,
to guide them on unconsciously and to convert their philosophy into a
preparation for, or a confirmation of, Christianity.[3302]--Summing it
all up, faith, the performance of religious duties, with religious and
political institutions, are at base of all thought of the seventeenth
century. Reason, whether she admits it or is ignorant of it, is only a
subaltern, an oratorical agency, a setter-in-motion, forced by religion
and the monarchy to labor in their behalf. With the exception of La
Fontaine, whom I regard as unique in this as in other matters, the
greatest and most independent, Pascal, Descartes, Bossuet, La Bruyere,
borrows from the established society their basic concepts of nature,
man, society, law and government.[3303] So long as Reason is limited
to this function its work is that of a councilor of State, an extra
preacher dispatched by its superiors on a missionary tour in the
departments of philosophy and of literature. Far from proving
destructive it consolidates; in fact, even down to the Regency, its
chief employment is to produce good Christians and loyal subjects.

But now the roles are reversed; tradition descends from the upper to the
lower ranks, while Reason ascends from the latter to the former.--On
the one hand religion and monarchy, through their excesses and misdeeds
under Louis XIV, and their laxity and incompetence under Louis XV,
demolish piece by piece the basis of hereditary reverence and filial
obedience so long serving them as a foundation, and which maintained
them aloft above all dispute and free of investigation; hence the
authority of tradition insensibly declines and disappears. On the other
hand science, through its imposing and multiplied discoveries, erects
piece by piece a basis of universal trust and deference, raising itself
up from an interesting subject of curiosity to the rank of a public
power; hence the authority of Reason augments and occupies its place.--A
time comes when, the latter authority having dispossessed the former,
the fundamental ideas tradition had reserved to itself fall into the
grasp of Reason. Investigation penetrates into the forbidden sanctuary.
Instead of deference there is verification, and religion, the state,
the law, custom, all the organs, in short, of moral and practical life,
become subject to analysis, to be preserved, restored or replaced,
according to the prescriptions of the new doctrine.

II. Ancestral Tradition And Culture.