. He fabs incessantly mto a style of
images and personifications; and one would
suppose one's self, in perusing his writings, to be
present at the formation of a mythology, at the
development of a world like that of the ancient
Gnostics, in which notions assumed forms and
marched on, passing through ab kinds of adven
tures." * M. Edmond Scherer's is a mind hard
to please, which is ever struck and offended by
incoherence of objects, futibty of artificial com
binations, and vain play upon words, even
where he recognizes or admires the genius.
The phbosophical "rout" is not embarrassed
for so sbght a cause ; it marches straight to the
object toward which the dominant idea, once
adopted, gives the impulse. In spite of its
complexities and of its craving for the recon
cbiation of religion and of politics, the Pan
theism of Hegel has borne its natural fruits.
A school has resulted from it, which, in accord-
* Melanges d'histoire religieuse, pp. 298, 838.

PANTHEISM. 327
ance with its proper and independent manifest
ations, a learned and moderate judge, M. Wibm,
characterizes in these words: "The new Ger
man phbosophy, of which Feuerbach, Bruno
Bauer, and Arnold Riige are the principal
chiefs, comes, in its ultimate results, in contact
with the Humanism of M. Pierre Leroux, the
Positivism of M. Auguste Comte, and the
Atheism of M. Proudhon. It tends to sub
stitute for the ancient worship the worship of
humanity, and to found a new worship dispens
ing with God, and with morality properly so
cabed. . . . There is no such thing as theology
but only anthropology ; for the mind of human
ity is the divine mind realized. There is no
longer any other piety than devotedness to the
objects of humanity; no longer any other
prayer than the contemplation of the human
mind. . . . Man accomplishes every reasonable
object if he accompbshes his own peculiar
object, and he cannot do better than employ
all his faculties to reabze his own objects.

328 PANTHEISM.
Man's will be done: such is the prmciple of
the new law." *
Such is the inevitable result at which Pan
theism, even that kind termed ideabstic Pan
theism, ultimately arrives, whatever the eleva
tion of mind and the morabty of intent in its
first authors. This is no scientific doctrine,
founded upon the observation of facts and their
laws; it is an hypothesis framed by dint of
violent abstractions, verbal commutations and
reasoning, in the blindness of a thought drunk
with itself. Under the breath of Pantheism ab
beings — real and personal beings — vanish, and
are replaced by an abstraction becoming in its
turn the Being par excellence; the sole bemg,
although without personality and without
vobtion, swallowing up ab things in a bottom
less abyss, which absorbs that bemg, too, after
it has already absorbed everything that it has
sought so to explain.
? Histoire de la philosophie allemande, depuis Kant jusqu'a
Hegel: by S. Willrn: vol. iv, pp. 634, 630.

PANTHEISM. 329
Was there ever, in the conceptions of my
thology, or in the mystical dreams of the human
imagination, anything so artificial, anything so
vain, as this hypothesis, which at its very
beginning, as web as throughout its entire
course, loses sight of the best attested facts
respecting inan and the world ; and, shocking
equaby science and common sense, departs as
much from the method of phbosophy as from
the spontaneous instincts of mankind ?

SIXTH MEDITATION.

MATEKIALISM.
Mateeialistio Pantheism is more consistent
and more intebigible. I must at once restore
to it its genuine name ; it has no right to that
of Pantheism: it sees God neither in the
universe nor in man; the eternal world and
ephemeral individuals are, in its eyes, only com
binations and different forms of matter. It is
Materiabsm in its principle, and Atheism in its
consequences. Two things strike me in the actual state of
men's minds; the progress that Materialism is
making, and its constant timidity in that very
progress. The progress of Materialism is evident ; prog
ress in the learned world and in the unlearned

MATERIALISM. 331
world, in the name of the scientific studies and
of popular tendencies. A contemporary spirit-
uabstic phbosopher, as distinguished by intel
lectual probity as by the independence and the
moderation of his opinions, of whom the Duke
de Broglie, on learning his death, exclaimed,
" We have lost a sage " — M. Damiron I mean —
published eight years ago his "Memoires pour
servir a l'histoire de la phbosophie au 18e
siecle;" he had read it in successive parts to
the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
He said in his preface, "Men are disposed a
second tune to have Sensuabsm; they insist
upon something that they may oppose to and
substitute for pure and simple Spiritualism : be
it so; but then let them at least web under
stand what it is that they are asking for. It is
not merely Locke, the moderate chief of the
school, nor is it d'Alembert, nor Saint-Lambert,
nor even Helvetius; these keep themselves
relatively within bounds: it is Diderot who
has so little moderation, it is d'Holbach, it is

332 MATERIALISM.
Naigeon, it is Lalande, and de la Mettrie ; it is a
whole order of minds, not very eminent, but very
decided and very consistent and logical in their
materiabsm; materiabsts in ab and for ab,
from the soul up to God — not forgetting, be it
remembered, liberty, duty, a future bfe, etc. . . .
These men, with their heads in the air and
their masks in their hand, with a confidence in
themselves and a faith almost confounding
itself with religion, profess openly as truth,
fatabsm, egotism, and atheism. This is what
men want, and what, if they wish to be logical,
men must want, when, closely or remotely, they
adhere to a phbosophy that reduces everything
to sensation, and that which is the object of
sensation. Let there then be no blusion upon
this subject ; ab the prmciples of morals and of
religion are at stake. Sensualism is what it is,
and can be nothing else. It was made a com
plete system in the eighteenth century; nothing
remains in it that can be either made or re
made ; and if men recur to it in our days, the

MATERIALISM. 333
mechanism and the form may be altered — for
these are variable — but not the essential sub
stance, for that is not so. There are not two
manners of being consequent any more in this
system than in any other ; however the attempt
may be made, men can never by any repro
duction render it what it is not, and what its
nature prevents it from ever being ; so we must
take it or we must leave it alone; we cannot
change its principles.*
What M. Damiron eight years ago felt would
occur, has been accomplished rapidly. Sens
uabsm, in its true nature as Materialism, has
resumed its activity and returned to the stage;
now tacitly admitted by sober, studious men,
now loudly professed and loudly proclaimed by
the " enfants terribles " of the school ; professed
and proclaimed not only with ab its principles,
but with ab its consequences.
? Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de la philosophie au 18o
siecle, by Ph. Damiron, member of the Institute ; vol. i, p. xiv.
1858.

