The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions Quotes

“Nothing great has great beginnings.”
― Joseph de Maistre, Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions

“Those who are content to corrupt ancient institutions, while at the same time preserving the exterior forms, have done as much evil to the human race.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“It is written, By me kings reign. This is not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the preacher; it is a literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races; maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honour; they take their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“These ideas (taken in their general sense) were not unknown to the ancient philosophers : they keenly felt the impotency, I had almost said the nothingness, of writing, in great institutions; but no one of them has seen this truth more clearly, or expressed it more happily, than Plato, whom we always find the first upon the track of all great truths. According to him, “the man who is wholly indebted to writing for his instruction, will only possess the appearance of wisdom. The word, he adds, is to writing, what the man is to his portrait. The productions of the pencil present themselves to our eyes as living things; but if we interrogate them, they maintain a dignified silence. It is the same with writing, which knows not what to say to one man, nor what to conceal from another. If you attack it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend itself; for its author is never present to sustain it. So that he who imagines himself capable of establishing, clearly and permanently, one single doctrine, by writing alone, is a great blockhead. If he really possessed the true germs of truth, he would not indulge the thought, that with a little black liquid and a pen he could cause them to germinate in the world, defend them from the inclemency of the season, and communicate to them the necessary efficacy. As for the man who undertakes to write laws or civil constitutions, and who fancies that, because he has written them, he is able to give them adequate evidence and stability, whoever he may be, a private man or legislator, he disgraces himself, whether we say it or not; for he has proved thereby that he is equally ignorant of the nature of inspiration and delirium, right and wrong, good and evil. Now, this ignorance is a reproach, though the entire mass of the vulgar should unite in its praise.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“We cannot but lament here over the fundamental fallacy of a system which has so unhappily divided Europe. The partizans of this system have said, We believe only in the Word of God. What abuse of words! what a strange and melancholy ignorance of Divine things! We alone believe in the Word, whilst our dear enemies are obstinately resolved to believe only in scripture; as if God could or would change the nature of things of which He is the Author, and impart to scripture the life and efficacy which it has not! The Holy Scripture—is it not then a writing? Has it not been traced with a pen and a little black liquid? Does it know what it is needful to say to one man, and what to withhold from another? Did not Leibnitz and his maid servant read in it the same words? Can this Scripture be any thing else than the image of the Word? And though infinitely venerable in this respect, if we should interrogate it, must it not keep a divine silence? If it should be attacked or insulted, can it defend itself in the absence of its Author? Glory to the truth! If the Word, eternally living, does not quicken the scripture, it will never become the word, that is to say, the life. Let others invoke then, as much as they please, the silent word; we will smile peacefully at this false god; always expecting, with a tender impatience the moment when its partisans, undeceived, will throw themselves into our arms, opened to embrace them for three centuries past.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“It were indeed desirable for us,” says one of the most eloquent of the Greek fathers, “never to have required the aid of the written word, ut to have had the Divine precepts written only in our hearts, by grace, as they are written with ink in our books; but since we have lost this grace by our own fault, let us then, as it is necessary, seize a plank instead of the vessel, without however forgetting the pre-eminence of the first state. God never revealed any thing in writing to the elect of the Old Testament: He always spoke to them directly, because He saw the purity of their hearts; but the Hebrew people having fallen into the very abyss of wickedness, books and laws became necessary. The same proceeding is repeated under the empire of the New Revelation; for Christ did not leave a single writing to his Apostles. Instead of books, he promised to them the Holy Spirit: It is He, saith our Lord to them, who shall teach you what you shall speak. But because, in process of time, sinful men rebelled against the faith and against morality, it was necessary to have recourse to books.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“They show the profound imbecility (it is certainly permissible to speak like Plato, who never loses his temper,) the profound imbecility, I say, of those poor men who imagine that lawgivers are men, that laws are a piece of paper, and that nations may be constituted with ink.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“In short, not to go out of generalities, if we do not return to the old maxims, if education is not restored into the hands of priests, and if science is not every where placed in the second rank, the evils which await us are incalculable: we shall become brutalized by science, and this is the lowest degree of brutality.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“The question is frequently asked: why there is a school of theology attached to every University? The answer is easy: It is, that the Universities may subsist, and that the instruction may not become corrupt. Originally, the Universities were only schools of theology, to which other faculties were joined, as subjects around their Queen. The edifice of public instruction, placed on such a foundation, has continued even to our day. Those who have subverted it among themselves, will repent it, in vain, for a long time to come. To burn a city, there is needed only a child or a madman; but to rebuild it, architects, materials, workmen, money, and especially time, will be required.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“When it is a question of abuses in political institutions, it is necessary to take great care to judge of them only by their constant effects, and never by any of their causes, of whatever kind, which signify nothing still less by certain collateral inconveniences (if I may so express myself ) which men of limited views readily lay hold of, and are thus prevented from seeing the whole together. Indeed, the cause, according to the hypothesis which seems to be proved, not having any logical relation to the effect; and the inconveniences of an institution, good in itself, being only, as I have just said, an inevitable dissonance in the general key; how can we judge of institutions by their causes and inconveniences?—Voltaire, who spoke of every thing, during an age, without having so much as penetrated below the surface, has reasoned very humorously on the sale of the offices of the magistracy which occurred in France; and no instance, perhaps, could be more apposite to make us sensible of the truth of the theory which I am setting forth. That this sale is an abuse, says he, is proved by the fact, that it originated in another abuse. Voltaire does not mistake here as every man is liable to mistake. He shamefully mistakes. It is a total eclipse of common sense. Everything which springs from an abuse, an abuse! On the contrary; one of the most general and evident laws of this power, at once secret and striking, which acts and makes itself to be felt on every side, is, that the remedy of an abuse springs from an abuse, and that the evil, having reached a certain point, destroys itself, as it ought to do; for evil, which is only a negation, has, for measure of dimension and duration, that of the being to which it is joined, and which it destroys. It exists as an ulcer, which can only terminate in self-destruction. But then a new reality will necessarily occupy the place of that which has disappeared; for nature abhors a vacuum, and the Good. But I diverge too far from Voltaire.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“What prudent man, then, will not shudder in putting his hand to the work? Social harmony, like musical concord, is subject to the law of temperament in the general key. Adjust the fifths accurately, and the octaves will jar, and conversely. The dissonance being then inevitable, instead of excluding it, which is impossible, it must be qualified by distribution. Thus, on both sides, imperfection is an element of possible perfection. In this proposition there is only the form of a paradox. But, it will perhaps still be said, where is the rule by which you may distinguish the accidental defect, from that which belongs to the nature of things, and which it is impossible to exclude?—Men to whom nature has given only ears, ask questions of this kind; and those who have an ear shrug their shoulders.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“The more we examine the influence of human agency in the formation of political constitutions, the greater will be our conviction that it enters there only in a manner infinitely subordinate, or as a simple instrument; and I do not believe there remains the least doubt of the incontestable truth of the following propositions:—

