Joseph De Maistre Quotes

Every country has the government it deserves.

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.

A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.

Nothing great has great beginnings.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.

Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song.

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

To know how to wait is the great secret of success.

Now, there is no such thing as ‘man’ in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare I’ve never encountered him.

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence. A kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed; but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A Power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable. . . has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. . . And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man. . . The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

To hear these defenders of democracy talk, one would think that the people deliberate like a committee of wise men, whereas in truth judicial murders, foolhardy undertakings, wild choices, and above all foolish and disastrous wars are eminently the prerogatives of this form of government." Study on Sovereignty.

Every nation has the government it deserves

[M]an cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short … there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of original sin.

Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch in Asia to the infant who smothers a bird with its hand for the pleasure of seeing that there exists in the world a being weaker than itself.

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.

War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

That the French Revolution was essentially a religious phenomenon was only seen with clarity by Joseph de Maistre and Jules Michelet.

Christianity is preached by the ignorant and believed by the learned. And in this way is like no other thing.

Providence - for whom everything, even an obstacle, is a means.

The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

Blood is the manure of the plant that we call genius.

Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its ministers. To annihilate it or to submit it to the discussion of all individuals, is the same thing.

Thus is worked out, from maggots up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living beings. The whole earth, continually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world,the extinction of evil,the death of death.

An den Verheißungen der Utopie scheint alles bewundernswert und ist alles falsch; an den Feststellungen der Reaktionäre ist alles verabscheuenswert und scheint alles wahr.

Contempt for Locke is the beginning of wisdom.

In the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom. As soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom, you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die, and how many are killed. But from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power of violence at once hidden and palpable … has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. Thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself. He kills to adorn himself, he kills in order to attack, and he kills in order to defend himself. He kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself. He kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.

Nos conceptions politiques nous sont dictées par notre sentiment ou notre vision du temps.

There is a sure rule for judging books just as there is for judging men: it is enough to know by whom they are loved, and by whom they are hated.

I have read millions of witticisms about the ignorance of the ancients who saw spirits everywhere; it seems to me that we who see them nowhere are much more foolish.

We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire, who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross.

The word nature has given rise to a multitude of errors. Let me repeat that the nature of any being is the sum of the qualities attributed to it by the Creator. With immeasurable profundity, Burke said that art is man's nature. This is beyond doubt; man with all his affections, all his knowledge, all his arts is the true natural man, and the weaver's cloth is as natural as the spider's web. Man's natural state is therefore to be what he is today and what he has always been, that is to say, sociable. All human records attest to this truth..

Nothing is more vital to him than prejudices. Let us not take this word in bad part. It does not necessarily signify false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, any opinions adopted without examination. Now, these kinds of opinion are essential to man; they are the real basis of his happiness and the palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither religion, morality, nor government. There should be a state religion just as there is a state political system; or rather, religion and political dogmas, mingled and merged together, should together form a general or national mind sufficiently strong to repress the aberrations of the individual reason which is, of its nature, the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it gives birth only to divergent opinions.

All sciences have their mysteries and at certain points the apparently most obvious theory will be found in contradiction with experience. Politics, for example, offers several proofs of this truth. In theory, is anything more absurd than hereditary monarchy? We judge it by experience, but if government had never been heard of and we had to choose one, whoever would deliberate between hereditary and elective monarchy would be taken for a fool. Yet we know by experience that the first is, all things considered, the best that can be imagined, while the second is the worst. What arguments could not be amassed to establish that sovereignty comes from the people? However they all amount to nothing. Sovereignty is always taken, never given, and a second more profound theory subsequently discovers why this must be so. Who would not say the best political constitution is that which has been debated and drafted by statesmen perfectly acquainted with the national character, and who have foreseen every circumstance? Nevertheless nothing is more false. The best constituted people is the one that has the fewest written constitutional laws, and every written constitution is WORTHLESS.

...[T]he art of the legislator is not to make a people free, but free enough...

The most powerful sovereign has only two arms; his power depends on the instruments he uses and what he is given by public opinion.

Those who are content to corrupt ancient institutions, while at the same time preserving the exterior forms, have done as much evil to the human race.

