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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Heavenly Father
+       Lectures on Modern Atheism
+
+Author: Ernest Naville
+
+Translator: Henry Downton
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18168]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEAVENLY FATHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Maddock, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HEAVENLY FATHER.
+
+Lectures on Modern Atheism.
+
+BY
+
+ERNEST NAVILLE,
+
+CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE (ACADEMY OF THE MORAL
+AND POLITICAL SCIENCES), LATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
+OF GENEVA.
+
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
+
+BY HENRY DOWNTON, M.A.,
+
+ENGLISH CHAPLAIN AT GENEVA.
+
+
+     --"To this deplorable error I desire to oppose faith in GOD as it
+     has been given to the world by the Gospel--faith in the HEAVENLY
+     FATHER."
+                _Author's Letter to Professor Faraday_ (v. p. 193).
+
+
+BOSTON:
+
+WILLIAM V. SPENCER
+
+1867.
+
+CAMBRIDGE:
+
+PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+These Lectures, in their original form, were delivered at Geneva, and
+afterwards at Lausanne, before two auditories which together numbered
+about two thousand five hundred men. A Swiss Review published
+considerable portions of them, which had been taken down in short-hand,
+and on reading these portions, several persons, belonging to different
+countries, conceived the idea of translating the work when completed by
+the Author, and corrected for publication. Proof-sheets were accordingly
+sent to the translators as they came from the press: and thus this
+volume will appear pretty nearly at the same time in several of the
+languages of Europe.
+
+The hearty kindness with which my fellow-countrymen received my words
+has been to me both a delight and an encouragement. The expressions of
+sympathy which have reached me from abroad allow me to hope that these
+pages, notwithstanding the deficiencies and imperfections of which I am
+keenly sensible, reflect some few of the rays of the truth which God has
+deposited on the earth, thereby to unite in the same faith and hope men
+of every tongue and every nation.
+
+                                                    ERNEST NAVILLE.
+
+GENEVA, _May, 1865_.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+
+The appearance of this translation so long after that of the original
+work is in contradiction to the foregoing statement of the Author, that
+it would appear at nearly the same time with it. The delay has been due
+to causes beyond the translator's control--in part to the difficulty of
+revising the press at so great a distance from the place of publication,
+the translator being resident at Geneva. This latter circumstance causes
+an exception in another particular as regards this translation, the
+proposal to translate the Lectures having been made to the Author, and
+kindly accepted by him, during the course of their delivery at Geneva.
+
+The mere statement by the Author of the numbers, large as they were, of
+those who formed the auditories, can give but a small idea of the
+enthusiasm with which they were received by the crowds which thronged to
+hear them, and which were composed of all classes of persons, from the
+most distinguished savant to the intelligent artisan.
+
+It is not to be expected that the Lectures when read, even in the
+original, and still less in a translation, can produce the vivid
+impression which they made on those, who, with the translator, had the
+privilege of hearing them delivered,--the Author having few rivals, on
+the Continent or elsewhere, in the graces of polished eloquence; but the
+subjects treated are, it is to be feared, of increasing importance, not
+abroad only, but in England; and in fact one Lecture, the fourth, is in
+a large measure occupied with forms of atheism which owe their chief
+support to English authors. In that Lecture the Author shows that the
+spiritual origin of man cannot "be put out of sight beneath details of
+physiology and researches of natural history," and that these not only
+"cannot settle," but "cannot so much as touch the question."
+
+The same Lecture is occupied in part by a practical refutation of the
+prejudice against religion drawn from the irreligious character of many
+men of science. The Author's subject has led him in the present work to
+confine his illustrations on this head to the question of natural
+religion: but the translator will avow that a main motive with him to
+undertake the labor of this translation has been the wish to prove, in
+the instance of the distinguished Author himself, that men of
+incontestable eminence as metaphysical philosophers may hold and profess
+boldly their faith in doctrines, which many who affect to guide the
+religious opinions of our youth would teach them to despise as the
+heritage of narrow minds, and to cast away as incompatible with the
+highest intellectual cultivation. Such doctrines are those of the fall
+and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine agency in his
+recovery, his need of propitiation by the sacrifice of the
+God-Man--_l'Homme-Dieu_. These truths are explicitly stated by the
+Author in his former course of lectures--_La Vie Eternelle_,[1] in
+which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the
+portion of the righteous, he does not shrink from declaring his belief
+in its awful counterpart, the eternal condemnation of the wicked.
+
+"The offence of the Cross" has not "ceased," and many finding that these
+are the opinions of this Author, will perhaps lay down his book as
+unworthy of their attention: yet the editor, biographer, and expositor
+of the great French thinker, Maine de Biran, will not need introduction
+to the intellectual magnates of our own or of any country. The
+translator will be thankful, if some of those,--the youth more
+especially,--of his own country, who have been dazzled by the glare of
+false science, shall find in this work a help to the reassuring of their
+faith, while they learn in a fresh example that there are men quite
+competent to deal with the profoundest problems which can exercise our
+thoughts, who at the same time have come to a conviction,--compatible as
+they believe with principles of the clearest reason,--of the truth of
+those very doctrines which form the substance of evangelical
+Christianity. In saying this, the translator is far from claiming the
+Author as belonging to the same school of theology with himself: but
+differing with him on some important points, he has yet believed that
+this volume is calculated to be of much use in the present condition of
+religious thought in England, and in this hope and prayer he commends it
+to the blessing of Him, whose being and attributes, as our God and
+Father in Jesus Christ, are therein asserted and defended.
+
+GENEVA, _November, 1865_.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] A translation of this work, by an English lady, has been published
+by Mr. Dalton, 28, Cockspur street.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+                             PAGE
+OUR IDEA OF GOD                 1
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+LIFE WITHOUT GOD               43
+  PART I.--THE INDIVIDUAL      45
+  PART II.--SOCIETY            72
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM        117
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+NATURE                        175
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+HUMANITY                      245
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+THE CREATOR                   297
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE FATHER                    340
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+_OUR IDEA OF GOD._
+
+(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, a German writer published a
+piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with
+the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah
+who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the
+living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth
+century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon the obsequies of the Eternal.
+
+I was young when these strange words met my eyes, and they produced in
+me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven
+them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many
+tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that men
+of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind,
+are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion
+in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath
+the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science,
+beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the
+ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the
+foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy
+words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a
+shudder of fright through society--more than threatening war, more than
+possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the
+dark against the security of persons or of property--is, the number, the
+importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days
+to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.
+
+This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should
+wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this
+term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is,
+either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which
+so many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who say that it
+is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution, who apply themselves to
+this work. They are too generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack
+upon a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by the intensity of
+their exertions, that in their own opinion they have something else to
+do than to give a finishing stroke to the dying.
+
+Present circumstances are serious, not for religion itself, which cannot
+be imperilled, but for minds which run the risk of losing their balance
+and their support. Let it be observed, however, that when it is said
+that we are living in extraordinary times, that we are passing through
+an unequalled crisis, that the like of what we see was never seen
+before, and so on, we must always regard conclusions of this nature with
+distrust. Our personal interest in the circumstances which immediately
+surround us produces on them for us the magnifying effect of a
+microscope: and our principal reason for thinking that our epoch is more
+extraordinary than others, is for the most part that we are living in
+our own epoch, and have not lived in others. A mind attentive to this
+fact, and so placed upon its guard against all tendency to
+exaggeration, will easily perceive that religious thought has in former
+times passed through shocks as profound and as dangerous as those of
+which we are witnesses. Still the crisis is a real one. Taking into
+account its extent in our days, we may say that it is new for the
+generation to which we belong; and it is worthy of close consideration.
+To-day, as an introduction to this grave subject, I should wish first to
+determine as precisely as possible what is our idea of God; to inquire
+next from what sources we derive it; and lastly to point out, as clearly
+as I may, the limits and the nature of the discussion to which I invite
+you.
+
+In asking what sense we must give to the word "God," I am not going to
+propose to you a metaphysical definition, or any system of my own: I am
+inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the bosom of modern
+society, in the souls which live by this idea, in the hearts of which it
+constitutes the joy, in the consciences of which it is the support.
+
+When our thoughts rise above nature and humanity to that invisible Being
+whom we speak of as God, what is it which passes in our souls? They
+fear, they hope, they pray, they offer thanksgiving. If a man finds
+himself in one of those desperate positions in which all human help
+fails, he turns towards Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of
+one of those instances of revolting injustice which stir the conscience
+in its profoundest depths, and which could not on earth meet with
+adequate punishment, we think within ourselves,--There is a Judge on
+high! If we are reproved by our own conscience, the voice of that
+conscience, which disturbs and sometimes torments us, reminds us that
+though we may be shut out from all human view, there is no less an Eye
+which sees us, and a just award awaiting us. Thus it is (I am seeking to
+establish facts) that the thought of God operates, so to speak, in the
+souls of those who believe in Him. If you look for the meaning common to
+all these manifestations of man's heart, what do you find? Fear, hope,
+thanksgiving, prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power
+intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to act upon our
+destinies. This is the idea which is found at the basis of all
+religions; not only of the religion of the only God, but of the most
+degraded forms of idolatrous worship. All religion rests upon the
+sentiment of one or more invisible Powers, superior to nature and to
+humanity.
+
+When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it disengages from the general
+sentiment of power the definite idea of the cause which becomes the
+explanation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by virtue of its very
+constitution, finds a need of conceiving of an absolute cause which
+escapes by its eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite character
+the bounds of limited existences; a principle, the necessary being of
+which depends on no other; in a word a unique cause, establishing by its
+unity the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with the idea of the
+sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches itself to it as the only thought
+which accounts to it for the world and for itself.
+
+The Creator is, first of all, He whose glory the heavens declare, while
+the earth makes known the work of His hands. He is the Mighty One and
+the Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who directs at once
+the chorus of stars in the depths of the heavens, and the drop of vital
+moisture in the herb which we tread under foot.
+
+If, after having looked around, we turn our regard in upon ourselves, we
+then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like
+stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man
+to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty.
+Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments
+may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions,
+pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if
+all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues
+from the depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. Our
+aspirations toward these spiritual excellences are unlimited. Our
+thought sets out on its course: have we solved one question? immediately
+new questions arise, which press, no less than the former, for an
+answer. Our conscience speaks: have we come in a certain degree to
+realize what is right and good? immediately conscience demands of us
+still more. Is our feeling for beauty awakened? Well, sirs, when an
+artist is satisfied with the work of his hands, do you not know at once
+what to think of him? Do you not know that that man will never do any
+thing great, who does not see shining in his horizon an ideal which
+stamps as imperfect all that he has been able to realize? The voice
+which urges us on through life from the cradle to the grave, and which,
+without allowing us a moment's pause, is ever crying--Forward! forward!
+this voice is not more imperious than the noble instinct which, in the
+view of beauty, of truth, of good, is also saying to us--Forward!
+forward! and, with the American poet, _Excelsior!_ higher, ever higher!
+Many of you know that instinct familiar to the _climbers of the
+Alps_,[2] as they are called, who, arrived at one summit, have no rest
+so long as there remains a loftier height in view. Such is our destiny;
+but the last peak is veiled in shining clouds which conceal it from our
+sight. Perfection,--this is the point to which our nature aspires; but
+it is the ladder of Jacob: we see the foot which rests upon the earth;
+the summit hides itself from our feeble view amidst the splendors of the
+infinite.
+
+These objects of our highest desires--beauty in its supreme
+manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite truth--are united in one and
+the same thought--God! The attributes of the spiritual are never in us
+but as borrowed attributes; they dwell naturally in Him who is their
+source. God is the truth, not only because He knows all things, but
+because He is the very object of our thoughts; because, when we study
+the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws which He has
+imposed on things; because, to know truth is never any thing else than
+to know the creation or the Creator, the world or its eternal Cause. God
+it is who must be Himself the satisfaction of that craving of the
+conscience which urges us towards holiness. If we had arrived at the
+highest degree of virtue, what should we have done? We should have
+realized the plan which He has proposed to spiritual creatures in their
+freedom, at the same time that He is directing the stars in their
+courses by that other word which they accomplish without having heard
+it. God is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who has shed grace
+upon our valleys, and majesty upon our mountains; and He, again, it is
+(I quote St. Augustine) who acts within the souls of artists, those
+great artists, who, urged unceasingly towards the regions of the ideal,
+feel themselves drawn onwards towards a divine world.
+
+God then above all is He who _is_,--the Absolute, the Infinite, the
+Eternal,--in the ever mysterious depths of His own essence. In His
+relation to the world, He is the cause; in His relation to the lofty
+aspirations of the soul, He is the ideal. He is the ideal, because being
+the absolute cause, He is the unique source, at the same time that He is
+the object, of our aspirations: He is the absolute cause, because being
+He who _is_, in His supreme unity, nothing could have existence except
+by the act of His power. We are able already to recognize here, in
+passing, the source at which are fed the most serious aberrations of
+religious thought. Are truth, holiness, beauty considered separately
+from the real and infinite Spirit in which is found their reason for
+existing? We see thus appear philosophies noble in their commencement,
+but which soon descend a fatal slope. The divine, so-called, is spoken
+of still; but the divine is an abstraction, and apart from God has no
+real existence. If truth, beauty, holiness are not the attributes of an
+eternal mind, but the simple expression of the tendencies of our soul,
+man may render at first a sort of worship to these lofty manifestations
+of his own nature; but logic, inexorable logic, forces him soon to
+dismiss the divine to the region of chimeras. These rays are
+extinguished together with their luminous centre; the soul loses the
+secret of its destinies, and, in the measureless grief which possesses
+it, it proclaims at length that all is vanity. We shall have, in the
+sequel, to be witnesses together of this sorrowful spectacle.
+
+Such is the basis of our idea of God: we must now discover its summit.
+Before the thought of this Sovereign Being, by whose Will are all
+things, and who is without cause and without beginning, our soul is
+overwhelmed. We are so feeble! the thought of absolute power crushes us.
+Creatures of a day, how should we understand the Eternal? Frail as we
+are, and evil, we tremble at the idea of holiness. But milder accents,
+as you know, have been heard upon the earth: This Sovereign God--He
+loves us. In proportion as this idea gains possession of our
+understanding, in the same proportion our soul has glimpses of the paths
+of peace. He loves us, and we take courage. He hears us, and prayer
+rises to Him with the hope of being heard. He governs all, and we
+confide in His Providence. When your gaze is directed towards the depths
+of the sky, does it never happen to you to remain in a manner terrified,
+as you contemplate those worlds which without end are added to other
+worlds? As you fix your thoughts upon the immeasurable abysses of the
+firmament,--as you say to yourselves that how far soever you put back
+the boundary of the skies, if the universe ended there, then the
+universe, with its suns and its groups of stars, would still be but a
+solitary lamp, shining as a point in the midst of the limitless
+darkness,--have you never experienced a sort of mysterious fright and
+giddiness? At such a time turn your eyes upon nearer objects. He who has
+made the heavens with their immensity, is He who makes the corn to
+spring forth for your sustenance, who clothes the fields with the
+flowers which rejoice your sight, who gives you the fresh breath of
+morning, and the calm of a lovely evening: it is He, without whose
+permission nothing occurs, who watches over you and over those you love.
+Possess yourselves thoroughly with this thought of love, then lift once
+more your eyes to the sky, and from every star, and from the worlds
+which are lost in the furthest depths of space, shall fall upon your
+brow, no longer clouded, a ray of love and of peace. Then with a feeling
+of sweet affiance you will adopt as your own those words of an ancient
+prophet: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee
+from Thy Presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make
+my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the
+morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall
+Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me:"[3] then you will
+understand those grand and sweet words of Saint Augustine, some of the
+most beautiful that ever fell from the lips of a man: "Are you afraid of
+God? Run to His arms!"
+
+Thus our idea of God is completed,--the idea of Him whom, in a feeling
+of filial confidence, we name the Father, and whom we call the
+_Heavenly_ Father, while we adore that absolute holiness, of which the
+pure brightness of the firmament is for us the visible and magnificent
+symbol. Goodness is the secret of the universe; goodness it is which has
+directed power, and placed wisdom at its service.
+
+My object is not to teach this idea, but to defend it: it is not, I say,
+to teach it, for we all possess it. There is no one here who has not
+received his portion of the sacred deposit. This sacred idea may be
+veiled by our sorrows, perverted by our errors, obscured by our faults;
+but, however thick be the layer of ashes heaped together in the depth of
+our souls--look closely: the sacred spark is not extinguished, and a
+favorable breath may still rekindle the flame.
+
+We have considered the essential elements of which our idea of God is
+composed. And whence comes this idea? What is its historical origin? I
+do not ask what is the historical origin of religion, for religion does
+not take its rise in history; it is met with everywhere and always in
+humanity. Those who deny this are compelled to "search in the darkness
+for some obscure example known only to themselves, as if all natural
+inclinations were destroyed by the corruption of a people, and as if, as
+soon as there are any monsters, the species were no longer any
+thing."[4] The consciousness of a world superior to the domain of
+experience is one of the attributes characteristic of our nature. "If
+there had ever been, or if there still anywhere existed, a people
+entirely destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an
+exceptional downfall which would be tantamount to a lapse into
+animality."[5] I am not therefore inquiring after the origin of the
+idea and sentiment of the Deity, in a general sense, but after the
+origin of the idea of the only and Almighty Creator as we possess it. In
+fact, if religion is universal, distinct knowledge of the Creator is not
+so.
+
+Our own past strikes its roots into the historic soil which, in the
+matter of creeds, is known by the name of paganism or idolatry. At first
+sight what do we find in the opinions of that ancient world? No trace of
+the divine unity. Adoration is dispersed over a thousand different
+beings. Not only are the heavenly bodies adored and the powers of
+nature, but men, animals, and inanimate objects. The feeling of the
+holiness of God is not less wanting, it would seem, than the idea of His
+unity. Religion serves as a pretext for the unchaining of human
+passions. This is the case unfortunately with religion in general, and
+the true religion is no exception to the rule: but what characterizes
+paganism is that in its case religion, by its own proper nature, favors
+the development of immorality. Celebrated shrines become the dens of a
+prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered to the gods; the
+religious rites of ancient Asia, and those of Greece which fell under
+their influence, are notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false
+deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often also dishonored
+by frightful sacrifices. The ancient civilization of Mexico was elegant
+and even refined in some respects; but the altars were stained, every
+year, with the blood of thousands of human beings; and the votaries of
+this sanguinary worship devoured, in solemn banquets, the quivering
+limbs of the victims. Let us not look for examples too far removed from
+the civilization which has produced our own. In the Greek and Roman
+world, the stories of the gods were not very edifying, as every one
+knows: the worship of Bacchus gave no encouragement to temperance, and
+the festivals of Venus were not a school of chastity. It would be easy,
+by bringing together facts of this sort, to form a picture full of
+sombre coloring, and to conclude that our idea of God, the idea of the
+only and holy God, does not proceed from the impure sources of idolatry.