334 MATERIALISM.
A profound sentiment of hesitation and
embarrassment clings, nevertheless, to the
doctrme of Materiabsm. The most distin
guished of its adepts struggle to give expla
nations that look like disavowals, and many
repudiate the charge of bemg Materialists as if
it were an insult. "I have never," says M de
Remusat, "observed without astonishment the
testy sensibbity of phbosophers upon this point.
Who is there that has not witnessed the in
dignation manifested by the fobowers of the
phbosophy of sensation when they hear re
traced to them the positive consequences of this
doctrme ? It seems just as if their rightful
claims were being disavowed, or as if they were
being denounced; as if the Inquisition were
stbl at hand, with its tortures and its auto-
da-fes; or as if their refuters were sending
them to martyrdom. A general timidity reigns
throughout their school; they seem to think
freedom of opinions never sufficiently assured,
and society never tolerant enough, for their

MATERIALISM. 335
phbosophy to declare and avow itself for such
as it is. Whether from shame or from fear,
Materiabsm asks to be tenderly handled, sus
pects that every one who defines her has the
designs of a persecutor, makes protestations of
her good intentions, and is alarmed at her very
faith. She defends herself from the imputation
of bebeving only in the senses, even whbe
making sensation the one universal fact. It
might be said that she blushes at matter just
as persons infirm of faith blush at the name of
Jesus. Perhaps this may be an indirect proof
of the distrust which theb' cause inspires in
Materiahsts, and an involuntary avowal that
the human mind belongs not to them." *
Whence arise, what signify, these two con
tradictory facts: on the one side, the perse
verance and the facility with which, in our
days, Materialism reproduces and propagates it
self; on the other side, the uneasiness and the
? Essais de philosophie, by Charles de Remusat : vol. ii,
p. 179.

336 MATERIALISM.
timidity which it inspires in many of those
even who admit it ?
Materialism is the doctrine of appearances.
"Specious doctrme," says M. Vacherot, "to
those whose conception of things depends solely
upon their abbity to picture them to them
selves."* It is by theb? material appearances
that, at the outset, the external world and man
himself manifest themselves to the human
mind. It is only by reflection and by a process
of observation within itself that it penetrates
beyond mere appearances, and discovers what
appearances alone would never enable it to see.
To minds at once active and superficial, inquis
itive, impatient to acquire science, although
not very nice as to the kind, Materiabsm is a
commodious and apparently clear solution of
certain difficult and obscure questions which
fasten irresistibly upon the human under
standing. Besides ab this, these questions, and the
? La m6taphysique et la science, vol. i, p. 171.

MATERIALISM. 337
different solutions of which they are susceptible,
have theb* epochs of ardor or languor, of favor
or discredit. In our days, the fruitful activity
and the brbbant progress of the sciences of the
material world, come in aid of the doctrine of
Materialism. This progress is, however, far
from bemg as exclusive of other progress as is
often said. Although less popular than a few
years ago, Spiritualism has not ceased to be an
active and influential doctrine in the elevated
region of philosophy, and the Christian awak
ening persists and develops itself energetically
in the face of the adversaries of Christianity.
The times in which we live are entitled to
more justice than men accord to them; intel
lectual labors are now very extensive and
very varied; the most different tendencies
coexist, and pursue their independent career.
Even in this, Materialism is again the doc
trine of appearances; it is neither so strong
nor so near its triumph as it has the air of
being. 22

338 ¦ MATERIALISM.
Nothing proves this better than the hesitation
and persistent embarrassment of the most dis
tinguished among its adherents. The circum
stance noticed by M. de Remusat twenty-five
years ago, is recurring at the present day as
plainly as ever. Sometimes we find disavowals
of the consequences of the principle of Material
ism, and attempts of ab kmds to escape from
those consequences; sometimes we find efforts
made to disguise the prmciple itself under purer
colors. A general and enduring instinct in man
persists in protesting against the appearances
upon which Materialism is founded. Man does
not believe either himself or the universe to be
exclusively matter. The distinction between
matter and mind is a natural and spontane
ous, a primitive and permanent, bebef of the
human race.
And is this, then, merely an instinct and an
aspiration, a proud pretension of human nature ?
Is it not, on the contrary, the innate sentiment
the intimate knowledges of that essentud fact in

MATERIALISM. 339
humanity of which observation recognizes and
evidences the existence ?
The fact to which I abude is the fobowing :
As soon as a consciousness of bfe is awakened
in man — as soon as he feels and perceives what
is taking place within him — he has a perception
of Irhnself as of a real, personal, and distinct
bemg. He gives voice to this feebng and this
perception as soon as he uses the word " I," and
he does so before he has any clear knowledge
in detab of the being whose existence he so
recognizes and affirms.
When, in the natural development of life,
man thus makes himself as a real and personal
being, the object of his own observation, he
recognizes in himself as such real and personal
being certain facts in their nature essentially
different. On the one side, he recognizes a
body inherent in his being, which forms part of
his being, and through which he communicates
with the external world, either by the impres
sions which he receives from that world, or by

340 MATERIALISM.
the modes in which he acts upon that world.
On the other side, whether he regard himself
as, so to say, the theater of action, or as the
very actor, he recognizes himself to be a single
being, a being permanent and abiding, ever the
same in the midst of the variety of his personal
impressions or of his actions upon the world
beyond him ; and this, too, in spite of the com
plications and mcessant transformations of his
body, the organ and the medium of those im
pressions and actions. •
Thus it is that in man's consciousness there is
a manifestation and proof at once of the unity
and of the complex nature of the human bemg ;
that is, in accordance with the spontaneous
language of mankind, at once of the distinction
and of the union of the soul and of the body.
This is the primitive and essential fact of man
in his actual life.
In proportion as the human being develops
himself, as he extends the circle of his observa
tions upon the world and upon himself, special

MATERIALISM. 341
facts confirm the general truth of which I have
just given a summary, and prove the essential
distinction of the soul and the body by the
essential diversity of the properties of each.
Thus the body, in its organization and in its
life, is subject to fixed and pre-established laws,
over which man's wib has no control or power;
whereas the soul is essentiaby free, and capable
of determining itself and of acting from motives
foreign to the laws which govern the body.
Fatality is the condition of the human being in
corporeal existence ; liberty is his privbege in his
moral bfe. I say in his moral life, and the ex
pression reveals between the soul and the body
another essential and ineffaceable difference.
The body is strange to every idea of morality,
abandoned to the exigencies of its necessities
and its appetites ; it has no aspiration, no tend
ency but to satisfy them. The soul has needs
and desires of quite a different kind, and they
are often contrary to those of the body; and
however often the soul may yield to the tenden-

342 MATERIALISM.
cies of the body, not seldom also does it with
stand and surmount them; and this both in
persons of obscure condition, and in those who
stand in the pubbc gaze of men. When the
body is dominant in man, man tends toward
Materiabsm ; when he bstens to the aspirations
of soul it is, on the contrary, to Spirituahsm
that his nature rises. The complexity of his
nature manifests itself in the development of
his life as in the first instinct of his conscious
ness ; at whatever epoch he is the subject either
of his own or of our observation he cannot be
called exclusively body, matter, without facts
giving his assertion at each step the flattest
contradiction. Whence comes this essential and primordial
fact — the fact of the complexity and yet unity
of the human being? How is this union of
soul and body accomplished ? their mutual in
fluences exercised, how? Here, according to
religion, is the mystery; here, for phbosophy,
lies the problem.

