“Thus,” he says, “there arose a Christianity more and more simplified, and reduced at length to a vague and powerless theism, which, by a strange medley of terms, the metaphysicians distinguished by the title of natural religion, as if all religion was not inevitably supernatural.  In pretending to direct the social reorganization after this vain conception, the metaphysic school, notwithstanding its destination purely revolutionary, has always implicitly adhered, and does so, especially and distinctly, at the present day, to the most fundamental principle of the ancient political doctrine—­that which represents the social order as necessarily reposing on a theological basis.  This is now the most evident, and the most pernicious inconsistency of the metaphysic doctrine.  Armed with this concession, the school of Bossuet and De Maistre will always maintain an incontestable logical superiority over the irrational detractors of Catholicism, who, while they proclaim the want of a religious organization, reject, nevertheless, the elements indispensable to its realization.  By such a concession the revolutionary school concur in effect, at the present day, with the retrograde, in preventing a right organization of modern societies, whose intellectual condition more and more interdicts a system of politics founded on theology.”

Our readers will doubtless agree with us, that this review of political parties (though seen through an extract which we have been compelled to abbreviate in a manner hardly permissible in quoting from an author) displays a singular originality and power of thought; although each one of them will certainly have his own class of objections and exceptions to make.  We said that the impression created by the work was decidedly conservative, and this quotation has already borne us out.  For without implying that we could conscientiously make use of every argument here put into our hands, we may be allowed to say, as the lawyers do in Westminster Hail, if this be so, then it follows that we of the retrograde, or as we may fairly style ourselves in England—­seeing this country has not progressed so rapidly as France—­we of the stationary party are fully justified in maintaining our position, unsatisfactory though it may be, till some better and more definite system has been revealed to us, than any which has yet made its advent in the political world.  If the revolutionary, metaphysic, or liberal school have no proper office but that of destruction—­if its nature be essentially transitional—­can we be called upon to forego this position, to quit our present anchorage, until we know whereto we are to be transferred?  Shall we relinquish the traditions of our monarchy, and the discipline of our church, before we hear what we are to receive in exchange?  M. Comte would not advise so irrational a proceeding.

But M. Comte has himself a constructive doctrine; M. Comte will give us in exchange—­what?  The Scientific Method!