He aimed at showing that it can "enchanter l'ame aussi divinement que les dieux de Virgile et d'Homere." He might call to his help the Fathers of the Church, but it was on Dante, Milton, Racine that his case was really based.

The book is an apologia, from the aesthetic standpoint of the Romantic school.

"Dieu ne defend pas les routes fleuries quand elles servent a revenir a lui." It was a matter of course that the defender of original sin should reject the doctrine of perfectibility.

"When man attains the highest point of civilisation," wrote Chateaubriand in the vein of Rousseau, "he is on the lowest stair of morality; if he is free, he is rude; by civilising his manners, he forges himself chains.

His heart profits at the expense of his head, his head at the expense of his heart." And, apart from considerations of Christian doctrine, the question of Progress had little interest for the Romantic school.