OF THE SPIRIT. 



405 



or systems of belief, and receive their convincing power 

 over individual minds only to a very small extent from the 

 temporary and subjective evidence upon which they are 

 fallaciously supposed to rest. It is further interest- 

 ing to see how de Lamennais and latterly Mr Balfour, 

 both of whom appeal to existing authorities, — i.e., to 

 generally admitted bodies of doctrine as against indi- 

 vidual and isolated ratiocination — are ultimately driven 

 to the confession that this whole scheme is intelligible 

 and workable only by the assumption of an underlying 

 universal reason, or of the intrinsic and ultimate ration- 7s. 



, . /. • , 1 • 1-1 Reversion to 



ality or existence, — a doctrine which comes very near to »■ position 



■^ . . . "^ likeHegers. 



the position taken up in Hegel's philosophy.^ 



But here we come upon the point where the religious 

 thought of to-day discards the Hegelian scheme, an 



^ De Lamennais, after seeing 

 his endeavours to vindicate the 

 truth of the Roman Catholic 

 system condemned by the Pope 

 himself — in the Encyclical against 

 " Les Paroles d'un Croyant," July 

 1834 — whose authority' he wished 

 to support, took to political and 

 speculative philosophj-, influenced 

 in the latter to some extent by 

 Schelling. His writings in this 

 direction had little influence on 

 philosophical thought, the history 

 of which is more interested in his 

 earlier works. With a true insight 

 into the difference between the 

 courses of philosophical thought 

 and special and isolated philosophi- 

 cal systems, M. Ferraz has defined 

 the position of de Lamennais as 

 follows : " Nous avons cru devoir 

 etudier en detail la doctrine de 

 Lamennais, moins k cause de sa 

 valeur propre, bien qu'elle soit 

 reelle, qu'a cause de I'influence 

 qu'elle a exercee sur le mouvement 



religieux de notre epoque. Avant 

 lui, le parti ultramontain, malgre 

 les appels reiteres de J. de Maistre, 

 ne s'etait point encore constitue et 

 n'avait pas meme encore une ombre 

 d'existence. C'est Lamennais qui 

 Fa cree, qui I'a organise et qui lui 

 a donne la force qu'il possede en ce 

 moment. . . . Mais, si Lamennais 

 a«produit, a une certaine date, le 

 catholicisme ultramontain, qui 

 domine aujourd'hui avec tant 

 d'empire, il a produit un peu jjIus 

 tard ce catholicisme liberal, qui a 

 rallie longtemps un certain nombre 

 de natures genereuses, de sorte que 

 les deux grands courants d'idees 

 qui se sont deroules de nos jours au 

 sein de I'Eglise, ont eu t^galement 

 en lui leur principe et leur source. 

 Le rationaliste ne s'est pas accuse 

 chez lui avec moins de force que le 

 catholique ultramontain et que le 

 catholique liberal, bien qu'il n'ait 

 pas exerc^ la meme influence sur ses 

 contemporains " {loc. cit., p. 268). 