MATERIALISM. 343
Materialism is but an hypothesis adopted for
the explanation of this great fact, and the hy
pothesis consists not in the solution of the
problem, but in its suppression by the denial
of the fact itself. What need, they say, to seek
to explain how the union of soul and body is
accompbshed? Neither this complexity of the
human being nor his unity in that complexity
is a reabty. Man is only a product and an
ephemeral form of matter!
I shab not refuse myself the pleasure of
refutmg this hypothesis by the mouth of a
contemporary phbosopher, whom I shab soon
myself have to combat. " Nothing," says
M Vacherot, "proves that the hypothesis of
Materialism is true ; on the contrary, positive
facts evidence its falsity. ... If the soul be only
the result of the play of the organs, how is it
that the soul is able to resist the impressions
and the appetites of the body, to direct, con
centrate, and govern its faculties? If the wbl
be but the instinct in a different form, how

344 MATERIALISM.
explain its empire over the instinct ? This fact
is an irresistible argument; it is the rock
upon which Materiabsm has always wrecked
itself, and upon which it wbl continue to do
so. . . . The wisdom of the ancients pronounced
its decree more than two thousand years ago.
'Do we not see,' says Socrates, according to
Plato, • that the soul governs ab the elements
of which it is pretended that it is composed ?
that the soul resists them throughout the whole
course of life, and subdues them in every way,
repressing some harshly and painfully, as where
the gymnastic or the medical method is resorted
to; repressing others more gently, rebuking
these, warning those, speaking to desires, to
anger, to fear, as to things of a nature aben to
its own ? So Homer, in the " Odyssey," repre
sents Ulysses as
" Smiting his breast, and chiding thus his heart :
Bear this, O heart, thou that hast worse endured. " *
* Sr^Sof tie 7rA»?faf, Kpatilr/v riviitaite p-vdi,>,
Ttr?.adi tie, K.patitr\. nai nvvrepov ukXo tzot' fr/lj/f.
Odyssey, Book xx, v. 17.

MATERIALISM. 345
'"Do you think,' adds Socrates, 'that Homer
would have so expressed himself had, in his
conception, the soul been a mere harmony,
necessarily governed by the passions of the
body ? Did he not rather think that the soul
ought to govern and master those passions, and
that the soul is something far more divine than
any harmony ? ' " *
Materialists themselves have felt the feeble
ness of theb' hypothesis; to support it they
have invented a second hypothesis. " No force
without matter, no matter without force," f says
Dr. Buchner, at the present day one of the most
resolute interpreters of the doctrine. That is to
say, not being able to explain facts by matter
alone, as matter is observed and conceived
naturaby by the human mind, they endow
matter with what they term force, a principle
of movement and of production. " Matter and
? La Metaphysique et la science, by M. Vacherot, vol. i, p.
174 ; Plato, Pheed. xliii.
t Le Materialisme contemporain en Allemagne, by M. Paul
Janet, of the Institute, p. 20. 1864.

346 MATERIALISM.
force are," it is now said, " inseparable ; both
have existed from ab eternity." Thus, imperi
ously urged by instinct and by theb* observa
tion of facts, they begin again by distinguishing
and naming separately matter and force ; then,
ab at once, they confound them, treat them as
united in their essence and from ab eternity,
and conclude by bebeving that they have suc
ceeded in giving an explanation of man and of
the world !
In this, what do they more than add an
abstraction to an abstraction, and an hypothesis
to an hypothesis ? We are here in the presence
of facts that are certain and yet perplexing; in
presence of an external world, which evidently
has not always been such as it is, which had a
beginnmg, which is continuing to develop itself
according to certain laws, and which is tending
to certain ends; in the presence, too, of man,
evidently a being at once one and complex,
identical and yet variable. The ancients gave
names and explanations to those incontestible

MATERIALISM. 347
facts, but the names and explanations are now
rejected! Stbl, names and explanations are
needed; man must put something in the place
of God, Creator, and Providence — in the place
of mind, and matter, and soul, and body. It is
not for the first time that man finds himself
confronted by this necessity, or that he essays
to satisfy it ; many abstractions, many words,
have been already employed for this purpose.
God was replaced by nature, by substance, by
cause; the human soul was transformed into
vital principle ; the vital principle was elevated
to the dignity of soul. It seems that these
words, these abstractions, have had then? time
and lost their credit ; and so now it is force
which replaces them; force is mind, force is
soul, /owe creates, force is God. It is enough
now that they incorporate force with body;
the problem no longer exists; man and the
universe are laid bare !
When Leibnitz, to combat the Idealism
of Descartes, and the Pantheism of Spinoza,

348 MATERIALISM.
developed the idea of force, he did not foresee
that that very notion would be one day made
use of to reduce to nonentities God, the human
soul, ab real and personal being, ab first and
final cause ; to reduce, in short, everything to a
medley of mechanics and dynamics incarnate
in matter !
However specious it may appear to super
ficial minds, or to minds prejudiced in its favor
by the peculiar nature of their studies and of
theb? habitual labors, Materiabsm, like Pan
theism, is only an hypothesis — an hypothesis
constructed by dint of mere abstractions and
purely verbal assertions. These not only disre
gard or suppress the facts which they pretend
to explain, but are in direct contradiction
with facts themselves recognized and proved
by psychological observation. It is, in effect,
an hypothesis, (I am forced here to repeat what
I before affirmed of Pantheism,) equally revolt
ing to true science and to common sense.
The hypothesis of Materialism has but a

MATERIALISM. 349
single merit; it is more consistent than those
of the other systems. But even to this merit
Materiabsm loses its title whenever it" shrinks
from pushing its principles boldly to their con
sequences, whether phbosophical or practical :
that is to say, whenever it shrinks from deny
ing man's liberty, a moral law, the necessary
prmciples of the human mind — whenever, in
short, it shrinks from proclaiming its ultimate
results, which are, as M. Damiron puts them,
Fatalism, Egotism, Atheism. Phbosophers are
right in seeking for truth and in respecting
truth for itself and at every risk; but there
are some consequences which are the clearest
evidence of a vice in principle; and this vice,
in Materialism, is the blind forgetfumess of the
best proved facts and the most essential ele
ments of human nature.

SEVENTH MEDITATION.

