One of the greatest errors
of a century which professed them all was to believe that a
political constitution could be created and written a
priori, whereas reason and experience unite in proving
that a constitution is a divine work and that precisely the
most fundamental and essentially constitutional of a
nation's laws could not possibly be written. . . .
Was it not a common belief everywhere that a constitution
was the work of the intellect, like an ode or a tragedy? Had
not Thomas Paine declared, with a profundity that charmed
the universities that a constitution does not exist as long
as one cannot put it in his pocket? The unsuspecting,
overweening self-confidence of the eighteenth century balked
at nothing, and I do not believe that it produced a single
stripling of any talent who did not make three things when
he left school: an educational system, a constitution, and a
world. . . .
I do not believe that the slightest doubt remains as to
the unquestionable truth of the following propositions:
The fundamental principles of political consciousness
exist prior to all written law.
Constitutional law [loi] is and can only be the
development of a pre-existing and unwritten law [droit].
. . .
[H]e who believes himself able by writing alone to
establish clear and lasting doctrine IS A GREAT FOOL. If he
really possessed the seeds of truth, he could never believe
that a little black liquid and a pen could germinate them in
the world, protect them from harsh weather, and make them
sufficiently effective. As for whoever undertakes writing
laws or civil constitutions in the belief that he can
give them adequate conviction and stability because he has
written them, he disgraces himself, whether or not people
say so. He shows an equal ignorance of the nature of
inspiration and delirium, right and wrong, good and evil.
This ignorance is shameful, even when approved by the whole
body of the common people.
. . . [N]o real grand great institution can be based on
written law, since men themselves, instruments, in turn, of
the established institution, do not know what it is to
become and since imperceptible growth is the true promise of
durability in all things. . . .
Everything brings us back to the general rule. Man
cannot create a constitution, and no legitimate constitution
can be written. The collection of fundamental laws which
necessarily constitute a civil or religious society never
has been or will be written a priori. . . .
Religion alone civilizes nations. No other known force
can influence the savage. . . . [W]hat shall we think of a
generation which has thrown everything to the winds,
including the very foundations of the structure of society,
by making education exclusively scientific? It was
impossible to err more frightfully. For every educational
system, which does not have religion as its basis will
collapse in an instant, or else diffuse only poisons
throughout the State...if the guidance of education is not
returned to the priests, and if science is not uniformly
relegated to a subordinate rank, incalculable evils await
us. We shall become brutalized by science, and that is the
worst sort of brutality. . . .
Not until the first half of the eighteenth century did
impiety really become a force. We [then] see it at first
spreading in every direction with amazing energy. From
palaces to hovels, it insinuates itself everywhere,
infesting everything. . . .
