The great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as it is often said to be, the combat of idealism against materialism.  Idealism begins well, and we must not refuse to acknowledge the services which it has rendered to the cause of truth.  But philosophy must follow the road traced out in an ancient adage:  Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad superiora.[67] If the mind does not go to the end of this royal road; if idealism, having surmounted the fascinations of the senses, remains in ideas, without ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of matter and the worship of the idea call mutually one to another, and revolve in a fatal circle.  The struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied honor, the adversaries breakfast together, and gather strength to combat, in case of need, a common enemy.  The great combat which forms the main subject of the history of ideas is the combat between belief in God and an atheistical philosophy.  Whether atheism admits for its first principle an atom without a Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is a fact very important for the history of philosophy, but the importance of which is small enough in regard to the interests of humanity.

We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into Germany, let us now cross the British Channel, and observe what is going on in England.

England, at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion.  France gave the patent of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in part from this foreign source.  An active propaganda for the diffusion of impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain.  A strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books and respectable journals.[68] These efforts were crowned with success.  England, by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices for the diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its respect for the Lord’s-day,[69] assumed[70] the characteristic marks of a Christian nation.  Grand measures adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity, placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously philanthropic civilization; but as Pere Gratry has remarked, “more than in any other people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."[71] The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of this double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy.  A book is instanced, of materialistic tendency,[72] published in 1828, of which a popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it advocated.  There was sold of this edition, in a short time, more than eighty thousand copies.  A thoughtful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a statistical statement, according to which English publications, openly atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six hundred and forty thousand copies.[73]