SKEPTICISM.
There are two kinds of Skepticism, experi
mental Skepticism and systematic Skepticism.
Experimental Skepticism is the result of the in
certitude which arises in men's minds from the
spectacle of the infinite variety, discordance, and
mobbity of human opinions. Systematic Skep
ticism, on the other hand, chabenges the power
itself of the human understanding, and declares
it incapable of knowing things in their essence
— reahty in itself. The one is doubt applied
in practice; the other is doubt affirmed as a
prmciple. In an essay on Skepticism, written in 1830,
M. Jouffroy treated experimental and practical
skepticism with great contempt : this skepticism

SKEPTICISM. 351
" founds itself," says he, " only upon the ap
parent contradictions of human judgment. To
prove that there is a contradiction either be
tween the results at which each faculty of the
mind when taken separately arrives, or between
the final results attained by different faculties,
as by the sense and by the reason ; to establish
that there is a contradiction of a like nature
between the opinions received by different men
or by different nations, or between those opin
ions themselves, which, at different epochs, have
variously for a time contented humanity; then
to conclude from ab this that the human intel
ligence regards in turn' as true things which are
contradictory, and that consequently there is for
that intebigence no truth at ab : such is ab the
mechanism in which this second-rate skepticism
consists which has fascinated, and stbl continues
to fascinate, whole hosts of little minds. Long
ago this skepticism was refuted, and at ab its
points ; long ago the unity of human truth was
demonstrated, after having been admitted a

352 SKEPTICISM.
priori in all ages by theb: leading minds. This
kind of skepticism is a theme upon which men
wbl long continue to dbate; the darling sub
ject for wits, it merits not to arrest the attention
of phbosophers."
By way of amends, however, for these re
marks, M. Jouffroy makes an immense conces
sion to the systematic skepticism which declares
the human mind incapable of knowing things
as they reaby are in themselves, for he admits
this skepticism to be rationally legitimate;
" the foundation of ab bebef," says he, " is an act
of faith, bbnd but irresistible. In effect there
is no contradiction between faith and skep
ticism ; for man bebeves by instinct and doubts
by reason. . . . Skeptics fab into no contradic
tion when, in the practice of life, they believe
theb: senses, theb" consciousness, then? memory,
and when they act in consequence; they obey
the laws of their instinctive nature by so be
lieving, and they obey their rational natures by
confessing that their beliefs are blegitimate.

SKEPTICISM. 353
So we equaby excuse humanity which believes,
and skepticism which doubts; but we cannot
equally excuse the philosophers who have com
bated skepticism by striving to demonstrate
the rational legitimacy of human belief When
men affirm that mankind believes, and that
skeptics do so with mankind, they affirm a fact
in itself incontestable; when they add that
mankind bebeves itself right in believing,
that is to say, virtuaby admits that the human,
intebigence sees things as they are, this is
true too, and skeptics do not deny it; but
when, grappling with skepticism itself, men
pretend to show that the human intebigence
really sees things as they are, this is a preten
sion which I cannot understand. What ! do
they not perceive that this pretension is
nothing less than the pretension of demon
strating the human intelligence by the human
intelligence, which has been, is, and wbl be
eternaby impossible? We believe skepticism
forever invincible, because we regard skep-
23

354 • SKEPTICISM.
ticism as the final word of the reason concerning
the reason itself." *
I do not agree with M. Jouffroy in his dis
dain for experimental and practical skepticism.
This is not, it is true, a system which philos
ophers are called upon to refute, but a fact
which ought to occupy an important place
with them, for by showing to us how incom
plete human science is, and human error how
frequent, it sets us on our guard against all
presumptuous confidence in our own ideas, and
against intolerance toward the ideas of others
— two of the most dangerous infirmities to
which human intebigence and society are
liable. But as for the reasoning which impels
M. Jouffroy to accept the systematic and defin
itive skepticism as to the intrinsic reality of
things, I repudiate it altogether. If that were,
as he says, "the final word of the reason re
specting the reason itself," it would be the
negation, or to use a better expression, the
* Melanges philosophique, pp. 238-240.

SKEPTICISM. 355
suicide, of man's reason and of the human in
tebigence. In his discourse which he pronounced in
1813, on resuming his functions at the "Faculte
des Lettres," M. Royer-Cobard summed up his
conclusions upon this fundamental question —
conclusions very different, more different essen
tiaby than even apparently they are, from those
arrived at by M. Jouffroy. Whereas M. Jouf
froy bebeves systematic skepticism forever in
vincible, "because he regards it as the final
word of the reason concerning the reason,"
M. Royer-Cobard, on the contrary, ends his dis
course with these words: "We cannot divide
man; we cannot assign a part only to skep
ticism; as soon as skepticism once penetrates
mto the understanding, in invades it through
out." I would confirm this conclusion of
M. Royer-Cobard, by carrying stbl further the
reasoning which led him to it.
"The most general result," says he, "pre
sented by the history of modern philosophy —

356 SKEPTICISM.
its most striking characteristic when contrasted
with ancient phbosophy — is its skepticism with
respect to the existence of the external world ;
that world in which mankind has so long
bebeved, which begins to reveal itself in us
with our existence itself, and in the bosom of
which we are forced to perceive ourselves as
mere fragments of its immensity. ... I am not
here to reason in favor of the received opmion;
that opinion needs neither proofs nor defenders;
it is rooted deeply enough in our most intimate
nature to brave ab attack. It is not the world
that risks anything at the hands of the phbos
ophers; it is rather the honor of philosophy
which suffers some discredit ; it is rather phbos
ophy that relieves the vulgar from a part of
the respect which phbosophy yet demands at
its hands, when it gives birth to paradoxes
bearing, seemingly, the very impress of foby.
Moreover, whether the material world reabv
exist or not, is not a matter in controversy;
this question would resolve itself into one stbl

SKEPTICISM. 357
more general — whether ab those faculties of
ours,>of which the authority is indivisible, are
organs of truth or organs of falsehood; and
upon this point we shab ever be driven to
accept the testimony of those very organs.
The sole question which belongs to phbosoph
ical analysis, consists in examining if it be cer
tain that our faculties attest to us the existence
of an external world, and if the human race
believes in this existence ; for if it bebeves in
it, this universal belief becomes a fact in our
intebectual constitution ; and whether this fact
be a primitive one, or a deduction from any
anterior fact — whether it be the immediate
teaching of nature or an acquisition by reason
ing — it is entitled to its place unmutbated in the
synthetic table of science. Has it disappeared?
Then the man of phbosophy is not the man of
nature; science is false, and consequently, the
analysis without fidebty; and one may rest
assured that phbosophers have inserted in the
understanding some principle, or some fact,

358 SKEPTICISM.
which was not there before ; or that they have
not cobected with care ab the principles and
facts which are actuaby there."
Having thus formalized the question, M.
Royer-Cobard follows it up with an inquiry as
exact as it is profound, of the psychological
fact of the perception of the external world
which accompanies the fact of sensation : this
inquiry leads him to this conclusion :
" Sensation has no object; sensation is merely
relative to the sentient bemg ; if not perceived,
sensation does not exist. But the perception,
which affirms an external existence, supposes
two things — the mind which perceives, and
the object which is perceived; the being that
thinks, and the being that is the subject-matter
of thought. Just as the sensation is relative to
the mind, so is the act of the perception relative
to it also, and just so does it suppose the mind ;
the object, on the contrary, supposes neither
the mind nor the mind's perception. The object
does not exist because we perceive it ; but we

