The German revolution was put down by the bayonet, but the doctrines of which it had revealed the existence, left vestiges for a long time in the country of the terror which they had inspired.  Alarm was felt for the various interests threatened, and noble souls were stirred with compassion by the conviction forced upon them of the spiritual miseries of their brethren.  A powerful reaction took place, as well in the religious as the philosophical world.  This reaction has produced salutary results; but the object is not fully attained.  Open the journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these days, the principal centre of materialism.  It is unhappily so rich in this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.

Doctor Buechner has published, under the title of Force and Matter, a small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately been translated into French.[64] Materialism is there set forth with perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity.  The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the researches of philosophy.  It would seem therefore that the question of the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies.  Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe infinite.  I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by means of observation that the universe is infinite.  We shall have occasion to recur to this subject.  Meanwhile we may be very sure that experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a metaphysical system as strongly marked as any.  When its adepts cry out, Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply:  We will have no good philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own without rivalry.  A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of their own despotism.

We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth with eclat by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and projects, and lastly materialism.  The elements are the same as in France, but exhibit themselves in a different order.  This diversity suggests some observations worth your attention.

France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the greater part of its atheistical manifestations.  German atheism, having as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.[65] We may inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.