"
In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century,
yet more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make
a last desperate defence of the sacred theory. The leaders in
this effort were the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De
Bonald, and Lamennais. Condillac's contention that "languages
were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had
his share of the general result," they attacked with reasoning
based upon premises drawn from the book of Genesis. De Maistre
especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific
theory. Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn in
the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that
"man can no more think without words than see without light." And
then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well known in
the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches his
argument by saying, "The Word is truly and in every sense `the
light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
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