Note that those who to-day preach obedience of the mind, not only demand it from the uncultured masses but from the men of thought, _especially_ from the men of thought. The anti-individualists of the Dreyfus affair particularly opposed the independence of scientists, writers, and philosophers--‘the mad vanity of a few intellectuals’. Nevertheless, the most curious thing is not that they require this obedience, but that they obtain it. When M. Maritain declares that ‘everyone cannot philosophize and that, for men, the essential thing is to choose a master’, and when M. Maurras asserts that the function of most minds is to be ‘servants’ and to reflect the thought of some leader, these teachers find a number of men of thought to applaud and abdicate their liberty of mind in their favour. The thinkers of the eighteenth century said: ‘A religion is needed for the people.’ Those of our age say: ‘A religion is needed for ourselves.’ What Barrès wrote: ‘The part of the masters is to justify the habits and prejudices of France, so as best to prepare our children to take their place in the national procession,’ he certainly meant that he and his colleagues were to walk in this procession. Here we again come upon that thirst for discipline which I spoke of above and which seemed to me so worthy of remark in the descendants of Montaigne and Renan. The cause, I said, was their desire to belong to a ‘strong group’. In them it also arises from a feeling for the artistic value of regimenting a collection of men in a beautiful ‘procession’, and also from the joy felt by so many souls in being governed, if not having to make the effort to think for themselves--a most curious joy in so-called men of thought. The cult for the collective soul, with all its violation of human consciousness, seems to me admirably denounced by a passage of Maine de Biran, quoted by M. L. Brunschvicg (op. cit., _La Sociologie de l’ordre_, p. 526):--