The nation’s true constitution is not written on paper, it’s written in the hearts and minds of the people.

It is frightening to see distinguished intellectuals fall under Robespierre’s ax. From a humane standpoint they can never be too much mourned, but divine justice is no respecter of mathematicians or scientists.

This world is a military expedition, an eternal combat. No doubt all chose who fought courageously in a battle are worthy of praise, but also there is no doubt that the greatest glory goes to the one who returns wounded.

Human reason reduced to its own resources is perfectly worthless, not only for creating but also for preserving any political or religious association, because it only produces disputes, and, to conduct himself well, man needs not problems but beliefs. His cradle should be surrounded by dogmas, and when his reason is awakened, it should find all his opinions ready-made, at least all those relating to his conduct. Nothing is so important to him as prejudices, Let us not take this word in a bad sense. It does not necessarily mean false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, opinions adopted before any examination. Now these sorts of opinions are man’s greatest need, the true elements of his happiness, and the Palladium of empires. Without them, there can be neither worship, nor morality, nor government. There must be a state religion just as there is a state policy; or, rather, religious and political dogmas must be merged and mingled together to form a complete common or national reason strong enough to repress the aberrations of individual reason, which of its nature is the mortal enemy of any association whatever because it produces only divergent opinions. All known nations have been happy and powerful to the extent that they have more faithfully obeyed this national reason, which is nothing other than the annihilation of individual dogmas and the absolute and general reign of national dogmas, that is to say, of useful prejudices. Let each man call upon his individual reason in the matter of religion, and immediately you will see the birth of an anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty. Likewise, if each man makes himself judge of the principles of government, you will at once see the birth of civil anarchy or the annihilation of political sovereignty. Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed. Man’s first need is that his nascent reason be curbed under this double yoke, that it be abased and lose itself in the national reason, so that it changes its individual existence into another common existence, just as a river that flows into the ocean always continues to exist in the mass of water, but without a name and without a distinct reality.

A religion that executes its obsolete sovereign must now establish the power of its new sovereign; it closes the churches, and this leads to an endeavor to build a temple. The blood of the gods, which for a second bespatters the confessor of Louis XVI, announces a new baptism. Joseph de Maistre qualified the Revolution as satanic. We can see why and in what sense. Michelet, however, was closer to the truth when he called it a purgatory. An era blindly embarks down this tunnel on an attempt to discover a new illumination, a new happiness, and the face of the real God. But what will this new god be?

The framers also held that, though the Constitution's barriers against the abuse of power are indispensable, they were only "parchment barriers" and therefore could never be more than part of the answer. And in some ways they were the secondary part at that. The U.S. Constitution was never meant to be the sole bulwark of freedom, let alone a self-perpetuating machine that would go by itself. The American founders were not, in Joseph de Maistre's words, "poor men who imagine that nations can be constituted with ink."" Without strong ethics to support them, the best laws and the strongest institutions would only be ropes of sand. Jefferson

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. Proud and terrible king, he needs everything and nothing resists him ... from the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

Nous avons pénétré dans cette communauté toute pleine de ces vieilles pratiques qui semblent si nouvelles aujourd'hui. C'est le jardin fermé. Hortus conclusus. Nous avons parlé de ce lieu singulier avec détail, mais avec respect, autant du moins que le respect et le détail sont conciliables. Nous ne comprenons pas tout, mais nous n'insultons rien. Nous sommes à égale distance de l'hosanna de Joseph de Maistre qui aboutit à sacrer le bourreau et du ricanement de Voltaire qui va jusqu'à railler le crucifix. Illogisme de Voltaire, soit dit en passant; car Voltaire eût défendu Jésus comme il défendait Calas; et, pour ceux-là mêmes qui nient les incarnations surhumaines, que représente le crucifix? Le sage assassiné.

contredisez sans cesse cet esprit de nouveauté et de changement, jusque dans les petites choses; laissez pendre sur vos murs les tapisseries enfumées de vos aïeux; chargez vos tables de leur pesante argenterie. Vous dites: ‘Mon père est mort dans cette maison, il faut que je la vende !’ Anathème sur ce sophisme de l’insensibilité ! dites au contraire : ‘Il y est mort, je ne puis plus la vendre’.

