Renouvier’s interest in theology and religion, and in the theological implications of all philosophical thought, was not due merely to a purely speculative impulse, but to a very practical desire to initiate a rational restatement of religious conceptions, which he considered to be an urgent need of his time. He lamented the influence of the Roman Church over the minds of the youth of his country, and realised the vital importance of the controversy between Church and State regarding secular education. Renouvier was a keen supporter of the secular schools (_écoles laïques_). In 1879, when the educational controversy was at its height, he issued a little book on ethics for these institutions (_Petit Traité de Morale pour les Ecoles laïques_), which was republished in an enlarged form in 1882, when the secular party, ably led by Jules Ferry, triumphed in the establishment of compulsory, free, secular education. That great achievement, however, did not solve all the difficulties presented by the Church in its educational attitude, and even now the influence of clericalism is dreaded. Renouvier realised all the dangers, but he was forced also to realise that his enthusiastic and energetic campaign against the power of the Church had failed to achieve what he had desired. He complained of receiving insufficient support from quarters where he might well have expected it. His failure is a fairly conclusive proof that Protestantism has no future in France: it is a stubborn survival, rather than a growing influence. With the decline in the power and appeal of the Roman Catholic Church will come the decline of religion of a dogmatic and organised kind. Renouvier probably had an influence in hastening the day of the official severance of Church and State, an event which he did not live long enough to see.[24] [24] It occurred, however, only two years after his death. Having become somewhat discouraged, Renouvier stopped the publication of his religious quarterly in 1885 and made the _Critique philosophique_ a monthly instead of a weekly Journal. It ceased in 1889, but the following year Renouvier’s friend, Pillon, began a new periodical, which bore the same name as the one which had ceased with the outbreak of the war in 1870. This was _L’Année philosophique_, to which Renouvier contributed articles from time to time on religious topics. Some writers are of the opinion that Renouvier’s attacks on the Roman Catholic Church and faith, so far from strengthening the Protestant party in France, tended rather to increase the hostility to the Christian religion generally or, indeed, to any religious view of the universe.