humanity is moving. Of these the first alone
was completed, but fragments of the other parts exist. Perhaps the most
valuable part, of the work is the general introduction. His last work,
_Vision d'Hebal_, intended as part of the _Ville des expiations_, describes
the chief of a Scottish clan, who, gifted with second sight, gives
semi-prophetic utterances as to the course of world-history. In 1841
Ballanche was elected a member of the French Academy. He died in 1847. A
collected edition of his works in nine volumes was begun in 1830. Four only
appeared. In 1833 a second edition in six volumes was published. As a man,
Ballanche was warm-hearted and enthusiastic, but he was endowed with a
too-vivid imagination and his strange thoughts are expressed in equally
bizarre language. To give a connected account of his views is difficult;
their full development should be studied in relation with his life-history,
the stages of which are curiously parallel to his theory of the progress of
man, the fall, the trial, the perfection.

As has been said, he belonged to the theocratic school, who, in opposition
to the rationalism of the preceding age, emphasized the principle of
authority, placing revelation above individual reason, order above freedom
and progress. But Ballanche made a sincere endeavour to unite in one system
what was valuable in the opposed modes of thinking. He held with the
theocratists that individualism was an impracticable view; man, according
to him, exists only in and through society. He agreed further with them
that the origin of society was to be explained, not by human desire and
efforts, but by a direct revelation from God. Lastly, with De Bonald, he
reduced the problem of the origin of society to that of the origin of
language, and held that language was a divine gift. But at this point he
parts company with the theocratists, and in this very revelation of
language finds a germ of progress. Originally, in the primitive state of
man, speech and thought are identical; but gradually the two separate;
language is no longer only spoken, it is also written and finally is
printed. Thus the primitive unity is broken up; the original social order
which co-existed with, and was dependent on it, breaks up also. New
institutions spring up, upon which thought acts, and in and through which
it even draws nearer to a final unity, a _palingenesis_. The volition of
primitive man was one with that of God but it becomes broken u