f a restored European order 313

Views Christianity from the statesman's point of view 314

His consequent hatred of the purely speculative temper of
the Greeks 316

His object was social or political 318

Hence his grounds for defending the doctrine of Infallibility 319

The analogy which lay at the bottom of his Ultramontane
doctrine 320

His hostility to the authority of General Councils 323

His view of the obligation of the canons on the Pope 325

His appeal to European statesmen 326

Comte and De Maistre 329

His strictures on Protestantism 331

Futility of his aspirations 335

JOSEPH DE MAISTRE.

Owing to causes which lie tolerably near the surface, the remarkable
Catholic reaction which took place in France at the beginning of the
present century, has never received in England the attention that it
deserves; not only for its striking interest as an episode in the
history of European thought, but also for its peculiarly forcible and
complete presentation of those ideas with which what is called the
modern spirit is supposed to be engaged in deadly war. For one thing,
the Protestantism of England strips a genuinely Catholic movement of
speculation of that pressing and practical importance which belongs to
it in countries where nearly all spiritual sentiment, that has received
any impression of religion at all, unavoidably runs in Catholic forms.
With us the theological reaction against the ideas of the eighteenth was
not and could not be other than Protestant. The defence and
reinstatement of Christianity in each case was conducted, as might have
been expected, with reference to the dominant creed and system of the
country. If Coleridge had been a Catholic, his works thus newly coloured
by an alien creed would have been read by a small sect only, instead of
exercising as they did a wide influence over the whole nation, reaching
people through those usual conduits of press and pulpit, by which the
products of philosophic thought are conveyed to unphilosophic minds. As
naturally in France, hostility to all those influe