"Analyze, for example, the vain attempts, so frequently renewed during two centuries by so many distinguished minds, to subordinate, according to the theologic formula, reason to faith; it is easy to recognize the radical contradiction this attempt involves, which establishes reason herself as supreme judge of this very submission, the extent and the permanence of which is to depend upon her variable and not very rigid decisions. The most eminent thinker of the present catholic school, the illustrious De Maistre, himself affords a proof, as convincing as involuntary, of this inevitable contradiction in his philosophy, when, renouncing all theologic weapons, he labours in his principal work to re-establish the Papal supremacy on purely historical and political reasonings, instead of limiting himself to command it by right divine—the only mode in true harmony with such a doctrine, and which a mind, at another epoch, would not certainly have hesitated to adopt."—P. 25.
After some further observations on the theologic or retrograde school, he turns to the metaphysic, sometimes called the anarchical, sometimes doctrine critique, for M. Comte is rich in names.
"In submitting, in their turn, the metaphysic doctrine to a like appreciation, it must never be overlooked that, though exclusively critical, and therefore purely revolutionary, it has not the less merited, for a long time, the title of progressive, as having in fact presided over the principal political improvements accomplished in the course of the three last centuries, and which have necessarily been of a negative description. If, when conceived in an absolute sense, its dogmas manifest, in fact, a character directly anarchical, when viewed in an historical position, and in their antagonism to the ancient system, they constitute a provisional state, necessary to the introduction of a new political organization.
"By a necessity as evident as it is deplorable, a necessity inherent in our feeble nature, the transition from one social system to another can never be direct and continuous; it supposes always, during some generations at least, a sort of interregnum, more or less anarchical, whose character and duration depend on the importance and extent of the renovation to be effected. (While the old system remains standing, though undermined, the public reason cannot become familiarized with a class of ideas entirely opposed to it.) In this necessity we see the legitimate source of the present doctrine critique—a source which at once explains the indispensable services it has hitherto rendered, and also the essential obstacles it now opposes to the final reorganization of modern societies....
"Under whatever aspect we regard it, the general spirit of the metaphysic revolutionary system consists in erecting into a normal and permanent state a necessarily exceptional and transitory condition. By a direct and total subversion of political notions, the most fundamental, it represents government as being, by its nature, the necessary enemy of society, against which it sedulously places itself in a constant state of suspicion and watchfulness; it is disposed incessantly to restrain more and more its sphere of activity, in order to prevent its encroachments, and tends finally to leave it no other than the simple functions of general police, without any essential participation in the supreme direction of the action of the collective body or of its social development.
"Approaching to a more detailed examination of this doctrine, it is evident that the absolute right of free examination (which, connected as it is with the liberty of the press and the freedom of education, is manifestly its principal and fundamental dogma) is nothing else, in reality, but the consecration, under the vicious abstract form common to all metaphysic conceptions, of that transitional state of unlimited liberty in which the human mind has been spontaneously placed, in consequence of the irrevocable decay of the theologic philosophy, and which must naturally remain till the establishment in the social domain of the positive method.[49] ... However salutary and indispensable in its historical position, this principle opposes a grave obstacle to the reorganization of society, by being erected into an absolute and permanent dogma. To examine always without deciding ever, would be deemed great folly in any individual. How can the dogmatic consecration of a like disposition amongst all individuals, constitute the definitive perfection of the social order, in regard, too, to ideas whose finity it is so peculiarly important, and so difficult, to establish? Is it not evident, on the contrary, that such a disposition is, from its nature, radically anarchical, inasmuch as, if it could be indefinitely prolonged, it must hinder every true mental organization?
"No association whatever, though destined for a special and temporary purpose, and though limited to a small number of individuals, can subsist without a certain degree of reciprocal confidence, both intellectual and moral, between its members, each one of whom finds a continual necessity for a crowd of notions, to the formation of which he must remain a stranger, and which he cannot admit but on the faith of others. By what monstrous exception can this elementary condition of all society be banished from that total association of mankind, where the point of view which the individual takes, is most widely separated from that point of view which the collective interest requires, and where each member is the least capable, whether by nature or position, to form a just appreciation of these general rules, indispensable to the good direction of his personal activity. Whatever intellectual development we may suppose possible, in the mass of men it is evident, that social order will remain always necessarily incompatible with the permanent liberty left to each, to throw back every day into endless discussion the first principles even of society....
"The dogma of equality is the most essential and the most influential after that which I have just examined, and is, besides, in necessary relation to the principle of the unrestricted liberty of judgment; for this last indirectly leads to the conclusion of an equality of the most fundamental character—an equality of intelligence. In its bearing on the ancient system, it has happily promoted the development of modern civilization, by presiding over the final dissolution of the old social classification. But this function constitutes the sole progressive destination of this energetic dogma, which tends in its turn to prevent every just reorganization, since its destructive activity is blindly directed against the basis of every new classification. For, whatever that basis may be, it cannot be reconciled with a pretended equality, which, to all intelligent men, can now only signify the triumph of the inequalities developed by modern civilization, over those which had predominated in the infancy of society....
"The same philosophical appreciation is applicable with equal ease to the dogma of the sovereignty of the people. Whilst estimating, as is fit, the indispensable transitional office of this revolutionary dogma, no true philosopher can now misunderstand the fatal anarchical tendency of this metaphysical conception, since in its absolute application it opposes itself to all regular institution, condemning indefinitely all superiors to an arbitrary dependence on the multitude of their inferiors, by a sort of transference to the people of the much-reprobated right of kings."
As our author had shown how the theologic philosophy was inconsistent often with itself, so, in criticising the metaphysics, he exposes here also certain self-contradictions. He reproaches it with having, in its contests with the old system, endeavoured, at each stage, to uphold and adopt some of the elementary principles of that very system it was engaged in destroying.