It is written, By me kings reign. This is not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the preacher; it is a literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races; maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honour; they take their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy.

Of course it was not only the Bourbons’ mistakes which helped decide Napoleon to risk everything to try to regain his throne. Emperor Francis’s refusal to allow his wife and son to rejoin him was another, and the fact that his expenses were running at two and a half times his income. There was also sheer ennui; he complained to Campbell of being ‘shut up in this cell of a house, separated from the world, with no interesting occupation, no savants with me, nor any variety in my society’.88† Another consideration was paragraphs in the newspapers and rumours from the Congress of Vienna that the Allies were planning forcibly to remove him from Elba. Joseph de Maistre, the French ambassador to St Petersburg, had nerve-wrackingly suggested the Australian penal colony of Botany Bay as a possible destination. The exceptionally remote British island of St Helena in the mid-Atlantic had also been mentioned.

Some of the men of this age seem to me to raise themselves at moments to a hatred for Divinity, but this frightful act is not needed to make useless to most strenuous creative efforts: the neglect of, let alone scorn for, the great Being brings an irrevocable curse on the human works stained by it. Every conceivable institution either rests on a religious idea or is ephemeral. Institutions are strong and durable to the degree that they partake of the Divinity. Not only is human reason, or what is ignorantly called philosophy, unable to replace those foundations ignorantly called superstitions, but philosophy is, on the contrary, an essentially destructive force.

But just let the masters of the world -- princes, kings, emperors, powerful majesties, invincible conquerors -- let them only try to make the people dance on a certain day each year in a set place. This is not much to ask, but I dare swear that they will not succeed, whereas, if the humblest missionary comes to such a spot, he will make himself obeyed two thousand years after his death. Every year the people meet together around a rustic church in the name of St. John, St. Martin, St. Benedict, and so on; they come filled with boisterous yet innocent cheerfulness; religion sanctifies this joy and the joy embellishes religion: they forget their sorrows; at night, they think of the pleasure to come on the same day next year, and this date is stamped on their memory. By the side of this picture put that of the French leaders who have been vested with every power by a shameful Revolution and yet cannot organize a simple fete.

A scaffold, when it is erected and prepared, has indeed a profoundly disturbing effect. We may remain more or less open-minded on the subject of the death penalty, indisposed to commit ourselves, so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But to do so is to be so shaken that we are obliged to take our stand for or against. Joseph de Maistre approved of the death penalty, Cesar de Beccaria abominated it. The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. He who sees it shudders in the most confounding dismay. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, the mechanism understood; as though that arrangement of wood and iron and rope expressed a will. In the most hideous picture which its presence evokes it seems to be most terribly a part of what it does. It is the executioner's accomplice; it consumes, devouring flesh and drinking blood. It is a special kind of monster created by the judge and the craftsman; a spectre seeming to live an awful life born of the death it deals. This was the effect it had on the bishop, and on the day following the execution, and for many days after, he seemed to be overwhelmed. The almost violent serenity of the fateful moment vanished: he was haunted by the ghost of social justice. Whereas ordinarily he returned from the performance of his duties with a glow of satisfaction, he seemed now to be assailed with a sense of guilt. There were times when he talked to himself, muttering gloomy monologues under his breath. This is a fragment that his sister overheard: 'I did not know that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become so absorbed in Divine Law that one is no longer aware of human law. Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?