SKEPTICISM. 359
perceive it because it exists — because we are
endowed with the faculty of perception. In a
city inhabited no longer, there remain no sensa
tion, no idea, no judgment ; the houses remain,
and even the streets, and with them nature,
with ab nature's laws, which are not suspended
in their course. To the universe, the energetic
presence of its Creator suffices; it does not
require our presence ; the absence of spectators
would not make it languish; it existed before
us, it wib exist after us ; its reality is independ
ent of us and of our thoughts — it is absolute.
The authority which persuades us of this is no
less than that of the consciousness itself; it is
the authority of the primitive laws of thought,
and to man's mind those laws are absolute laws
of truth. The same draught may convey the
impression of sweetness and of bitterness, be
cause sensation is relative to the variable state
of sensibbity, and sensibbity itself is relative to
organization ; but the laws of the mind are an
immutable standard. The imperfection of

360 SKEPTICISM.
knowledge does not render it uncertain, and
although it admits of degrees, it does not admit
of contradiction. Our limited faculties do not,
it is true, perceive ab that there is in things ;
but stbl, what they do perceive, is in effect there
just as they perceive it. ... If a man cab upon
me to prove this by reasoning, I shab, in my
turn, demand of him, too, that he first prove to
me by reasoning that reasoning is more con
vincing than perception ; that he at least prove
that the memory, without which there is no
such thing as reasoning, is a faculty more to be
relied upon than those faculties whose testimony
they reject.
Intebectual bfe is an uninterrupted succes
sion, not merely of ideas, but of bebefs, explicit
or implicit. The beliefs of the mind are the
force of the soul and the moving incentives of
the will. Whatever determines us to bebeve
we cab evidence. . . . Reason renders no account
of what is evident ; to condemn it to do so is
to annihbate it, for it also has need of an evi-

SKEPTICISM. 361
dence peculiar to itself. Did not reasoning rest
upon principles anterior to the reason, analysis
would be without end, and synthesis without
commencement. The fundamental laws of belief
constitute the intebigence itself; and as those
laws ab flow from the same source, they have
the same authority ; they judge by the same
right ; there is no appeal from the tribunal
of one to that of another. Whoever revolts
against any single one of these laws, revolts
against them all, and so abdicates ab his nature.
Are there weapons of legitimate use against
that faculty by which we perceive the external
world ? These same weapons may be turned
against the conscience, the memory, the moral
sense, against reason itself. . . . Let but, in any
single point, the nature of knowledge — the
nature, I say, and not the degree — be made
subordinate to our means of knowing, and all
certitude is at an end ; nothing is true, nothing
is false. But it is not enough to say this ; for
all is true and false altogether, since truth and

362 SKEPTICISM.
falsehood no longer differ from sweet and bitter.
The void itself is then deprived of its absolute
nubity: it enters into the domain of the rela
tive ; it is something, nothmg, according to the
conformation of the spectator's eye. The useful
is the sole subject that the understanding con
templates, the sole subject for which the heart
has to make its laws. A legislation capricious
and without efficacy, which applies only shifting
rules to actions, and which has none for the
intentions and for the desires. This is not mere
declamation ; ab these consequences have been
deduced from skeptical doctrines with an exact
itude leaving nothmg to be either desb-ed or
contested. It is then a fact that pubbc and
private morabty, the order of society and the
happiness of individuals, are directly at stake in
the controversy between true phbosophy and
false phbosophy respecting the reality of knowl
edge. For when existences themselves become
problems, what force remains to the bond that
unites them? We cannot divide the entire

SKEPTICISM. 363
man ; we cannot assign a part only to skepti
cism ; as soon as skepticism once penetrates into
the understanding it invades it throughout." *
I retrench nothmg, change nothing in these
remarkable words that express so energetically
the conclusions of the common sense of mankind.
I would only render them stbl more complete,
by blustrating in its primitive and indestruct
ible unity the fact upon which they are founded.
"We cannot divide man," says M. Royer-
Cobard. Here is precisely the risk that philo
sophical science incurs, and to which it too often
succumbs. It divides man in order to study
him ; and after having so studied him, when it
seeks to deduce from its laborious operation
what man in his complete and living reality is,
we find the result a strange misapprehension,
because science has neglected to re-establish the
unity which it broke. It puts together, it is
true, the scattered members, but the being itself
* Fragments de M. Royer-Collard, in the works of Reid,
translation of M. JoufiToy, vol. iv, pp. 426-451.

364 SKEPTICISM.
has disappeared ; and then it is that phbosophers
know not how to solve the problems or to extri
cate themselves from the doubts by which they
are confronted. Entire, living, one, the human
being explained himself; mutilated and severed
into distinct parts, that being loses ab power
and fabs into obscurity.
What is sensation, what perception, judg
ment, reasoning, reason, wbl, consciousness?
They are the human bemg, feeling, perceiving,
judgmg, reasoning, willing, and observing what
is passing withm him. This is no troop of
actors playing, each his • part, in a complex
drama ; but a bemg single and alive, actor and
sole spectator in the drama of his proper bfe.
What is this one and single being doing
when he feels, perceives, judges, reasons, wibs,
and watches what is occurring within himself ?
He is taking cognizance at once of himself, and
what is not himself. His own existence and
the existence of that which is not himself, reveal
themselves to him from the very first in those

SKEPTICISM. 365
diverse facts and acts which philosophical
science discriminates, and calls by the particu
lar names of sensation, perception, judgment,
reason, wib, consciousness. The primitive and
essential fact at the root of ab, is the fact itself
of the cognizance which man takes of himself,
and of what is not himself. A cognizance, at
first confused, and always incomplete, but at
the same time direct and certain. Not by way
of deduction, nor as a mere appearance, but by
way of immediate intuition, and as a positive
reabty, does the human being become aware of
his own existence and of that existence which
is not his. This fact is lost sight of, or at least
is not characterized exactly and as it is in itself,
when it is said that man bebeves naturally
and inevitably in his own existence, and in that
of the external world. This is a very different
thing from belief: it is knowledge itself of that
double reabty, internal and external, cabed by
the name of Man and World. Phbosophers
ignore, and they change the nature of this fact,

366 SKEPTICISM.
when, merely playing with verbal distinctions
and reasonings, they condemn the human mind
not to issue forth from itself, when they refuse
to it the right to affirm as real, out of the mind
and in itself, that which, in the mind and for
the mind, the mind yet admits to be true.
The human being may deceive himself, and
often does deceive himself in such or such a
special affirmation as to external realities; it
has of them only a knowledge incomplete, and
liable to error; but its general and permanent
affirmation as to their existence is stbl fully
justified and legitimate; it knows them as it
knows itself, by the same proof and by the
same natural process. M. Royer-Cobard ex
presses admirably this great fact when he says :
" The universe does not exist because we per
ceive it; but we perceive it because it exists.
... It needs not our presence ; the absence of
spectators would not make it languish away ; it
was before us, it will stbl be after us; its
reabty is independent of us : it is absolute."