+The proceeding would be brief and convenient; but such an estimation of
+the facts, false because incomplete, would destroy the value of the
+conclusion. In pagan antiquity, in fact, the abominations of which I
+have just reminded you did not by themselves make up religious
+tradition. Side by side with a current of darkness and impurity, we meet
+with a current of pure ideas and of strong gleams of the day.
+
+Almost all the pagans seem to have had a glimpse of the Divine unity
+over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays of the Divine
+holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a Greek who wrote
+these words: "Nothing is accomplished on the earth without Thee, O God,
+save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in their folly."[6] It was in
+a theatre at Athens that the chorus of a tragedy sang, more than two
+thousand years ago: "May destiny aid me to preserve unsullied the purity
+of my words and of all my actions, according to those sublime laws
+which, brought forth in the celestial heights, have Heaven alone for
+their father, to which the race of mortal men did not give birth, and
+which oblivion shall never entomb. In them is a supreme God, and one who
+waxes not old."[7] It would be easy to multiply quotations of this
+order, and to show you in the documents of Grecian and Roman
+civilization numerous traces of the knowledge of the only and holy God.
+Listen now to a voice which has come forth actually from the recesses of
+the sepulchre: it reaches us from ancient Egypt.
+
+In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in
+popular practice complete. But, under the confused accents of
+superstition, the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar
+the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number
+of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred
+text which is called the _Book of the Dead_. Here is the translation of
+some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God
+who speaks: "I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that replenishes the
+earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of mortals. I am the
+Prince of the infinite ages. I am the great and mighty God, the Most
+High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of the armies
+which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise and who judge
+the evil-doers, and the persecutors of godly men. I discover and
+confound the liars.... I am the all-seeing Judge and Avenger ... the
+guardian of my laws in the land of righteousness."[8]
+
+These words are found mingled, in the text from which I extract them,
+with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be acknowledged that the
+translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is still uncertain enough.
+Still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to the general sense
+and bearing of the recent discoveries of our savants. Myself a simple
+learner from the masters of the science, I can only point out to you the
+result of their studies. Now, this is what the masters tell us as to the
+actual state of mythological studies. Traces are found almost
+everywhere, in the midst of idolatrous superstitions, of a religion
+comparatively pure, and often stamped with a lofty morality. Paganism is
+not a simple fact: it offers to view in the same bed two currents, the
+one pure and the other impure. What is the relation between these two
+currents? A passage in a writer of the Latin Church throws a vivid light
+upon their actual relation in practical life. It is thus that Lactantius
+expresses himself: "When man (the pagan) finds himself in adversity,
+then it is that he has recourse to God (to the only God). If the horrors
+of war threaten him, if there appear a contagious disease, a drought, a
+tempest, then he has recourse to God.... If he is overtaken by a storm
+at sea, and is in danger of perishing, immediately he calls upon God; if
+he finds himself in any urgent peril, he has recourse to God.... Thus
+men bethink themselves of God when they are in trouble; but as soon as
+the danger is past, and they are no longer in any fear, we see them
+return with joy to the temples of the false gods, make to them
+libations, and offer sacrifices to them."[9] This is a striking picture
+of the workings of man's heart in all ages; for, as our author observes,
+"God is never so much forgotten of men as when they are quietly enjoying
+the favors and blessings which He sends them."[10] As regards our
+special object, this page reveals in a very instructive manner the
+religious condition of heathen antiquity. The thought of the sovereign
+God was stifled without being extinguished; it awoke beneath the
+pressure of anguish; but ordinary life, the life of every day, belonged
+to the easy worship of idols.
+
+It may now be asked what is the historical relation between the two
+currents of paganism of which we have just established the actual
+relation in practical life. Did humanity begin with a coarse fetichism,
+and thence rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of
+a comparatively pure monotheism first show themselves in the most recent
+periods of idolatry? Contemporary science inclines more and more to
+answer in the negative. It is in the most ancient historical ground
+(allow me these geological terms) that the laborious investigators of
+the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut to the
+ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few years
+afterwards: in place of the tree cut down you will find coppice-wood;
+the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided amongst a
+multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the opinion
+which tends to prevail amongst our savants on the subject of the
+historical development of religions. The idea of the only God is at the
+root,--it is primitive; polytheism is derivative. A forgotten, and as it
+were slumbering, monotheism exists beneath the worship of idols; it is
+the concealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have absorbed all
+the sap. The ancient God (allow me once more a comparison) is like a
+sovereign confined in the interior of his palace: he is but seldom
+thought of, and only on great occasions; his ministers alone act,
+entertain requests, and receive the real homage.
+
+The proposition of the historical priority of monotheism is very
+important, and is not universally admitted. It will therefore be
+necessary to show you, by a few quotations at least, that I am not
+speaking rashly. One of the most accredited mythologists of our time,
+Professor Grimm, of Berlin, writes as follows: "The monotheistic form
+appears to be the more ancient, and that out of which antiquity in its
+infancy formed polytheism.... All mythologies lead us to this
+conclusion."[11] Among the French savants devoted to the study of
+ancient Egypt, the Vicomte de Rongé stands in the foremost rank. This is
+what he tells us: "In Egypt the supreme God was called the one God,
+living indeed, He who made all that exists, who created other beings. He
+is the Generator existing alone who made the heaven and created the
+earth." The writer informs us that these ideas are often found
+reproduced "in writings the date of which is anterior to Moses, and many
+of which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns;" then he comes
+to this conclusion: "Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of
+doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the
+soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading
+superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious
+history of all antiquity."[12] As regards the civilization which
+flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the
+subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns the religious
+idea, at the following conclusion: "To sum up: primitive monotheism of a
+character more or less vague, passing gradually into a polytheism still
+simple, such appears to have been the religion of the ancient
+Aryas."[13] One of our fellow-countrymen, who cultivates with equal
+modesty and perseverance the study of religious antiquities, has
+procured the greater part of the recent works published on these
+subjects in France, Germany, and England. He has read them, pen in hand,
+and, at my urgent request, he has kindly allowed me to look over his
+notes which have been long accumulating. I find the following sentence
+in the manuscripts which he has shown me: "The general impression of
+all the most distinguished mythologists of the present day is, that
+monotheism is at the foundation of all pagan mythology."
+
+The savants, I repeat, do not unanimously accept these conclusions:
+savants, like other men, are rarely unanimous. It is enough for my
+purpose to have shown that it is not merely the grand tradition
+guaranteed by the Christian faith, but also the most distinctly marked
+current of contemporary science, which tells us that God shone upon the
+cradle of our species. The august Form was veiled, and idolatry with its
+train of shameful rites shows itself in history as the result of a fall
+which calls for a restoration, rather than as the point of departure of
+a continued progress.
+
+The august Form was veiled. Who has lifted the veil? Not the priests of
+the idols. We meet in the history of paganism with movements of
+reformation, or, at the very least, of religious transformation:
+Buddhism is a memorable example of this; but it is not a return towards
+the pure traditions of India or of Egypt which has caused us to know the
+God whom we adore. Has the veil been lifted by reflection, that is to
+say by the labors of philosophers? Philosophy has rendered splendid
+services to the world. It has combated the abominations of idolatry; it
+has recognized in nature the proofs of an intelligent design; it has
+discerned in the reason the deeply felt need of unity; it has indicated
+in the conscience the sense of good, and shown its characteristics; it
+has contemplated the radiant image of the supreme beauty--still it is
+not philosophy which has restored for humanity the idea of God. Its
+lights mingled with darkness remained widely scattered, and without any
+focus powerful enough to give them strength for enlightening the world.
+To seek God, and consequently to know Him already in a certain measure;
+but to remain always before the altar of a God glimpsed only by an
+_élite_ of sages, and continuing for the multitudes the unknown God:
+such was the wisdom of the ancients. It prepared the soil; but it did
+not deposit in it the germ from which the idea of the Creator was to
+spring forth living and strong, to overshadow with its branches all the
+nations of the earth. And when this idea appeared in all its splendor,
+and began the conquest of the universe, the ancient philosophy, which
+had separated itself from heathen forms of worship, and had covered
+them with its contempt, contracted an alliance with its old adversaries.
+It accepted the wildest interpretations of the common superstitions, in
+order to be able to league itself with the crowd in one and the same
+conflict with the new power which had just appeared in the world. And
+this sums up in brief compass the whole history of philosophy in the
+first period of our era.
+
+The monotheism of the moderns does not proceed historically from
+paganism; it was prepared by the ancient philosophy, without being
+produced by it. Whence comes it then? On this head there exists no
+serious difference of opinion. Our knowledge of God is the result of a
+traditional idea, handed down from generation to generation in a
+well-defined current of history. Much obscurity still rests upon man's
+earliest religious history, but the truth which I am pointing out to you
+is solidly and clearly established. Pass, in thought, over the
+terrestrial globe. All the superstitions of which history preserves the
+remembrance are practised at this day, either in Asia or in Africa, or
+in the isles of the Ocean. The most ridiculous and ferocious rites are
+practised still in the light of the same sun which gilds, as he sets,
+the spires and domes of our churches. At this very day, there are
+nations upon the earth which prostrate themselves before animals, or
+which adore sacred trees. At this very day, perhaps at this hour in
+which I am addressing you, human victims are bound by the priests of
+idols; before you have left this room, their blood will have defiled the
+altars of false deities. At this very day, numerous nations, which have
+neither wanted time for self-development, nor any of the resources of
+civilization, nor clever poets, nor profound philosophers, belong to the
+religion of the Brahmins, or are instructed in the legends which serve
+as a mask to the pernicious doctrines of Buddha. Where do we meet with
+the clear idea of the Creator? In a unique tradition which proceeds from
+the Jews, which Christians have diffused, and which Mahomet corrupted.
+God is known, with that solid and general knowledge which founds a
+settled doctrine and a form of worship, under the influence of this
+tradition and nowhere else. We assert this as a simple fact of
+contemporary history; and there is scarcely any fact in history better
+established.
+
+The light comes to us from the Gospel. This light did not appear as a
+sudden and absolutely new illumination. It had cast pale gleams on the
+soul of the heathen in their search after the unknown God; it had shone
+apart upon that strange and glorious people which bears the name of
+Israel. Israel had preserved the primitive light encompassed by
+temporary safe-guards. It was the flame of a lamp, too feeble to live in
+the open air, and which remained shut up in a vase, until the moment
+when it should have become strong enough to shine forth from its
+shattered envelope upon the world. The worship of Jehovah is a local
+worship; but this worship, localized for a time, is addressed to the
+only and sovereign God. To every nation which says to Israel as Athaliah
+to Joash:
+
+
+     I have my God to serve--serve thou thine own,[14]
+
+
+Israel replies with Joash:
+
+
+     Nay, Madam, but my God is God alone;
+     Him must thou fear: thy God is nought--a dream![15]
+
+
+Israel does not affirm merely that the God of Israel is the only true
+God, but affirms moreover that the time will come when all the earth
+will acknowledge Him for the only and universal Lord. A grand thought, a
+grand hope, is in the soul of this people, and assures it that all
+nations shall one day look to Jerusalem. Its prophets threaten, warn,
+denounce chastisements, predict terrible catastrophes; but in the midst
+of their severer utterances breaks forth ever and again the song of
+future triumph:
+
+
+     Uplift, Jerusalem, thy queenly brow:
+     Light of the nations, and their glory, thou![16]
+
+
+Thus is preserved in the ancient world the knowledge of God amongst an
+exceptional people, amidst the darkness of idolatry and the glimmerings
+of an imperfect wisdom. And not only is it preserved, but it shines with
+a brightness more and more vivid and pure. The conception of sovereignty
+which constitutes its foundation, is crowned as it advances by the
+conception of love. At length He appears by whom the universal Father
+was to be known of all.
+
+Have you not remarked the surprising simplicity with which Jesus speaks
+of His work? He speaks of the universe and of the future as a lawful
+proprietor speaks of his property. The field in which the Word shall be
+sown is the world. He introduces that worship in spirit and in truth
+before which all barriers shall fall. He knows that humanity belongs to
+Him; and when He foretells His peaceful conquest, one knows not which
+predominates in His words, simplicity or grandeur. Now this predicted
+work has been done, is being done, and will be done. No one entertains
+any serious doubt of this. The idea of God, as it exists amongst
+Christian peoples, bears on its brow the certain sign of victory.
+
+In many respects, we are passing through the world in times which are
+not extraordinary, and among things little worthy of lasting record.
+Still great events are being accomplished before our eyes. The ancient
+East is shaken to its foundations. The work of foreign missions is taken
+up again with fresh energy. Ships, as they leave the shores of Europe,
+carry with them,--together with those who travel for purposes of
+commerce, or from curiosity, or as soldiers,--those new crusaders who
+exclaim: God wills it! and are ready to march to their death in order
+to proclaim the God of life to nations plunged in darkness. The advances
+of industry, the developments of commerce, the calculations of ambition,
+all conspire to diffuse spiritual light over the globe. These are noble
+spectacles, revealing clearly the traces of a superior design, which the
+mighty of this world are accomplishing, even by the craft and violence
+of their policy: they are the manifest instruments of a Will to which
+oftentimes they are insensible. The knowledge of God is extending; and
+while it is extending, it is enriching itself with its own conquests.
+Just as it absorbed the living sap of the doctrines of the Greeks, so it
+is strengthening itself with the doctrines of the ancient East and of
+old Egypt, which an indefatigable science is bringing again to light.
+Christian thought is growing, not by receiving any foreign impulse from
+without, but like a vigorous tree, whose roots traverse new layers of a
+fertile soil. All truth comes naturally to the centre of truth as to its
+rallying-point; and to the universal prayer must be gathered all the
+pure accents gone astray in the superstitious invocations which rise
+from the banks of the Ganges or from the burning regions of Africa. The
+day will come, when our planet, in its revolutions about the sun, shall
+receive on no point of its surface the rays of the orb of day, without
+sending back, over the ruins of idol-temples for ever overthrown, a song
+of thanksgiving to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, become through
+Jesus Christ the God of all mankind.
+
+We know now whence comes our idea of God: it is Christian in its origin.
+It proceeds from this source, not only for those who call themselves
+Christians, but for all those who, in the bosom of modern society,
+believe sincerely and seriously in God. But little study and reflection
+is required for the acknowledgment that the doctrines of our deists are
+the product of a reason which has been _evangelized_ without their own
+knowledge. They have not invented, but have received the thought, which
+constitutes the support of their life. A mind of ordinary cultivation is
+free henceforward from all danger of falling into the artless error of
+J.J. Rousseau, when he pretended that even though he had been born in a
+desert island and had never known a human being, he would have been able
+to draw up the confession of faith of the _Vicaire Savoyard_. The habit
+of historical research has dispelled these illusions. A French writer,
+distinguished for solid erudition, wrote not long ago: "The civilized
+world has received from Judea the foundations of its faith. It has
+learned of it these two things which pagan antiquity never
+knew--holiness and charity; for all holiness is derived from belief in a
+personal, spiritual God, Creator of the universe; and all charity from
+the doctrine of human brotherhood!"[17] Religion, in its most general
+sense, is found wherever there are men; but distinct knowledge of the
+Heavenly Father is the fruit of that word which comes to us from the
+borders of the Jordan,--a word in which all the true elements of ancient
+wisdom are found to have mutually drawn together, and strengthened each
+other. In the very heart of our civilization, those men of mind who
+succeed in freeing themselves in good earnest from the influence of this
+word come, oftener than not, to throw off all belief in the real and
+true God, if they have strength of mind enough properly to understand
+themselves.
+
+How is it that the full idea of the Creator,--an idea which true
+philosophers have sought after in all periods of history, and of which
+they have had, so to speak, glimpses and presentiments,--how is it that
+this idea is a living one only under the influence of the tradition
+which, proceeding originally from Abraham and Moses, has been continued
+by Jesus Christ? It is not impossible to point out the spiritual causes
+of this great historical phenomenon. Faith in God, in order to maintain
+itself in presence of the difficulties which rise in our minds, and--to
+come at once to the core of the question--the idea of the love of God,
+in order to maintain itself in presence of evil and of the power of evil
+on the earth, has need of resources which the Christian belief alone
+possesses. The knowledge of the Heavenly Father is essentially connected
+with the Gospel: this is the historical fact. This fact is accounted for
+by the existence of an organic bond between all the great Christian
+doctrines: this is my deliberate conviction. I frankly declare here my
+own opinions: to do so is for me a matter almost of honor and good
+faith; but I declare them, without desiring to lay any stress upon them
+in these lectures. My present object is to consider the idea of God by
+itself. I isolate it for my own purposes from Christian truth taken as a
+whole, but without making the separation in my thoughts. The thesis
+which I propose to maintain is common to all Christians, that is quite
+clear; but further; in a perfectly general sense, and in a merely
+abstract point of view, it is a proposition maintained equally by the
+disciples of Mahomet; it is maintained by J.J. Rousseau and the
+spiritualist philosophers who reproduce his thoughts. It is clear in
+fact that just as Jesus Christ is the corner-stone of all Christian
+doctrine, so God is the foundation common to all religions.
+
+Before concluding this lecture I desire to answer a question which may
+have suggested itself to some amongst you. What are we about when we
+take up a Christian idea in order to defend it by reasoning? Are we
+occupied about religion or philosophy? Are we treading upon the ground
+of faith, or on the ground of reason? Are we in the domain of tradition,
+or in that of free inquiry? I have no great love, Gentlemen, for hedges
+and enclosures. I know very well, better, perhaps, than many amongst
+you, because I have longer reflected on the subject, what are the
+differences which separate studies specially religious, from
+philosophical inquiries. But when the question relates to God, to the
+universal cause, we find ourselves at the common root of religion and
+philosophy, and distinctions, which exist elsewhere, disappear. Besides,
+these distinctions are never so absolute as they are thought to be. You
+will understand this if you pay attention to these two considerations:
+there is no such thing as pure thought disengaged from every traditional
+element: there is no such thing as tradition received in a manner purely
+passive, and disengaged from all exercise of the reflective faculties.
+
+You think you are employed about philosophy when you shut yourself up in
+your own individual thoughts. A mistake! The most powerful genius of
+modern times failed in this enterprise. Descartes conceived the project
+of forgetting all that he had known, and of producing a system of
+doctrine which should come forth from his brain as Minerva sprang all
+armed from the brain of Jupiter. Now-a-days a mere schoolboy, if he has
+been well taught, ought to be able to prove that Descartes was mistaken,
+because the current of tradition entered his mind together with the
+words of the language. It is not so easy as we may suppose to break the
+ties by which God has bound us all together in mutual dependence. Man
+speaks, he only thinks by means of speech, and speech is a river which
+takes its rise in the very beginnings of history, and brings down to the
+existing generation the tribute of all the waters of the past. No one
+can isolate himself from the current, and place himself outside the
+intellectual society of his fellows. We have more light than we had on
+this subject, and the attempt of Descartes, which was of old the happy
+audacity of genius, could in our days be nothing but the foolish
+presumption of ignorance.