Que no se objete que el cristianismo ordena a los niños a amar a sus padres, a los padres a amar a sus hijos, a los esposos a feccionarse mutuamente. Sí, les manda eso, pero no les permite amarlo inmediata, naturalmente y por sí mismos, sino sólo en dios y por dios; no admite todas esas relaciones actuales más que a condición de que dios se encuentre como tercero, y ese terrible tercero mata las uniones. El amor divino aniquila el amor humano. El cristianismo ordena, es verdad, amar a nuestro prójimo tanto como a nosotros mismos, pero nos ordena al mismo tiempo amar a dios más que a nosotros mismos y por consiguiente también más que al prójimo, es decir sacrificarle el prójimo por nuestra salvación, porque al fin de cuentas el cristiano no adora a dios más que por la salvación de su alma. Aceptando a dios, todo eso es rigurosamente consecuente: dios es lo infinito, lo absoluto, lo eterno, lo omnipotente; el hombre es lo finito, lo impotente. En comparación con dios, bajo todos los aspectos, no es nada. Sólo lo divino es justo, verdadero, dichoso y bueno, y todo lo que es humano en el hombre debe ser por eso mismo declarado falso, inicuo, detestable y miserable. El contacto de la divinidad con esa pobre humanidad debe devorar, pues, necesariamente, consumir, aniquilar todo lo que queda de humano en los hombres. La intervención divina en los asuntos humanos no ha dejado nunca de producir efectos excesivamente desastrosos. Pervierte todas las relaciones de los hombres entre sí y reemplaza su solidaridad natural por la práctica hipócrita y malsana de las comunidades religiosas, en las que bajo las apariencias de la caridad, cada cual piensa sólo en la salvación de su alma, haciendo así, bajo el pretexto del amor divino, egoísmo humano excesivamente refinado, lleno de ternura para sí y de indiferencia, de malevolencia y hasta de crueldad para el prójimo. Eso explica la alianza íntima que ha existido siempre entre el verdugo y el sacerdote, alianza francamente confesada por el célebre campeón del ultramontanismo, Joseph de Maistre, cuya pluma elocuente, después de haber divinizado al papa, no dejó de rehabilitar al verdugo; uno era en efecto el complemento del otro.

Thus,

Frédéric Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshott, John Gray, Ammianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadia Gaon, or Joseph de Maistre; he

Divine justice is no respecter of mathematicians or scientists.

Refuse to honour the genius who has abused his gifts.

The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter of course, hesitated in nothing.

The productions of the pencil present themselves to our eyes as living things; but if we interrogate them, they maintain a dignified silence. It is the same with writing, which knows not what to say to one man, nor what to conceal from another. If you attack it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend itself; for its author is never present to sustain it. So that he who imagines himself capable of establishing, clearly, and permanently, one single doctrine, by writing alone, IS A GREAT BLOCKHEAD.

That the French Revolution was essentially a religious phenomenon was only seen with clarity by Joseph de Maistre and Michelet.

In all the acts of the French Revolution, one can hear the voice of divinity saying, ‘I want to show you what you can do without me.

You, masters of the earth – princes, kings, emperors, powerful majesties, invincible conquerors – simply try to make the people go on such-and-such a day each year to a given place to dance. I ask little of you, but I dare give you a solemn challenge to succeed, whereas the humblest missionary will succeed and be obeyed two thousand years after his death. Every year the people gather around some rustic temple in the name of St John, St Martin, St Benedict, etc.; they come, animated by a feverish and yet innocent eagerness; religion sanctifies their joy and the joy embellishes religion; they forget their troubles; on leaving they think of the pleasure that they will have on the same day the following year, and the date is set in their minds. Beside this picture, put that of the masters of France, who have been invested with every power by an unprecedented revolution and who are unable to organize a simple holiday. They pour out money, they call all the arts to their assistance, and the citizens remain at home, taking notice of the call only to laugh at the organizers.

War is divine in its results, over which human reason speculates in vain: for they can be totally different in two nations, although both were equally affected by the war. Some wars debase nations and debase them for centuries; others exalt them, perfect them in every way, and within a short space of time, even repair momentary losses with a visible increase in population, which is very extraordinary. History often presents us with the picture of a population which remains rich and goes on increasing while the most desperate battles are being fought. But some wars are vicious and accursed, which our conscience, rather than our reason, recognises to be so: nations receive their death-blow in these wars, both as regards their power and their character. Thus, even the conqueror seems degraded and impoverished, and although he is crowned with laurels, he is left sad and lamenting, while in the vanquished country there is soon not a workshop or a plough which is not working to capacity.

This government is believed to be strong because it is violent; but strength differs from violence as much as from weakness; and the astonishing way it operates at this time is, by itself, perhaps proof enough that it cannot endure long.