SKEPTICISM. 367
Systematic skepticism is not, like Materiabsm
and Pantheism, an hypothesis invented, although
unsuccessfuby invented, in order to solve the
grand problem of soul and body, of finite
and infinite ; its error is not less considerable,
although of a different character. It consists in
a defective examination of the primitive fact of
the human mind, and in the misapprehension of
the nature and the import of that fact. This
fact is by no means, as M. Jouffroy affirms, " a
faith blind and irresistible," disavowed by
rational science; it is really the natural knowl
edge, and the earliest knowledge acquired by
the human being when it enters mto activity; a
knowledge, confused and incomplete, either of
itself or of what is not itself; but stbl a knowl
edge direct and certain of the existence of itself,
and of the existence of what is not itself. " Man
believes by instinct and doubts by reason," adds
M Jouffroy; "skeptics obey the law of their
instinctive nature when they believe, bke the
mass of mankind, in their senses, their con-

368 SKEPTICISM.
sciousness, theb* memory, and when they act in
consequence ; so also they obey theb" rational
nature when they confess that theb? bebefs are
ibegitimate." This is strangely to ignore — I permit myself
the use of this, here, incorrect expression — at
once the reabty of facts, and the value of words.
What M. Jouffroy terms instinct, is the intuitive
consciousness of internal reality and of external
reality, and this consciousness the human bemg
acquires directly by the complete and indivis
ible exercise of all his faculties; what he
terms reason is the result of the isolated opera
tion of one of the faculties of the human
being, who virtuaby forgets, when he decom
poses himself for his own study, what he reaby
is. Skepticism is not the "final word of the
reason respecting the reason ; " it is the suicide
of the reason by a negation falsely termed
scientific, of natural evidence, and of the com
mon sense of mankind.

EIGHTH MEDITATION.

IMPIETY, RECKLESSNESS, AND PERPLEXITY.
The different systems, of each of which I
have endeavored to show the essential and
characteristic vice, do not remain confined to
learned regions, or to the classes to which, from
profession or from taste, man and the world are
a special object of study. The breath of
science penetrates to a distance, and pervades,
unseen itself, places even where ignorance
reigns. How often in remote cities and even
rural districts, among a population alien to every
kind of study, have I met with and discovered
the traces of Rationabsm, of Positivism, of Pan
theism, Materialism, Skepticism ; and yet these
had been imported, imperceptibly and in manner
that the sense could not detect, like a noxious
24

370 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
miasma, into places where their very names
were unknown; and yet they bore everywhere
theb? natural fruits! There is a contagion in
the intebectual as well as in the moral order ;
and the facbity, the rapidity, the universabty
of communication, which contribute so much to
the force and the grandeur of modern civiliza
tion, are as much at the disposal of evil as of
good, of error as of truth.
The effects of this mtebectual contagion vary
with the social regions into which it penetrates,
and the dispositions that it there encounters.
When the systems of phbosophy present them
selves confusedly to minds in which ambitious
and passionate feelings are fermenting, and
these feelings are capable of bemg aided by
those systems, their action is prompt and for
cible. At epochs and among classes where
pride and ambition of intebect reign without
bounds, Rationabsm and Pantheism are received
with favor. In those, on the other hand,
conspicuous for the almost exclusive study of

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 371
the material world, or for the ardor with
which men thirst after physical enjoyments,
Positivism and Materialism seem very readby
to prevab. After long perturbations of society,
and in the midst of the disappointments and the
jaded feelings that they leave behind them,
many minds fab involuntarily into skepticism,
or make it even their refuge. These different
social facts, and the influence which they give
to the different systems of philosophy, manifest
themselves in our days in the state of men's
minds, and they do so whether men be learned
or unlearned, demonstrative or taciturn.
Three dispositions of the mind are very ob
servable and very general — impiety, reckless
ness as to rebgion, and rebgious perplexity:
I feel no difficulty in thus ranging side by
side things which are coexisting, and develop
ing themselves simultaneously although con
trary in their nature. There are epochs when
a great current rises and hurries society toward
a single object and by a single way. Others

372 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
there are where different currents cross and
combat one another, and impel society at the
same moment toward different objects. The
spirit of authority and of faith was very pre
dominant in the seventeenth century ; the spirit
of independence and of innovation in the eight
eenth. The nineteenth century is sweeping
on its way under the empire of tendencies
various but simultaneous in theb? power and
theb? activity; the different principles and
elements of our society, good or the reverse,
confront one another, awaiting the moment
when they may again be harmonized. I re
traced the awakenmg of Christianity and its
progress; I seek in no respect to qualify any
remark that I have made, either as to that
important movement or as to the confidence
with which it inspires me ; but I, at the same
time, bebeve also in the forcible influence of
the antichristian demonstrations which are
taking the form of impiety or of recklessness ;
nor can I disregard the force of that rebgious

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 373
perplexity into which this great struggle throws
so many men of feeble purpose, and even some
men of eminent powers of mind.
In our days impiety is spreading, and as
suming serious development, more especiaby
among the operative classes, and in that young
generation that issues from the middle classes,
and is destined to fobow the liberal professions.
Not that the infection is universal even there ;
on the contrary, those classes show also the
most different tendencies; among them, too, the
progress of the Christian awakenmg has made
itself felt, and rebgious bebef is treated with
more respect. There, however, it is that the
evb of impiety has its focus and its center of
expansion. Sometimes it manifests itself under
gross and cynical forms, sometimes with a pre
tension to thought and learning; now by the
brutal licentiousness of its behavior, now by
the arrogant yet embarrassed expression of its
opinions. Last year I received an invitation to
attend the great congress of students assem-

374 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
bled at Liege; an invitation which, although I
expressed for the purpose of this assemblage a
real and a sincere interest, I declined. When I
learned what the ideas were that had been there
loudly expressed — when I read that the question
had there been put as one between God and
man, and that the idolatry of man had been
proclaimed in the place of the adoration of God,
— I experienced two sentiments the most con
tradictory, a bvely satisfaction that I had held
myself aloof from such a scene, and a profound
regret, at the same time, that I had not been
present to protest against such an invasion of
Pantheism and of Atheism into young souls,
upon whom my thoughts only rest with senti
ments of affectionate hopefulness. I have
grown old, I have had to undergo painful dis
appointments, but in spite of all, my first im
pulse has ever been to believe in the prompt
efficacy of truth when it knocks unhesitatingly
at the door of the mind; nor is it without re
luctance that I bring myself to wait for time

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 375
and experience to unvab what is error. Of the
two kinds of impiety which I have just abuded
to, the impiety which is gross and cynical,
which springs from immorabty and which pro
duces immorality, is undoubtedly the more
fatal to the human soul, to its dignity and its
future lot; but systematic impiety — impiety that
estabbshes itself into doctrine — is the more dan
gerous for human societies; for, enamored of
itself, it takes its pride in self-glorification and
self-propagation. The ambitious ones of im
piety obtain more credit than those, the chief
characteristic of whose impiety is licentiousness.
Recklessness in rebgion is in our days a more
widely spread evil than impiety. I do not
here speak of that indifferentism with respect
to religious subjects that the Abbe de la Men
nais so eloquently attacked ; that sentiment may
be profound, and it may be frivolous ; it may
spring from Materialism, from Skepticism, from
a thoughtful impiety, as web as from a gross
forgetfulness of the paramount questions which

