Political Liberty and Belief in Religion, the movement of society in advance and the impulse of the soul towards eternity, Free Government and Christianity, these are the two forces to which we should recur, and the only ones capable of remedying this disease of trouble and doubt which afflict both our thoughts and our conduct, and which at one time impairs, at another paralyses, our understanding. {xxxix} I have no intention here to speak of political liberties in the abstract, and of their necessity either to a country in order to guarantee to it a good administration at home and abroad, or to individuals in order to secure their interests, moral and material. The right of France to these liberties, and their opportuneness to her at this moment, have recently been set in their clearest light, and established in all their force on their highest stage, in the bosom of the legislative body. [Footnote 2] It is solely because of its influence upon that ill of our epoch, the complication of questions and the hesitations of opinion, that I speak here of political liberty; I regard it as one of the two great remedies against this ill. [Footnote 2: Discourse of M. Thiers, _Sur les libertés nécessaires et sur la liberté de la presse_, in the séances of the 11th January, 1864, 13th February, 1866, 30th January, 7th, 8th, 15th, 21st, and 22nd February, 1868.] {xl} When all questions are agitated pell mell, and all minds are perplexed, the first salutary result consequent upon liberty is that it sets all opinions and all intentions in contact and in conflict. At first, and for a time, this simultaneous invasion of so many complex facts, and of so many diverse and contrary ideas, does but add to the perplexity of the questions and to the confusion of minds; but little by little, and quickly too, provided liberty endures, the winnowing process produces its effect upon the questions, and light penetrates into the understandings: the different facts, and problems which these facts suggest, are set in turn in their place, and valued only for as much as they are worth; actors and spectators grow accustomed to them all, and begin to form more precise conceptions of them. Little by little order takes the place of confusion; opinions define and classify themselves; and instead of the fermentation of opinions in a chaotic confusion, we have a contest in regular form, and upon intelligible issues, I repeat that a result so salutary cannot be obtained unless upon the condition of a liberty universal, real, and durable; partial or transitory, it would serve only to aggravate the perturbation, and to unsettle opinions still more. {xli}