THE SENATOR: This is an abyss into which it is better no to look.
THE COUNT: Mu friend, we are not free not to look.
Joseph de Maistre, St Petersburg Dialogues
Citado por John Gray en "Black Mass, Apocalyptic Religion an the Death of Utopia"(2007)
Isaiah Berlin called The Executioner, which appears in the first dialogue, "the most famous passage in the whole of Maistre’s works".
Is he a man? Yes: God receives him in his temples and permits him to pray. He is not a criminal; yet no language will consent to say, for example, that he is virtuous, that he is an honest man, that he is estimable, etc. No moral praise can be applied to him, since all such praise presupposes relations with other men, and he has none.
And yet all greatness, all power, all subordination depend upon the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove from the world this incomprehensible agent, and at that very instant order gives way to chaos, thrones collapse, and society disappears. God, who is the author of sovereignty, is therefore also the author of punishment: he has cast our world upon these two poles: for Jehovah is the master of the hinges of the earth, and upon them he has set the world (Domini enim sunt cardines terrae et posuit super eos orbem).
Est-ce un homme ? Oui : Dieu le reçoit dans ses temples et lui permet de prier. Il n’est pas criminel ; cependant aucune langue ne consent à dire, par exemple, qu’il est vertueux, qu’il est honnête homme, qu’il est estimable, etc. Nul éloge moral ne peut lui convenir, car tous supposent des rapports avec les hommes, et il n’en a point.
Et cependant toute grandeur, toute puissance, toute subordination repose sur l’exécuteur : il est l’horreur et le lien de l’association humaine. Otez du monde cet agent incompréhensible ; dans l’instant même l’ordre fait place au chaos, les trônes s’abîment et la société disparaît. Dieu, qui est l’auteur de la souveraineté, l’est donc aussi du châtiment : il a jeté notre terre sur ces deux pôles: car Jêhovah est le maître des deux pôles, et sur eux il fait tourner le monde (Domini enim sunt cardines terrae et posuit super eos orbem).
