Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/444

418 anticipated Strauss. Having worked for thirty years at his book De la Religion, he declared in the end that liberalism was inadequate, and that religion alone could provide a sure foundation for social life. He had, of course, no other religion to offer than that of his Adolphe, a sentimental amalgam of Rousseau and Jacobi, of Kant and Scottish philosophy. [sic] Constant insisted further that philosophy could not replace religion, for philosophy did not leave room for faith and would therefore never be accepted by the people—religion was essential to the populace, and Voltaire recognised that there must be a religion for his tailor. Even Locke, who had so long ago and so ardently advocated toleration, desired that for the sake of social order atheism should be made a capital offence. Constant followed Locke in this matter, but liberalised Locke's teaching.

After 1848, liberalism aimed more and more at the promotion of governmental efficiency. Whilst the old liberalism had adopted Sieyès' saying, "le roi reigne mais ne gouverne pas," the new liberalism inclined to favour Napoleon's dictum that the monarch is no mere "cochon à l'engrais." Bismarck's antiparliamentarian creed, and Prussian and Austrian constitutionalist practice, were more honoured than English parliamentarism. The night-watchman theory of the state was abandoned by the liberals, now that they had been admitted to a share in the powers of government. They supported an extension of state authority, abandoning their earlier and more radical tenets of antimilitarism and democracy, and advocating political centralisation as contrasted with the earlier liberal aspiration for autonomy and self-government.

Liberalism has thus arrived at the apotheosis of the state. Belief in the state is upon the same footing as belief in God, now that constitutionalism has transformed the liberals themselves into parts of this mundane god. A certain liberal, and what is more an American and a republican, Burgess, the teacher of constitutional law, has in conformity with the old English maxim that the king can do no wrong, seriously declared the state to be infallible. The state, be it noted, is infallible, not the president, but the state as principle, the state as an institution, the state as the liberal god.

To the liberalism of the manufacturing classes, imperialism has been thoroughly welcome, and the liberals have understood very well how to adapt their formulas to imperialist ideas,