1. That the fundamental principles of political constitutions exist before all written law.

2. That a constitutional law is, and can only be, the developement or sanction of an unwritten pre-existing right.

3. That which is most essential, most intrinsically constitutional, and truly fundamental, is never written, and could not be, without endangering the state.

4. That the weakness and fragility of a constitution are actually in direct proportion to the multiplicity of written constitutional articles.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“One of the grand errors of an age, which professed them all, was, to believe that a political constitution could be written and created à priori; whilst reason and experience unite in establishing, that a constitution is a Divine work, and that that which is most fundamental, and most essentially constitutional, in the laws of a nation, is precisely what cannot be written.”
― Joseph de Maistre, The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

“The productions of the pencil present themselves to our eyes as living things; but if we interrogate them, they maintain a dignified silence. It is the same with writing, which knows not what to say to one man, nor what to conceal from another. If you attack it or insult it without a cause, it cannot defend itself; for its author is never present to sustain it. So that he who imagines himself
capable of establishing, clearly, and permanently, one single doctrine, by
writing alone, IS A GREAT BLOCKHEAD.”
― Joseph de Maistre, Essai sur le Principe Générateur des Constitutions Politiques et des Autres Institutions Humaines

“The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter of course, hesitated in nothing.”
― Joseph de Maistre, Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions