--Skepticism pure and simple as the only safeguard of
intellectual independence--such is the point of view of almost all our
young men of talent. Absolute freedom from credulity seems to them the
glory of man. My impression has always been that this excessive
detachment of the individual from all received prejudices and opinions
in reality does the work of tyranny. This evening, in listening to the
conversation of some of our most cultivated men, I thought of the
Renaissance, of the Ptolemies, of the reign of Louis XV., of all those
times in which the exultant anarchy of the intellect has had despotic
government for its correlative, and, on the other hand, of England, of
Holland, of the United States, countries in which political liberty is
bought at the price of necessary prejudices and _a priori_ opinions.
That society may hold together at all, we must have a principle of
cohesion--that is to say, a common belief, principles recognized and
undisputed, a series of practical axioms and institutions which are not
at the mercy of every caprice of public opinion. By treating everything
as if it were an open question, we endanger everything.
Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny. "If a people will not believe it
must obey," said Tocqueville. All liberty implies dependence, and has
its conditions; this is what negative and quarrelsome minds are apt to
forget.
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