Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/93

Rh and the monarchy "by the grace of God," must appear to the enlightened people as a denial of their manifest, national power. A constitutional monarchy can only be accepted by sacrificing one's reasoning faculties. It is, compared to an absolute monarchy, what the protestant is to the catholic church. Catholicism is consistent; protestantism is arbitrary. The former gives its superiors the right to decide upon the articles of faith, and allows no criticism of any of its arrangements. The latter allows criticism of its doctrines, by the medium of the Bible, but forbids any criticism of the Bible itself. The mind is allowed free liberty of thought as far as Revelations. The line is drawn at Revelations, where it must stop. Why? There is no reason. Because it is so, and not otherwise. It is free thought with a limited circulation; it is free criticism, with a thumbscrew, which allows it to go only to a certain point. In the same way a constitutional monarchy lays down certain premises, but forbids any one to draw the conclusions from them. It recognizes the fundamental principle of the nation's right to self-government, but at the same time it denies it by asserting the king's right to govern, to be higher and more sacred. It permits logic to follow in its train, but not until its teeth have been pulled out and its limbs amputated.

I consequently sing the praises of the absolute monarchy, surrounded by the mediæval institutions of slate and society. It satisfies logic, and pleases the senses that appreciate symmetry and harmony. We are only obliged to close our ears to the voice of reason for one moment, to accept but one arbitrary premise without criticism, that is, that the monarch owes his privileges to the special grace of God. This statement once accepted, all the remaining details of an absolute monarchy follow in a symmetrical and logical sequence.