In the name of conscience and authority, then, Lamennais published a protest against the irreligion of the state, that is, against its recognition of no confession—what he called "political atheism." He started the cry: The laws of France are atheistical. He went farther. In a famous letter addressed to Bishop Frayssinous, and published in the newspaper Le Drapeau blanc, he declared that as the generation now to be brought up was a generation born in blood, hard by the scaffold of Louis XVI. and the altar of the goddess of reason, it could only be saved by Christ, only educated by Christianity. But all education in France was, he maintained, atheistic. "Am I exaggerating, Monseigneur, when I say that there are in France educational institutions, more or less closely connected with the University, where children are brought up in practical atheism and hatred of Christianity? In one of these horrible dens of vice and irreligion thirty of the pupils have been known to approach the table of the Lord, receive the sacred wafer, keep it, and commit a sacrilege which formerly would have been punished by law, namely, use it to seal the letters which they wrote to their parents. ... The influence of the University is producing an ungodly, depraved, rebellious generation."
These indiscreet revelations were very unwelcome to the party in power, who were much annoyed by such attacks on the constitution from a quarter where they had looked for warm support. When Lamennais found that he was treated with coldness and received reprimands instead of thanks, he went a step farther.
We have already seen that his doctrine led to the sacrificing of secular to ecclesiastical infallibility in cases of collision between them. But this was in reality equivalent to acknowledging that the heretical, free-thinking school was right in repudiating the quality of inviolability and irreversibility which the royalist writers ascribed to the monarchy by the grace of God. It moreover made the temporal power dependent on the spiritual, namely, on the Pope. All the bishops of France responded with a manifesto in which they declared the secular to be independent of the Papal power.
Lamennais, the champion of authority, now stood in the most strained relations with both the ecclesiastical and the temporal authorities.
His democratic period does not lie within the scope of the present work. We shall only note the germs of the later development which exist in his original theory of authority. This new theory of authority is fascinatingly unlike the good old hard and fast doctrine propounded by Bonald and De Maistre immediately after the Revolution. The reaction is now much more an affair of reason, consequently much less an affair of immovable principles. Every serious attempt to show the grounds upon which the principle of authority rests must inevitably deal the principle a death-blow; for authority does not rest upon grounds. Lamennais' doctrine, which at first sight seemed so favourable to autocracy, proved on closer inspection to be extremely democratic. The whole edifice rested upon the principle of the authority of the human race. But beneath this fundamental idea—the authority of the human race—another was perceptible; and what was this other but the idea so repugnant to the reactionaries, Rousseau's old idea—the sovereignty of the people! Lamennais' readers did not observe this at once; he did not see it himself; but it lay dormant there, and one fine day it awoke and was recognised by all.
Lamennais desired to substitute theocracy for monarchy. But theocracy was not popular, was at any rate only popular when the word was interpreted in the sense of the old proverb: vox populi, vox Dei—when God's voice meant the voice of the people. The practical result of his doctrine was, then, merely the weakening of that secular authority which it asserted to be subject to the fiat of the reason of all; for the reason of all, which had at first been personified in the sovereign church, was very soon personified in the sovereign people. When Lamennais at last, in Les Paroles d'un Croyant, instigated to intellectual revolt, all the difference in his position was that he now desired theocracy for the sake of the people, instead of, as formerly, for the sake of their rulers.
The Revolution of July produced liberty of the press, and the first use Lamennais made of this was to publish a demand for the emancipation of education from state control and for the separation of the church from the state. He hoped by this means to get education altogether into the hands of the church, and thereby restore its old religious tendency. In the autumn of 1830 he started the famous newspaper L'Avenir, the watchword of which was the separation of church and state. Appeal to Rome was his answer to every attack; his newspaper was supposed to reflect the exact state of opinion there; but the Vatican remained obstinately silent. The fact of the matter was that it regarded Lamennais' liberal ideas with anything but favour, and had no inclination whatever to relinquish the state grant to the church. His opponents continuing to maintain that his opinions were incompatible with Catholic orthodoxy, Lamennais went to Rome in February 1831, to inquire of the Pope if it was (as he himself put it) a crime to fight for God, justice, and truth, and if it was desirable that he should continue his efforts. He was detained in Rome on one pretext or another until August 1832.
Presently the bull was published in which he, the opponent of indifference on the subject of religion, is declared guilty of religious indifferentism. In it we read: "From the impure source of this indifference springs also the erroneous and absurd, or, more correctly speaking, insane theory that liberty of conscience should be allowed and secured to all.... But, as St. Augustine said, what worse death is there than liberty to go astray? For it stands to reason that when every restraint is removed that can keep men to the paths of truth, their nature, which inclines to evil, will plunge into the abyss.... Amongst these must be reckoned that abominable liberty which we can never sufficiently loathe and dread, the liberty of the press to publish any work whatsoever, a liberty which some dare to champion with such ardour".[4]
This was plain speaking. Lamennais made submission, and his newspaper stopped appearing. But the cup given him to drink was gall and wormwood, and only a drop was needed to make it overflow. From this time onwards he stood prepared to throw himself into the arms of the Revolution. And ere long he took the leap.
What most interests us, who are confining our attention to the first stage of Lamennais' psychological development, is to observe the manner in which his childish faith in authority is undermined as soon as he has the opportunity of seeing the holy thing close at hand. He writes from Rome in a private letter: "The Pope is pious, and has the best intentions; but he has little knowledge of the world, and is completely ignorant of the condition of the church and of society; he sits immovable in the darkness which closes in ever thicker round him, weeping and praying; his task, his mission is to prepare and hasten the final catastrophes which must precede the regeneration of society, and without which this regeneration would either be impossible or incomplete. Therefore God has given him into the hands of men who are as base as it is possible to be. Ambitious, greedy, and depraved, in their foolish frenzy they call on the Tatars to produce in Europe what they call order."