ers. The reader may remember how
the unhappy Emperor Maurice as his five innocent sons were in turn
murdered before his eyes, at each stroke piously ejaculated: 'Thou art
just, O Lord! and thy judgments are righteous.'[8] Any name would befit
this kind of transaction better than that which, in the dealings of men
with one another at least, we reserve for the honourable anxiety that he
should reap who has sown, that the reward should be to him who has
toiled for it, and the pain to him who has deliberately incurred it.
What is gained by attributing to the divine government a method tainted
with every quality that could vitiate the enactment of penalties by a
temporal sovereign?

We need not labour this part of the discussion further. Though conducted
with much brilliance and vigour by De Maistre, it is not his most
important nor remarkable contribution to thought. Before passing on to
that, it is worth while to make one remark. It will be inferred from De
Maistre's general position that he was no friend to physical science.
Just as moderns see in the advance of the methods and boundaries of
physical knowledge the most direct and sure means of displacing the
unfruitful subjective methods of old, and so of renovating the entire
field of human thought and activity, so did De Maistre see, as his
school has seen since, that here was the stronghold of his foes. 'Ah,
how dearly,' he exclaimed, 'has man paid for the natural sciences!' Not
but that Providence designed that man should know something about them;
only it must be in due order. The ancients were not permitted to attain
to much or even any sound knowledge of physics, indisputably above us as
they were in force of mind, a fact shown by the superiority of their
languages which ought to silence for ever the voice of our modern pride.
Why did the ancients remain so ignorant of natural science? Because they
were not Christian. 'When all Europe was Christian, when the priests
were the universal teachers, when all the establishments of Europe were
Christianised, when theology had taken its place at the head of all
instruction, and the other faculties were ranged around her like maids
of honour round their queen, the human race being thus prepared, then
the natural sciences were given to it.' Science must be kept in its
place, for it resembles fire which, when confined in the grates prepared
for it, is the most useful and powerful of man's servants; scattered
about anyhow, it