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Updated: June 6, 2025
'Why, De Maistre says, 'there is not in the whole world a single power in a condition to bear all possible and arbitrary hypotheses of this sort; and if you judge them by what they can do, without speaking of what they have done, they will have to be abolished every one. This, it may be worth noticing, is one of the many passages in De Maistre's writings which, both in the solidity of their argument and the direct force of their expression, recall his great predecessor in the anti-revolutionary cause, the ever-illustrious Burke.
Such is the fundamental law of the European monarchy, and it is the work of the Popes. All this, however, is only the external development of De Maistre's central idea, the historical corroboration of a truth to which he conducts us in the first instance by general considerations.
Little would be gained here by serious criticism of a view of this kind from a positive point. How little, the reader will understand from De Maistre's own explanations of his principles of Proof and Evidence. 'They have called to witness against Moses, he says, 'history, chronology, astronomy, geology, etc. The objections have disappeared before true science; but those were profoundly wise who despised them before any inquiry, or who only examined them in order to discover a refutation, but without ever doubting that there was one. Even a mathematical objection ought to be despised, for though it may be a demonstrated truth, still you will never be able to demonstrate that it contradicts a truth that has been demonstrated before. His final formula he boldly announced in these words: 'Que toutes les fois qu'une proposition sera prouvée par le genre de preuve qui lui appartient, l'objection quelconque, MÊME INSOLUBLE, ne doit plus être écoutée. Suppose, for example, that by a consensus of testimony it were perfectly proved that Archimedes set fire to the fleet of Marcellus by a burning-glass; then all the objections of geometry disappear. Prove if you can, and if you choose, that by certain laws a glass, in order to be capable of setting fire to the Roman fleet, must have been as big as the whole city of Syracuse, and ask me what answer I have to make to that. 'J'ai
And when we make allowances for the grave errors of personal taste, the gross exaggeration, the inability to see the Revolution as something more than a single point in time, it becomes obvious enough that his criticism, de Maistre's apart, is by far the soundest we possess from the generation which knew the movement as a living thing.
The vilification of the Greeks is strikingly like some vehement passages in De Maistre's estimate of their share in sophisticating European intellect. At last Rousseau even began to doubt whether "so chattering a people could ever have had any solid virtues, even in primitive times."
We can readily imagine the fulness with which the question would grow up in the mind of a royalist and Catholic exile at the end of the eighteenth century. Nothing can be more clearly put than De Maistre's answers to the question which the circumstances of the time placed before him to solve. What is the law of the distribution of good and evil fortune in this life? Is it a moral law?
Xavier de Maistre's mind always did so, and left what Xavier called the poor bête of a carcass to take care of itself; and all of us have to experience this double existence at times. Then you find the advantages of knowing a great deal of poetry.
It was composed within the first twenty years of the present century, when the universe, to men of De Maistre's stamp, seemed once more without form and void.
He conferred on his brother, Xavier de Maistre, a post in one of the public museums, while to the Sardinian envoy's son he gave a commission in the Russian service. The first departure of this son for the campaign of 1807 occasioned some of the most charming passages in De Maistre's letters, both to the young soldier himself and to others.
Such traditions linger in families, and when he came to have children of his own, they too read nothing of which their father had not been asked to express his approbation. De Maistre's early education was directed by the Jesuits; and as might have been expected from the generous susceptibility of his temper, he never ceased to think of them with warm esteem.
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