ABSTRACT
He who would understand the decay of society and would seek the path to a sound one should realise that even here it is the Spirit "which forms the body". It will be no easy matter to make this clear to our rationalist friend and to deflect him from his customary habit of ignoring such trifles as space and history or of constructing an independent individual willing to associate freely with others of his kind. Rationalist folly is not merely a reaction to political Absolutsim but is in effect its continuance, at least in spirit and partly even in aim. This is particularly true of France, that nation whose intellectual fame illuminated all Europe during the eighteenth century and which yet played such a fateful role in the aberrations of rationalism. The essence as also the weakness of Positivism is to be found in the narrow grasp of the conception of "fact".
