The three schools illustrate the principal tendencies in which unbelief manifested itself in France previous to the establishment of the empire;(885) and show clearly the intimate relation of particular kinds of sceptical views to particular systems of metaphysical philosophy.(886) In the latter years of Napoleon I. the struggle first commenced between the Voltairian party and the church; a middle course being taken by the eclectics. The constitutional tendency of this last school gave them the moral victory during the restoration, over the democratic tendency of the one and the reactionist of the other. After the revolution of 1830, the socialist struggle was superadded; which, when mixed with the old ideology, produced Positivism. The catholic church had sought to restore faith in Christianity, partly by the establishment of _Conférences_,(887) lectures to reply to the systems now described; and partly by trying to satisfy the reason by establishing a rival philosophy, and stating philosophically the grounds of faith. (45) This philosophy, though noble in its aim, and taught by many pious minds, is visionary. It was based on the principle first evolved by Huet; the weakness of human reason, and the supposed necessity of submission to authority. In De Maistre, its founder, who carried out in philosophy what Chateaubriand did in literature, it was the suggestion of an abject submission to the papacy, as the living authority on earth; accompanied by a sceptical disbelief of the value of inductive science. It has expressed itself in different forms; but in all it has been an attempt to find a solution for difficulties by means of religion instead of philosophy; an attempt analogous to that in other lands, not merely to restrain the human reason in matters of religion, but to inculcate distrust of it; falling into the very error which Plato made his master describe, of those who, baffled in the search for truth, blame not their own unskilfulness, but reason itself; and pass the rest of their lives in contempt of it; and thus are deprived of the knowledge that they seek. The history of thought in France, thus studied, exhibits a general resemblance to that of Germany in its forms and tendency. In both alike there has been a contest, between the school which seeks to absorb Christianity in philosophy, and that which extinguishes philosophy by Christianity. There is an absence indeed in France of the spiritual return to a living Christian faith, the union of science and piety, which is observable in the latter country. But within the sphere of natural religion, in reference to the belief in a spiritual world, an advance is perceptible, if the present condition of France be measured against that which was observable at the period when the philosophic unbelief of the last century predominated.