+
+As for the purely passive reception of tradition, this may be conceived
+when only unimportant legends are in question, or doctrines which occupy
+the mind only as matters of curiosity; but when life is at stake, and
+the interests of our whole existence, the mind labors upon the ideas
+which it receives. Religion is only living in any soul when all the
+faculties have come into exercise; and faith, by its own proper nature,
+seeks to understand. The distinction between traditional data therefore
+and pure philosophy is far from being so real or so extensive as it is
+commonly thought to be. But for lack of time, I might undertake to prove
+to you more at length that the labor of individual thought upon the
+common tradition is the absolute and permanent law of development for
+the human mind.
+
+We have to steer between two extreme and contrary pretensions. What
+shall we say to those theologians who deny all power to man's reason,
+and consider the understanding as a receiver which does nothing but
+receive the liquid which is poured into it? to those theologians who,
+not content with despising Aristotle and Plato, think themselves obliged
+to vilify Socrates and calumniate Regulus? We will tell them that they
+depart from the grand Christian tradition, of which they believe
+themselves _par excellence_ the representatives. We will add that they
+outrage their Master by seeming to believe that in order to exalt Him it
+is necessary to calumniate humanity. Again, what shall we say to those
+philosophers, who do not wish for truth except when they have succeeded
+in educing it by themselves? to those philosophers who draw a little
+circle about their own personal thought, and say: If truth discovers
+itself outside this circle we have no wish to see it; and who boast that
+they only are free, because they have abandoned the common beliefs? We
+will tell them that they are deceiving themselves by taking for their
+own personal thought the _débris_ of the tradition of the human race.
+We will add that their pretended independence is a veritable slavery. A
+strange sort of liberty that, which should forbid those who affect it to
+accept a faith which appeared to them to be true, because they were not
+the inventors of it. Listen to this wise reflection of a contemporary
+writer: "Philosophy allows us to range ourselves on the side of
+Platonism: why should it not also allow us to range ourselves on the
+side of the Christian faith, if there it is that we find wisdom and
+immutable truth? The choice ought to seem as free and as worthy of
+respect on the one side as on the other; and philosophy which claims
+liberty for itself, is least of all warranted in refusing it to
+others."[18] To be free, is to look for truth wherever it may be found,
+and it is to obey truth wherever we meet with it. When the question
+therefore relates to God, or to the soul and its eternal destinies,--to
+the man who asks me, Are you occupied with religion or philosophy? I
+have only one answer to give: I am a man, and I am seeking truth.
+
+A final consideration will perhaps put these thoughts in a more
+striking light. If you think the most important of the discussions of
+our day to be that between natural and revealed religion, between deism
+and the Gospel, you have not well discerned the signs of the times. The
+fundamental discussion is now between men who believe in God, in the
+soul, and in truth, and men, who, denying truth, deny at the same time
+the soul and God. When these high problems are in question, periodicals
+and other publications, which have the widest circulation, and which
+gain admission into every household, bring us too often the works of
+writers without convictions, eager to spread amongst others the doubt
+which has devoured their own beliefs. They have received entire, and
+without losing an obole of it, the heritage of the Greek Sophists. They
+involve in fact in the same proscription Socrates and Jesus Christ, Paul
+of Tarsus and Plato of Athens: they have no more respect for the
+opinions of Descartes and Leibnitz than for those of Pascal and Bossuet.
+The great question of the day is to know whether our desire of truth is
+a chimćra; whether our effort to reach the divine world is a spring into
+the empty void. When the question relates to God, inasmuch as He is the
+basis of reason no less than the object of faith, all the barriers which
+exist elsewhere disappear: to defend faith is to defend reason; to
+defend reason is to defend faith. The unbridled audacity of those who
+deny fundamental truths is bringing ancient adversaries, for a moment at
+least, to fight beneath the same flag. What they would rob us of, is not
+merely this or that article of a definite creed, but all faith whatever
+in Divine Providence, every hope which goes beyond the tomb, every look
+directed towards a world superior to our present destinies. But take
+courage. This flame lighted on the earth, and which is evermore directed
+towards heaven, has passed safely through rougher storms than those
+which now threaten it; it has shone brightly in thicker darkness than
+that in which men are laboring so hard to enshroud it. It is not going
+to be extinguished, be very sure, before the affected indifference of a
+few wits of our day, and the haughty disdain of a few contemporary
+journalists.
+
+In a word, Gentlemen,--to take the idea of God as it has been handed
+down to us, and to study its relation to the reason, the heart, and the
+conscience of man,--this is my proposed method of proceeding. To show
+you that this idea is truth, because it satisfies the conscience, the
+heart, and the reason--this is the object I have in view. Of this object
+I am sure you feel the importance: nevertheless, and that we may be more
+alive to it still, I propose to you to sound with me the abysses of
+sorrow and darkness which are involved in those terrible words--"without
+God in the world."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Aux _grimpeurs des Alpes_.
+
+[3] Psalm cxxxix. 7-10.
+
+[4] J.J. Rousseau.
+
+[5] _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_, by Adolphe Pictet, ii. 651.
+
+[6] Cleanthes, _Hymn to Jupiter_.
+
+[7] Sophocles, _OEdipus R._
+
+[8] _Handbuch der gesammten ägyptischen Alterthumskunde_, von Dr. Max
+Uhlemann. Leipzig, 1857.
+
+[9] _Institutions divines_, ii. 1.
+
+[10] Id.
+
+[11] _Deutsche Mythol._ Third edition, page lxiv.
+
+[12] _Annales de philosophie chrétienne_, t. 59, p. 228._r_.
+
+[13] _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_, ii. 720.
+
+[14] J'ai mon Dieu que je sers, vous servirez le vôtre.
+
+[15]
+
+                          Il faut craindre le mien;
+     Lui seul est Dieu, Madame, et le vôtre n'est rien.
+
+[16]
+
+     Lčve, Jérusalem, lčve ta tęte altičre!
+     Les peuples ŕ l'envi marchent ŕ ta lumičre.
+
+[17] _Etudes Orientales_, par Adolphe Franck, p. 427.
+
+[18] Barthélemy St. Hilaire, in the _Séances et travaux de l'Académie
+des sciences morales et politiques_, LXX., p. 134.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+_LIFE WITHOUT GOD._
+
+(At Geneva, 20th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 13th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+I propose to examine to-day what are the consequences for human life of
+the total suppression of the idea of God. This suppression is the result
+of atheism properly so called: it is also the result of scepticism
+raised into a system. The soul which doubts, but which seeks, regrets,
+hopes, is not wholly separated from God. It gives Him a large share in
+its life, inasmuch as the desire which it feels to meet with Him, and
+the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full
+light, become the principal facts of its existence. But doubt adopted as
+a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so
+called, life without God, the mournful subject of our present study.
+
+Having God, the spiritual life has a firm base and an invincible hope.
+The vapors of earth may indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while
+fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the
+thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye
+of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has
+its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when
+in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice,
+and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the
+eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life
+and of joy in death: _My God!_ Take God away, and life is decapitated.
+Even this comparison is not sufficient; life, rather, becomes like to a
+man who should have lost at once both his head and his heart. The
+immense subject which opens before us falls into an easy and natural
+division: we will fix our attention successively upon the individual and
+upon society.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_THE INDIVIDUAL._
+
+
+Man thinks, he feels, and he wills: these are the three great functions
+of the spiritual life. Let us inquire what, without God, would become,
+first, of thought, which is the instrument of all knowledge; next; of
+the conscience, which is the law of the will; then of the heart, which
+is the organ of the feelings. We will begin with thought.
+
+Let us go back to the origin of modern philosophy. The labors of
+Descartes will make us acquainted, under the form clearest for us, with
+a current of lofty thoughts which does honor to ancient civilization,
+and which has come down to us through the writings of Plato and St.
+Augustine. We have seen that Descartes deceived himself, when he thought
+to separate himself altogether from tradition, and forgot the while how
+intimately men's minds are bound together in a common possession of
+truth. He was mistaken, because he confounded the idea, natural to the
+human mind, of an infinite reason, with the full idea of the Creator; so
+attributing to the efforts of his own philosophy that gift of truth
+which he had received from the Christian tradition. But, having so far
+recognized his error, listen now to this great man, and judge if he were
+again mistaken in those thoughts of his which I am about to reproduce to
+you.
+
+Descartes strives hard to doubt of all things, persuaded that truth will
+resist his efforts, and come forth triumphant from the trial. He doubts
+of what he has heard in the schools: his masters may have led him into
+error. He doubts of the evidence of his senses: his senses deceive him
+in the visions of the night; what if he were always dreaming, and if his
+waking hours were but another sleep with other dreams! He will doubt
+even of the certainty of reason: what if the reason were a warped and
+broken instrument? Reason is only worth what its cause may be worth. If
+man is the child of chance, his thoughts may be vain. If man is the
+creature of a wicked and cunning being, the light of reason may be only
+an _ignis fatuus_ kindled by a malicious and mocking spirit. Here is a
+soul plunged in the lowest abysses of doubt; but it is a manly soul
+which seeks in doubt a trial for truth, and not a comfortable pillow on
+which slothfully to repose. How does Descartes upraise himself? By a
+thought known to every one, and which was already found in St.
+Augustine: "_Cogito, ergo sum_. I think, therefore I am." Deceive me who
+will; if I am deceived, I exist. Here is a certainty protected from all
+assault: I am. But what a poor certainty is this! What does it avail me
+to have rescued my existence from the abysses of universal doubt, if
+above the deep waters which have swallowed up all belief floats only
+this naked and mortifying truth: I am; but I exist only perhaps to be
+the sport of errors without end. The first step therefore taken by the
+philosopher would be a fruitless one if it were not followed by a
+second. An eye is open, and says: I see; but it must have a warrant that
+the light by which it sees is not a fantastic brightness. No, replies
+Descartes; reason sees a true light; and this is how he proves it: I am,
+I know myself; that is certain. I know myself as a limited and imperfect
+being; that again is certain. I conceive then infinity and perfection;
+that is not less certain; for I should not have the idea of a limit if I
+did not conceive of infinity, and the word _imperfect_ would have no
+meaning for me, if I could not imagine perfection, of which imperfection
+is but the negation. Starting from this point, the philosopher proves by
+a series of reasonings that the conception of perfection by our minds
+demonstrates the real existence of that perfection: God is. He adds,
+that the existence of God is more certain than the most certain of all
+the theorems of geometry. You will observe, Gentlemen, that the man who
+speaks in this way is one of the greatest geometricians that ever lived.
+He has found God, he has found the light. Reason does not deceive, when
+it is faithful to its own laws: the senses do not deceive, when they are
+exercised according to the rules of the understanding. Error is a
+malady; it is not the radical condition of our nature; it is not without
+limits and without remedy, for the final cause of our being is God, that
+is to say truth and goodness.
+
+
+     From everlasting God was true,
+     For ever good and just will be,
+
+
+says one of our old psalms. Faith in the veracity of God--such is the
+ground of the assurance of believers; such is also the foundation on
+which has been raised the greatest of modern philosophies. Without the
+knowledge of God and faith in his goodness, man remains plunged in
+irremediable doubt, possessing only this single, poor, and frightful
+certainty: I am; and I exist perhaps only to be eternally deceived.
+
+But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it--What
+a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that
+God is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good
+because God is. His reason demonstrates God to him, and God demonstrates
+his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once
+see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said
+again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple
+consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely
+that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very
+closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that
+have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a
+fault of logic which any schoolboy can discover? Self-sufficient levity
+of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading
+minds; and it very often happens to us to fail of understanding because
+we have failed in respect.
+
+Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes,
+as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes
+is one of the most illustrious representatives.
+
+To recognize in the reason traces of God, and to show that in faith in
+God consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a
+vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed
+in is not reasoning, but analysis; we are establishing a fact in order
+to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the
+natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals
+to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of
+certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his
+individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is
+evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were
+thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages,
+when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of
+our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would
+contradict our own. We believe in a general reason, everywhere and
+always the same, and in which the reason of each individual
+participates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth
+which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere
+present; in other words, we believe in God considered as the source of
+the universal intelligence. To believe in one's reason, is to believe in
+God, in this sense: the fact of the confidence which we place in our own
+faculty of thought, supposes a concealed faith in eternal truth. This is
+the analysis of which I was speaking. It is a circle if you please, but
+it is a circle of light, outside of which there is, as we shall see by
+and by, nothing but darkness and hard contradictions.
+
+You deny the existence of God. On what ground do you rest this denial?
+On the ground of your reason. You believe then that your reason is good,
+you believe it very good, since you do not hesitate to trust it, while
+you undertake to prove false the fundamental instincts of human nature.
+But you would not venture to say that this reason which you believe in
+with a faith so firm is your own separate reason merely, your personal
+and exclusive property. You believe in the universal reason; you believe
+in God, considered at least as the source of the understanding. The man
+therefore who denies God, affirms Him in a certain sense at the same
+time that he denies Him. He denies Him in his words, in the external
+form of his thought; he affirms Him in reality, as the Supreme
+Intelligence, by the very trust which he places in his own thought. Our
+understanding is only the reflected ray of the Divine verity. Therefore
+it is that Descartes, as soon as he has laid the first foundations of
+his system, interrupts the chain of his reasonings to trace these lines:
+"Here I think it highly meet to pause for a while in contemplation of
+this all-perfect God, to ponder deliberately his marvellous attributes,
+to consider, admire, and adore the incomparable beauty of that immense
+light, at least so far as the strength of my mind, which remains in a
+manner dazzled by it, shall allow me to do so."[19] Thus it is that
+while descending into the depths of the understanding, the philosopher
+who is supposed to be absorbed in pure abstractions, discovers all at
+once a sublime brightness, and exclaims with the ancient patriarch: "The
+LORD is in this place, and I knew it not!"[20] God is everywhere; He is
+in the heights of heaven, He is in the depths of thought. Remember
+those celebrated words of Lord Chancellor Bacon: "A little knowledge
+inclineth the mind to atheism, but a further acquaintance therewith
+bringeth it back to religion."
+
+God is not demonstrated, in the ordinary sense which we attach to the
+word demonstrate;[21] He is pointed out[22] as the source of all light.
+The attempt to demonstrate God as anything else is demonstrated, by
+descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is
+arrived at--this attempt implies a contradiction. God is in fact the
+first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond
+which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human
+mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate God by
+mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of
+departure--this is literally to wish to light up the sun. If the sun of
+intelligences is extinguished, reason sets out on its way vaguely
+enlightened still with the remains of the light which it has reflected;
+but it is not long ere it is stumbling in darkness. Then it is that--be
+not deceived about it!--the doubts which Descartes called up by an act
+of his own will do in good earnest invade the soul. We possess a
+natural certainty, which does not suppose a clear view of God; we reason
+without thinking distinctly of the principles on which we reason, just
+as, when we are in a hurry, we take the shortest cut without thinking of
+the axiom of geometry which prescribes the straight line. But if we pass
+from the natural order of our thoughts into the domain of science, if we
+ask--what is it which guarantees to me the value of my reason? then the
+question is put, and many perish in the passage which separates natural
+faith from the domain of science,--that dangerous passage where doubt
+spreads out its perfidious fogs and its deceitful marshes. The moment
+the question is started of the worth of reason, and all the schools of
+scepticism do start it, our answer must be--_God_; and we must find
+light in this answer, or see thought invaded in its totality by an
+irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie;
+and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of
+Ecclesiastes.[23] There are more souls ill of this malady than are
+supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against God what
+they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which
+has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at
+last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in
+the shroud of a universal scorn.
+
+Without God reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to
+the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the
+style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere
+I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes,
+conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its
+necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the
+august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given us the light
+of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the
+works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He
+would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a
+spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the
+contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism.
+We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no
+one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is
+another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is
+one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be
+the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must
+make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual
+heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience
+reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is
+evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty
+rebels: it subsists evermore, because it is the work of the Almighty.
+Humanity, in its strange destiny, has never ceased to outrage the rule
+which it acknowledges, and to pronounce upon its own acts a ceaseless
+condemnation. The laws which are investigated by the physical sciences
+are the plan of the Creator realized in nature: the law proposed to
+liberty is the plan of the Creator to be realized by the community of
+minds. Such is the explanation of the conscience: God is its solid
+foundation.
+
+Duty and God, morality and religion, are inseparable principles; all the
+efforts of a false philosophy have never succeeded, and never will
+succeed, in disjoining them. Men will never be prevented from believing
+that God is holy, and that His will is binding upon them: they will
+never be prevented from believing that holiness is divine, and that the
+will of God reveals itself in the admonitions of the conscience.
+Therefore the progress of religion and the progress of morality are
+closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea
+which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same
+time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the
+degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the
+man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other
+hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by
+error and the passions, the conscience protests, and by its protest
+purifies the religious conceptions. It has often been said, that in the
+onward march of humanity, morality is separated from faith, and comes at
+last to rest upon its own bases. It is a notion of the eighteenth
+century, which, although its root has been cut, is still throwing out
+shoots in our time. The attempt has been made to support this theory by
+the great name of Socrates. It is affirmed that the sage of Athens,
+breaking the bond which connects the earth with heaven, separated duty
+from its primitive source. Listen: Placed in the alternative of either
+renouncing his mission or dying, it is thus that Socrates addresses his
+judges: "Athenians, I honor you and I love you, but I will obey the
+Deity rather than you. My whole occupation is to persuade you, young and
+old, that before the care of the body and of riches, before every other
+care, is that of the soul and of its improvement. Know that this it is
+which the Deity prescribes to me, and I am persuaded that there can be
+nothing more advantageous to the republic than my zeal to fulfil the
+behest of the Deity."[24] Does the man who speaks in this way appear to
+you to have wished to break the link which connects morality with
+religion? He separates himself from the established religion; he pursues
+with his biting raillery shameful objects of worship; his conscience
+protests. But, while it protests, it attaches itself immediately to a
+higher and holier idea of that God, of whose perfections the sage of
+Athens had succeeded in obtaining a glimpse.