376 IMPIETY — ^PERPLEXITY.
exercise the human mind. The recklessness
now so common gives no thought at all to
these subjects, does not picture to itself that
there is any ground for so doing; where this
tendency prevabs, man's thought confines itself
to its terrestrial, its actual life; the business
and the mterests of this bfe alone occupy him,
alone content him ; there is, as it were, a sleep
of ab those instincts and requirements of the
human soul which go beyond this low region,
and if not a complete abdication, at least a
sluggish torpor of the heavenly part of our
nature. Let not the friends of a religious bfe and of
the Christian faith deceive themselves; it is
here that they have the greatest obstacles to
encounter, the deadest weight to lift and to
remove. Aggression provokes resistance; a
struggle leads to the marshaling of the dif
ferent hostbe forces; nor does the learning of
the believer dread to enter the arena with the
learning of the incredulous. But recklessness

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 377
in rebgion is like a vast Dead Sea in which no
being lives, an immense barren desert in which
no vegetation pushes. It is, if not the most
revolting, at least the most formidable evb of
the day. It is against this evil that Christians
are bound, more especiaby, to direct their
energies, for there are a world and an entire
population here to be conquered.
Nor wib points d'appui or means of action
fab them in this great work. For if religious
recklessness is in our days deplorably common,
neither is perplexity as to religious matters a
stranger among us. It springs from sentiments
and out of mterests very different in their
natures, sometimes merely on the surface, some
times in the depths of the soul. There is a
kind of perplexity founded upon the dictates
of common sense, and entitled to every respect,
but to which I do not accord, nevertheless, the
epithet of religious; this perplexity is gener
ated by the instinct or the experience of the
utbity of rebgion for the maintenance of order

378 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
in society, not merely in the great pubbc
society, but also in the smaller domestic
societies, that is, in the state as well as in
famibes. A man of distinguished mental capac
ity and of an honorable character, "eleve" of
the " Ecole politechnique," and " ingenieur en
chef" in one of our great departments, was one
day speaking to me with sorrow of the attacks
leveled at Christianity. "It is not," he said,
"on my own account that I regret these
attacks ; you know I am a ' Voltairean ; ' but I
ask for regularity and peace in my own house
hold; I febcitate myself that my wife is a
Christian, and I mean my daughters to be
brought up like Christian women. These
demobshers know not what they are doing ; it
is not merely upon our Churches, it is upon our
houses, our homes and their inmates, that then?
blows are tebing ! "
There is a perplexity more serious and more
profound — a perplexity reaby religious — one
suggested not merely by the necessity of social

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 379
order, but by that of moral security, of har
mony, of confidence, and of intimate hopeful
ness in the presence of the problems and of the
chances that weigh upon man. This perplexity
takes place not merely in the minds of thinking
men — of men who render to themselves an ac
count of theb? internal troubles, and who avow
them undisguisedly ; it causes agitation and
spreads desolation among multitudes of single-
minded, modest, and sbent men, who suffer
from the antichristian malaria spread around
them. What framer of statistics shab count
then number? what phbosopher minister suc
cessfully to then disease ?
I go further stbl. I listen to contemporary
philosophers themselves, and I find in the cases
of some of the more eminent an intebectual per
plexity, showing itself clearly through opinions
the most systematic, and the furthest removed
from the Christian rebgion. I shab name but
two — M. Vacherot and M. Edmond Scherer. I
have no intention of entering here into a special

380 IMPIETY — PERPLEXITY.
examination of their ideas ; I seek only to show
the state of their minds and of their souls, as it
results from the tenor of their works.
I have read, and read over again, with scru
pulous attention, the two prmcipal phbosoph
ical treatises of M. Vacherot, La Metaphysique
et la Science ou Principes de Philosophie Pos
itive* and the Fssais de Philosophie Critique.^
M. Vacherot does not desire to be, nor is he
really, in his conscience and in his own eyes, an
advocate either of Materialism, or Positivism,
or Pantheism, or Atheism, or Skepticism. He
analyzes and he refutes successively these dif
ferent systems, as conceived and expounded by
theb- most distinguished representatives; he
defends himself, and with warmth, from the
charge of adhering to them : " a man," he says,
" isx not an Atheist, a Materialist, a Pantheist,
an Idealist, because he does not believe in God,
soul mind, matter, world — in ab these meta-
* Second edition, three vols. 12mo., 1863.
t One vol. 8vo., 1864.

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 381
physical words taken in a given acceptation.
The true Atheist, if such a one exists, is he whose
mind is grossly empirical, and wanting in the
sense of what is intebigible, ideal, and divine.
The true Pantheist is he who identifies truth
and reabty, God and the world, whether, bke
Spinoza and Goethe, he deifies the world, or
bke the Stoics, he materializes God. The true
Materialist is he who degrades man to the
beast, either by denying him his superior and
really human faculties, or by deriving these
from animal faculties. The true Idealist, like
Berkeley, is he who rejects all external reality
as an ibusion, whatever the conception of that
reabty; whether it be as a thing made up of
forces and of laws, or as consisting of extended
matter. . . . All these words require to be
defined and explained, or they necessarily oc
casion mysteries, contradictions, and absurdities.
In their vague complexities they do not express
ideas of sufficient simpbcity, nor do they answer
to ideas sufficiently precise for science to adopt

382 IMPIETY — PERPLEXITY.
them unreservedly and without distinction. . . .
A chosen few exist whose sympathy is dear to
me; I remain profoundly attached to all the
truths which they, with reason,- regard as con
stituting the strength, life, and honor of phi
losophy. I remain, bke them, a Spiritualist, an
Idealist, a Theist, although with other methods,
another language, and also, beyond a doubt,
with notable reservations." *
Nor is M. Vacherot more of a Skeptic than
of a Materialist and a Pantheist ; he bebeves
firmly in absolute truth, in scientific metaphys
ics, and in the universal and essential principles
which form their bases. "Metaphysics," he
says, " have nothing to dread from analysis ; it
is a test from which they can only issue with
honor. The truths a priori upon which the
science rests, wib inspire no more doubt so soon
as it comes to be web understood that those
truths are founded upon the ordinary prin-
* La Metaphysique et la science ; in the Introduction and
the Preface, vol. i., pp. xvi, xxxiv.

