Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]

[Stone]

The Liberal Illusion

Chapter III

Everything has its limits, and so the breath of our orator gave out at last. As he had interested us, if not by the novelty of his doctrines, at least by his frankness in expressing them, we had allowed him to talk on without interruption. Obliged to refill his lungs with air, he interrupted himself. Someone took advantage of the lull to point out the emptiness of his maxims, the incoherence of his reasoning, the groundlessness of his hopes. He listened with the air of a man who is less intent on weighing what is said to him than on finding a way to dispute it.

I must confess that what his opponent said, though sound in reason and full of good sense, did little to reassure me. Unquestionably, he made some telling points that were unanswerable, and there was none among those present who did not heartily agree that he was right. But in spirit I enlarged the audience, so as to take in the general public, and instantly there came upon me the sad realization of the utter helplessness of reason in matters like the present.

For on questions such as these it is the multitude, swayed and determined by sentiment alone, that passes final judgment. Reason is a weight it cannot bear. The multitude obeys its passions, it loves destruction; it applauds whenever it surmises that something is to be torn down. And what can compare with the Church as a thing to tear down! Herein lies the secret of the success of heresies — all of them absurd, all of them refuted by unanswerable reasons, yet all of them triumphant over reason for a certain period of time, which has seldom been of short duration.

Weakened by sin, humanity is naturally inclined to error, and an inclination to error is an inclination to death, or rather error is itself death. This fact alone, evident on every side, proves to the hilt that the civil power itself is under obligation to acknowledge the truth and to defend it with the might that society places in its hands. Only on that condition can society live; it has never so much as undertaken to live on any other terms. No sage of paganism has ever set up as ideal head of a State a type of ruler who was not the armed and resolute defender of truth and justice. Jethro gave this counsel to Moses: “And provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, in whom there is truth, and that hate avarice, and appoint of them rulers of thousands, and of hundreds.” Exodus, 18: 21.  Cicero, at the other end of the ancient world, writes: “A State cannot exist any more than a home, unless the good are rewarded and the wicked punished.” 20 This duty to uphold justice, and by consequence to acknowledge the truth, is of the very essence of government, irrespective of all constitutions and all political forms.

God menacing the rebellious people says to them: “I will give thee a king in my wrath, and will take him away in my indignation.” 21 All of Scripture is full of this light. But of what avail is Divine reason and human reason, when ignorance is in control! From the thick of the multitude there emanates some sort of fog that obscures the mental vision of even the more intelligent, and you meet any number of intellectuals who will never more see clearly except by the light of incendiary fires already broken out. When one studies this phenomenon, it appears so strange and terrifying that one may well recognize in it something of the divine. The divine wrath blazes forth, it triumphs, it punishes the long contempt of truth.