+
+God then is the explanation of the conscience: He is moreover its
+support. It has need in sooth to be supported,--that voice which speaks
+within us; because it is unceasingly contradicted and denied. The
+spectacle which the world presents is not an edifying one; the facts
+which are taking place on the earth are not all of a nature to maintain
+the steadfastness of the moral feeling. Let us imagine an example, a
+striking example, such as it would be easy to find realized on a small
+scale in more commonplace events. A peaceable population, menaced in its
+most sacred rights, has taken up arms in the simplest and most
+legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the
+soldiers who are advancing to oppress it--mere instruments as they are
+in the hands of their leaders--but upon the leaders themselves. One of
+these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to
+which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one
+of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the
+soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter,
+pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have
+grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, when
+this man shall be receiving the praises of his superiors. Men will laud
+the bravery and daring of his exploit; his sovereign will place upon
+his breast a brilliant cross, the august sign of the world's redemption;
+he will return to his country amidst the acclamations of the multitude,
+and drink in with delight the shouts of triumph which greet him as he
+moves on his way. For such things as these, is there to be no penalty
+but troublesome recollections which may sometimes be banished, and a few
+timid protests soon hushed by the loud voice of success? Verily there
+are perpetrated beneath the sun acts which cry aloud for vengeance. Have
+you never felt it--that mighty cry--rising from your own bosom, at the
+sight of some odious crime, or on reading such and such a page of
+history? And it must be so; it must be that the cry for vengeance will
+rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer,
+and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in
+the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never
+be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be
+broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains
+of Philippi:--"Virtue! thou art but a name!"
+
+The conscience is a reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the
+captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil
+tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs
+the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes
+place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon
+the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such
+as these:--"This voice of duty--whence comes it? and what would it have?
+May not conscience be a prejudice, the result of education and of habit?
+It has little power, it seems, for it is braved with impunity. Many say
+that it is a factitious power from which one comes at last to deliver
+one's self by resisting it. Am I not the dupe of an illusion? I am
+losing joys which others allow themselves. Barriers encompass me on
+every hand, for there are for me prohibited actions, unwholesome
+beauties, culpable feelings. Others are free, and make a larger use of
+life in all directions. What if I too made trial of liberty!" Here lies
+the temptation. When the soul aspires to become larger than conscience
+and more tolerant than duty, it is not far from a fall. The honest woman
+will be tempted to repine at the liberty of the courtesan, and the man
+who is bound by his word will become capable of looking with envy on
+the liberty of the liar. Then come terrible experiences which teach at
+length that the unbinding of the passions is the hardest of slaveries,
+and that, in the struggle between inclination and duty, it is liberty
+which oppresses and law which sets free. Happy then is he who, feeling
+himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that God who is able to
+rescue him from the abyss, and strengthens his shaken conscience by
+replacing it on its solid foundation. "God speaks and reigns. All
+rebellion is transient in its nature; justice will at length be done.
+Justice may be slow in the eyes of the creature of a day, seeing that He
+who shall dispense it has eternity at his disposal." But if God be not a
+refuge for us from men and from the world, if, when we see all that is
+passing around us, we cannot cast a look beyond and above the earth, men
+may lose their faith in duty. And this faith is lost in fact. If there
+are not dead consciences, there are consciences at any rate singularly
+sunk in sleep. There are men for whom goodness, truth, justice, honor,
+seem to be a coinage of which they make use because it is current, but
+without for themselves attaching to it any value. These pieces of money
+have no longer in their eyes any visible impression, because the
+conception of the almighty and just God is the impression which
+determines duty and guarantees its value.
+
+When the necessary alliance of moral order with religious thought is
+denied, the reality of conscience is opposed to what are called
+theological hypotheses always open to discussion. It is seen well enough
+that men may doubt of God, but it is supposed to be impossible to doubt
+of conscience. This is an illusion of generous minds. Those who would
+keep this illusion must not open the pages of the history of philosophy
+where the negation of duty does not occupy less space than the negation
+of God; they must not cast their eyes too much about them; they must
+also take care not to open the most widely circulated books, and the
+most fashionable periodicals: otherwise, as we shall see, they would not
+be long in finding out that this morality which they would fain have
+superior to all attacks, is perhaps what of all things is most attacked
+now-a-days, and that that conscience which it is impossible to deny is
+in fact the object of denials the most audacious on the part of a few of
+the present favorites of fame. The voice of duty is heard no doubt even
+when God does not come distinctly into mind; but when the questions are
+clearly put, if God is denied, conscience grows dim, and comes at last
+to be extinguished. This obscuration does not take place all at once:
+the potter's wheel goes on turning for a while, says an old Hindoo poem,
+after that the foot of the artisan is withdrawn from it. But the
+darkening takes place gradually with time: such at least is the general
+rule. There are exceptional men who seem to escape this law, and to bear
+in their bosom a God veiled from their own consciousness. Such men may
+be found, and even in considerable numbers, in a time like ours, when
+doubt is, in many cases, a prejudice which current opinion deposits on
+the surface of minds without penetrating them deeply. There are men all
+whose convictions have fallen into ruins, while their conscience
+continues standing like an isolated column, sole remaining witness of a
+demolished building. The meeting with these heroes of virtue inspires a
+mingled feeling of astonishment and respect. They are verily miracles of
+that divine goodness of which they are unable to pronounce the name. If
+there is a man on earth who ought to fall on both knees and shed burning
+tears of gratitude, it is the man who believes himself an atheist, and
+who has received from Providence so keen a taste for what is noble and
+pure, so strong an aversion for evil, that his sense of duty remains
+firm even when it has lost all its supports. But the exception does not
+make the rule; and that which is realized in the case of a few is not
+realized long, and for all. You know those crusts of snow which are
+formed over the _crevasses_ of our glaciers. These slight bridges are
+able to bear one person who remains suspended over the abyss, but let
+several attempt to pass together,--the frail support gives way, and the
+rash adventurers fall together into the gulf. Such is the destiny of
+those schools of philosophy in which the notion of God disappears, and
+of those civilizations in which the sense of God is extinguished; they
+fall into dark regions where the light of goodness shines no longer.
+
+After the mind and conscience, it remains for us to speak of the heart.
+Man, an intelligent and free being, has in his reason an instrument of
+knowledge, and in his conscience a rule for his will. But man is not
+sufficient for himself, and cannot live upon his own resources. If you
+inquire what the word heart expresses, in its most general acceptation,
+you will find that it always expresses a tendency of the soul to look,
+out of itself, in things or persons, for the support and nourishment of
+its individual life. Does the question concern the relations of man with
+his fellows? The heart is the organ of communication of one soul with
+another, for receiving, or for giving, or for giving and receiving at
+the same time, in the enjoyment of the blessing of a mutual affection.
+The heart is in each of us what those marks are upon the scattered
+stones of a building in course of construction which indicate that they
+are to be united one to another. The philosopher suffices for himself,
+the stoics used to say; the heart is the negation of this haughty maxim.
+From the heart proceeds love, that son of abundance and of poverty, to
+speak with Plato, that needy one ever on the search for his lost
+heritage. Love has wings, said again the wisdom of the Greeks, wings
+which essay to carry him ever higher. Let us extricate the thought which
+is involved in these graceful figures: Our desires have no limits, and
+indefinite desires can be satisfied only by meeting with an infinite
+Being who can be an inexhaustible source of happiness, an eternal object
+of love. "Our heart is made for love," said Saint Augustine, the great
+Christian disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds
+repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not
+always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness,
+a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand
+instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due
+object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its
+indefinite aspirations attach themselves to objects which cannot satisfy
+them, and thence arise stupendous aberrations. With some, it is the
+pursuit of sensual gratifications; they rush with a kind of fury into
+the passions of their lower nature. With others it is the ardent pursuit
+of riches, power, fame,--feelings which are always crying more: More!
+and never: Enough. And the after-taste from the fruitless search after
+happiness in the paths of ambition and vanity is not less bitter perhaps
+than the after-taste from sensual enjoyments. Listen to the confession
+of a man whose works, full as they are of beauties, are disfigured by so
+many impure allusions, that the author appears to have indulged, more
+than most others, in the giddy follies and culpable pleasures of life:
+
+
+     If, tired of mocking dreams, my restless heart
+       Returns to take its fill of waking joy,
+     Full soon I loathe the pleasures which impart
+       No true delight, but kill me, while they cloy.[25]
+
+
+Here are the accents of a true confession. These are moreover truths of
+daily experience. I have seen--and which of you could not render similar
+testimony?--I have seen the sick man, deprived of all the ordinary
+avocations and amusements of life, and with pain for his constant
+companion, I have seen him find joy in the thought of his God, and
+feeding, without satiety, on this bread of contentment. I have seen the
+face of the blind lighted up by a living faith, and radiant with a light
+of peace, for him sweeter and brighter than the rays of the sun. But
+where God is wanting, and all connection is broken with the source of
+joy, there you shall see the richest of the rich, the most prosperous
+among the ambitious, the man of fame whose renown is most widely
+extended,--you shall see these men carrying the heavy burden of
+discontent. Their brow, unillumined by the celestial ray, is furrowed by
+the lines of sadness. If you meet them in a moment of candor, these
+rich, ambitious, and famous men will tell you with a sigh: "All this
+does not satisfy; we are but pursuing chimeras." Still they continue to
+run after these chimeras. They cry Vanity! Vanity! and they do not cease
+to pursue vanity. They flee from themselves: if they retired within
+themselves, they would find there ennui, inexorable ennui, which is but
+the sense of that place which God should fill left void in the depth of
+the soul. For the deceived heart, life becomes a bitter comedy. Those
+who do not succeed in blinding themselves by the dust of thoughtless
+folly, end oftentimes by wrapping themselves in disdain as with a cloak;
+they seek a sad and solitary satisfaction in the greatness of their
+contempt for life. But neither does this satisfy: disdain is not a
+beverage, and contempt is not food.
+
+Such are the destinies of the heart, to which God is wanting. But I
+hope, Gentlemen, that you have here some remonstrances to offer. I have
+just spoken of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I have
+made no allusion to those affections in which the heart manifests its
+highest qualities. Shall we forget the joys of pure love? the domestic
+hearth? friendship? country? Do not fear that, having given myself up
+to a fit of misanthropy, I am come hither to blaspheme the true
+happinesses of life. But do the affections of earth offer us sufficient
+guarantees? We have need of the infinite to answer to the immensity of
+our desires; in the presence of those we love, have we no need of the
+Eternal that we may lean our hearts on Him? Will not all human love
+become a source of torment, if we have no faith in the love of Him who
+will stamp holy affections with the seal of His own eternity?
+
+A single question will suffice to enlighten us on this head. Do you know
+the feeling of anxiety? We all know it, though in different degrees.
+Epidemical disease may appear. The cholera has started on its course; it
+has left the interior of Asia, and is approaching. The report is current
+that neighboring cities have begun to feel its ravages. Those we
+love--in a month, in a week, where will they be? War is declared. We
+hear of preparations for death; the sovereigns of Europe apply
+themselves to calculations which seem to portend torrents of blood. If
+war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have to take up arms,
+that daughter who will one day perhaps find herself at the mercy of an
+unbridled soldiery----. But let us not look for examples so far away.
+Have you no dear one in a distant land of whom you are expecting
+tidings? And those who are near you! To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps,
+while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is discovering its first
+symptoms----. Have you received the hard lessons of death? If you see
+children playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it happen to
+none of you to think of another child, once the joy of your fireside,
+now lying beneath the sod? Does it never happen to you, by a sinister
+presentiment, to see features you love to gaze on convulsed with agony
+or pale in death? And yet you must either see the death of your beloved
+ones, or they must lay you in the earth; for every life ends with the
+tomb, and we do but walk over graves. When the soul has been thus
+wounded by anxiety, for this poisoned wound there is one remedy, but
+only one: "God reigns!" Nothing happens without the permission of His
+goodness. And of all those who are dear to us, we can say: "Father, to
+Thy hands I commit them." If we are without this trust, we shall only
+escape torment by levity. Without God our mind is sick; our conscience
+and our heart are sick also, and in a way more grievous still.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[19] _Méditation troisičme_, at the end.
+
+[20] Gen. xxviii. 16.
+
+[21] _Démontrer_.
+
+[22] "_On le montre_."
+
+[23] "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.... Let us hear the conclusion
+of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is
+the whole duty of man." (Eccles. i. and xii.)
+
+[24] Apology.
+
+[25]
+
+     Si mon coeur, fatigué du ręve qui l'obsčde,
+     A la réalité revient pour s'assouvir,
+     Au fond des vains plaisirs que j'appelle ŕ mon aide,
+     Je trouve un tel dégoűt que je me sens mourir.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+_SOCIETY._
+
+
+We have just studied what life without God would be for the individual.
+Let us now direct our attention to those collections of human beings
+which form societies. We shall not speak here of the relations of civil
+with ecclesiastical authorities,--a complex question, the solution of
+which must vary with times, places, and circumstances. Let us only
+remark that the distinction between the temporal and spiritual order of
+things is one of the foundations of modern civilization. This
+distinction is based upon those great words which, eighteen hundred
+years ago, separated the domain of God from the domain of Cćsar.
+Religion considered as a function of civil life; dogma supported by the
+word of a monarch or the vote of a body politic; the formula of that
+dogma imposed forcibly by a government on the lips of the
+governed--these are _débris_ of paganism which have been struggling for
+centuries against the restraints of Christian thought.[26] The
+religious convictions of individuals do not belong to the State;
+religious sentiments are not amenable to human tribunals; and it would
+be hard to say whether it is the spiritual or the temporal order of
+things which suffers most from the confusion of these distinct domains.
+Religion should have its own proper life, and its special
+representatives; civil life ought to be set free from all tyranny
+exercised in the name of dogma; but religion is not the less on that
+account, by the influence which it exerts over the consciences of men,
+the necessary bond and strength of human society.
+
+"You would sooner build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "than cause a
+State to subsist without religion." Some have contested in modern times
+this opinion of ancient wisdom. The philosophy of the last century, as
+we have said already, wished to separate duty from the idea of God. It
+pretended to give as the only foundation for society a civil morality,
+the rules and sanction of which were to be found upon earth. The men of
+blood who for a short time governed France, gave once as the order of
+the day--_Terror and all the virtues_: this was a terrible application
+of this theory. Virtue rested on a decree of political power, and, for
+want of the judgment of God, the guillotine was the sanction of its
+precepts. Healthier views begin now to prevail in the schools of
+philosophy. One of the members of the _Institut de France_, M. Franck,
+has lately published a volume on the history of ancient
+civilization,[27] with the express intention of showing that the
+conception which a people has of God is the true root of its social
+organization. According to the worth of the religious idea is that of
+the civil constitution. Before M. Franck, twenty years ago, a man of the
+very highest distinction as a public lecturer, indicated this movement
+of modern thought. M. Edgard Quinet, in his Lyons course, taught that
+the religious idea is the very substance of civilization, and the
+generating principle of political constitutions. He announced "a history
+of civilization by the monuments of human thought," and added: "Religion
+above all is the pillar of fire which goes before the nations in their
+march across the ages; it shall serve us as a guide."[28] Benjamin
+Constant exhibits in the variation of his opinions the transition from
+the stand-point of the last century to that of the present. He had at
+first conceived of his work upon religion as a monument raised to
+atheism, he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the condition
+necessary to the existence of civilized societies.[29] Here is a real
+progress; and this progress brings us back to the thought above quoted
+from Plutarch. In fact, take away the idea of God, and the first
+consequence will be that you will sacrifice all the conquests of modern
+civilization; the next, that you will soon have rendered impossible the
+existence of any society whatever. I am going to ask your close
+attention to these two points successively.
+
+History does not offer to our view an uninterrupted progress, as certain
+optimists suppose; still less does it present the spectacle of an
+ever-increasing deterioration, as misanthropes affirm; and lastly, it is
+not true, as we hear it said sometimes, that all epochs are alike, as
+good one as another. There are times better than those which follow
+them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them.
+Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings and
+retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created
+liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is
+clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while
+man is in restless agitation, God is leading him on. The conquests of
+modern civilization are great and sacred realities. What are these
+conquests? Let us not stay at the surface of things, but go to the
+foundation. Societies fallen into a condition of barbarism have for
+their motto the famous saying of a Gallic chief: Woe to the vanquished!
+In institutions, as in manners, the triumph of force characterizes
+barbarous times. The right of the strongest is the twofold negation of
+justice and of love; and what characterizes civilization, issuing from
+the barbarous condition, the fragments of which it so long trails after
+it, is the establishment of that justice which founds States, and, upon
+the basis of justice, the development of the benevolence which renders
+communities happy. These are the two essential conditions of social
+progress. These conditions are necessary even to the progress of
+industry and of material welfare.
+
+Modern civilization,--that, namely, which we so designate, while we
+relegate, so to speak, into the past the contemporaneous societies of
+the vast East,--modern civilization possesses a power unknown to
+antiquity. Justice has a foundation in the conscience, benevolence has
+natural roots in the heart; but a moment has been when justice and love
+appeared in the world with new brightness, like rays disengaged from
+clouds. Modern civilization was then deposited on the earth in a
+powerful germ, of which nothing was any more to arrest the growth. That
+moment was when the idea of God appeared in its fulness: modern
+civilization was born of the Gospel. The knowledge of God strengthens
+justice, and the thought of the common Father develops benevolence.
+These theses are well known; let us confine ourselves to a few rapid
+illustrations.
+
+There exists an institution in which has been embodied the negation of
+social justice--Slavery. Slavery is at length disappearing before our
+eyes from the bosom of Christendom; and its final retreat is doing honor
+to Russia, and bathing America in blood. This is perhaps the greatest of
+the events which the annals of history will inscribe on the page of the
+nineteenth century. Now slavery was, in the past, an almost universal
+institution. The finest intellects of Greece devoted a portion of their
+labors to its justification. Rome, at the most brilliant period of its
+civilization, caused slaves to kill one another, in savage spectacles
+intended to delight the populace, or during sumptuous banquets for the
+amusement of wealthy debauchees![30] How has slavery disappeared little
+by little! How has man been rediscovered beneath that living _thing_ of
+which was made, one while an instrument of labor, and another while the
+sport of execrable passions? Inquire into this history. You will find
+the reason and the heart making their protests heard in antiquity, but
+without becoming efficacious. One day all is changed, and the
+foundations of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable epoch you will
+meet with a written document, the first in which is shown in its germ
+the great social fact which was about to have birth. It is not an
+emperor's decree, it is not the vote of a body politic, it is a letter a
+few lines long written by a prisoner to one of his friends. The
+substance of this letter was: "I send thee back thy slave; but in the
+name of God I beg of thee to receive him as thy brother; think of the
+common Master who is in heaven." This letter was addressed--"To
+Philemon;" the name of the writer was Paul. It is the first charter of
+slave emancipation. Ponder this fact, Gentlemen: contemplate the ancient
+institution of slavery shaken to its foundations, without being the
+object of any direct attack, by the breath of a new spirit. You will
+then understand how historians can tell us that the relations of states,
+belligerent rights, civil laws, political institutions, all these things
+of which the Gospel has never spoken, have been, and are being still,
+every day transformed by the slow action of the Gospel. God has
+appeared; justice is marching in His train.
+
+Justice is the foundation of society; but without the spirit of love,
+justice remains crippled, and never reaches its perfection. Justice
+maintains the rights of each; love seeks to realize the communication of
+advantages among all. Justice overthrows the artificial barriers raised
+between men by force and guile; love softens natural inequalities and
+causes them to turn to the general good. Need I tell you that the
+knowledge of God is a light of which the brightest ray is love to men?
+Benevolence, that feeling natural to our hearts, is strengthened,
+extended, transfigured, by becoming charity;--charity, that union of
+the soul with the Heavenly Father, which descends again to earth in
+loving communion between all His children. The soul separated from God
+may be conscious of strong affections: but study well the character of a
+virtue which is nourished from purely human sources; you will see that
+it may for the most part be expressed in these terms--"To love one's
+friends heartily, and to hate one's enemies with a generous hatred; to
+esteem the honest and to despise the vicious." But that virtue which
+loves the vicious while it hates the vice, that virtue which will avenge
+itself only by overcoming evil with good, that virtue which, while it
+draws closer the bonds of private affections, makes a friend of every
+man, that virtue which we call divine, by a natural impulse of our
+heart--what is the source from which it flows? The following fact will
+sufficiently answer the question. On the façade of one the hospitals of
+the Christian world, are read these Latin words, the brief energy of
+which our language cannot render: _Deo in pauperibus_, "This edifice is
+consecrated to God in the person of the poor." Here is the secret of
+charity: it discerns the Divine image deposited in every human soul.
+But do not mistake here: we cannot love, with a love natural and direct,
+the rags of squalid poverty, the brands of vice, the languors and sores
+of sickness; but let God manifest Himself, and our eyes are opened. The
+beauty of souls breaks forth to our view beneath the wasting of the
+haggard frame, and from under the filth of vice. We love those immortal
+creatures fallen and degraded; a sacred desire possesses us to restore
+them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of
+rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of
+the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the
+noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is
+the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who
+desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that
+love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the
+hospital, which have at times thrown Christians into extravagances which
+our age has no reason to dread. God in the poor man, God in the sick
+man, God in the vicious man and the criminal; this, I repeat, is the
+grand secret of charity. Charity passes from the heart of men and from
+individual practice into social customs and institutions. Charity it is
+which, by degrees, takes from law its needless rigors, and from justice
+its useless tortures; which substitutes the prison in which it is sought
+to reform the guilty for the galley, which completes the corruption of
+the criminal; it is charity that opens public asylums for all forms of
+suffering; and that will realize, up to the limits of what is possible,
+all the hopes of philanthropy. If God ceases to be present to the mind
+and conscience of men, justice and love lose their power. Without the
+powerful action of justice and of love, society would descend again, by
+the ways of corruption, towards the struggles of barbarism. Observe,
+study well, all that is going on around us. Does our civilization appear
+to you sufficiently solid to give you the idea that it can henceforth
+dispense with the foundations on which it has reposed hitherto?
+
+The sentiments of justice and of benevolence which form the double basis
+of the progress of society, suppose a more general sentiment which is
+their common support--the sentiment of humanity. The idea that man has a
+value in himself, that he is, in virtue of his quality as man,
+independently of the places which he inhabits and of the position which
+he occupies in the world, an object of justice and of love;--this idea
+includes in itself all the moral part of civilization. Social progress
+is only the recognition, ever more and more explicit, of the value of
+one soul, of the rights of one conscience. Now, the idea of humanity has
+the closest possible connection with the knowledge of God, considered as
+the Father of the human race. Ancient wisdom, superior to the worship of
+idols, had gained a glimpse of the fact that the philosopher is a
+citizen of the universe; and that famous line of Terence: "I am a man,
+and I reckon nothing human foreign to me," excited, it is said, the
+applause of the Roman spectators. But these were mere gleams,
+extinguished soon by the general current of thought. It was the pale
+dawn of the idea of humanity. Whence came the day?
+
+I will limit the question by defining it. The idea of humanity is the
+idea of the worth and consequently of the rights of each individual man.
+It is the idea of liberty; not of liberty interpreted by passion and
+selfishness as the inauguration of the license which violates right, but
+of liberty interpreted by reason and conscience as the limit which the
+action of each man encounters in the right of his neighbor. We are not
+speaking here of the equality of political rights, which is not always
+a guarantee of veritable liberty. We are speaking of a social condition
+such that man, in the exercise of his faculties, in the manifestation of
+his thoughts, in his efforts for the causes which he loves, so long as
+he does not violate the rights of others, does not meet with an
+arbitrary power to arrest him. Still farther to limit our subject, we
+shall speak of the most important manifestation of that liberty--liberty
+of conscience, of which religious liberty is the most ordinary and most
+complete manifestation. This is only one of the points of the subject,
+but it is a point which in reality supposes and includes all the rest.
+This liberty--whence does it come?
+
+It does not come from paganism. Paganism, with its national religions,
+could only produce fanaticism or doubt. Each people having its own
+particular religion, to exterminate the foreigner was to serve the cause
+of the gods of the country. A war-cry descended from the Olympus of each
+several nation--that Olympus which the gods quitted, in case of need, to
+take part in the quarrels of men. Did reason perceive the nothingness of
+these national divinities? Then scepticism appeared. The idea of the
+supreme God being unsettled with all, and wholly obscured for the
+crowd, when men ceased to believe in the gods of the nation, they lost
+all belief whatsoever. For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at the
+decline of the ancient world. Those pantheons in which all religions
+were received, welcomed, protected, are the ever-memorable temples of
+scepticism. Now you know what voice made itself heard, when the ancient
+civilization was enfeebled by the spirit of doubt: "Henceforth there is
+neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free. Ye are all brethren, and for
+all there is one God, and one truth:" here behold the root of scepticism
+severed. And the same voice added: "This only God is the lawful Owner of
+His creatures; and when you presume to do violence to the consciences
+which belong to Him, you know not by what spirit you are animated:" here
+behold the fountain of fanaticism dried up. God is acknowledged; He is
+the Master of souls: faith founds liberty.
+
+The Witness to universal truth appears before Rome as represented by a
+deputy of Cćsar. He is a fanatic, says the Roman; then he goes his way,
+and leaves Him to be put to death. But ere long, a dull hoarse murmur of
+the nations, extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty
+empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and is speaking
+to the general conscience. Then Rome starts from her sleep; Rome; the
+politic tolerant Rome, sheds rivers of blood. Her tolerance allowed men
+to believe everything, but on condition that they believed seriously in
+nothing. Rome was directed by the sure instinct of despotism. She did
+not fear the gods of the Pantheon, because she could always place above
+them the statue of the Emperor: whereas what was now in question was,
+while leaving to Cćsar the things which were Cćsar's, to place a
+Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legislation above the
+legislation of the empire. Therefore the Roman city determined to give a
+death-blow to Christianity,--to the idea of universal truth, because if
+that idea gained entrance into the understanding, the cause of the
+liberty of souls was gained. So it was that indifference became
+ferocious, and that doubt led back to fanaticism.
+
+I have told you whence liberty does not come; but whence comes it?
+Whence comes liberty? Ask any scholar of the Lyceums of France; he will
+answer you, without hesitation: Liberty comes from the French
+revolution!--No doubt, whispers an older comrade in his ear; but do not
+forget the philosophy of the eighteenth century which developed the
+principles which the revolution put in practice.--That is all very well,
+a Protestant will say; but let us consider the grand fact of the
+Reformation: it is from the sixteenth century that liberty has its
+date.--Well and good, adds an historian; but do you not know that the
+Germans were they who poured a generous and free blood into the
+impoverished blood of the men who had been fashioned by the slavery of
+the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed
+to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic
+causes. But this I venture to affirm,--that if any one thinks to fix
+definitely the hour when liberty was born in history, he is mistaken:
+for it has no other date than that of the human conscience, and I will
+say with M. Lamartine:
+
+
+     Give me the freedom which that hour had birth,
+     With the free soul, when first in conscious worth
+     The just man braved the stronger![31]
+
+
+Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his fellow men to acts
+which wounded his conscience, a man, relying upon God, felt himself
+stronger than the world. That Socrates had not studied, I fancy, in the
+school of the Encyclopedists, and was no German either, that I know of,
+who said to the judges of Athens, with death in prospect: "It is better
+to obey God than men." And when those words were repeated by the
+Apostles of the universal truth, the death of Socrates, that noble death
+which has justly gained for him the admiration of the universe, was
+reproduced in thousands and thousands of instances. Children, women,
+young girls, old men, perished in tortures to attest the rights of
+conscience; and the blood of martyrs, that seed of Christians, as a
+father of the Church called it,[32] was not less a seed of liberty.
+Liberty was not born in history; but if you wish to fix a date to its
+grandest outburst, you have it here; there is no other which can be
+compared with it.
+
+Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying so, that I am
+maintaining a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of
+conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church
+has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood
+rendered visible by the funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing,
+Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three
+remarks which I commend to your attention.
+
+It must not be forgotten that the Gospel first obtained extensive
+success when Roman society was in the lowest state of corruption, and
+that its representatives were but too much affected by the evils which
+it was their mission to combat.
+
+It must not be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians
+who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured
+over the new leaven a coarse paste hard to penetrate.
+
+It must not be forgotten, lastly, that if a cause might legitimately be
+condemned for the faults of its defenders, there are none, no, not a
+single one, which could remain erect before the tribunal which so should
+give judgment. Every cause in this world is more or less compromised by
+its representatives; but there are bad principles, which produce evil by
+their own development, and there are good principles which man abuses,
+but which by their very nature always end by raising a protest against
+the abuse. It is in the light of this indisputable truth that we are
+about to enter upon a discussion of which you will appreciate the full
+importance.
+
+Sceptical writers affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening
+of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they
+recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of
+promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which
+would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in
+the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall have peace.
+Prisons have been built and the stake has been set up in the name of
+God: let us get rid of God, and we shall have toleration. Observe well
+the bearing of this mode of argument. Let us get rid of fire, and we
+shall have no more conflagrations; let us get rid of water, and no more
+people will be drowned. No doubt,--but humanity will perish of drought
+and of cold.
+
+Let us examine this subject seriously: it is well worth our while. If
+toleration proceeds from the enfeebling of religious belief, we ought
+among various nations to meet with toleration in an inverse proportion
+to the degree of their faith. This is a question then of history. Let us
+study facts. Recollecting first of all that ancient Rome did not draw
+forth a germ of liberty from its scepticism, let us throw a glance over
+existing communities.
+
+Sweden is far behind England in regard to liberty of conscience. Is it
+that religious convictions are weaker in England than in Sweden? Has the
+religious liberty which Great Britain practises sprung from
+indifference? Is it not rather that that land produces an energetic
+race, and that it has been so often drenched with the blood of the
+followers of different forms of worship, that that blood cried at length
+to heaven, and that the conscience of the people heard it? There is more
+religious liberty in France than in Spain. Is it the case that the true
+cause of the intolerance of the Spanish people is a more lively and more
+general faith than that of the French? That is not so certain.
+
+Switzerland is one of the countries in which is enjoyed the greatest
+liberty of opinion. Is Switzerland a land of indifference? Was not the
+comparative firmness of its citizens' convictions remarked during the
+conflicts of the last century? Do not the United States bear in large
+characters upon their banner this inscription: LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE?
+America is not distinguished as a country without religion; on the
+contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the
+multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects. Was it a
+sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect
+religious convictions? Assuredly not! William Penn was shut up in the
+Tower of London for the crime of free thought. Set free from prison, he
+crossed the ocean. While intolerance was reigning still on both shores
+of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all
+proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful. In vain I pass from
+old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that
+liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity
+of nations. I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most
+liberty where there is most real faith.
+
+Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the
+condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers
+causes. Let us simplify the question. Is it not, it will be said, the
+literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and
+founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my
+supposed questioner to go on. If he is a Frenchman, he will name
+Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics.
+They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact,
+and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of
+noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that
+every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of
+which it is deprived. But it is one thing to claim for one's-self a
+liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is
+another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all. There was, as I
+am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which
+led Voltaire to consecrate to noble causes a pen so often sold to evil.
+Still it is impossible not to suspect that if that apostle of toleration
+had had a principality under his own sway, the fact of thinking
+differently from the master would very soon have figured among the
+number of delinquencies.
+
+The patriarch of Ferney wrote in favor of toleration; some friends of
+religious indifference have pleaded the cause of liberty of conscience:
+the fact is certain. But other writers, animated by a living faith, have
+also demanded liberty for all: the fact is not less certain. Some years
+ago, at nearly the same epoch, the Pčre Lacordaire and our own
+Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the
+attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of
+his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the
+vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays
+not God."[33] Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on
+the borders of our lake, have gained entrance far and near into many
+hearts. I should like to take such and such a Parisian journalist, bring
+him into our midst, and get him to acquaint himself thoroughly with the
+results of our experience; I should like to conduct him to the cemetery
+of Clarens, place him by the tomb of Vinet, and tell him what that man
+was.--If, as he returned to his home, my journalist did not leave behind
+him at the French frontier, as contraband merchandise, all that he would
+have seen and learnt in our country, he would perhaps understand that
+the surest road by which to arrive at respect for the consciences of
+others is not indifference, but firmness of faith, in humility of heart,
+and largeness of thought. All the writers who have devoted their pen to
+the defence of the rights of the human soul have not therefore been
+sceptics. Without continuing this discussion of proper names, let us
+settle what is here the true place of writers. Before there are men who
+demand liberty and digest the theory of it, there must be other men who
+take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated
+with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the
+sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the
+martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary
+writer, "is free men, rather than liberators of humanity."[34]
+
+In fact, liberty comes to us above all from those who have suffered for
+it. Its living springs are in the spirit of faith, and not, as they
+teach us, in the spirit of indifference. It is easy to understand, that
+where no one believes, the liberty to believe would not be claimed by
+any one.
+
+Let us now endeavor to penetrate below facts, in order to bring back the
+discussion to sure principles. Let us ask what, in regard to liberty of
+conscience, are the natural consequences of faith, and the natural
+consequences of scepticism.
+
+Faith does appear, at first sight, a source of intolerance. The man who
+believes, reckons himself in possession of the right in regard to truth,
+and to God; he has nothing to respect in error. Thus it is that belief
+naturally engenders persecution. This reasoning is specious, all the
+more as it is supported by numerous and terrible examples; but let us
+look at things more closely. Place yourselves face to face with any one
+of your convictions, no matter which; I hope there is no one of you so
+unfortunate as not to have any. Suppose that it were desired to impose
+upon you by force even the conviction which you have. Suppose that an
+officer of police came to say to you, pronouncing at the same time the
+words which best expressed your own thoughts: "you are commanded so to
+believe." What would happen? If you had never had a doubt of your faith,
+you would be tempted to doubt it, the moment any human power presumed to
+impose it upon you. The feeling of oppression would produce in your
+conscience a strong inclination to revolt. Let us analyze this feeling.
+You feel that it is words, not convictions, which are imposed by force;
+you feel that declarations extorted by fear from lying lips are an
+outrage to truth. You feel, in a word, that your belief is the right of
+God over you, and not the right of your neighbor. Men respect God's
+right over the souls of their fellow-men, in proportion as they are
+intelligent in their own faith. The fanaticism which would impose words
+by force is not an ardent but a blind faith. In order to bring it back
+into the paths of liberty, it is enough to restore to it its sight.
+
+The establishment of the Christian religion furnishes a great example in
+support of our thesis. The Christians, when persecuted by the empire,
+had never allowed themselves to reply to the violence of power by the
+violence of rebellion. There came, however, and soon enough, a time when
+they were sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, and had withal the
+consciousness of their strength; but they had no will to conquer the
+world, except by the arms of martyrdom, and heroism, and obedience. This
+was not the case during a few years only, it is the history of three
+centuries, an ever-memorable page of human annals, in which all ages
+will be able to learn what are the true weapons of truth. Christendom,
+too often forgetful of its origin, has in later times allowed the fury
+of persecution to cloak itself under a pretended regard for sacred
+interests; but the remedy has proceeded from the very evil. The
+Christian conscience has protested, in the name of the Gospel, against
+the crimes of which the Gospel was the pretext, and the passions of men
+the cause. "We must bewail the misery and error of our time," already
+St. Hilary was exclaiming, in the fourth century. "Men are thinking that
+God has need of the protection of men.... The Church is uttering threats
+of banishment and imprisonment, and desiring to compel belief by
+force,--the Church, which itself acquired strength in exile and in
+prisons!"
+
+True faith, then, possesses a principle by which it protests against
+abuses which it is sought to cloak under its name, and this protest
+comes at last to make itself heard. Faith suppressed, the passions will
+remain, for in order to be a saint, it is not enough to be a sceptic.
+The passions will look for other pretexts. Will not the spirit of doubt
+offer them such pretexts?
+
+It seems at first sight that doubt must promote toleration, since it
+does not allow any importance to be attached to opinions. This is a
+specious conclusion, similar to that which placed in belief the source
+of intolerant passions. Let us once more reflect a little. The first
+effect of doubt is certainly to dispose the mind to leave a free course
+to all opinions; but disdain is not the way to respect, and only respect
+can give solid bases to the spirit of liberty. Believers are in the eyes
+of the sceptic weak-minded persons, whom he treats at first with a
+gentle and patronizing compassion. But these weak minds grow obstinate;
+the sceptic perceives that they do not bend before his superiority, and
+dare perhaps to consider themselves as his equals. Then irritation
+arises, and, beneath the velvet paw, one feels the piercing of the claw.
+The sceptic has in fact a dogma; he has but one, but one he has after
+all--the negation of truth. The faith of others is a protest against
+that single dogma on which he has concentrated all the powers of his
+conviction. He is passionately in earnest for this negation; he feels
+himself the representative of an idea, of which he must secure the
+triumph. Now come such surmisings as these: "Here are men who think
+themselves the depositaries of truth! These pretended believers--may
+they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power;
+let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a
+cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an innocent weakness, takes
+then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the
+temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to
+get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the
+conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we
+should have in the State! If we proclaimed the true modern dogma,
+namely, that there is no dogma; if silencing, in short, fanatics who are
+behind their age, we decreed that every belief is a crime and every
+manifestation of faith a revolt, what quiet in society!" The incline is
+slippery, and what shall hold back the sceptic who is descending it?
+
+Faith carries with it the remedy for fanaticism, but where shall be
+found the remedy for the fanaticism of doubt? In the claims of God? God
+is but a word, or a worthless hypothesis. In respect for the convictions
+of others? All conviction is but weakness and folly. All this, be well
+assured, gives much matter for reflection. When I hear some men who call
+themselves liberal, tracing the ideal of the society which they desire,
+the bare imagination of their triumph frightens me, for I can understand
+that that society would enjoy the liberty of the Roman empire, and the
+toleration of the Cćsars.
+
+Such are the consequences of scepticism for the leaders of a people.
+What will those consequences be for the people themselves? The spirit of
+indifference paralyzes the sources of generous sentiments, and ends in
+the same results as the spirit of cowardice. And do you not know the
+part which cowardice has played in history? If I may venture to call up
+here the most mournful recollections of modern times, do you not know
+that during the Reign of Terror, two or three hundred scoundrels
+instituted public massacres in the Capital of France, in the midst of a
+population shuddering with fright, but who let things go? Now the
+characteristic of indifference is the letting things go. If fanaticism
+has something to do with persecution, indifference has a great deal to
+do with it. The crimes which minds paralyzed by doubt allow to be
+perpetrated have besides a sadder character than those which are
+perpetrated by passions, which, wild and erring though they be, have a
+certain nobleness in their origin. If I must be bound to the stake, I
+had rather burn with the blind assent of a fanatical crowd, than in the
+presence of an indifferent populace who came to look on. For just as
+sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they find all spectacles
+equally instructive and curious.[35]
+
+I have felt it necessary to insist on these considerations. Direct
+attacks upon religious truth are perhaps less dangerous than the efforts
+by which modern infidelity endeavors to estrange us from God, by
+persuading us that doubt is the guarantee of liberty, and that belief
+rivets the chains of bondage. Many consciences are disturbed by these
+affirmations. It concerns us therefore to know that God is the great
+Liberator of souls, and that forgetfulness of God is the road to
+slavery. The faith which seeks to propagate itself by force inflicts
+upon itself the harshest of contradictions. The spirit of doubt, in
+order to become the spirit of violence, has only to transform itself
+according to the laws of its proper nature.
+
+And now to sum up. One of the noblest spectacles that earth can show,
+is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which
+each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his
+brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable
+asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by
+sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses
+itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt every firm and noble
+conviction!
+
+To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up its source the stream of the
+veritable progress of modern society; it is to attack the foundations of
+liberty, justice, and love. The material conquests of civilization would
+serve thenceforward only to hasten the decomposition of the social body.
+The pure idea of God is the true cause of the great progress of the
+modern era; religion, in its generality, is, as Plutarch has told us,
+the necessary condition to the very existence of society. This is what
+remains for us to prove.
+
+"How sacred is the society of citizens," said Cicero, "when the immortal
+gods are interposed between them as judges and as witnesses."[36] Let us
+raise still higher this lofty thought, and say: "How sacred is human
+society, when, beneath the eye of the common Father, the inequalities of
+life are accepted with patience and softened by love; when the poor and
+the rich, as they meet together, remember that the Lord is the Maker of
+them both; when a hope of immortality alleviates present evils, and when
+the consciousness of a common dignity reduces to their true value the
+passing differences of life!" Take away from human society God as
+mediator, and the hopes founded in God as a source of consolation, and
+what would you have remaining? The struggle of the poor against the
+rich, the envy of the ignorant directed against the man who has
+knowledge, the dullard's low jealousy of superior intelligence, hatred
+of all superiority, and, by an almost inevitable reaction, the obstinate
+defence of all abuses,--in one word, war--war admitting neither of
+remedy nor truce. Such is the most apparent danger which now threatens
+society.
+
+When I consider these facts with attention, I am astonished every day
+that society subsists at all, that the burning lava of unruly passions
+does not oftener make large fissures in the social soil, and overflow in
+devastating torrents, bearing away at once palace and cottage, field and
+workshop. This standing danger is drawing anxious attention, and we
+hear the old adage repeated: "There must be a religion for the people."
+There are men who wish to give the people a religion which they
+themselves do not possess, acting like a man who, at once poor and
+ostentatious, should give alms with counterfeit money. And what result
+do they attain? We must have a religion for the people, say the
+politicians, that they may secure the ends they have in view, and
+conduct at their own pleasure the herds at their disposal. We must have
+a religion for the people, say the rich, in order to keep peaceably
+their property and their incomes. We must have a religion for the
+people, say the _savants_, in order to remain quiet in their studies, or
+in their academic chairs. What are they doing--these men without God,
+who wish to preserve a faith for the use of the people? These
+_savants_,--they say, and print it, that religion is an error necessary
+for the multitudes who are incapable of rising to philosophy. Where is
+it that they say it, and print it? Is it in drawing-rooms with closed
+doors? Is it within the walls of Universities, or in scientific
+publications which are out of the reach of the masses? No. They say it
+in political journals, in reviews read by all the world; they print it
+at full in books which are sold by thousands of copies. Their words are
+spreading like a deleterious miasma through all classes of society.
+Thoughtless men! (I am unwilling to suppose a cool calculation on their
+part of money or of fame which should oblige me to say--heartless men),
+thoughtless men! they do not see the inevitable consequences of their
+own proceeding. The people hear and understand. The intellectual
+barriers between the different classes of society are gradually becoming
+lower: this is one of the clearest of the ways of Providence in our
+time. Do you believe that the people will long consent to hear it said
+that they only live on errors, but that those errors are necessary for
+them? Do you not see that they are about to rise, and answer, in the
+sentiment of their own dignity, that they will no longer be deceived,
+and that they intend to deliver themselves also from superstition? Then,
+all restraining barriers removed, passions will have free course; and
+believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of
+study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of
+this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to
+destroy religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are
+Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but
+whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation
+of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia,
+in January, 1757, "will render an eternal service to the human race, by
+destroying that infamous superstition, I do not say amongst the rabble,
+which is not worthy to be enlightened, and to which all yokes are
+suitable, but amongst honest people." A religion was necessary for the
+people; but Voltaire and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the
+French marquises, and the ladies who received their homage, could do
+without it.
+
+Voltaire died before eating of the fruit of his works; and Alfred de
+Musset could only address to him his vengeful apostrophe at his tomb:
+
+
+     Sleep'st thou content, and does thy hideous smile
+     Still flit, Voltaire, above thy fleshless bones?[37]
+
+
+Voltaire was dead; but many of his friends and disciples were able to
+meditate, in the prisons of the Terror and as they mounted the steps of
+the scaffold, on the nature of the terrible game which they had
+played--and lost.
+
+So it fares with men of letters who have no God, but who would have a
+religion for the people. Other men there are who would have a religion
+for the people, being themselves the while without restraint, because
+they are without religious convictions. They abandon themselves to the
+ardent pursuit of riches, excitements, worldly pleasures. These are they
+who have made a fortune by disgraceful means, perhaps the public sale of
+their consciences, and who by their luxurious extravagance overwhelm the
+honest and economical working-man. These are the courtesans who parade
+in broad daylight the splendid rewards of their own infamy. Let not such
+deceive themselves! The people see these things; they form their
+judgment of them, and if they give way to the bad instincts which are in
+us all, where God is not in the heart to restrain them, to their hatred
+is added contempt. If they are forcibly kept back from realizing their
+cherished hopes, they adjourn them, but without renouncing them.
+
+Put away all belief in God, and you will see the action and reaction of
+human passions forming, as it were, a mass of opposite electricities,
+and preparing the thunder-peal and the furies of the tempest. Then
+appear those disorganized societies which are terrified at their own
+dissolution, until a strong man comes, and, taking advantage of this
+very terror, takes and chastises these societies, as one chastises an
+unruly child. It is a story at once old and new, because, in proportion
+as God withdraws from human society, in that same proportion the power
+of the sword replaces the empire of the conscience. There must be a
+religion for the people! Yes, Sirs, but for that people, wide as
+humanity, which includes us all.
+
+If the existence of God is denied, man falls into despair, and society
+into dissolution. What then is my inference? That atheism is false. Such
+a mode of arguing produces an outcry. "A matter of sentiment!" men
+exclaim. "You would build up a doctrine according to your own fancy! You
+do not discuss the question calmly, but appeal to interests and
+prejudices: you quit the domain of science, which takes cognizance only
+of facts and reasoning." Such expressions are common enough to make it
+worth while to study their value. Of course, science must not be an
+instrument of our caprice. We are bound to search for truth; and we are
+unfaithful to our obligations if we try to establish doctrines which
+serve our passions, or favor our interests, or flatter our tastes and
+our prejudices. But the conscience, the heart, the conditions of the
+existence of human society, are neither prejudices nor personal
+interests; they are eternal and living realities. We speak of the
+conscience, of the heart, of society, and they answer us: "We do not
+believe that there are true sciences in that domain; we only wish for
+facts." Occasionally we hear naturalists speak in this way. We only wish
+for facts! Then our thoughts, our feelings, our conscience are not
+facts! The man who will give the closest observation to the steps of a
+fly, or to a caterpillar's method of crawling, has not a moment's
+attention to give to the impulses of the heart, to the rules of duty, to
+the struggles of the will; and when addressed on the subject of these
+realities of the soul, the most certain of all realities, he will reply:
+"That is no business of mine, I want nothing but facts." Let us pass
+from this aberration, and listen for a moment to other objectors.
+
+We do not deny, it is often said, the reality of our feelings. Man
+desires happiness, and seeks it in religious belief; but this is an
+order of things which science cannot take account of. Science has only
+truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason.
+If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience,
+no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results.
+"There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning,
+than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may
+do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is
+certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it
+entails dangerous consequences."[38] So wrote the patriarch of modern
+sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; it is
+repeated to us, without end, in the columns of the leading journals of
+France, and in the pages of the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The adversaries
+of spiritual beliefs have changed their tactics. In the last century,
+they replied to minds alarmed for the consequences of their work: "Truth
+can never do harm."--"Truth can never do harm," retorted J.J. Rousseau:
+"I believe it as you do, and this it is that proves to me that your
+doctrines are not truth." The argument is conclusive. So the adversary
+has taken up another position; and he says at this day:--"Our doctrines
+do perhaps pain the heart, and wound the conscience, but this is no
+reason why they should be false: moral goodness, utility, happiness, are
+not signs by which we may know what is true."
+
+Philosophy, Gentlemen, has always assumed to be the universal
+explanation of things, and you will agree that it is on her part a
+humiliating avowal, that she is enclosed, namely, in a circle of pure
+reason, and leaves out of view, as being unable to give any account of
+them, the great realities which are called moral goodness and happiness.
+One might ask what are the bases of that science which disavows, without
+emotion, the most active powers of human nature. One might ask whether
+those who so speak, understand well the meaning of their own words; and
+inquire also what is the method which they employ, and the result at
+which they aim. One might ask whether these philosophers are not like
+astronomers who should say: "Here are our calculations. It matters
+nothing to us whether the stars in their observed course do or do not
+agree with them. Science is sovereign; it is amenable only to its own
+laws, and visible realities cannot be objections in the way of its
+calculations." Let us leave these preliminary remarks, and let us come
+to the core of the controversy.
+
+They set the reason on one side, the conscience and heart upon the
+other, as an anatomist separates the organic portions of a corpse, and
+they say: Truth belongs only to the reason; the conscience and the heart
+have no admission into science. Listen to the following express
+declaration of the weightiest, perhaps, of French contemporary
+philosophers: "The God of the pure reason is the only true God; the God
+of the imagination, the God of the feelings, the God of the conscience,
+are only idols!"[39] It is impossible to accept this arbitrary division
+of the divine attributes. There is but one and the same God, the
+Substance of truth, the inexhaustible Source of beauty, the supreme Law
+of the wills created to accomplish the designs of His mercy. The
+conscience, the heart, the reason rise equally towards Him, following
+the triple ray which descends from His eternity upon our transitory
+existence. We cannot therefore seriously admit that God of the pure
+reason, separated from the God of the conscience and of the heart. Still
+let us endeavor to make this concession, for argument's sake, to our
+philosopher. Let us suppose that the reason has a God to itself, a God
+for the metaphysicians who is not the God of the vulgar. Before we
+immolate upon His altar the conscience and the heart, it is worth our
+while to examine whether the statue of the God of the reason rests upon
+a solid pedestal. Here are the theses which are proposed to us: "It is
+impossible for our feelings to supply any light for science. Truth may
+be gloomy, and despair may gain its cause. Virtue may be wrong, and
+immorality may be the true. Reason alone judges of that which is." I
+answer: Human nature has always eagerly followed after happiness. Human
+nature has always acknowledged, even while violating it, a rule of duty.
+The heart is not an accident, the conscience is not a prejudice: they
+are, and by the same right as the reason, constituent elements of our
+spiritual existence. If there exist an irreconcilable antagonism between
+science and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and universal
+aspirations, is the victim of an illusion, if the conscience in its
+clearest admonitions is only a teacher of error, what is our position?
+In what I am now saying, Gentlemen, I am not appealing to your feelings;
+the business is to follow, with calm attention, a piece of exact
+reasoning. If the heart deceives us, if the voice of duty leads us
+astray, the disorder is at the very core of our being; our nature is ill
+constructed. If our nature is ill constructed, what warrants to us our
+reason? Nothing. What assures us that our axioms are good, and that our
+reasonings have any value? Nothing. The life of the soul cannot be
+arbitrarily cloven in twain; it must be held for good in all its
+constituent elements, or enveloped wholly and entirely in the shades of
+doubt. If the heart and conscience deceive us, then reason may lead us
+astray, and the very idea of truth disappears. God is the light of the
+spiritual world. We prove His existence by showing that without Him all
+returns to darkness. This demonstration is as good as another.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[26] Christian States have given the force of law to institutions, such,
+for instance, as monogamy, which date their origin from the Gospel
+records. Here we have the normal development of civilization: religious
+faith enlightens the general conscience, and reveals to it the true
+conditions of social progress. In this order of things, it is not a
+question of _beliefs_, but of _acts_ imposed in the name of the
+interests of society. The state may take account of the religious
+beliefs of its subjects, and enter into such relations as may seem to it
+convenient with the ecclesiastical authorities: this is the basis of the
+system of concordats, a system which has nothing in it contrary to first
+principles, so long as liberty is maintained. But the establishment of
+_national_ religions, decreed by the temporal power and varying in
+different states, manifestly supposes a foundation of scepticism. For
+the idea of truth, one and universal in itself, is substituted the idea
+of decisions obligatory for those only who are under the jurisdiction of
+a definite political body. If the State, without pretending to decree
+dogma, receives it from the hands of the Church, and imposes it upon its
+subjects, it seems at first that the temporal power has placed itself at
+the service of the Church, but that the idea of truth is preserved. But
+when the question is studied more closely, it is seen that this is not
+the case, and that the state usurps in fact, in this combination, the
+attributes of the spiritual power. In fact, before protecting _the true
+religion_, it is necessary to ascertain which it is; and in order to
+ascertain the true religion, the political power must constitute itself
+judge of religious truth. So we come back, by a _détour_, to the
+conception of national religions. The Emperor of Russia and the Emperor
+of Austria will inquire respectively which is the only true religion, to
+the exclusive maintenance of which they are to consecrate their temporal
+power. To the same question they will give two different replies; and
+each nation will have its own form of worship, just as each nation has
+its own ruler.
+
+[27] _Etudes orientales_, 1861.
+
+[28] _Unité morale des peuples modernes_,--a lecture delivered at Lyons,
+10 April, 1839. This lecture is inserted after the _Génie des Religions_
+in the complete works of the author.
+
+[29] Franck, _Philosophie du droit ecclésiastique_, pages 117 and 118.
+
+[30] Schmidt, _Essai historique sur la Société civile dans le monde
+romain_. Bk. 1. ch. 3.
+
+[31]
+
+     La liberté que j'aime est née avec notre âme
+     Le jour oů le plus juste a bravé le plus fort.
+
+[32] Tertullian.
+
+[33] _Le Pčre Lacordaire_, by the Comte de Montalembert, p. 25.
+
+[34] _De l'autre rive_, by Iscander (in Russian). Iscander is the
+pseudonyme of M. Herzen.
+
+[35] "The man of thought knows that the world only belongs to him as a
+subject of study, and, even if he could reform it, perhaps he would find
+it so curious as it is that he would not have the courage to do
+so."--Ernest Renan, preface to _Etudes d'histoire religieuse_, 1857. The
+author has manifested better sentiments in 1859, in the preface to his
+_Essais de morale et de critique._
+
+[36] _De Legibus_, ii. 7.
+
+[37]
+
+     Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire
+     Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os décharnés?
+
+[38] Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having access to
+the original, I re-translate the French translation.--TR.]
+
+[39] Vacherot, _La metaphysique et la science_. Preface, p. xxix.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+_THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM._
+
+(At Geneva, 24th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 18th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+The subject of the present Lecture will be--The revival of Atheism. And
+I do not employ the word 'atheism'--a term which has been so greatly
+abused--without mature reflection. When Socrates opposed the idea of the
+holy God to the impure idols of paganism; when he dethroned Jupiter and
+his train in order to celebrate "the supreme God, who made and who
+guides the world, who maintains the works of creation in the flower of
+youth, and in a vigor always new,"[40] they accused Socrates of being an
+atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence
+of God more certain than any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as
+an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to
+worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world,
+the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down
+to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of
+the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of
+persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In
+an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best
+efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God,
+because they would not have been understood had they attempted to
+say--"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing
+them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines,
+apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of
+history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where
+liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names,
+for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In
+affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites
+of fame, are shaking the foundations of all religion, one exposes no
+one to severities which have disappeared from our manners, one only
+exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But
+candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of
+thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and,
+while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.
+
+Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted
+that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny
+God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every
+soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a
+secret hope, or by a secret dread? This is true, as I think; but we are
+speaking here of doctrines and not of men. It is true again that the
+negation of the Creator allows of the existence, in certain
+philosophies, of generous ideas and elevated conceptions. Such men,
+while they put God out of existence, desire to keep the true, the
+beautiful, the good; they hope to preserve the rays, while they
+extinguish the luminous centre from which they proceed. Such systems
+always tend to produce the deadly fruits pointed out in my last lecture;
+but men devoted to the severe labors of the intellect often escape, by
+a noble inconsistency, the natural results of their theories. Therefore,
+in the inquiry on which we are about to enter, the term 'atheism'
+implies, with regard to persons, neither reproach nor contempt. It
+simply indicates a doctrine, the doctrine which denies God. This denial
+takes place in two ways: It is affirmed that nature, that is to say
+matter, force devoid of intelligence and of will, is the sole origin of
+things; or, the reality is acknowledged of those marks which raise mind
+above nature, but it is affirmed that humanity is the highest point of
+the universe, and that above it there is nothing. Such are the two forms
+of atheism.
