In  countries  where  this  intellectual  anarchy  has  been  sanctioned
by  the  political  preponderance  of  Protestantism,  the  divergences
have  been  more  multiplied  than  elsewhere,  without  being  less
serious.  It  could  not  but  be  so  from  the  tendency  of  the  general
mind,  in  its  then  infantile  state,  to  use  its  new  emancipation  to  plunge
into  the  indefinite  discussion  of  religious  opinions — (the  most  vague
and  discordant  of  all) — -in  the  absence  of  a  restraining  spiritual
authority.  In  the  United  States,  for  instance,  there  are  hundreds
of  Christian  sectSj  radically  discordant,  and  incessantly  parting  off
into  opinions  which  are  really  little  more  than  individual,  which  it
is  impossible  to  classify,  and  which  are  already  becoming  implicated
with  innumerable  political  differences.  The  nations  which,  like  the
French,  have  escaped  the  treacherous  stage  of  Protestantism,  and
have  passed  at  once  from  the  Catholic  to  the  fully  revolutionary
state,  were  not,  on  that  account,  entirely  exempt  from  the  intellec-
tual anarchy  inherent  in  any  prolonged  exercise  of  the  absolute
right  of  free  individual  inquiry.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  their
aberrations,  without  being  less  anti-social,  have  a  less  vague  char-
acter, and  are  less  in  the  way  of  the  final  reorganization.  They
arise,  take  possession  for  awhile  of  even  healthy  and  well-trained
intellects,  and  then  give  place  to  others  that  have  their  day,  and  in
their  turn  are  superseded.  In  our  time,  we  hear  of  proposals,  enter-
tained here  and  there  even  by  men  who  know  what  positive  science
is  ia  some  one  department  of  study,  which  it  is  a  shock  to  one's
hopes  to  see  so  advocated ;  proposals,  for  instance,  to  abolish  money


i22  POSITIVE   PHILOSOPHT.
