very highest distinction as a public lecturer, indicated this movement
of modern thought. M. Edgard Quinet, in his Lyons course, taught that
the religious idea is the very substance of civilization, and the
generating principle of political constitutions. He announced "a history
of civilization by the monuments of human thought," and added: "Religion
above all is the pillar of fire which goes before the nations in their
march across the ages; it shall serve us as a guide."[28] Benjamin
Constant exhibits in the variation of his opinions the transition from
the stand-point of the last century to that of the present. He had at
first conceived of his work upon religion as a monument raised to
atheism, he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the condition
necessary to the existence of civilized societies.[29] Here is a real
progress; and this progress brings us back to the thought above quoted
from Plutarch. In fact, take away the idea of God, and the first
consequence will be that you will sacrifice all the conquests of modern
civilization; the next, that you will soon have rendered impossible the
existence of any society whatever. I am going to ask your close
attention to these two points successively.

History does not offer to our view an uninterrupted progress, as certain
optimists suppose; still less does it present the spectacle of an
ever-increasing deterioration, as misanthropes affirm; and lastly, it is
not true, as we hear it said sometimes, that all epochs are alike, as
good one as another. There are times better than those which follow
them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them.
Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings and
retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created
liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is
clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while
man is in restless agitation, God is leading him on. The conquests of