+
+Perhaps you expect here the explanation of a doctrine which is often
+described as holding a sort of middle place between the negation and the
+affirmation of God, namely, pantheism. Pantheism, in the true sense of
+that word, is a system according to which God is all, and the universe
+nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek,
+Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime
+infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses
+in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is
+manifold and transitory a disdain which passes into negation. In the
+domain of experience, all is limited, temporary, imperfect; and reason
+seeks the perfect, the eternal, the infinite. The doctrine of creation
+alone explains how the universe subsists in presence of its first cause.
+In ignorance of this doctrine, some bold thinkers have cut the knot
+which they could not untie. They have declared that reason alone is
+right, and that experience is wrong: the world does not exist, it is but
+an illusion of the mind. Whence proceeds this illusion? If perfection
+alone exists, how comes that imperfect mind to exist which deceives
+itself in believing in the reality of the world? To this question the
+system has no answer. Such is true pantheism; but it is not to dangers
+so noble that most minds run the risk of succumbing. What is commonly
+understood by pantheism is the deification of the universe. The idea of
+God is not directly denied, but it undergoes a transformation which
+destroys it. God is no longer the eternal and Almighty Spirit, the
+Creator; but the unconscious principle, the substance of things, the
+whole. The universe alone exists; above it there is nothing; but the
+universe is infinite, eternal, divine. The higher wants of the reason,
+mingling with the data derived from experience, form an imposing and
+confused image, which, while it beguiles the imagination, perverts the
+understanding, deceives the heart, and places the conscience in peril.
+In a philosophical point of view, it is a contradiction of thought,
+which seeks the Infinite Being, and, being unable to discover Him, gives
+the character of infinity to realities bounded by experience. In a
+religious point of view, it is an aberration of the heart, which
+preserves the sentiment of adoration, but perverts it by dispersing it
+over the universe. "Pantheism," says M. Jules Simon, "is only the
+learned form of atheism; the universe deified is a universe without
+God."[41] From the moment that the reason endeavors to see distinctly,
+pantheism vanishes like a deceitful glare. Atheism disengages itself
+from the cloak which was concealing its true nature, and the mind
+remains in presence of nature only, or of humanity only. We will proceed
+to take a rapid glance at some few of the countries of Europe, in order
+to discover and point out in them the traces of this melancholy
+doctrine. Let us begin with France.
+
+In the year 1844, just twenty years ago, some French writers,
+representing the philosophy, in some measure official, of the time,
+united to publish a _Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques_. M.
+Franck, the director of this useful and laborious enterprise, said in
+the preface to the work: "Atheism has well nigh completely disappeared
+from philosophy; the progress of a sound psychology will render its
+return for ever impossible." In speaking thus, he expressed the thoughts
+and hopes of the school of which he remains one of the most estimable
+representatives. A generous impulse was animating a group of intelligent
+and learned young men. Their hope was to translate Christianity into a
+purely rational doctrine, to purify religious notions without destroying
+them, and, while endowing humanity with a vigorous scientific culture,
+to leave to it its lofty hopes. The object in view was to establish a
+philosophy founded upon a serious faith in God; and to this philosophy
+was promised the progressive and pacific conquest of the human race.[42]
+Twenty years have passed, and things bear quite another aspect. To
+language expressive of security have succeeded the accents of anxiety
+and words of alarm. The cause which was proclaimed victorious is
+defended at this day like a besieged city. You will remark
+however,--that I may not leave you beyond measure discouraged by the
+facts of which I have to tell you,--you will remark, I say, that it is
+the efforts attempted in the cause of good which have helped to set me
+on the track of evil; it has often been the defence which has fixed my
+attention upon the attack.
+
+The materialism of the last century seems to have maintained a strong
+hold upon one part of the Paris school of medicine. We do find in France
+a good many physicians who, like Boerhave, render homage to religion,
+and a good many physiologists who, like the great Haller, are ready to
+defend beliefs of the spiritual order;[43] but, among men specially
+devoted to the study of matter, many succumb to the temptation of
+refusing to recognize anything as real which does not come under the
+experience of the senses. This however is not one of the points which
+offer themselves most strikingly for our examination. The atheistic
+manifestations of the socialist schools have more novelty, and perhaps
+more importance.
+
+Man is naturally a social being. Good and evil have their primitive seat
+in the heart of individuals, but good and evil are transferred into
+institutions of which the influence is morally beneficial or pernicious.
+If socialism consists in recognizing the importance of social
+institutions, in cherishing ideas of progress and hopes of reform, I
+trust that we are all socialists. Do we desire progress by the ever
+wider diffusion of justice and love? From the moment that, across the
+conscience whereon divine rays are falling, we have descried the eternal
+centre of light, we understand that God is the most implacable enemy of
+abuses. How is it then that atheism sometimes manifests itself in
+attempts at social reform? We may explain it, without so much as
+pointing out the influence, but too real, of the faults committed by the
+representatives of religion. Faith is a principle of action; it is, as
+history testifies, the grand source of the progress of human society;
+but faith is also a principle of patience. The brow of every believer is
+more or less illumined by the rays of His peace who is patient because
+He is eternal. Eager to effect good to the utmost extent of his ability,
+he accomplishes his work with that calm activity to which are reserved
+durable victories. In the impossible (for if the word impossible is not
+French, it is human) the believer recognizes one of the manifestations
+of the supreme Will, and immortal hope enables him to support the evils
+which he does not succeed in destroying. But this is not enough for
+impatient reformers. Ignorant of the profound sources of evil, they
+think that institutions can do everything, and that a change of laws
+would suffice to reform men's hearts; they believe that the organization
+of society alone hinders the realization of good and of happiness. The
+resignation of believers appears to them a stupid lethargy, and in their
+patient expectation of a judgment to come they see only an obstacle to
+the immediate triumph of justice on the earth. What if the nations were
+persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present
+life, so that all that is to be done is to make to ourselves a paradise
+as soon as may be here below! If they were persuaded that all appeal to
+the Judge in heaven is a chimerical hope, with what ardor would they
+throw themselves into schemes of revolution! Thus it is that certain
+political innovators are led to seek in the negation of God one of their
+means of action.
+
+Two views, therefore, essentially diverse, govern the labors of the
+renovators of society. The one class desire to realize, in an ever
+larger measure, justice and love; religious convictions are the
+strongest support of their work. The other class would uproot from men's
+minds every principle of faith, in order the more readily to obtain the
+realization of their theories. These two classes of men seem at times to
+be fighting all together in the _męlée_ of opinions. They meet, as, in
+the doubtful glimmer of the dawn, might meet together laborious workmen
+who are anticipating the daylight, and evil-doers who are fleeing from
+the sun.
+
+In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools,
+it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into
+the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained
+and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some
+prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough
+for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of
+Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas. It
+discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a
+materialistic enthusiasm for corporeal indulgences. Disregarding the
+sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn
+our attention elsewhere.
+
+M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and
+elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred
+pages destined to maintain the thesis that God does not exist.[44] Man
+conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection
+realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception
+of a real and perfect being: such is the usual process of metaphysical
+reasoning. For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one
+another; this is one of his fundamental theses. This thesis does but
+interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to
+raise ourselves higher. The world with which we are acquainted is
+imperfect; therefore--say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes--the
+perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to
+the world. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect,
+therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says
+M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the
+absolute rule of truth. To say therefore of God that He is perfect, is
+to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never
+realized. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd
+and violent. If God is perfect, He does not exist. If God exists, He is
+not perfect. The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us
+to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His
+perfection. The author of this theory renders a worship to that ideal
+which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the
+world is gravitating by the law of progress. This worship is of too
+abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular
+by taking another shape, and it does so in this way: We conceive of that
+perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our
+thought. Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards
+perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human
+mind. The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is
+it that we must adore. We are here out of the region of pure
+abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.
+
+The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with
+chimeras, was founded in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte. M.
+Littré is at present one of its principal representatives. This writer,
+says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring "to set
+humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions,
+from deceitful idols and powers."[45] Let us say the same thing in
+simpler terms: M. Littré professes the doctrines of a school which
+ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history. To ascertain
+phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such,
+say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge. As for the
+origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual
+fancy. "Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as
+he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in
+doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future."[46]
+
+"In spite of some appearances to the contrary," says M. Littré, "the
+positive philosophy does not accept atheism."[47] Why? Because atheism
+pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and that after a
+fashion is still theology. Minds "veritably emancipated" profess to know
+nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience. They do
+not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts. The attempt is a
+bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emancipating themselves
+from the laws of reason. The very writer whom I have just quoted is
+himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of
+a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very
+treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the
+"_eternal_ motive powers of a _boundless_ universe."[48] Boundless!
+eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the instincts of the reason
+coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing! Adoration
+is withdrawn from God, and it is given to the universe at large. What is
+it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct
+object of worship? Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in
+a work reviewed by Auguste Comte: "Man," he says, "has always adored
+humanity." Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and
+the brief summary of their history. This humanity-god has been long
+adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its worshippers;
+but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his
+worship and give it its true name.[49]
+
+The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard
+to whatever is not included in the domain of experience. But its foot
+slips, and it falls into the negation of God, from which it rises again
+by means of a humanitarian atheism. All these marks are met with again
+in the works of the critical school.
+
+The critics group themselves about M. Renan. The praises which they
+lavished a while ago on a bad book by that author seem at least to allow
+us to point him out as their chief. They derive their name from studies
+in history and archćology, with which we here have nothing to do. They
+are regarded as forming a philosophical and religious school, and it is
+in that connection that they claim our attention. Their influence is
+incontestable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is
+nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school
+engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings
+the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and
+to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and
+to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow
+particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and of
+philosophy; but this interest is purely historical. Nothing is more
+curious than the successive forms of human beliefs; but the period of
+beliefs is over. Religious faith no longer subsists except in minds
+which are behind the age; and philosophy, upheld in a final swoon by
+Hegel and Hamilton, has just yielded its last breath in the arms of M.
+Cousin: so M. Renan informs us.[50] To choose a side between the
+defenders of the idea of God and its opponents; to choose between Plato
+and Epicurus, between Origen and Celsus, between Descartes and Hobbes,
+between Leibnitz and Spinoza, would be to make one's self the Don
+Quixote of thought. An honest man may find amusement in reading the
+Amadis of Gaul; the Knight of _la Manche_ went mad through putting
+faith in the adventures of that hero. A like fate befalls those minds
+which are simple enough to believe still, in the midst of the nineteenth
+century, in the brave chimeras of former days. Let us study history, let
+us study nature; beyond that we do not know, and we never shall know,
+anything. Our fashionable men of letters develop their thesis with so
+much assurance; they lavish upon believers so many expressions of
+amiable disdain; they appear so sure of being the interpreters of the
+mind of the age, that they seem ready to repeat to young people dazzled
+by their success, the lesson which Gilbert had expressed in these terms:
+
+
+     Between ourselves--you own a God, I fear!
+     Beware lest in your verse the fact appear:
+     Dread the wits' laughter, friend, and know your betters:
+     Our grandsires might have worn those old-world fetters;
+     But in our days! Come, you must learn respect,--
+     Content _your age to follow_, not direct.[51]
+
+
+To believe in God would be vulgar; to deny the existence of God would be
+a want of taste; the divine world must remain as a subject for poetry.
+So our critics speak. Their direct affirmation is scepticism. But they
+follow the destinies of the positivist school; they do not succeed in
+maintaining their balance between the affirmation and negation of God.
+Alfred de Musset has described this position of the soul, and its
+inevitable issue. Must I hope in God? Must I reject all faith and all
+hope?
+
+
+     Between these paths how difficult the choice!
+       Ah! might I find some smoother, easier way.
+     "None such exists," whispers a secret voice,
+       "God _is_, or _is not_--own, or slight, His sway."
+     In sooth, I think so: troubled souls in turn
+       By each extreme are tossed and harassed sore:
+     They are but atheists, who feel no concern;
+       If once they doubted they would sleep no more.[52]
+
+
+The indifference of the critical philosophers is in fact only a
+transparent veil to atheistical doctrines. Faith in God the Creator is
+in their eyes a superstition; this is their only settled dogma. In other
+respects they indulge in theses the most contradictory. Most generally
+they deify man, declaring that there is no other God than the idea of
+humanity, no other infinite than the indefinite character of the
+aspirations of our own soul. At other times they proclaim an undisguised
+materialism, and look for the explanation of all things in atoms and in
+the law which governs them. They make to themselves a two-faced idol,
+one of these faces being called nature, and the other humanity. What
+strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language
+change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty, of
+religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted
+from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally
+different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their God
+is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a
+law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these
+equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of
+the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and
+captivated by success, is deluged with writings which have the same
+effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of
+the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ever
+allowing it to form either a precise idea or a settled judgment.
+
+Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance
+over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no
+difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are
+multiplying with the object of defending the existence of God,
+Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against
+the rising flood of atheism.[53] And here is a fact still more
+significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are
+recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are passing in review the
+worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of God,
+without having their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention
+directed to contemporary productions.[54]
+
+I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there
+presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing principally
+as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed,
+doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the
+Rhine.
+
+A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of
+speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped
+in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most
+directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been
+pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and
+on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or
+not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the
+following words: "I have only had one disciple who has understood
+me--and he has misunderstood me." A man distinguished in metaphysical
+research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect,
+devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secrétan, writes
+with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian
+system: "If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no
+answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one
+has ever understood it."[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here
+undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be
+enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to
+understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor,
+in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.
+
+The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an
+eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to
+any mind. The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an
+inadmissible conception. They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the
+palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the
+act of an intelligence. This idea-God we have already encountered in the
+writings of M. Vacherot. We shall find it again more than once as we go
+on. In Germany, as in France, the theory only becomes popular by
+undergoing a transformation. The eternal idea manifests itself in the
+mind of man, and exists nowhere else. Above this idea there is nothing.
+Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored. And
+thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of
+1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the _Gazette d'Augsbourg_: "I
+begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel
+declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago." The deification of
+man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.
+Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was
+current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its
+popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found
+him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of
+an ecstatic contemplation. "Why, what are you doing there?" inquired the
+visitor. "I am adoring myself," replied the young adept in philosophy.
+
+I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history
+of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it
+occupies a large place and demands the most serious attention; I am
+tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.
+This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of
+atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M.
+Saint-Réné Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of
+the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts
+of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulć, it
+gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious
+authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."[57]
+
+It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be
+brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in
+its commencement, to favor at length _the revolts of matter run mad_.
+And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the
+development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is
+necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of
+destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the
+flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the
+moment that the flesh is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and
+ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism
+into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There
+exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us
+there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us:
+the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an
+idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for
+Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to
+his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic
+sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really
+serviceable to humanity."[58]
+
+Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacrifices; the emancipation
+is incomplete. What is this humanity to which man owes himself? An
+abstraction, an idol still, an idol to be overthrown if he would obtain
+perfect independence. Listen to the German Stirmer, deducing from the
+doctrine its extreme consequences: "Perish the people," he exclaims,
+"perish Germany, perish all the nations of Europe; and let man, rid of
+all bonds, delivered from the last phantoms of religion, recover at
+length his full independence!"[59] All the mists of abstraction have now
+disappeared: here we are on ground which is hideously clear. Humanity is
+no longer in question, but the worship of _self_; it is the complete
+enfranchisement of selfishness.
+
+While the proud idealism of the Germans was thus, by its own weight,
+descending into the level flats of thought, a political movement was
+agitating Germany. Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an
+enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not
+simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the
+irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice.
+In the year 1845, the attention of the Swiss authorities was drawn to
+certain secret societies, composed of Germans, and having for their
+object a revolution in Germany, but which had established their basis of
+operations on the Swiss territory. The inquiries of the police issued in
+the discovery of twenty-seven clubs bound together by secret
+correspondence. Working-men were induced on various pretexts to attend
+meetings, of which the real object was only gradually disclosed to
+them. If they were reckoned worthy, they were initiated into the plan of
+a social reform, the basis of which was atheism.[60] One of the
+principal agents in this work of proselytism, Guillaume Marr, exclaimed:
+"Faith in a personal and living God is the origin and the fundamental
+cause of our miserable social condition." And he deduced as follows the
+practical consequence of his theory: "The idea of God is the key-stone
+of the arch of a tottering civilization; let us destroy it. The true
+road to liberty, to equality, and to happiness, is atheism. No safety on
+earth, so long as man holds on by a thread to heaven.--Let nothing
+henceforward shackle the spontaneity of the human mind. Let us teach man
+that there is no other God than himself, that he is the Alpha and the
+Omega of all things, the superior being, and the most real reality." We
+have still to explain the nature of this spontaneity, free from every
+shackle. One of the editors of the journal conducted by Marr discloses
+it by quoting some verses in which Henri Heine expresses the wish to
+see _great vices, bloody and colossal crimes_, provided he may be
+delivered from a _worthy-citizen virtue_, and an _honest-merchant
+morality_![61] A little later, a journal of German Switzerland asserted,
+that in order to set free man's natural instincts and propensities, it
+is indispensable to destroy the idea of God.[62]
+
+These, I am well aware, are the screams of a savage madness. But after
+all, and be this as it may, Marr was publishing his journal at Lausanne
+in 1845, and in 1848 he was named representative of the people, by a
+considerable majority, in one of the largest cities of Germany. And this
+was by no means an isolated fact. Atheism showed itself in the ephemeral
+parliament of Frankfort as a sort of party, of which M. Vogt, says the
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, was the great orator.[63]
+
+The German revolution was put down by the bayonet, but the doctrines of
+which it had revealed the existence, left vestiges for a long time in
+the country of the terror which they had inspired. Alarm was felt for
+the various interests threatened, and noble souls were stirred with
+compassion by the conviction forced upon them of the spiritual miseries
+of their brethren. A powerful reaction took place, as well in the
+religious as the philosophical world. This reaction has produced
+salutary results; but the object is not fully attained. Open the
+journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these
+days, the principal centre of materialism. It is unhappily so rich in
+this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to
+furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.
+
+Doctor Büchner has published, under the title of _Force and Matter_, a
+small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately
+been translated into French.[64] Materialism is there set forth with
+perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity.
+The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of
+experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the
+researches of philosophy. It would seem therefore that the question of
+the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies.
+Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe
+infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in
+order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what
+journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by
+means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have
+occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that
+experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a
+metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out,
+Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good
+philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own
+without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues
+who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in
+making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of
+their own despotism.
+
+We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth
+with _éclat_ by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and
+projects, and lastly materialism. The elements are the same as in
+France, but exhibit themselves in a different order. This diversity
+suggests some observations worth your attention.
+
+France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose
+to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the
+greater part of its atheistical manifestations. German atheism, having
+as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man
+was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.[65] We may
+inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to
+the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural
+movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.
