defiance of such advisers as
Lacordaire, Ravignan, and Dupanloup, he pronounced in favour of the
author of the _coup d'etat_, saying: "Je suis pour l'autorite contre la
revolte"; and boasted that, in entering the Academy he had attacked the
Revolution, not of '93 but '89, and that Guizot, who received him, had
nothing to say in reply. There were many things, human and divine, on
which they could not feel alike; but as the most urgent, eloquent, and
persevering of his Catholic friends, gifted with knowledge and
experience of affairs, and dwelling in the focus, it may be that on one
critical occasion, when religion and politics intermingled, he
influenced the working of Doellinger's mind. But the plausible reading of
his life which explains it by his connection with such public men as
Montalembert, De Decker, and Mr. Gladstone is profoundly untrue; and
those who deem him a liberal in any scientific use of the term, miss the
keynote of his work.

The political party question has to be considered here, because, in
fact, it is decisive. A liberal who thinks his thought out to the end
without flinching is forced to certain conclusions which colour to the
root every phase and scene of universal history. He believes in upward
progress, because it is only recent times that have striven
deliberately, and with a zeal according to knowledge, for the increase
and security of freedom. He is not only tolerant of error in religion,
but is specially indulgent to the less dogmatic forms of Christianity,
to the sects which have restrained the churches. He is austere in
judging the past, imputing not error and ignorance only, but guilt and
crime, to those who, in the dark succession of ages, have resisted and
retarded the growth of liberty, which he identifies with the cause of
morality, and the condition of the reign of conscience. Doellinger never
subjected his mighty vision of the stream of time to correction
according to the principles of this unsympathising philosophy, never
reconstituted the providential economy in agreement with the Whig
Theodicee. He could understand the Zoroastrian simplicity of history in
black and white, for he wrote: "obgleich man allerdings sagen kann, das
tiefste Thema der Weltgeschichte sei der Kampf der Knechtschaft oder
Gebundenheit, mit der Freiheit, auf dem intellectuellen, religioesen,
politischen und socialen Gebiet." But the scene which lay open before
his mind was one of greater complexity, deeper d