Trappist, and, later, a Jesuit. He knew himself better when he shrank so
long and persistently from the yoke of priesthood, and when, having
yielded against his truer instincts to the indiscreet zeal of pious
friends, he experienced an agony of repugnance at his first Mass. With
different antecedents he might have profited by the yoke, but as things
stood it could but gall him.

In spite of Mr. Gibson's contention to the contrary, it can hardly be
maintained that De Lamennais was well educated in the strict sense of
the expression. The evidence he adduces points to a marvellous diversity
of interests, and even to close and careful reading. But on the whole he
was self-taught, and a self-taught man is never educated. Without
intercourse with other living minds, education is impossible. This is
indeed hoisting De Lammenais with his own petard. For, according to
"Traditionalism," the mind is paralyzed by isolation, and can be duly
developed only in society. An overweening self-confidence and slight
regard for the labours of other thinkers usually characterizes
self-taught genius. This it was that led him to cut all connection with
the philosophy of the past, and to attempt to build up, single-handed, a
new system to supplant that which had been the fruit of the collective
mind-labour of centuries. "I shall work out," he writes calmly to the
Abbé Brute, "a new system for the defence of Christianity against
infidels and heretics, a very simple system, in which the proofs will be
so rigorous that unless one is prepared to give up the right of saying
_I am_, it will be necessary to say _Credo_ to the very end." Only a man
with a very slight and superficial acquaintance with the endeavours of
previous apologists, and the extreme difficulty of the problem, could
speak with such portentous self-confidence. And the result bears out
this remark. For grand and imposing as is the structure of the _Essai
sur l'Indifférence,_ it rests on fallacies so patent that none but a man