Let us follow the connecting thread in this network of sophisms, that we may be able to pull it to pieces. It runs thus: Reason is developed only by the aid of language, the witness. The witness is only to be found in society. Hence man can only live in society. Hence there must have been society, intercourse, between God and the first man. (Observe the unproved assertion of the existence of an Adam, also Bonald's doctrine that God gave Adam language--in short, elements taken from so-called revealed religion as authority, employed to prove that so-called revealed religion rests upon authority.) The necessity of witness involves the necessity of faith, without which witness would be of no effect. Hence faith lies in the very nature of man, is the first condition of life. The certainty of faith is founded upon its harmony with reason, _i.e._ upon the strength of the authority which bears witness. Hence the witness of God is infinitely certain, since it is nought else but the revelation of infinite reason or of supreme authority. No witness is possible except where there is society. Hence no authority or certainty is possible without a society. No human society can exist except in virtue of that original society of God and man which came into being by virtue of the truths or laws originally revealed by his word. Hence these truths cannot be lost in any society without the destruction of that society resulting from the loss. They are consequently to be found in every society. These essential truths are preserved only by means of witness, which has no power or effect without authority. Hence, as there is no authority except in society, there is also no society without authority; where there is no authority, there is no society. But it is to be noted that there are two species of society; for man stands both in temporal relations to his fellow-men, and in eternal relations to them and to God. These two societies are the political or civil (temporal) society and the spiritual (eternal) society. Consequently there are two authorities, and these authorities are _infallible_, each in its own domain. This all sounds extraordinarily logical; if _ergo_ were a sufficient proof, there would be no want of proofs. But let us examine one or two of the links in the chain of argument. The Ego, says Lamennais, cannot alone, in solitude, develop self-consciousness. The premise is correct, and we infer from it what there is to infer when we say that the _I_ has consequently developed with the assistance of a _you_. This is a thought to which Feuerbach has devoted special attention, and which he has followed out in a variety of directions. But Lamennais, taking as his premise the Old Testament supposition of a single man existing before the rest of the race, builds the doctrine of the communication between this man and God, and all that follows thereon, upon this foundation, which sinks with the edifice erected on it.