The History of Freedom, and Other Essays

by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

The fall of Lamennais, however impressive as a warning, is of no great historical importance; for he carried no one with him, and his favourite disciples became the ablest defenders of Catholicism in France. But it exemplifies one of the natural consequences of dissociating secular from religious truth, and denying that they hold in solution all the elements necessary for their reconciliation and union. In more recent times, the same error has led, by a contrary path, to still more lamentable results, and scepticism on the possibility of harmonising reason and faith has once more driven a philosopher into heresy. Between the fall of Lamennais and the conflict with Frohschammer many metaphysical writers among the Catholic clergy had incurred the censures of Rome. It is enough to cite Bautain in France, Rosmini in Italy, and Günther in Austria. But in these cases no scandal ensued, and the decrees were received with prompt and hearty submission. In the cases of Lamennais and Frohschammer no speculative question was originally at issue, but only the question of authority. A comparison between their theories will explain the similarity in the courses of the two men, and at the same time will account for the contrast between the isolation of Lamennais and the influence of Frohschammer, though the one was the most eloquent writer in France, and the head of a great school, and the other, before the late controversy, was not a writer of much name. This contrast is the more remarkable since religion had not revived in France when the French philosopher wrote, while for the last quarter of a century Bavaria has been distinguished among Catholic nations for the faith of her people. Yet Lamennais was powerless to injure a generation of comparatively ill-instructed Catholics, while Frohschammer, with inferior gifts of persuasion, has won educated followers even in the home of Ultramontanism.

The first obvious explanation of this difficulty is the narrowness of Lamennais's philosophy. At the time of his dispute with the Holy See he had somewhat lost sight of his traditionalist theory; and his attention, concentrated upon politics, was directed to the problem of reconciling religion with liberty,—a question with which the best minds in France are still occupied. But how can a view of policy constitute a philosophy? He began by thinking that it was expedient for the Church to obtain the safeguards of freedom, and that she should renounce the losing cause of the old régime. But this was no more philosophy than the similar argument which had previously won her to the side of despotism when it was the stronger cause. As Bonald, however, had erected absolute monarchy into a dogma, so Lamennais proceeded to do with freedom. The Church, he said, was on the side of freedom, because it was the just side, not because it was the stronger. As De Maistre had seen the victory of Catholic principles in the Restoration, so Lamennais saw it in the revolution of 1830.

This was obviously too narrow and temporary a basis for a philosophy. The Church is interested, not in the triumph of a principle or a cause which may be dated as that of 1789, or of 1815, or of 1830, but in the triumph of justice and the just cause, whether it be that of the people or of the Crown, of a Catholic party or of its opponents. She admits the tests of public law and political science. When these proclaim the existence of the conditions which justify an insurrection or a war, she cannot condemn that insurrection or that war. She is guided in her judgment on these causes by criteria which are not her own, but are borrowed from departments over which she has no supreme control. This is as true of science as it is of law and politics. Other truths are as certain as those which natural or positive law embraces, and other obligations as imperative as those which regulate the relations of subjects and authorities. The principle which places right above expedience in the political action of the Church has an equal application in history or in astronomy. The Church can no more identify her cause with scientific error than with political wrong. Her interests may be impaired by some measure of political justice, or by the admission of some fact or document. But in neither case can she guard her interests at the cost of denying the truth.

This is the principle which has so much difficulty in obtaining recognition in an age when science is more or less irreligious, and when Catholics more or less neglect its study. Political and intellectual liberty have the same claims and the same conditions in the eyes of the Church. The Catholic judges the measures of governments and the discoveries of science in exactly the same manner. Public law may make it imperative to overthrow a Catholic monarch, like James II., or to uphold a Protestant monarch, like the King of Prussia. The demonstrations of science may oblige us to believe that the earth revolves round the sun, or that the donation of Constantine is spurious. The apparent interests of religion have much to say against all this; but religion itself prevents those considerations from prevailing. This has not been seen by those writers who have done most in defence of the principle. They have usually considered it from the standing ground of their own practical aims, and have therefore failed to attain that general view which might have been suggested to them by the pursuit of truth as a whole. French writers have done much for political liberty, and Germans for intellectual liberty; but the defenders of the one cause have generally had so little sympathy with the other, that they have neglected to defend their own on the grounds common to both. There is hardly a Catholic writer who has penetrated to the common source from which they spring. And this is the greatest defect in Catholic literature, even to the present day.

In the majority of those who have afforded the chief examples of this error, and particularly in Lamennais, the weakness of faith which it implies has been united with that looseness of thought which resolves all knowledge into opinion, and fails to appreciate methodical investigation or scientific evidence. But it is less easy to explain how a priest, fortified with the armour of German science, should have failed as completely in the same inquiry. In order to solve the difficulty, we must go back to the time when the theory of Frohschammer arose, and review some of the circumstances out of which it sprang.

