The fact has not been sufficiently attended to, that there is no study more deceptive than that of the moral sciences; I say deceptive, because this study, seducing the mind by an appearance of facility, draws it into difficulties which it is no easy matter to overcome. It may be compared to those tranquil waters which, although apparently but shallow, are in reality unfathomably deep. Familiarized from our infancy with the language of this science, surrounded by its continual applications, and having before our eyes its truths under a palpable form, we possess a certain facility of speaking readily on many parts of the subject; and we have the rashness to suppose that it would not be difficult to master its highest principles and its most delicate relations. But wonderful as it is, scarcely have we quitted the path of common sense, and attempted to go beyond those simple impressions which we have received from our mothers, when we find ourselves in a labyrinth of confusion. If the mind gives itself up to subtilties, it ceases to listen to the voice of the heart, which speaks to it with equal simplicity and eloquence; if it does not repress its pride, and attend to the wise counsels of good sense, it will be guilty of despising those salutary and necessary truths, which have been preserved by society to be transmitted from generation to generation: it is then, while groping its way in the dark, that it falls into the wildest extravagances, the lamentable effects of which are so often exemplified in the history of the sciences.
If we observe attentively, we shall find something of the same kind in all the sciences. The Creator has taken care to supply us with knowledge necessary for the purposes of life, and for the attainment of our destiny; but it has not pleased Him to gratify our curiosity by discovering to us what was not necessary. Nevertheless, in some things He has communicated to the mind a power which renders it capable of constantly adding to its knowledge; but, with respect to moral truths, it has been left sterile. What man is required to know, has been deeply engraven on his heart, in characters simple and intelligible; or is contained in the sacred volume; and moreover, he has had pointed out to him, in the authority of the Church, a fixed rule, to which he can apply to have his doubts explained. With respect to the rest, man has been placed in such a position, that if he attempt to enter into matters which are too subtle, he only wanders backwards and forwards in the same road, at the extremities of which he finds on the one side skepticism, on the other pure truth.
Perhaps some modern ideologists will urge, in opposition to this, the result of their own analytical labours. "Before men began to analyze facts," they will say, "and while they indulged in fanciful systems, and satisfied themselves with verbal disputes without critical examination, all this might be true; but now that we have explained all the ideas of moral good and evil, in so perfect a way, and have separated the prejudice in them from the true philosophy; now that the whole system of morality is based upon the simple principles of pleasure and pain, and we have given the clearest ideas of these things, such, for example, as the sensations produced in us by an orange; to maintain your assertion, is to be ungrateful towards science, and to underrate the fruit of our labours."
I am aware of the labours of some moral ideologists, and I know with what deceptive simplicity they develop their theories, by giving to the most difficult things an easy turn, which affects to make them intelligible to the most limited minds. This is not the place to examine these analytical investigations, and their results. I shall, however, remark that, in spite of their promised simplicity, it does not appear that either society or science makes much progress through their means, and that these opinions, although but a short time broached, are already superannuated. This is not a matter of astonishment to us; for it was easy to perceive that, in spite of their positiveness, if I may be allowed to use the expression, these ideologists are as hypothetical as many of their predecessors, who are loaded by them with sarcasms and contempt. They are a poor, narrow-minded school, devoid of the truth, and not even adorned by the brilliant dreams of great men; a proud and deluded school, who fancy they explain a fact, when they only obscure it; and prove a thing, when they only assert it; and imagine that they analyze the human heart, when they take it to pieces.
If such is the human mind; if such is its inability in matters of science, whether physical or moral, that it has not advanced a single step beyond the limit prescribed by a beneficent Providence; what service has Protestantism rendered to modern society, by impairing the force of authority, that power which could alone present an effectual barrier to man's unhappy wanderings?[9]
[CHAPTER VII.]
INDIFFERENCE AND FANATICISM.
In rejecting the authority of the Church, and in adopting this resistance as its only principle, Protestantism was compelled to seek its whole support in man; thus to mistake the true character of the human mind, and its relations with religious and moral truth, was to throw itself, according to circumstances, into the opposite extremes of fanaticism and indifference.
It may seem strange that these opposite errors should emanate from the same source; and yet nothing is more certain. Protestantism, by appealing to man alone in religious matters, had only two courses to adopt; either to suppose men to be inspired by Heaven for the discovery of truth, or to subject all religious truths to the examination of reason. To submit religious truths to the judgment of reason was sooner or later to produce indifference; on the other hand, private inspiration must engender fanaticism.