[10] Sources: Bonald, Théorie du pouvoir, i-iii.; La législation primitive; Essai analytique sur les lois naturelles; Du divorce; Barante, Tableau de la littérature française au 18me siècle; Lamennais, Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion; Laurent, Histoire du droit des gens, xvi.
CHATEAUBRIAND
[IV]
"LE GÉNIE DU CHRISTIANISME"
Chateaubriand's book, Le Génie du Christianisme, which originally bore the significant title Beautés de la Religion Chrétienne, marks the transition from the first to the second stage of the reaction, because, cold and devoid of real feeling as it is, it is an attempt to vindicate and rehabilitate authority by means of an appeal to sentiment and imagination.
It was a defence of Christianity of a perfectly new species, from the fact that it appealed to imagination, not to faith; to sentiment, not to reason. It impresses one as being proffered under the conviction that reason was now inimical to Christianity, and that faith no longer existed.