6. Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg. 2 vols. 8vo. 7. Lettres et opuscules inédits. 2 vols. 8vo. 1851. 8. Mémoires politiques et correspondance du comte de Maistre, publiés par M. Albert Blanc. 2 vols. 8vo. 1858. {26} After these two great writers, another great writer, (shall I term him Catholic?) the Abbé de la Mennais, placed himself upon the same path, but to arrive at a very different issue. He, too, made authority alone the basis of man's faith and of human society; but seeking to ascertain the sign which distinguishes legitimate authority, and which entitles it to unarguing submission, he fixed this sign in the general and traditional assent of mankind. "The common consent or authority, _there_," said he, "we find the natural rule of our judgment; and what but folly can reject that rule, and listen to its own reason in preference to the reason of all? ... The search for certitude is the search for a reason not liable to error at all, that is, for a reason that is infallible. {27} Now this infallible reason must necessarily be either the reason of each individual or the reason of all men; in fact, of human reason. It is not the reason of each individual, for men contradict one another, and nothing frequently is more discordant and more contradictory than their judgments; therefore it is the reason of all." [Footnote 4] [Footnote 4: Essai sur l'indifférence en matiére de religion, t. ii, p. 59. Défense de l'Essai sur l'indifférence, chap. x, pp. 133-148.]