But even more remarkable than this clearsightedness in a single matter are the gleams of profounder general insight which we now find in Lamennais' letters. Hitherto he had sought absolute truth, and had looked to authority to ensure this. Now he suddenly arrives at the idea of relativity, the idea which most thoroughly and utterly demolishes the principle of authority.
"The older I grow the more it astonishes me to see how all the beliefs which are deepest rooted in us depend upon the age in which we live, the society into which we have been born, and a thousand other equally accidental circumstances. Only think what our beliefs would be if we had come into the world ten centuries earlier, or had been born in this century at Teheran, at Benares, or on the Island of Otaheite!"
There is more philosophy in these two sentences, which forestall Taine's theory of the influence of surroundings, than in all the volumes of Lamennais' famous chief work.[5]
The following verses date from his earliest youth:
On a souvent vu des maris, Jaloux d'une épouse légère; On en a vu même à Paris, Mais ce n'est pas le tien, ma chère.
On a vu des amants transis, Ainsi qu'une faveur bien chère, Implorer un simple souris, Mais ce n'est pas le tien, ma chère.
[2] _Reden über die Religion_. Fifth edition, pp. 50, 54, 56.
[3] _Du progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'église_.
[4] Atque ex hoc putidissimo _indifferentismi_ fonte absurda illa fluit ac erronea sententia, seu potius deliramentum, asserendam esse ac vindicandam cuilibet _libertatem conscientiæ_.... _At quæ pejor mors animæ quam libertas erroris?_ inquiebat Augustinus. Freno quippe omni adempto, quo homines contineantur in semitis veritatis, proruit jam in præceps ipsorum natura ad malum inclinata.... Huc spectat deterrima illa ac nunquam satis execranda et detestabilis libertas artis librariæ ad scripta quælibet edenda in vulgus, quam tanto convicio audent nonnulli efflagitare ac promovere.
[5] Lamennais, _Essai sur l'indifférence; Progrès de la révolution et de la guerre contre l'église; Correspondance par M. Forgues; Œuvres inédits par M. Blaize_; Schleiermacher, _Reden über die Religion_; Renan, _Essais de morale et de critique_; Schérer, _Mélanges de critique religieuse_.