[144] Here M. Maurras separates from his Master, de Maistre, who speaks of ‘the ocean which will one day welcome everything and everyone to its bosom’. However, the author of the _Soirées de Saint-Petersbourg_ quickly adds: ‘But I refrain from touching on personality, without which immortality is nothing.’ [145] On the existence of this doctrine of immanence among almost all Christian teachers until our own times, see Renouvier: ‘l’Idée de Dieu’ (_Année Philosophique_, 1897), and also _Essai d’une Classification des doctrines_, 3: _l’évolution_; _la création_. [146] According to Hegel, God constantly grows at the expense of His opposite; His activity is essentially that of war and victory. [147] Let me note a keen protest against this conception in ‘Neo-Thomism’. [148] Compare, for instance, the condemnation of Rosmini with that of Maître Eckart, where such propositions as ‘Nulla in Deo distinctio esse aut intelligi potest’ and ‘Omnes creaturae sunt purum nihil’ are declared to be, not heretical, but only ‘ill-sounding, rash and suspected of heresy’. [149] Remember that in 1806, immediately after Jena, Hegel’s one thought was to find a corner in which to philosophize. In 1813 Schopenhauer was completely indifferent to the up-rising of Germany against Napoleon. [150] ‘No one has the right to be indifferent to the disasters of his country; but the philosopher, like the Christian, always has reasons for living. The Kingdom of God knows neither conquerors nor conquered; that Kingdom resides in the joys of the heart, the mind, and the imagination, which the conquered enjoys more than the conqueror if he is morally on a higher plane and has more mind. Your great Goethe, your admirable Fichte have taught us, have they not, how to lead a noble and consequently happy life, when our country is humiliated abroad.’ (First Letter to Strauss.) Need I say that Nietzsche, who seems to me a bad ‘clerk’ from the nature of his teaching, seems to me one of the finest from his entire devotion to the passions of the spirit alone? [151] Of course, I am not doubting the sincerity of all the ‘right-thinking’ men of letters. Some persons are so fortunate that the most profitable attitudes are precisely those which they adopt sincerely. [152] This may be clearly seen by the ill-will displayed by the French bourgeoisie towards the order of their ‘spiritual leader’ forbidding them to read a publication whose doctrines they like. The change may be estimated if you remember that when, a century ago, the Pope ordered the French Catholics to accept the law against the Jesuits voted by the government of Charles X, they all bowed to his will.