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 383
ciples of demonstration, like ab the truths a
priori of the other sciences. Metaphysics have,
and wib ever have for theb? object, the Being
infinite, necessary, absolute, and universal.
Now the ideas of bemg, infinite, necessary,
absolute, universal, are so involved in the
notion of appearance, finite, contingent, relative,
individual, that it is impossible for the human
mind to separate them. Accordingly, in order
to be entitled to deny Metaphysics, and the
truths which are peculiar to them, we must first
mutbate the human mind, and reduce it to the
pure faculties of sensation and imagination
which are common to it with animals. From
the moment when the reason, the thought, the
faculty peculiar to the human intebigence, enters
the field, it brings necessarby with it the object
of sensation and of imagination, under the
categories of quantity, quabty, being, relation,
unity. Then it is that appear to the mind the
distinction, and afterward the logical con
nection, of the two terms corresponding to each

384 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
category, of the finite and the infinite, of the
contingent and the necessary, of the individual
and the universal, of the relative and the ab
solute, of appearance and being. The thought
enters then perforce, whether it is conscious of
it or not, upon the peculiar ground of Meta
physics. Nothmg but a gross and, so to say,
an animal empiricism, has the right to deny the
conceptions and the truths of this science, and
the denial is a denegation of the higher faculties
of the intebigence." *
It is impossible to disavow more indignantly
Materialism, Atheism, Skepticism, with their
prmciples and their consequences. But after
ab these declarations and these disavowals,
when M. Vacherot has to draw his conclusions,
and has to set the affirmation of his own ideas
by the side of his criticism of the ideas of other
writers; when he, in his turn, undertakes to
explain God and the world, this twofold object
of Metaphysics, the perplexity of the thinker
* La Metaphysique et la science ; Preface, vol. i, p. xlviii.

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 385
becomes at once apparent, and he fabs, in spite
of himself, into the very paths from which he
proposed to escape.
"What do you understand by God?" says
he; "the perfect Bemg? He is the God of
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Leib
nitz ; he is the God of all the theologians with
whom Divinity and Perfection are synonyms.
That God is our God too. But if, of this God,
immutable in his perfection, elevated beyond
time, space, the movement of universal life, you
make anything else than an ideal of the
thought, I confess I no longer comprehend him.
. . . These ideas, ab equally reducible to the
idea of the Perfect, as understood by Plato,
Descartes, Malebranche, Fenelon, Leibnitz, can
have no objective reality, and only exist in the
ideal order of pure thought ; absolutely in the
same manner as the figures of geometry do,
which lose ab the vigorousness and ab the
exactitude of their definition elsewhere than in
the domain of the understanding. . . . Per-
25

386 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
fection exists, can only exist, in the thought.
It is of the essence of perfection to be purely
ideal ; and the remark appbes as truly to the
Perfect Bemg of Descartes and of Leibnitz as
to the 'intebigible world' of Plato and of
Malebranche. A 'perfect God,' or a 'real
God?' Theology must make its choice. A
perfect God is only an ideal God." *
That is to say, that for Metaphysics to admit
God, the Being God must vanish, and remain
only a conception, a notion, an idea It may
be that to a philosopher or two this may seem
stib Theism; to the human soul, and to the
human race, it is Atheism, and nothing else.
God thus made to vanish, what becomes in
its turn of the world ?
Here God reappears. "As for the real God,''
says M. Vacherot, "he lives, he develops him
self in the immensity of space and in the eter
nity of time; he appears to us under the infinite
* La Metaphysique et la science ; vol. i, pp. xii, 1, vol. iii,
p. 247.

IMPIETY — PERPLEXITY. 387
variety of forms which are his manifestations —
he is Cosmos. . . . The world thought of is some
thing else than the world imagined. Imagina
tion represents to us the world as an immense
mass of dispersed matter, as an infinite collection
of forces disseminated in the vast fields of space.
The idea does not occur to men of vulgar minds,
nor even to our men of learning, that this image
of universal life cannot for an instant support the
glance of reason ; they do not perceive that void
is synonymous with nothing, that the atom is an
unintebigible hypothesis ; that being is always
and everywhere, without any possible solution
of continuity, either in time or in space; that
the universal life is one in its apparent disper
sion ; and finaby, that the world is a being, and
not merely a whole." *
What is this if it be not Pantheism ?
And these incoherences, these contradictions,
these relapses of M. Vacherot into systems that
he disavows, and that he has just combated,
La Metaphysique et la science, vol. iii, p. 247 ; vol. i, p. lii.

388 IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY.
what are they but striking evidences of the
vanity of his efforts, bke those of so many
others, to explain, unaided by God, God and
the universe ?
Of another nature is the perplexity of M. Ed-
mond Scherer; his is the disquietude of the
critic, not the embarrassment of the metaphy
sician. M. Edmoad Scherer was a bebeving
Christian, a bebever zealous in his faith, and
active in its cause. The examination of systems
and of facts, historical criticism and phbosoph
ical criticism, impebed him to skepticism ; not to
that skepticism which is mdifferent and strange
to ab personal conviction. M. Scherer bebeves
in truth and in the rights of truth ; but where
that truth ? He seeks it, he finds it not ; he
wanders among systems and facts as in a laby
rinth, discovering at each step that his path is
the wrong one, and from it nevertheless finding
no issue. He is stbl aware that humanity can
not live in a labyrinth, that it requires — nay,
absolutely requires — to issue forth, to behold,

IMPIETY  PERPLEXITY. 389
or at least to catch glimpses of, the bght of day.
He has a sentiment of the moral requirements
of human nature, of man's life ; and he sees web
that the negations and the doubts of the differ
ent systems of phbosophy can never satisfy
those requirements. I have already cited, in
the course of these Meditations, some of the pas
sages in which this perplexity strikingly man
ifests itself; a perplexity full at once of pride
and sadness, which, although it does not shake
M. Scherer in his convictions, makes him never
theless see then? vanity.* He knows that its
own thought suffices not for the human soul;
perhaps it is his own soul suggests to him that
knowledge. Why is it that Christianity, in spite of
ab the attacks which it has had to undergo,
and ab the ordeals through which it has been
made to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied
* See particularly the passage cited in the Third Meditation
(Rationalism) of thisvolume, p. 256, etc., and in the " Meditation
on the Essence of the Christian Religion," (Third Meditation,
the Supernatural,) p. 119.

390 IMPIETY — PERPLEXITY.
infinitely better the spontaneous instincts and
invincible cravings of humanity ? Is it not be
cause it is pure from the errors which vitiate
the different systems of philosophy just passed
in review? because it fibs up the void that
those systems either create or leave in the
human soul ? because, in short, it conducts man
higher to the fountain of bght ? Question par
amount, to which these Meditations are intended
as the prelude, and which I shab essay to solve,
by confronting, as I before said,* Christianity
with its opponents, and by showing that, if it
succeeds where they fail, the reason is, that,
sprung from a higher source than man, it alone
has the right to succeed, for it alone knows man
rightly as he is — as one entire bemg; it alone
satisfies man by furnishing him with a rule for
his guidance through life.
* First Meditation, p. 200.
THE END.

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