There is no kinship between Joseph de Maistre and those who really did believe in the possibility of some kind of return — neo-medievalists from Wackenroder and Görres and Cobbett to G. K. Chesterton, and Slavophils and Distributists and Pre-Raphaelites and other nostalgic romantics; for he believed, as Tolstoy also did, in the exact opposite: in the "inexorable" power of the present moment: in our inability to do away with the sum of conditions which cumulatively determine our basic categories, an order which we can never fully describe or, otherwise than by some immediate awareness of it, come to know.

il partageait avec un autre héros de la révolution le pouvoir d'agiter la multitude, sans avoir celui de la dominer, ce qui forme le véritable cachet de la médiocrité dans les troubles politiques.

Todas las ciencias tienen misterios, y que presentan ciertos puntos donde la teoría mas evidente en apariencia, se encuentra en contradicción con la experiencia. La política, por ejemplo, ofrece muchas pruebas de esta verdad. ¿Qué otra cosa hay más extravagante en teoría que la monarquía hereditaria? Nosotros juzgamos por experiencia; pero si jamás se hubiese oído hablar de gobierno y fuese necesario elegir, uno, creo se tendría por loco a aquel que prefiriese la monarquía hereditaria a la electiva. Sin embargo, sabemos por experiencia que el primero en todos conceptos es el mejor, y el segundo el peor. ¡Qué de argumentos podrán acumularse para probar que la soberanía viene del pueblo! Sin embargo, no hay nada de eso. La soberanía siempre se toma; jamás se da; Y una segunda teoría mas profunda, manifiesta en seguido que esta debe ser así. ¿Quién no dirá que la mejor constitución política es aquella que ha sido deliberada y escrita por hombres de estado, perfectamente enterados del carácter de la nación y sus necesidades, y que por lo mismo han previsto todos los casos? Sin embargo, nada hay más falso. El pueblo mejor constituido, es aquel que tiene escritas menos leyes constitucionales, y toda constitución escrita es nula.

Vous vous êtes répondu à vous-même, M. le chevalier, en prononçant ces mots "hors du monde matériel". Je n'ai point dit que chaque découverte doive sortir immédiatement d'un dogme comme le poulet sort de l'œuf : j'ai dit qu'il n'y a point de causes dans la matière et que par conséquent elles ne doivent point être cherchées dans la matière. Or, mon cher ami, il n'y a que les hommes religieux qui puissent et qui veuillent en sortir. Les autres ne croient qu'à la matière, et se courroucent même lorsqu'on leur parle d'un autre ordre de choses. Il faut à notre siècle une astronomie mécanique, une chimie mécanique, une pesanteur mécanique, une morale mécanique, une parole mécanique, des remèdes mécaniques pour guérir des maladies mécaniques : que sais-je enfin; tout n'est-il pas mécanique ? Or, il n'y a que l'esprit religieux qui puisse guérir cette maladie.

J’ai lu des millions de plaisanteries sur l’ignorance des anciens qui voyaient des esprits partout : il me semble que nous sommes beaucoup plus sots, nous qui n’en voyons nulle part.

[. . .] The philosophy of Plato, which is the human preface of the Gospel [. . .]

However, Christianity has come to present us a new idea, all the more powerful in that it rests on a universal idea as old as the world, and that we needed to be rectified and sanctioned by revelation. So when the guilty ask us it is why the innocent suffer in his world, we are not lacking in responses, as you have seen, but we can choose one that is more direct and perhaps more convincing than all the others. We can reply: Innocence suffers for you, if you wish it.

Every inventor, every man of originality has been religious and even fanatically so. Perverted by irreligious skepticism, the human mind is like waste land that produces nothing or is covered with weeds useless to man. At such a time even its natural fertility is an evil, for these weeds harden the soil by tangling and intertwining their roots and moreover create a barrier between the sky and the earth. Break up these accursed clods; destroy these fatally hardy weeds; call on every human aid; drive in the plow; dig deep to bring into contact the powers of the earth and the powers of the sky. Here, gentlemen, is the natural analogy to human intelligence opened or closed to divine knowledge. The natural sciences themselves are subject to the general law. Genius does not rely much on the slow crawl of logic. Its gait is free, its manner derives from inspiration; one can see its success, but no one has seen its progress....

