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Updated: June 12, 2025
No doubt, Jesus proceeded from Judaism; but he proceeded from it as Socrates proceeded from the schools of the Sophists, as Luther proceeded from the Middle Ages, as Lamennais from Catholicism, as Rousseau from the eighteenth century. A man is of his age and his race even when he reacts against his age and his race.
A few masterly portraits by Scheffer's hand indicate his power of reproducing individual character. Among these we may name that of his mother, which is said to be his finest work, one of the Queen, a picture of Lamennais, and another of Emilia Manin, to which we shall again refer.
M. Lamennais, in recognizing the right of property, gives the lie to his past career, and renounces his most generous tendencies. Can it, then, be true that in this man, who has been too roughly treated, but who is also too easily flattered, strength of talent has already outlived strength of will?
When Alexandre Dumas, the younger, was received into the French Academy in 1875, the Count d'Haussonville, who welcomed him, asserted that the elder Dumas, like Balzac, Beranger, de Lamennais and others, had preferred to remain an outsider. In the case of Balzac, the Count was mistaken. The so-called preference was Hobson's choice. He stayed outside only because he could not get in.
When, therefore, it seemed to him that Gregory XVI. had condemned Ultramontanism, it was, to De Lamennais, as though he had condemned the cause of the Church and of humanity, and thrown the weight of his authority into that of Gallicanism. Here again we see how his mental intensity and impatience reduced him to the dilemma which found solution in his apostasy.
Has the world among all its manifold sorrows any sorrow like unto this? The late M. de Lamennais was wont to speak with contempt of Silvio Pellico, as being a weak, spiritless craven, who accepted with resignation when he should have plotted to end the thraldom of his country.
The Generic Reason of Lamennais, as well as the uniform Tradition of the Church, may constitute, when duly improved, a branch of the objective evidence for the truth, and as such they have been applied even by Protestant writers when they have appealed to common consent as a collateral proof, auxiliary to that which is more direct and conclusive; but they cannot be regarded as the exclusive grounds of the certainty of human knowledge, since this arises from the fundamental, universal, and invariable laws of human thought.
Public order, unity, the world's welfare, social harmony, the union of the nations, concerning each of these things there is no possible difference of opinion. Everybody wishes them; the character of the publicist depends only upon the means by which he proposes to arrive at them. But why look to M. Lamennais for a steadfastness of opinion, which he himself repudiates?
Augustine, the biography of Blanco White, the letters of Lamennais, at least agree in the witness which they bear to the bitter pangs and anxieties amid which, in their case, the eventful change came about.
The impersonal reason of Cousin, the common sense or generic reason of Lamennais, and the authoritative tradition of the Church, have all been severally resorted to, for the purpose of obtaining a ground of Certitude in the matters both of Philosophy and Faith, such as is supposed to be unattainable by the exercise of our own proper faculties, or by the most careful study of evidence.
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