Excerpt from The Abbe De Lamennais: And the Liberal Catholic Movement in France Following the local and personal exaggerations, as well as the apparent failure of the Revolution, it was natural that the earlier of this series of writers should have given to their work, superficially at least, the character of a reactionary movement. But we should bear in mind that in reality a return to the dead past was impossible and that they, and especi ally De Maistre with his profound insight into human nature, were not unaware of this. Had it been other wise they could have had no message for their time, and consequently would have been starved by neglect out of the world of life and movement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.