And what are these idolatrous dogmas which tend to regulate the belief of all by the authority of some? Wherefore did God come upon the earth, if men will still dictate to us? Is the authority of a book or of a council anything else than the expression of the predominating idea of an age? Time passes on, and this authority expresses no more than an error. To seek for truth in the decisions of the doctors is, in fact, to bring us back to the opinions and the passions of bygone ages; it is to make us return to what is no more; it is to deny the existence of Christianity in accordance with human perfectibility.

In order to arrive at similar results, not only must we renounce reason, but we must also stifle the sense of justice and of injustice which exists in us. We must say as Pascal said, "I believe because it is absurd; and again, I believe because it is iniquitous."

Certainly, there is no one who respects more than ourselves the holiness of scripture; but, also, no one is more apprehensive of the interpretations of men. After the example of Bossuet, who will dare to seek for truth in them? From this example it must necessarily be inferred; 1st, that the authority of doctors, the authority of writings, is a very bad means of knowing the truth, because it may lead to error. 2nd. That the most sacred authority requires a rule which justifies it, and that this rule exists neither in a blind faith, nor in human reasonings.

CHAPTER V.

SEARCH AFTER TRUTH IN THE AUTHORITY OF THE HUMAN RACE-INVALIDITY OF THIS CRITERION.

"On n'aurait jamais fait un pas vers la vérité, si les autorités eussent prévalu sur la raison."

DUCLOS.

A MAN, powerful in eloquence, has come to place the authority of the human race by the side of the authority of scripture. We will not examine how far these authorities may proceed together; this point of doctrine is foreign to our subject. The question for us is to seek for the foundation of certainty, the infallible rule of truth. Is this rule to be found in universal testimony? In other words, does the consent of all mankind suffice to establish truth? This is the question.

And this question includes another, of which the solution will be decisive, viz. whether the voice of the human race has always proclaimed truth?

For if it so happened that the voice of the human race had proclaimed error, it could no longer be considered as a testimony. How can you cause an eternal truth to arise from a transient opinion? Authority is infallible only in as far as it is immutable.

In order to establish the principle of the authority of the human race, some have endeavoured to demonstrate, on the one hand, the weakness of individual reason, and on the other, the strength of general reason. M. de la Menais will have it, that the one should be abject, that the other should be infallible; like Pascal, he humiliates human

reason, and like Vico, he deifies the reason of the human

race.

But, if each individual reason only engenders error, how can the aggregate of all these reasons produce truth? Is it, then, one of the privileges of falsehood to disappear by becoming larger? You say that I am but darkness, and you add, from the union of all these darknesses, light will spring forth. Thus my logic must be to repel the reason of each as an insensate thing, and to adopt the reason of all as a respectable authority. I must approach this impure sink, to which each individual reason brings its follies and its crimes; where the one announces the doctrines of annihilation, where the other creates the manners of the age of Tiberius, for it is reason, you say, which engenders all these monstrosities. It formed Petronius and Nero. I must listen to India and China, the east and the west, and amidst the frightful clamour of all these human reasons, the voice which most predominates over the abyss will be the voice of reason.

*

In order to destroy similar sophistries, it suffices to present them clearly to the mind; they carry with themselves their own refutation.

Let M. de la Menais depict reason with the characters of crime and madness; reason does not answer him, it shows itself, and whosoever can but have a glimpse of it, declares it to have been misunderstood and calumniated.

And as regards the authority of the human race, this universal reason, which is to serve as a rule and as a principle, at what epoch did it proclaim truth? Shall we select the earliest periods of history? Then barbarity and ignorance divided the earth between them; all nations had slaves, and all religions human sacrifices. Such is the most ancient testimony of the reason called universal. At "Essai sur l'indifference."

a later age, the belief in the holiness of celibacy, the divinity of virgins, the power of demons, enchanters, of ghosts, magic, and oracles, was spread over the whole world, and covered it with chains which are not yet broken. It is in this manner that the doctrine presents itself; one must believe in the truth of all these things, or else deny the authority of the human race.

Just imagine what would have become of the world, if the rare intellects which have enlarged the scope of human thought; if Socrates, Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes, had succumbed beneath the general belief of their ages. Though still immersed in the darkness of idolatry and slavery, the world, even at the present day, would have believed itself civilised while selling an entire people by auction, like Cæsar, or while prostrating itself before an ox, like Sesostris. Universal authority is universal immobility, and immobility in folly and in crime.

In vain does individual reason protest against these aberrations of what people dare to call universal reason, it is overwhelmed by the number. Authority does not judge, it counts; that which is attested by the generality of men must be believed, not because wisdom invites us to believe it, but because the generality of men attest it. This is the principle, and there is none more fatal to humanity and to truth. The human race knows all, hence there would be no more progress, no more development; its testimony is a sort of divine right, before which genius and reason must be silent.

I know that M. de la Menais believes that he has answered these objections beforehand, by establishing two principles-the order of faith, that is to say, the authority of the human race, and the order of conception, that is to say, the labour of the intellect, which itself only becomes an authority by means of universal suffrage. But, one of two things must occur; either the discoveries of the order

of conception can change nothing in the belief of the human race, or this belief can be modified by the two-fold operation of genius and time; in the former case the human race is immovable, all improvement is prohibited to it, it remains with its idols and its slaves; in the second case, the monument raised with so much care gives way at its foundation and falls to the ground. Of what value is the testimony which one man may destroy? Wherever there is uncertainty there is no longer authority.

These two orders are, then, incompatible; the activity of the one constantly tends to shake the power of the other. Copernicus, by arresting the course of the sun, like Joshua; Jesus Christ, by overthrowing idols and destroying slavery-have proved that there were universal errors; and from that period no general opinion has been able to become the criterion of truth.

The system of authority is but a fragment of the old school, one of the ruins made by Descartes, with this difference, that it has been attempted to substitute the testimony of the human race for the testimony of the master, always the ipse dixit.

And, nevertheless, there is an immense fact which saps this system at its base, viz. that the lofty truths which at the present day are spread abroad on the earth, arrived at the reason of the multitude only through the intermedium of the reason of individuals. The masses know nothing but that which they believe, and that which they believe they defend with all the eagerness of ignorance and faith." Thus Moses stood alone against his people; Socrates alone against Greece; Jesus Christ alone against the world; on the one hand the human race, on the other a sage—a man -a god. O miserable condition of humanity! I see a cross raised, executioners who prepare themselves, the universal testimony has been convicted of being in error, and thus revenges itself by punishments!