¿cómo llegó Michael Foucault a convertirse en el referente de la izquierda woke? Su estilo era desde luego radical, pero su mensaje era tan reaccionario como cualquiera de los escritos de Edmund Burke o Joseph de Maistre. De hecho, la visión de Foucault era aún más pesimista que la de estos.

They show the profound imbecility (it is certainly permissible to speak like Plato, who never loses his temper,) the profound imbecility, I say, of those poor men who imagine that lawgivers are men, that laws are a piece of paper, and that nations may be constituted with ink.

It were indeed desirable for us,” says one of the most eloquent of the Greek fathers, “never to have required the aid of the written word, ut to have had the Divine precepts written only in our hearts, by grace, as they are written with ink in our books; but since we have lost this grace by our own fault, let us then, as it is necessary, seize a plank instead of the vessel, without however forgetting the pre-eminence of the first state. God never revealed any thing in writing to the elect of the Old Testament: He always spoke to them directly, because He saw the purity of their hearts; but the Hebrew people having fallen into the very abyss of wickedness, books and laws became necessary. The same proceeding is repeated under the empire of the New Revelation; for Christ did not leave a single writing to his Apostles. Instead of books, he promised to them the Holy Spirit: It is He, saith our Lord to them, who shall teach you what you shall speak. But because, in process of time, sinful men rebelled against the faith and against morality, it was necessary to have recourse to books.

What prudent man, then, will not shudder in putting his hand to the work? Social harmony, like musical concord, is subject to the law of temperament in the general key. Adjust the fifths accurately, and the octaves will jar, and conversely. The dissonance being then inevitable, instead of excluding it, which is impossible, it must be qualified by distribution. Thus, on both sides, imperfection is an element of possible perfection. In this proposition there is only the form of a paradox. But, it will perhaps still be said, where is the rule by which you may distinguish the accidental defect, from that which belongs to the nature of things, and which it is impossible to exclude?—Men to whom nature has given only ears, ask questions of this kind; and those who have an ear shrug their shoulders.

We cannot but lament here over the fundamental fallacy of a system which has so unhappily divided Europe. The partizans of this system have said, We believe only in the Word of God. What abuse of words! what a strange and melancholy ignorance of Divine things! We alone believe in the Word, whilst our dear enemies are obstinately resolved to believe only in scripture; as if God could or would change the nature of things of which He is the Author, and impart to scripture the life and efficacy which it has not! The Holy Scripture—is it not then a writing? Has it not been traced with a pen and a little black liquid? Does it know what it is needful to say to one man, and what to withhold from another? Did not Leibnitz and his maid servant read in it the same words? Can this Scripture be any thing else than the image of the Word? And though infinitely venerable in this respect, if we should interrogate it, must it not keep a divine silence? If it should be attacked or insulted, can it defend itself in the absence of its Author? Glory to the truth! If the Word, eternally living, does not quicken the scripture, it will never become the word, that is to say, the life. Let others invoke then, as much as they please, the silent word; we will smile peacefully at this false god; always expecting, with a tender impatience the moment when its partisans, undeceived, will throw themselves into our arms, opened to embrace them for three centuries past.

These ideas (taken in their general sense) were not unknown to the ancient philosophers : they keenly felt the impotency, I had almost said the nothingness, of writing, in great institutions; but no one of them has seen this truth more clearly, or expressed it more happily, than Plato, whom we always find the first upon the track of all great truths. According to him, “the man who is wholly indebted to writing for his instruction, will only possess the appearance of wisdom. The word, he adds, is to writing, what the man is to his portrait. The productions of the pencil present themselves to our eyes as living things; but if we interrogate them, they maintain a dignified silence. It is the same with writing, which knows not what to say to one man, nor what to conceal from another. If you attack it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend itself; for its author is never present to sustain it. So that he who imagines himself capable of establishing, clearly and permanently, one single doctrine, by writing alone, is a great blockhead. If he really possessed the true germs of truth, he would not indulge the thought, that with a little black liquid and a pen he could cause them to germinate in the world, defend them from the inclemency of the season, and communicate to them the necessary efficacy. As for the man who undertakes to write laws or civil constitutions, and who fancies that, because he has written them, he is able to give them adequate evidence and stability, whoever he may be, a private man or legislator, he disgraces himself, whether we say it or not; for he has proved thereby that he is equally ignorant of the nature of inspiration and delirium, right and wrong, good and evil. Now, this ignorance is a reproach, though the entire mass of the vulgar should unite in its praise.

