Note 141 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal (continued 2)

As is well known, this is the argument of the ‘Avenir de l’intelligence’. It allows followers to say (‘Manifeste de l’Intelligence,’ Figaro, 19th July, 1919; on this manifesto, see Note P at the end of this volume) that ‘one of the most obvious missions of the Church during the ages has been to protect the intelligence against its own errors’—an irrefutable saying from the moment that the errors of the intelligence are everything it says without reference to social order (whose basis is to be the teaching of the Church). This practical conception of the intelligence leads to definitions of this sort: ‘True logic is to be defined as the normal union of feelings, images and signs, to inspire in us the conceptions suited to our moral, intellectual and physical needs.’ (Maurras.) Compare this with the tradition teaching of the French masters: ‘Logic is the art of guiding reason properly in the knowledge of things.’ (Logique de Port-Royal.)

The wish to esteem intelligence according to its practical results appears again in this astounding formula: ‘A critical mind is of value through the influence it exerts by means of the enlightenment it bestows.’ (Maurras.) See also how severe is M. Massis (Jugements, i, 87) for Renan when he says: ‘The useful is what I abhor.’ Elsewhere (Jugements, 107) the same thinker speaks of a spiritual freedom ‘whose disinterestedness is merely a refusal of the conditions of life, of action, and of thought!’