First, the political attack. A fact which the nineteenth century has repeatedly insisted on, and which must not be forgotten, is that the eighteenth century was devoid of any proper understanding and appreciation of history. One of its most famous representatives, D'Alembert, went so far as to wish that the remembrance of all past times could be blotted out. The naïve belief of Rousseau and his century that isolated thought, unconnected with history or reality, is capable of changing the whole existing order of things, was now universally contested. The preceding generation had believed that all would be well when they had a written constitution which abolished what they considered abuses and established what they regarded as right. They had looked upon this piece of paper, or, to use their phraseology, these tables of the law, as the real constitution. In confutation of this idea, Joseph de Maistre propounds his theory: "Man cannot make a constitution, and a lawful constitution cannot be written." He is both unmistakably right and extraordinarily wrong. He has a prescience of the great truth, which may be regarded as acknowledged in the politics of to-day, that the true constitution of a country is the actual existing distribution of power, a distribution which is not changed although dilettante politicians alter it upon a sheet of paper. In De Maistre's judgment the powers that be have right on their side. Any rebellion seems to him a crime; but, keenly alive to realities, he has no faith in a written constitution as a preventive. Writing on the subject of a preventive of lawlessness, he says: "It may be custom, or conscience, or a papal tiara, or a dagger, but it is always a something." The written constitution alone is to him nothing real. His great mistake is to be found in the reason on which he bases his aversion to this written constitution. He is of opinion that what is written, what is foreseen and determined by human wisdom, is to be regarded as an infringement on the province of divine providence. "It is impertinence towards God not to have confidence in the unforeseen future; every government which is founded upon settled laws is founded upon a usurpation of the prerogative of the divine law-giver." The real working constitution he regards, on the contrary, as being of a divine nature, for, from his orthodox standpoint, he maintains that it is God who makes the nations what they are. To the sovereignty of the people he, like Bonald and Lamennais, opposes the sovereignty of God, thus finally anchoring in theocracy.