For adjusting the relations between science and authority, the method of Rome had long been that of economy and accommodation. In dealing with literature, her paramount consideration was the fear of scandal. Books were forbidden, not merely because their statements were denied, but because they seemed injurious to morals, derogatory to authority, or dangerous to faith. To be so, it was not necessary that they should be untrue. For isolated truths separated from other known truths by an interval of conjecture, in which error might find room to construct its works, may offer perilous occasions to unprepared and unstable minds. The policy was therefore to allow such truths to be put forward only hypothetically, or altogether to suppress them. The latter alternative was especially appropriated to historical investigations, because they contained most elements of danger. In them the progress of knowledge has been for centuries constant, rapid, and sure; every generation has brought to light masses of information previously unknown, the successive publication of which furnished ever new incentives, and more and more ample means of inquiry into ecclesiastical history. This inquiry has gradually laid bare the whole policy and process of ecclesiastical authority, and has removed from the past that veil of mystery wherewith, like all other authorities, it tries to surround the present. The human element in ecclesiastical administration endeavours to keep itself out of sight, and to deny its own existence, in order that it may secure the unquestioning submission which authority naturally desires, and may preserve that halo of infallibility which the twilight of opinion enables it to assume. Now the most severe exposure of the part played by this human element is found in histories which show the undeniable existence of sin, error, or fraud in the high places of the Church. Not, indeed, that any history furnishes, or can furnish, materials for undermining the authority which the dogmas of the Church proclaim to be necessary for her existence. But the true limits of legitimate authority are one thing, and the area which authority may find it expedient to attempt to occupy is another. The interests of the Church are not necessarily identical with those of the ecclesiastical government. A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision. Authority may be protected by its subjects being kept in ignorance of its faults, and by their holding it in superstitious admiration. But religion has no communion with any manner of error: and the conscience can only be injured by such arts, which, in reality, give a far more formidable measure of the influence of the human element in ecclesiastical government than any collection of detached cases of scandal can do. For these arts are simply those of all human governments which possess legislative power, fear attack, deny responsibility, and therefore shrink from scrutiny.

One of the great instruments for preventing historical scrutiny had long been the Index of prohibited books, which was accordingly directed, not against falsehood only, but particularly against certain departments of truth. Through it an effort had been made to keep the knowledge of ecclesiastical history from the faithful, and to give currency to a fabulous and fictitious picture of the progress and action of the Church. The means would have been found quite inadequate to the end, if it had not been for the fact that while society was absorbed by controversy, knowledge was only valued so far as it served a controversial purpose. Every party in those days virtually had its own prohibitive Index, to brand all inconvenient truths with the note of falsehood. No party cared for knowledge that could not be made available for argument. Neutral and ambiguous science had no attractions for men engaged in perpetual combat. Its spirit first won the naturalists, the mathematicians, and the philologists; then it vivified the otherwise aimless erudition of the Benedictines; and at last it was carried into history, to give new life to those sciences which deal with the tradition, the law, and the action of the Church.

The home of this transformation was in the universities of Germany, for there the Catholic teacher was placed in circumstances altogether novel. He had to address men who had every opportunity of becoming familiar with the arguments of the enemies of the Church, and with the discoveries and conclusions of those whose studies were without the bias of any religious object. Whilst he lectured in one room, the next might be occupied by a pantheist, a rationalist, or a Lutheran, descanting on the same topics. When he left the desk his place might be taken by some great original thinker or scholar, who would display all the results of his meditations without regard for their tendency, and without considering what effects they might have on the weak. He was obliged often to draw attention to books lacking the Catholic spirit, but indispensable to the deeper student. Here, therefore, the system of secrecy, economy, and accommodation was rendered impossible by the competition of knowledge, in which the most thorough exposition of the truth was sure of the victory, and the system itself became inapplicable as the scientific spirit penetrated ecclesiastical literature in Germany.

In Rome, however, where the influences of competition were not felt, the reasons of the change could not be understood, nor its benefits experienced; and it was thought absurd that the Germans of the nineteenth century should discard weapons which had been found efficacious with the Germans of the sixteenth. While in Rome it was still held that the truths of science need not be told, and ought not to be told, if, in the judgment of Roman theologians, they were of a nature to offend faith, in Germany Catholics vied with Protestants in publishing matter without being diverted by the consideration whether it might serve or injure their cause in controversy, or whether it was adverse or favourable to the views which it was the object of the Index to protect. But though this great antagonism existed, there was no collision. A moderation was exhibited which contrasted remarkably with the aggressive spirit prevailing in France and Italy. Publications were suffered to pass unnoted in Germany which would have been immediately censured if they had come forth beyond the Alps or the Rhine. In this way a certain laxity grew up side by side with an unmeasured distrust, and German theologians and historians escaped censure.

This toleration gains significance from its contrast to the severity with which Rome smote the German philosophers like Hermes and Günther when they erred. Here, indeed, the case was very different. If Rome had insisted upon suppressing documents, perverting facts, and resisting criticism, she would have been only opposing truth, and opposing it consciously, for fear of its inconveniences. But if she had refrained from denouncing a philosophy which denied creation or the personality of God, she would have failed to assert her own doctrines against her own children who contradicted them. The philosopher cannot claim the same exemption as the historian. God's handwriting exists in history independently of the Church, and no ecclesiastical exigence can alter a fact. The divine lesson has been read, and it is the historian's duty to copy it faithfully without bias and without ulterior views. The Catholic may be sure that as the Church has lived in spite of the fact, she will also survive its publication. But philosophy has to deal with some facts which, although as absolute and objective in themselves, are not and cannot be known to us except through revelation, of which the Church is the organ. A philosophy which requires the alteration of these facts is in patent contradiction against the Church. Both cannot coexist. One must destroy the other.