ound to yield. With De Maistre there was no
peradventure. Again, no speculative mind of the highest order ever
mistakes, or ever moves systematically apart from, the main current of
the social movement of its time. It is implied in the very definition of
a thinker of supreme quality that he should detect, and be in a certain
accord with, the most forward and central of the ruling tendencies of
his epoch. Three-quarters of a century have elapsed since De Maistre was
driven to attempt to explain the world to himself, and this interval
has sufficed to show that the central conditions at that time for the
permanent reorganisation of the society which had just been so violently
rent in pieces, were assuredly not theological, military, nor
ultramontane, but the very opposite of all these.

There was a second consequence of the conditions of the time. The
catastrophe of Europe affected the matter as well as the manner of
contemporary speculation. The French Revolution has become to us no more
than a term, though the strangest term in a historic series. To some of
the best of those who were confronted on every side by its tumult and
agitation, it was the prevailing of the gates of hell, the moral
disruption of the universe, the absolute and total surrender of the
world to them that plough iniquity and sow wickedness. Even under
ordinary circumstances few men have gone through life without
encountering some triumphant iniquity, some gross and prolonged cruelty,
which makes them wonder how God should allow such things to be. If we
remember the aspect which the Revolution wore in the eyes of those who
seeing it yet did not understand, we can imagine what dimensions this
eternal enigma must have assumed in their sight. It was inevitable that
the first problem to press on men with resistless urgency should be the
ancient question of the method of the Creator's temporal government.
What is the law of the distribution of good and evil fortune? How can we
vindicate with regard to the conditions of this life, the different
destinies that fall to men? How can we defend the moral ordering of a
world in which the wicked and godless constantly triumph, while the
virtuous and upright who retain their integrity are as frequently
buffeted and put to shame?

This tremendous question has never been presented with such sublimity of
expression, such noble simplicity and force of thought, as in the
majestic and touching legend of Job. But its comp