The more we examine the influence of human agency in the formation of political constitutions, the greater will be our conviction that it enters there only in a manner infinitely subordinate, or as a simple instrument; and I do not believe there remains the least doubt of the incontestable truth of the following propositions:— 1. That the fundamental principles of political constitutions exist before all written law. 2. That a constitutional law is, and can only be, the developement or sanction of an unwritten pre-existing right. 3. That which is most essential, most intrinsically constitutional, and truly fundamental, is never written, and could not be, without endangering the state. 4. That the weakness and fragility of a constitution are actually in direct proportion to the multiplicity of written constitutional articles.

This has been the constant belief of all men. It has been modified in practice, according to the characteristics of peoples and religions, but the principle always remains the same. In particular, all nations are agreed on the wonderful effectiveness of the voluntary sacrifice of the innocent who dedicates himself to God like a propitiatory victim. Men have always attached a boundless value to the submission of the just to sufferings.

One of the grand errors of an age, which professed them all, was, to believe that a political constitution could be written and created à priori; whilst reason and experience unite in establishing, that a constitution is a Divine work, and that that which is most fundamental, and most essentially constitutional, in the laws of a nation, is precisely what cannot be written.

When it is a question of abuses in political institutions, it is necessary to take great care to judge of them only by their constant effects, and never by any of their causes, of whatever kind, which signify nothing still less by certain collateral inconveniences (if I may so express myself ) which men of limited views readily lay hold of, and are thus prevented from seeing the whole together. Indeed, the cause, according to the hypothesis which seems to be proved, not having any logical relation to the effect; and the inconveniences of an institution, good in itself, being only, as I have just said, an inevitable dissonance in the general key; how can we judge of institutions by their causes and inconveniences?—Voltaire, who spoke of every thing, during an age, without having so much as penetrated below the surface, has reasoned very humorously on the sale of the offices of the magistracy which occurred in France; and no instance, perhaps, could be more apposite to make us sensible of the truth of the theory which I am setting forth. That this sale is an abuse, says he, is proved by the fact, that it originated in another abuse. Voltaire does not mistake here as every man is liable to mistake. He shamefully mistakes. It is a total eclipse of common sense. Everything which springs from an abuse, an abuse! On the contrary; one of the most general and evident laws of this power, at once secret and striking, which acts and makes itself to be felt on every side, is, that the remedy of an abuse springs from an abuse, and that the evil, having reached a certain point, destroys itself, as it ought to do; for evil, which is only a negation, has, for measure of dimension and duration, that of the being to which it is joined, and which it destroys. It exists as an ulcer, which can only terminate in self-destruction. But then a new reality will necessarily occupy the place of that which has disappeared; for nature abhors a vacuum, and the Good. But I diverge too far from Voltaire.

The question is frequently asked: why there is a school of theology attached to every University? The answer is easy: It is, that the Universities may subsist, and that the instruction may not become corrupt. Originally, the Universities were only schools of theology, to which other faculties were joined, as subjects around their Queen. The edifice of public instruction, placed on such a foundation, has continued even to our day. Those who have subverted it among themselves, will repent it, in vain, for a long time to come. To burn a city, there is needed only a child or a madman; but to rebuild it, architects, materials, workmen, money, and especially time, will be required.

In short, not to go out of generalities, if we do not return to the old maxims, if education is not restored into the hands of priests, and if science is not every where placed in the second rank, the evils which await us are incalculable: we shall become brutalized by science, and this is the lowest degree of brutality.

