It is possible to champion the principle of authority in church and state, in society and in the family, nay, even in the domain of human knowledge, as the principle of knowledge and of wisdom. During the period of which I purpose describing the spiritual life it was so championed in all those domains, but at the time now referred to it was overthrown in them all.
In order to understand how it came to be resuscitated, proclaimed, developed, vindicated, established, and finally again overthrown, it is necessary that we should see how, and by virtue of what fundamental principles, it was annulled at the time of the Revolution.
It was not attacked at once in all the different domains; but it became evident that its existence in them all depended upon its existence in what was considered the highest, that of religion. For it was the church which, as authority, imparted authority in all the other spheres of life--to the "king by the grace of God," to marriage as a sacrament, &c. &c.
Therefore the principle of authority in general stood or fell with the authority of the church. When that was undermined, it drew all other authorities with it in its fall.
Not that the man who, in the eighteenth century, laboured more energetically and successfully than any other for the emancipation of the intellect from ecclesiasticism and dogma had foreseen such a result of his labour. Far from it! Voltaire desired no outward revolution. In his little tale, _Le monde comme il va_, the wise Babouc, who is at first utterly revolted by the depravity of the great city of Persepolis, gradually comes to see that the bad state of matters has its good sides; and, when the fate of the city hangs upon his report to the angel Ithuriel, he pronounces himself to be entirely opposed to its destruction. Even the angel does not in the end propose making any change in the customs of Persepolis, because, "though things are not good, they are certainly bearable." This train of thought can hardly be called revolutionary; and Voltaire is, at least at times, of the same opinion as Babouc. It was always to the sovereigns, not to the peoples, that he appealed to transform his ideas into actions, and he often declared that the cause of kings and of philosophers was one and the same. Hence when Holbach and his collaborators asserted that "hardly once in a thousand years was there to be found amongst these rulers by the grace of God, these representatives of the Deity, a man possessing the most ordinary sense of justice or compassion, or the commonest abilities and virtues," Voltaire could not control his wrath. His letters to the King of Prussia, too, contain violent outbursts of indignation at _Le Système de la Nature_. He did not recognise himself in these disciples and in these conclusions.