Who authorizes this will, this sovereignty of the
prince, this first of public obligations? In
the first place, eight centuries of possession, a
hereditary right similar to that by which each one
enjoys his own field and domain, a property established
in a family and transmitted from one eldest son to
another, from the first founder of the State to his
last living successor; and, in addition to this, a
religion directing men to submit to the constituted
powers. — And who, finally, authorizes
this religion? At first, eighteen centuries of
tradition, the immense series of anterior and concordant
proofs, the steady belief of sixty preceding generations;
and after this, at the beginning of it, the presence
and teachings of Christ, then, farther back, the creation
of the world, the command and the voice of God. —
Thus, throughout the moral and social order of things
the past justifies the present; antiquity provides
its title, and if beneath all these supports which
age has consolidated, the deep primitive rock is sought
for in subterranean depths, we find it in the divine
will. — During the whole of the seventeenth
century this theory still absorbs all souls in the
shape of a fixed habit and of inward respect; it is
not open to question. It is regarded in the same
light as the heart of the living body; whoever would
lay his hand upon it would instantly draw back, moved
by a vague sentiment of its ceasing to beat in case
it were touched. The most independent, with Descartes
at the head, “would be grieved” at being
confounded with those chimerical speculators who,
instead of pursuing the beaten track of custom, dart
blindly forward “in a direct line across mountains
and over precipices.” In subjecting their
belief to systematic investigation not only do they
leave out and set apart “the truths of faith,"[1]
but again the dogma they think they have thrown out
remains in their mind latent and active, to guide
them on unconsciously and to convert their philosophy
into a preparation for, or a confirmation of, Christianity.[2]
— Summing it all up, faith, the performance
of religious duties, with religious and political
institutions, are at base of all thought of the seventeenth
century. Reason, whether she admits it or is
ignorant of it, is only a subaltern, an oratorical
agency, a setter-in-motion, forced by religion and
the monarchy to labor in their behalf. With
the exception of La Fontaine, whom I regard as unique
in this as in other matters, the greatest and most
independent, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, La Bruyère,
borrows from the established society their basic concepts
of nature, man, society, law and government.[3] So
long as Reason is limited to this function its work
is that of a councilor of State, an extra preacher
dispatched by its superiors on a missionary tour in
the departments of philosophy and of literature.
Far from proving destructive it consolidates; in
fact, even down to the Regency, its chief employment
is to produce good Christians and loyal subjects.