Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France

by Georg Brandes

Let us follow the connecting thread in this network of sophisms, that we may be able to pull it to pieces. It runs thus: Reason is developed only by the aid of language, the witness. The witness is only to be found in society. Hence man can only live in society. Hence there must have been society, intercourse, between God and the first man. (Observe the unproved assertion of the existence of an Adam, also Bonald's doctrine that God gave Adam language—in short, elements taken from so-called revealed religion as authority, employed to prove that so-called revealed religion rests upon authority.) The necessity of witness involves the necessity of faith, without which witness would be of no effect. Hence faith lies in the very nature of man, is the first condition of life. The certainty of faith is founded upon its harmony with reason, i.e. upon the strength of the authority which bears witness. Hence the witness of God is infinitely certain, since it is nought else but the revelation of infinite reason or of supreme authority. No witness is possible except where there is society. Hence no authority or certainty is possible without a society. No human society can exist except in virtue of that original society of God and man which came into being by virtue of the truths or laws originally revealed by his word. Hence these truths cannot be lost in any society without the destruction of that society resulting from the loss. They are consequently to be found in every society. These essential truths are preserved only by means of witness, which has no power or effect without authority. Hence, as there is no authority except in society, there is also no society without authority; where there is no authority, there is no society. But it is to be noted that there are two species of society; for man stands both in temporal relations to his fellow-men, and in eternal relations to them and to God. These two societies are the political or civil (temporal) society and the spiritual (eternal) society. Consequently there are two authorities, and these authorities are infallible, each in its own domain.

This all sounds extraordinarily logical; if ergo were a sufficient proof, there would be no want of proofs. But let us examine one or two of the links in the chain of argument.

The Ego, says Lamennais, cannot alone, in solitude, develop self-consciousness. The premise is correct, and we infer from it what there is to infer when we say that the I has consequently developed with the assistance of a you. This is a thought to which Feuerbach has devoted special attention, and which he has followed out in a variety of directions. But Lamennais, taking as his premise the Old Testament supposition of a single man existing before the rest of the race, builds the doctrine of the communication between this man and God, and all that follows thereon, upon this foundation, which sinks with the edifice erected on it.

Lamennais declares the infallible sign of the truth to be universal consent. But upon what does the authority of this consent rest? Has it a cause, or is it simply a fact?

If it has a cause, if the reason of all is to provide the law for the reason of the individual, then that very individual reason for which Lamennais has such a profound contempt is, after all, the supreme judge of the truth. For it is it which, in the first place, invests universal consent with its great importance, and in the second, determines in each separate case whether or not universal consent is to be bestowed.

If, on the other hand, the authority of common consent is a fact, that is to say, a thing which simply follows from our nature, then the certainty with which it inspires us is in no wise different from any other certainty. But Lamennais himself has just been opposing the idea of certainty resulting from an inward feeling, been denying our certainty even of our own existence, the certainty which we require being infallible certainty. What on earth should make belief in authority more infallible than any other certainty?

Lamennais' chain of argument leads us finally to two infallible authorities. The word "infallible" tells us that the Roman Catholic Church is not far off. Infallibility insinuates itself as an inevitable consequence of authority.

There is one point on which all the writers who help to bring about the revival of ecclesiasticism agree, on which Joseph de Maistre, the inaugurator of the revival, is in perfect harmony with Lamennais, its last exponent, little favour though he shows to the other paradoxes of his latest disciple. This point is the infallibility of the Pope. It must be remembered that in the eighteenth century the Papal power had appeared to be defunct. A Pope had corresponded with Voltaire and accepted the dedication of his Mahomet. The Pope had himself done away with his faithful Janissaries, the Jesuits. The religious reaction begins by the re-assertion, nay, by the exaggeration even from a Roman Catholic point of view, of the power and importance of the Pope. De Maistre said: "Without the Pope, no authority; without authority, no faith"—that is, without a Pope, no faith. The supremacy of the Pope thus becomes the very fountain, the very kernel of Christianity; in our days (in the writings of Bishop Ségur) the Pope has actually become a sacrament, "the real presence of Jesus upon earth."

De Maistre argued thus: There is no religion without a visible church; there is no church without government, no government without sovereignty, and no sovereignty without infallibility. He cited the principle of the irresponsibility of the king, which, in his estimation, was essentially the same as that of the infallibility of the Pope. Every government, he insisted, is from its very nature absolute, endures no insubordination; from the moment when it becomes permissible to oppose it, on the pretence of its being unjust or mistaken, it can no longer be called a government. And he attempted, as we have already seen, to prove, by appeal to the unquestioned discipline prevailing on board ship and the unquestioned decisions of the courts of justice, how familiar men are in all other domains of life with that idea of infallibility which it is considered correct to take umbrage at where the Pope is concerned.

This dexterous defence has every merit conceivable in a defence of an irredeemably lost case. That we are obliged to regard the temporal sovereign, though he is not infallible, as being so, does not prove that the Pope, as the spiritual sovereign, really is infallible. The fact that there must always be a supreme power, qualified to demand outward submission, does not prove that this power has also the right to demand intellectual submission. But perhaps outward submission is sufficient? Joseph de Maistre in reality grants that it is. He writes: "As regards the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, we have no interest in throwing doubt upon it. When one of those theological questions which must of necessity be submitted to the arbitration of a supreme court occurs, it is of no interest to us whether it is decided in this way or that, but it is of great interest that it should be decided at once and without appeal."