MAISTRE, Count Joseph Maire de

MAISTRE, Count Joseph Maire de, a statesman and philosopher, was born at Chambéry in Piedmont, on the 1st April 1753. His father, who held the honourable office of president of the senate of Savoy, directed his education with much care; and the industry and success of the son amply rewarded the solicitude of the parent. Having completed his education at the university of Turin with great distinction at the age of twenty, the following year saw him elevated to the rank of a magistrate, and in 1788 he was promoted to the dignity of a senator. On the French invasion in 1792 he was compelled to take refuge in Lausanne, where he remained till 1797, when he returned to Piedmont, only to leave it again for Venice. He remained in the latter city till 1800, when a call from

Maitland. the King of Sardinia to occupy an important political position in connection with the government of that kingdom, induced him to embark again in public life. Count de Maistre was sent as an ambassador to St Petersburg in 1803, where he remained till 1817. He died on the 26th February 1821, in his sixty-eighth year.

The writings of Count de Maistre are of a twofold character. The Soirées de Saint Pétersbourg, and the Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon, belong more properly to philosophy; while the Essai sur le Principe Générateur des Constitutions Politiques; Le Pape; the Considérations sur la France, &c., are devoted to an exposition and defence of the political and social views of the author. The Soirées—which, by its popular form, its nervous and picturesque style, and the vigorous talent and pleasant wit which pervade it, exerted great influence—runs through a series of subtle metaphysical questions, handled with the apparent ease of a man of the world, and with all the grace of unstudied conversation. But his philosophy is more the reflex of his social ideas and political feelings than the product of calm reflection and steady adherence to the phenomena of observation. The principal design of De Maistre's philosophy is to justify or explain the temporal government of Providence; to show that the sufferings to which mankind are subjected are in no wise contradictory of the attributes of the Deity. He maintains that the good and the bad are alike subject to calamities, but that the good have less to suffer than the bad; that the good man suffers not as good, but as man; that man suffers in consequence of original sin; and that our only deliverance consists in personal prayer and the intercession and merits of the good employed in our behalf. He sums up his scheme of moral government by alleging, that "sovereignty and punishment are the two poles upon which God has poised the world." As for his religious and political sentiments, he advocates the divine right of legitimate sovereigns, passive obedience, the authority of the church in matters of faith, the supremacy of the pope, and the superiority of ecclesiastical over temporary authority. His system betrays two peculiar tendencies,—the one towards asceticism, the other towards mysticism. A complete edition of De Maistre's works was published at Paris 1821-36.