The Ego, says Lamennais, cannot alone, in solitude, develop self-consciousness. The premise is correct, and we infer from it what there is to infer when we say that the _I_ has consequently developed with the assistance of a _you_. This is a thought to which Feuerbach has devoted special attention, and which he has followed out in a variety of directions. But Lamennais, taking as his premise the Old Testament supposition of a single man existing before the rest of the race, builds the doctrine of the communication between this man and God, and all that follows thereon, upon this foundation, which sinks with the edifice erected on it.
Lamennais declares the infallible sign of the truth to be universal consent. _But upon what does the authority of this consent rest?_ Has it a cause, or is it simply a fact?
If it has a cause, if the reason of all is to provide the law for the reason of the individual, then that very individual reason for which Lamennais has such a profound contempt is, after all, the supreme judge of the truth. For it is it which, in the first place, invests universal consent with its great importance, and in the second, determines in each separate case whether or not universal consent is to be bestowed.
If, on the other hand, the authority of common consent is a fact, that is to say, a thing which simply follows from our nature, then the certainty with which it inspires us is in no wise different from any other certainty. But Lamennais himself has just been opposing the idea of certainty resulting from an inward feeling, been denying our certainty even of our own existence, the certainty which we require being _infallible_ certainty. What on earth should make belief in authority more infallible than any other certainty?
Lamennais' chain of argument leads us finally to two infallible authorities. The word "infallible" tells us that the Roman Catholic Church is not far off. Infallibility insinuates itself as an inevitable consequence of authority.
There is one point on which all the writers who help to bring about the revival of ecclesiasticism agree, on which Joseph de Maistre, the inaugurator of the revival, is in perfect harmony with Lamennais, its last exponent, little favour though he shows to the other paradoxes of his latest disciple. This point is the infallibility of the Pope. It must be remembered that in the eighteenth century the Papal power had appeared to be defunct. A Pope had corresponded with Voltaire and accepted the dedication of his _Mahomet_. The Pope had himself done away with his faithful Janissaries, the Jesuits. The religious reaction begins by the re-assertion, nay, by the exaggeration even from a Roman Catholic point of view, of the power and importance of the Pope. De Maistre said: "Without the Pope, no authority; without authority, no faith"--that is, without a Pope, no faith. The supremacy of the Pope thus becomes the very fountain, the very kernel of Christianity; in our days (in the writings of Bishop Ségur) the Pope has actually become a sacrament, "the real presence of Jesus upon earth."