Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

THE TRADITION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 113
preceding half;" yet in this latter half he only aimed
at converting rationalism from a negative to a positive
system. But, allowing that a system of some sort
might thus be constructed, can positivism be defined
as more than the system of those who are positive by
mutual consent and agreement without faith or certainty,
and who are the more positive in proportion
as they recede from Catholic truth and tradition.
We, however, who believe in the identity of Catholicism
and Christianity, may still appreciate Professor Huxley's
definition of positivism, viz.-" Catholicism minus Christianity."
5
Can any one adduce a more typical representative of
the clear, powerful, penetrating intellect of man than
Voltaire ! Voltaire, moreover, had the aim and ambition
(u ecraser I'infame ") to obliterate the tradition
5 Montalembert ("Disc, de Reception/' 1852, Discours iii. pp. 614,
615,621, 622) says of the Constituent Assembly of 1789-"It was the
Assembly of 1789 which made the word revolution the synonyme of
methodical destruction, of permanent war against all order and all
authority. ... It had that mania for uniformity which is the parody of
unity, and which Montesquieu called the passion of mediocre minds. . . .
In a word, the Constituent Assembly was wanting not only in justice,
courage, and humanity, but it was also deficient in good sense. The evil
which it created has survived it. It has made us believe that it is
possible to destroy everything and to reconstruct everything in a day.
. . . God has chastised it, above all, by the sterility of its work. It had
had the pretence of laying the foundations of liberty for ever, and it had
for its successors the most sanguinary tyrants who ever dishonoured any
nation. Its mission was to re-establish the finances, the empire of the
law, and it has bequeathed to France bankruptcy, anarchy, and despotism
despotism without even the repose which they have wrongly taken as the
compensation of servitude. It has done more : it has left pretexts for
every abuse of force, and precedents for any excess of future anarchy.
[Montalembert could hardly have foreseen the last application of its principles
which we have recently witnessed in Paris by the Commune, which,
too, forsooth, was to have inaugurated a new era for humanity.] But it
(this Constituent Assembly) founded nothing-Nothing! The ancient society
which it reversed had lasted, in spite of its abuses, a thousand years."
H