a radical reaction against the eighteenth century; the second represents a continuation and correction of the French enlightenment; the third represents a new formation which contains the germ of positivism.
1. Joseph de Maistre, the most important exponent of the principle of authority, assails both philosophy and natural science, the moment they presume to undertake anything beyond wholly specialized investigations. And yet he has a philosophy of his own, which is closely affiliated with that of Malebranche. Whatever is material cannot be a cause; every cause is essentially mental and the type of all causality is given in the immediate consciousness of volition. Our world theory is not to be determined by investigators and thinkers, but by the authorities instituted by God in state and church. Has not history indeed sufficiently exposed the impotence of human reason! The philosophy of the eighteenth century was indeed a veritable conspiracy against everything sacred. The only thing which can put an end to human misfortune and establish social peace is the acknowledgment of the infallibility of the Pope (Les Soirees de St. Petersbourg, written 1809, not published until 1821).
2. Amid the storms of the revolution there was a small group of thinkers who remained loyal to philosophical investigation. These had been disciples of Condillac, but they introduced important corrections into his doctrine. Thus, for example, the physician, Cabanis, places special emphasis on the influence of the inner organic states upon the development of mind. He describes vital feeling as something which is only indirectly determined by external impressions, and hence forms a basis for psychic life which is relatively independent of