There is nothing but violence in the world; but we are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

In theorizing about the counter-revolution, men have too often assumed that this counter-revolution should and could be solely the result of popular deliberation. ‘The people fear,’ they say, ‘the people want, the people will never consent, it does not suit the people, etc.’ What a pity! The people count for nothing in revolutions, or at most count only as a passive instrument. Four or five persons, perhaps, will give France a king. Letters from Paris will announce to the provinces that France has a King, and the provinces will cry ‘Long live the king.

The savage cuts down the tree to gather its fruit, he unharnesses the ox that missionaries have just given him, and cooks it with the wood of the plough. He has known us for three centuries without having wanted anything from us, except gunpowder to kill his fellows and brandy to kill himself.

The great fault in women is to desire to be like men

Like radical intellectuals in the thirties and forties who became disillusioned with Communism under Stalin, the new Romantics came to appreciate virtues in their own society that their previous political faith had taught them to condemn. The result was the rise of a new generation of conservative Romantics, including Schlegel, Joseph de Maistre, and the poets Chateaubriand, Novalis, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They looked at the institutions the French Revolution and its Enlightenment predecessors had attacked—the Catholic Church, the monarchy, the traditional aristocracy—with a new respect. These now appeared as important landmarks of an older and nobler cultural heritage, which both the French and Industrial Revolutions had put at peril. One could call these figures conservative Romantics, but “reactionary”—as a reaction against the whole notion of progress—is probably more accurate.

Qu’on rie des idées religieuses, ou qu’on les vénère, n’importe : elles ne forment pas moins, vraies ou fausses, la base unique de toutes les institutions durables.

The people count for nothing in revolutions, or at most count only as a passive instrument.

He [Joseph de Maistre] held grimly unconventional and misanthropic views about the nature of individuals and societies, and wrote with a dry and ironical violence about the incurably savage and wicked nature of man, the inevitability of perpetual slaughter, the divinely instituted character of wars, and the overwhelming part played in human affairs by the passion for self-immolation, which, more than natural sociability or artificial agreements, creates armies and civil societies alike. He emphasised the need for absolute authority, punishment and continual repression if civilisation and order were to survive at all. Both the content and the tone of his writing are closer to Nietzsche, d’Annunzio and the heralds of modern Fascism than to the respectable royalists of his own time.

les contes répétés deux fois sont ennuyeux, même quand ils sont des vérités

En dehors des statues finies de Michel-Ange, j'ai la certitude que son atelier serait encore quelque chose de suggestif et de grand. Même la sciure de son marbre, n'aurait-elle pas un aspect auguste ? C'est une impression de cet ordre que vous causera ce gros volume de cinq cent cinquante pages, où il y a de la sciure de ces idées qui, depuis, sont devenues des monuments !

Le Génie ne décourage pas le Génie.

Je meurs avec l’Europe, je suis en bonne compagnie.

Certains des nôtres savent déjà - mais ne le savaient-ils pas depuis toujours - que le signe fondamental, que le signum magnum de ce changement abyssal de l'histoire de ce monde annoncé par Joseph de Maistre n'est autre que celui de la mise en chantier, à la fois historique et suprahistorique, de cet Imperium Ultimum, condition préliminaire de l'avènement du Regnum Sanctum, que des forces considérables s'utilisent à l'heure actuelle à en préparer les voies, révolutionnaires et impériales, dans le visible et dans l'invisible, dans l'espace intérieur secret de l'histoire où se passent les grandes décisions du destin. Imperium Ultimum que l'on pourra désormais identifier dans le projet révolutionnaire impérial grand-continental et planétaire d'un certain gaullisme transcendantal, occulte, se maintenant très à dessein encore dans l'ombre, le projet de ce que nous autres nous appelons du nom de l'Empire Eurasitaique de la Fin. Un projet dont le "concept absolu" apparaît comme avoir été, et qui restera, jusqu'à la fin, la figure déjà suprahistorique de Charles de Gaulle, à la fois dans sa trajectoire politico-historique propre et dans les dimensions encore inconnues, nocturnes, de sa personnalité cachée et de son "grand dessein" secret, "grand dessein" impérial planétaire en appelant à sa vision mystique du Regnum Sanctum, en qui celui-là trouvera son accomplissement final, son affirmation suprême.

All greatness, all power, all subordination rests on the throne, and the throne on the cross.