“retrograde school.” In a regular discussion, the latter would soon have compelled it to admit that it allows the essential principles of the old régime while refusing to accept their most indispensable consequences.[316] The inmost contradiction from which the revolutionary philosophy suffers will become more and more apparent. A not far distant moment will arrive when the effort to restore the past will include a large number of those who have contributed to its destruction. The partisans of natural religion, and even those of the most advanced Deism will rally to Catholicism as to the real foundation of the social organisation which they defend. The alternative will then be set up between the only two solutions which are logical and organic: either the old régime, with the Catholic organisation, or the new, with the positive organisation. Between these two there is no room for the critical, liberal, metaphysical, revolutionary system, which, by whatever name it may be called, signifies “no organisation at all.” IV. The old régime was bound to perish because in it, the social organisation was connected with a system of beliefs and of dogmas which could not withstand the spirit of investigation. In order that the new régime may escape this cause of death, must it be able without suffering to bear the indefinite exercise of an absolute freedom of examination?——No, replies Comte, there is no system capable of enduring under these conditions. But it suffices that in constituting itself, the new faith, which is the basis of social order, should have undergone the test of free examination as we see it practised in the positive sciences. It suffices that, instead of a revealed faith, we should have a demonstrated faith which will then be immovable, and which will no more have to be called in question.