Philosophism

French Philosophism has arisen; in which little word how much do we include! Here, indeed, lies properly the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. Faith is gone out; Scepticism is come in.

French "philosophism" led to scepticism and on to atheism, but worse still, it discredited as chimera anything not immediately “logical” or tangible, leaving the human being without a spiritual rock to anchor a moral compass.

Thus (to stop at the case we have before us) mythologism, which intends to be the opposite of philosophism and to work with blind fancy instead of with empty concepts, is obliged in order to save itself from the attacks of criticism to have recourse to philosophism; and religion is then called theology. Theology is philosophism, because it works with concepts which are empty of all historical and empirical content.