The other course adopted by French philosophy, in the times immediately preceding the Revolution, was to lay aside the weapons of wit, and to employ a burning eloquence as more likely to attract and to carry away minds naturally noble. It had, consequently, if possible, still more fatal results than the former. The reason, as the peculiar character of man in a civilized state--so it was argued--is like civilized man himself, an artificial creation, and in its essence totally unnatural; and the savage state of nature is the only one properly adapted to man. As the means of emancipation from an artificial and corrupt civilization, the well-known theory of the social contract was advanced. Our whole age has learned dearly enough the lesson, that this dogma, practically applied on a large scale, may, indeed, lead to a despotism of liberty, and to the lust of conquest, but can as little effect the re-establishment of a true civilization as it can bring back the state of nature. It would be a work of supererogation to dwell upon the pernicious results or the intrinsic hollowness of this system. It is, however, worth while to remark, that, in this theory also, the beginning was made with an opposition to reason. Starting with a depreciation of it as an artificial state and a departure from nature, at the last it threw itself, and the whole existing frame of society, into the arms of reason, and thereby sought to gain for the latter an unlimited authority over all laws, both human and divine. A somewhat similar phenomenon may every where be observed, and the same course will invariably be taken when philosophy allows itself to set out with some question or impugning of the reason, and, in its exclusiveness, makes this dialectical faculty the basis of its investigations.