560 Chapter XXIII
tions, however, like the polemics of Burke, rose above momentary questions to the
level of a theory of knowledge, an ethic, and a philosophy of society. De Maistre
distrusted “reason,” and especially the reason of individuals. No society, he main-
tained, could exist with constant carping and criticism and the proliferation of
novel ideas by private persons. A raison nationale, “political and religious dogmas,”
were necessary as a protection against the aberration and presumption of the “rea-
son” of particular men. There must be préjugés conservateurs. It was impossible to
invent institutions out of hand, or to constitute a government by conscious plan-
ning, or to give oneself any rights not already defined, developed, possessed through
history and custom. Institutions grow, and government has a life of its own, like
men; society is organic. There is no such thing as man- in- general, but only French-
men or Russians formed by their several cultures and environments. The French
republic is an artificial creation, a monstrosity having no relation to anything real.
The French Revolution is “satanic” and God- hating; philosophism is purely de-
structive; and the truth is that society needs what are too lightly dismissed as “su-
perstitions.” The Revolution is the embodiment of radical evil. From real barbarism
men can progress. “But studied barbarism, systematic atrocity, calculated corrup-
tion, and above all ir- religion, have never produced anything.”^37
The Abbé Barruel, born in 1741, had begun his career as a Jesuit, but after the
expulsion of the Jesuits from France had spent years in Germany and Bohemia.
Returning to France, he had published a critique of the philosophes in 1781, his
Lettres Helviennes, which were several times reprinted into the 1830’s. As early as
1789 he attributed the Revolution to “philosophism.” In 1792 he emigrated to
England, where he met Edmund Burke and Robert Clifford. There he wrote a his-
tory of the troubles of the French clergy during the Revolution. In 1797 he pub-
lished in London the first version of his Mémoires pour servir à l ’histoire du jaco-
binisme, of which a translation by Clifford appeared simultaneously in English. It
looks as if discussions with English friends, a knowledge of German and the Ger-
man language obtained many years before, and a familiarity with writings of the
philosophes acquired at least as early as 1781, had all gone into the preparation of
this classic of the counter- revolution, which was published in its final form at
Hamburg in five volumes in 1798–1799, with a full German translation the fol-
lowing year, and of which an abridgement appeared in Paris as late as 1911. There
is no known explanation of the simultaneous publication of Robison’s Proofs of a
conspiracy, which Barruel himself noted as a pure coincidence.
Barruel is chiefly remembered as the classic formulator of the conspiratorial
theory of the causes of the French Revolution. In that revolution, he insisted,
nothing happened because of unforeseen circumstances. All was “premeditated,
pre- arranged, resolved, and decided upon.” A “sect,” numbering perhaps 300,000
“adepts,” had been deliberately at work for at least twenty years. But, as so often
with historians, Barruel addressed himself as much to the future as to the past. The
37 Considérations sur la France (London, 1797), 73 ff. and passim·, Beik, 62–71; Godechot, 94–106.
Louis de Bonald, usually mentioned in this same connection, seems to have been little known until
several years later. Beik and Godechot treat him and Chateaubriand at some length.