The failure of the Revolution to fulfil the visionary hopes which had dazzled France for a brief period--a failure intensified by the horrors that had attended the experiment--was followed by a reaction against the philosophical doctrines and tendencies which had inspired its leaders. Forces, which the eighteenth century had underrated or endeavoured to suppress, emerged in a new shape, and it seemed for a while as if the new century might definitely turn its back on its predecessor. There was an intellectual rehabilitation of Catholicism, which will always be associated with the names of four thinkers of exceptional talent, Chateaubriand, De Maistre, Bonald, and Lamennais. But the outstanding fame of these great reactionaries must not mislead us into exaggerating the reach of this reaction. The spirit and tendencies of the past century still persisted in the circles which were most permanently influential. Many eminent savants who had been imbued with the ideas of Condillac and Helvetius, and had taken part in the Revolution and survived it, were active under the Empire and the restored Monarchy, still true to the spirit of their masters, and commanding influence by the value of their scientific work. M. Picavet's laborious researches into the activities of this school of thinkers has helped us to understand the transition from the age of Condorcet to the age of Comte. The two central figures are Cabanis, the friend of Condorcet, [Footnote: He has already claimed our notice, above, p. 215.] and Destutt de Tracy. M. Picavet has grouped around them, along with many obscurer names, the great scientific men of the time, like Laplace, Bichat, Lamarck, as all in the direct line of eighteenth century thought. "Ideologists" he calls them. [Footnote: Ideology is now sometimes used to convey a criticism; for instance, to contrast the methods of Lamarck with those of Darwin.] Ideology, the science of ideas, was the word invented by de Tracy to distinguish the investigation of thought in accordance with the methods of Locke and Condillac from old-fashioned metaphysics. The guiding principle of the ideologists was to apply reason to observed facts and eschew a priori deductions. Thinkers of this school had an influential organ, the Decade philosophique, of which J. B. Say the economist was one of the founders in 1794. The Institut, which had been established by the Convention, was crowded with "ideologists," and may be said to have continued the work of the Encyclopaedia. [Footnote: Picavet, op. cit. p. 69. The members of the 2nd Class of the Institut, that of moral and political science, were so predominantly Ideological that the distrust of Napoleon was excited, and he abolished it in 1803, distributing its members among the other Classes.] These men had a firm faith in the indefinite progress of knowledge, general enlightenment, and "social reason." 2.