+
+Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man,
+and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence. We are
+nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without
+leaving any trace of ever having been together. Is not this a thing to
+be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world? Why then are the
+apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and
+uttering shouts of triumph? It is that they feel themselves free,
+emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,
+
+
+                            ... that brood of idle fear
+     Fine nothings worshipped,--_why_, doth not appear;
+     The gods--whom man made, and who made not man.[66]
+
+
+Emancipation! Such is the watchword of materialism. Listen, for example,
+to the conclusion of Baron d'Holbach's _System of Nature_: "Break the
+chains," says he, "which are binding men. Send back those gods who are
+afflicting them to those imaginary regions from whence fear first drew
+them forth. Inspire with courage the intelligent being; give him energy;
+let him dare at length to love himself, to esteem himself, to feel his
+own dignity; let him dare to emancipate himself, let him be happy and
+free." Strange accents these, at the close of a large philosophical
+treatise intended to prove that there is nothing in the universe but
+matter. Whence proceeds the dignity of that fragment of matter which
+calls itself man? Understand well what passes in the mind of these
+philosophers. In proportion as man lowers his own origin, in the same
+proportion,--if he does not wish to make himself a brute, in order to
+live as do the animals,--he exalts himself in an inevitable sentiment of
+pride. In vain does he give out that the material frame is everything;
+he feels that thought is more than the material frame; and he accords to
+himself the first place in the universe. The materialist ignores the
+Eternal Mind in order to emancipate himself; and whatever he may say,
+his real deity is not the atom, but himself. The encyclopedists, sons of
+an age which yielded at once to noble influences and to guilty
+seductions, united the worship of progress to a degrading philosophy.
+Consider with what a feeling of pride they lowered man, and you will
+understand why eternal nature gave place to sacred humanity. When
+France had fallen into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little
+dust in an earthen vase which was offered for public adoration, but they
+led in procession through the streets of Paris a woman who was called
+the goddess Reason.
+
+So it was that materialism ended in the adoration of man. Let us
+endeavor to understand how the adoration of man turns again to
+materialism. The mind endowed with intelligence and will is more
+elevated in the scale of being than inert bodies. This is for us an
+evident truth. Could one demonstrate it by reasoning? I do not know; but
+in contesting it, we should contradict the plainest evidence. Reason is
+superior to matter. If, with the school which extends from Pythagoras to
+Saint Augustine, and from Saint Augustine to Descartes, we connect
+reason with God as its principle, the grand science of metaphysics is
+founded. But if reason does not rise to God, what will happen? This
+reason, which proclaims itself superior to matter, is not, as we have
+said already, the individual thought of Francis, Peter, or John. If an
+individual presented himself as being reason itself, the absolute
+reason, and said, "I am the truth," it would be necessary to take one of
+three courses. If we thought that he spoke truly, and if we received
+his testimony, it would be necessary to worship him, for he would be
+God. If it were feared that he spoke truly, and those who so feared were
+unwilling to acknowledge his rule, it would be necessary for them to
+kill him in order to endeavor to kill the truth. If it were thought that
+he spoke falsely, it would be necessary to watch him, and the moment he
+committed an act dangerous for society, to shut him up, for he would be
+a madman. But the philosophers make no such pretension. The reason of
+which they speak is the reason common to all, a reason which is not that
+of an individual, but that of which all rational individuals partake.
+This common, universal, eternal reason,--where and how does it exist?
+Reason manifests itself by ideas, and ideas are the acts of minds. To
+imagine an idea without a mind of which it is the act, is the same thing
+as to imagine a movement without a body of which it is also the act, in
+a different sense. Take away bodies, and there is no more movement. Take
+away intelligences, and there are no more ideas. The philosopher who
+speaks of an idea which is not the idea of an intelligence, utters words
+which have no meaning. The reason which is not that of any created
+individual remains therefore absolutely inconceivable without the
+eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible
+conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself
+in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of
+ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized
+with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is
+always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on
+shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the _positive_ by a
+violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive
+materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty
+pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene
+Doctor Büchner and his fellows.
+
+The great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as it is often said to
+be, the combat of idealism against materialism. Idealism begins well,
+and we must not refuse to acknowledge the services which it has rendered
+to the cause of truth. But philosophy must follow the road traced out in
+an ancient adage: _Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad
+superiora_.[67] If the mind does not go to the end of this royal road;
+if idealism, having surmounted the fascinations of the senses, remains
+in ideas, without ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of matter
+and the worship of the idea call mutually one to another, and revolve in
+a fatal circle. The struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds
+one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied honor, the
+adversaries breakfast together, and gather strength to combat, in case
+of need, a common enemy. The great combat which forms the main subject
+of the history of ideas is the combat between belief in God and an
+atheistical philosophy. Whether atheism admits for its first principle
+an atom without a Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is a
+fact very important for the history of philosophy, but the importance of
+which is small enough in regard to the interests of humanity.
+
+We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into Germany, let us now cross
+the British Channel, and observe what is going on in England.
+
+England, at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the
+eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion. France gave
+the patent of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in part
+from this foreign source. An active propaganda for the diffusion of
+impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain. A
+strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed
+various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books
+and respectable journals.[68] These efforts were crowned with success.
+England, by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices for the
+diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its respect for the
+Lord's-day,[69] assumed[70] the characteristic marks of a Christian
+nation. Grand measures adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity,
+placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously philanthropic
+civilization; but as Pčre Gratry has remarked, "more than in any other
+people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."[71]
+The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of
+this double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in
+which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit
+of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy. A book is
+instanced, of materialistic tendency,[72] published in 1828, of which a
+popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it
+advocated. There was sold of this edition, in a short time, more than
+eighty thousand copies. A thoughtful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a
+statistical statement, according to which English publications, openly
+atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six hundred and forty
+thousand copies.[73]
+
+If we pass from the current literature to scientific publications, we
+shall meet with facts of the same order. The Hegelianism and the
+scepticism of the critical school are creeping into the works of some
+theologians. The theories of positivism, reduced to shape in France,
+have passed the channel, and have obtained in England more attention
+perhaps than in the country of their origin. They have been adopted by
+a distinguished author, Mr. Stuart Mill; and a female writer, Miss
+Martineau, has set them forth, in her mother-tongue, for the use of her
+fellow-countrymen.[74] Positivism is even in vogue, and has become
+"_fashionable_" amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in
+Great Britain.[75]
+
+In less elevated regions of the intellectual world of England, an
+organized sect commends itself to our attention. This sect has given to
+its system of doctrine the name of _Secularism_. It has a social
+object--the destruction of the Established Church and the existing
+political order. It has a philosophy, the purport and bearing of which
+we will inquire of Mr. Holyoake. The following is the answer of the
+chief of the secularists:--"All that concerns the origin and end of
+things, God and the immortal soul, is absolutely impenetrable for the
+human mind. The existence of God, in particular, must be referred to
+the number of abstract questions, with the ticket _not determined_. It
+is probable, however, that the nature which we know, must be the God
+whom we inquire after. What is called atheism is found _in suspension_
+in our theory."[76] The practical consequence of these views is, that
+all day-dreams relating to another world must be put aside, and we must
+manage so as to live to the best advantage possible in the present
+life.[77] Hence the name of the system. _Secularism_ teaches its
+disciples to have nothing to do with religion in any shape, that they
+may confine themselves strictly to the present life. It is an attempt of
+which the express object is to realize life without God.
+
+These doctrines formed the subject of public discussions, in London in
+1853, and at Glasgow in 1854. The meeting at Glasgow numbered, it is
+said, more than three thousand persons.[78] The sect employs as its
+means of action open-air speeches, the publication of books and
+journals,[79] and assemblies for giving information and holding debates
+in lecture-rooms. There are five of these lecture-rooms in London. I
+have seen the programme, for 1864, of the meetings held at No. 12,
+Cleveland Street, under the direction of Messrs. Holyoake and J. Clark.
+There are, every Sunday,--a discourse at eleven o'clock, a discussion at
+three o'clock, a lecture at seven o'clock. The programme invites all
+free-thinkers to attend these meetings. Some of the assemblies are
+public; for others a small entrance fee is demanded. London is the
+principal centre of the association; but it has branches all over the
+country, and it numbers in Great Britain twenty-one lecture-rooms,
+particularly at Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and
+Edinburgh.[80] Secularism naturally seeks to magnify, as much as may be,
+its own importance; and it is not to the declarations of its apostles
+that we must refer in order to estimate the extent and influence of its
+action. At the same time the existence of a society, the avowed object
+of which is the diffusion of practical atheism, cannot be regarded with
+indifference. At the present moment the affairs of the sect would not
+appear to be flourishing. A year ago a secularist orator had delivered a
+vehement speech in favor of virtue. Just as he had resumed his seat, a
+policeman entered the room and took him into custody. A few days
+afterwards the _Times_ informed its readers that the orator of virtue
+had just been condemned for theft to twelve months' hard labor.[81] In
+the _Secular World_ of the 1st January, 1864, Mr. Holyoake complains
+that a great many _mauvais sujets_ seem to seek in secularism a kind of
+cheap religion. He declares that he is going to use energetic efforts to
+purify the sect, and seems to intimate that he shall retire if his
+efforts fail. Let us leave him to wrestle against the invasion of the
+orators of virtue, and let us pass from England into Italy.
+
+While Italy is seeking to deliver itself from the bayonets of Austria,
+it is threatened with subjection to the influence of the most pernicious
+German doctrines. After having bent, like nearly all Europe, in the
+eighteenth century, beneath the blast of sensualism, Italy made a noble
+effort to renew more generous traditions. Two eminent men, Rosmini and
+Gioberti, the second especially, succeeded in exciting in the youth of
+Italy a passionate interest in doctrines in which liberty and vigor of
+thought were united with the confidence of faith. This intellectual
+movement preceded and prepared a national movement, the course of which
+has been precipitated by the intrigues of politics and the intervention
+of the arms of the foreigner. At the present time the influence of
+Rosmini and of Gioberti is on the decline. Hegelianism is being
+installed with a certain _éclat_ in the university of Naples. Nothing
+warrants us in hoping that this system will not produce upon the shores
+of the Mediterranean the same depravation of philosophic thought which
+it has produced in Germany. In the ancient university of Pisa, M.
+Auguste Conti, a brave defender of Christian philosophy, steadfastly
+maintains the union of religion and of speculative inquiry,[82] and the
+centre of Italy is less affected perhaps than the extremities of the
+Peninsula by the spirit of infidelity. But as we go further north, we
+encounter in the writings of Ferrari the utterance of a gloomy
+scepticism, and in those of Ausonio Franchi, formerly a journalist at
+Turin, and now a Professor at Milan, the manifestations of an almost
+undisguised atheism. Ausonio Franchi, or rather the man who assumes that
+pseudonyme, is an ex-priest, who, "while maintaining severely the rule
+of good morals and the dignity of life,"[83] has turned with violent
+animosity against his former faith. He exerts some influence over the
+youth of Italy, and has met with warm admirers in England and Germany.
+Franchi's profession of faith reduces itself to these very simple
+terms:--"The world is what it is, and it is _because it is_; any other
+reason whatever of its essence and of its existence can be nothing but a
+sophism or an illusion."[84] All inquiry into the origin of things is a
+pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves to the experience of
+the present life, and look for nothing beyond it. The author treats with
+sufficient disdain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton, and
+Leibnitz. It has seemed to me that his understanding, a little obscured
+by passion, misconceives the true purport of the reasonings which it
+rejects, and by thus impairing their force, assumes to itself the right
+to despise them.
+
+The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do not stop at Christian
+dogma. He denies all value to those higher aspirations of the human soul
+which constitute _reason_, in the philosophical meaning of the term.
+Now, this radical negation of the reason is what those Italians who do
+not scruple to practise it denominate _Rationalism_. And this very
+unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a
+general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which
+present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth.
+The Frenchmen, who call themselves the _critics_, are men who require
+that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but
+shall renounce the while all discrimination between truth and error. The
+term scepticism, in its primary signification, contains the idea of
+inquiring, of examining; and they give the name of _sceptics_ to the
+philosophers who declare that there is nothing to discover, and
+consequently nothing to examine, or to search for! One is a
+_free-thinker_ only on the express condition of renouncing all such
+free exercise of thought as might lead to the acceptance of beliefs
+generally received. This is verily the carnival of language, and the
+_bal masqué_ of words. These corruptions of the meaning of terms are
+highly instructive. Doctrines contrary to the laws of human nature bear
+witness in this way to a secret shame in producing themselves under
+their true colors. Just as hypocrisy is an homage which vice pays to
+virtue, so these barbarisms are an homage which error pays to truth.
+
+To return to Italy: that beautiful and noble country has not escaped the
+revival of atheism. The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political
+struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged, will favor for a
+time, it may be feared, the development of evil doctrines.[85] But the
+lively genius of the Italians will not be long in attaching itself
+again to the grand traditions of its past history; and the inhabitants
+of the land, whose soil was trodden by Pythagoras and Saint Augustine,
+will not link themselves with doctrines which always run those who hold
+them aground sooner or later upon the sad and gloomy shores of a vulgar
+empiricism.
+
+We have not leisure, Gentlemen, to extend our study to all parts of the
+globe, and besides, there are countries with regard to which information
+would fail me. Therefore I say nothing of Holland, where we should have,
+as I know, distressing facts to record. The silence imposed on Spain
+upon the subjects which we are discussing would render the study of that
+country a difficult one. I am wanting in data regarding America. Let us
+conclude our survey by a few words about Russia.
+
+If we are warranted in making general assertions in speaking of that
+immense empire, we may say that the Russian people, taken as a whole, is
+good and pious, badly instructed, and often the victim of ignorance or
+of superstition, but disposed to open its heart to elevated and pure
+influences. The clergy is ignorant, though with honorable and even
+brilliant exceptions. It is too much cut off from general society, and
+consigned to a sort of caste, of which it would be most desirable to
+break down the barriers, in order to allow the influence of the
+representatives of religion to extend itself more freely. The young
+nobles, and the university students in general, are, in too large a
+proportion, imbued with irreligious principles. Various atheistical
+writings, those of Feuerbach amongst others, have been translated into
+Russian, printed abroad, and furtively introduced into the empire. M.
+Herzen, a well-known writer, has published, under the pseudonyme of
+Iscander, a work full of talent, but in which come plainly into view the
+worst tendencies of our time.[86] In his eyes, life is itself its own
+end and cause. Faith in God is the portion of the ignorant crowd, and
+atheism, like all the high truths of science, like the differential
+calculus and the laws of physics, is the exclusive possession of the
+philosophical few. When Robespierre declared atheism aristocratic, he
+was right in this sense, for atheism is above the reach of the vulgar;
+but when he concluded that atheism was false, he made a great mistake.
+This error, which led him to establish the worship of the Supreme Being,
+was one of the causes of his fall. When he began to follow in the wake
+of the _conservatives_, as a necessary consequence he would lose his
+power.[87] The writings of Iscander have exerted a veritable influence
+in Russia. M. Herzen appears to have lost much of his repute, by the
+exaggerated and outrageous course he has taken in politics; but it is to
+be feared that the traces of his action are not altogether effaced.
+
+The Russian Empire has been for a long time, in the eyes of the West,
+only an immense garrison; but now for some years past it has been taking
+rank among the number of intellectual powers, and nowhere in Europe is
+the ascending march of civilization displaying itself by signs so
+striking. The summons to liberty of so many millions of men, which has
+just been accomplished by the generous initiative of the ruling power,
+and with the consent of the nation, testifies that that vast social body
+is animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But in the solemn
+phase through which she is passing, Russia is exposed to a great danger.
+She is running the risk of substituting for a national development,
+drawn from the grand springs of human nature, a factitious civilization,
+in which would figure together the fashions of Paris, the morals of the
+_coulisses_ of the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the
+West. May God preserve her!
+
+We have passed in review some of the symptoms of the revival of atheism,
+and it is impossible not to acknowledge the gravity of the facts which
+we have established. What must especially awaken solicitude is, that the
+irreligious manifestations of thought have assumed such a character of
+generality, that the sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce
+in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews, (I allude especially to
+the French-speaking public), widely-circulated journals which take good
+care not to violate propriety, and which could not with impunity offend
+the interests or prejudices of the social class from which their
+subscribers are recruited, are able to entertain without danger, and
+without exciting energetic protestations, the productions of an open, or
+scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are ample reasons for thoughtfulness;
+but this thoughtfulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to do
+with a challenge the very audacity of which inspires me with confidence,
+rather than with dread. In fact all the productions of irreligious
+philosophy rest on one and the same thought, the common watchword, of
+the secularism of the English, of the rationalism of the Italians, of
+the positivism of the French, and which may even be recognized, with a
+little attention, under the haughty formulas which bear the name of
+Hegel. And the thought is this: The earth is enough for us, away with
+heaven; man suffices for himself, away with God; reality suffices for
+us, away with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting ourselves with the
+world as it is. It is attempted ridiculously enough to place this wisdom
+under the patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are bidden,
+forsooth, to see in the negation of the real and living God, a conflict
+of progress with routine, of science with a blind tradition, of the
+modern mind with superannuated ideas.[88] We know of old this defiance
+hurled against the aspirations of the heart, the conscience, and the
+reason. We know the destined issue of this ancient revolt of the
+intellect against the laws of its own nature. There were atheists in
+Palestine in the days when the Psalmist exclaimed, "The fool hath said
+in his heart, There is no God."[89] There were atheists at Rome when
+Cicero wrote,[90] that the opinion which recognizes gods appeared to him
+to come nearest to the resemblance of truth. A poet of the thirteenth
+century has expressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in vogue
+among a great many of our contemporaries: "He dares nothing great, who
+believes that there are gods."[91] There were atheists in the
+seventeenth century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound them,
+and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits of their time.[92] And
+who, again, does not know that in the eighteenth century atheism
+marched with head aloft, and filled the world with its clamors. The
+attempt to do without God has nothing modern about it, it is met with at
+all epochs. The means employed now-a-days to attain this end have
+nothing new about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with the
+characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of which are transient
+crises. The moment the negation is blazoned openly, humanity protests.
+Why? Because man will never be persuaded to content himself with the
+earth, and with what the earth can give him: his nature absolutely
+forbids it. When we compare the reality with the desires of our souls,
+we can all say with the aged patriarch Jacob: "Few and evil have been
+the days of my pilgrimage;"[93] we can all say with Lamartine:
+
+
+     Though all the good desired of man
+       In one sole heart should overflow,
+     Death, bounding still his mortal span,
+       Would turn the cup of joy to woe.[94]
+
+
+And it is not the heart only which is concerned here; without God man
+remains inexplicable to his own reason. The spiritual creature of the
+Almighty, free by the act of creation, and capable of falling into
+slavery by rebellion,--he understands his nature and his destiny; but it
+is in vain that the apostles of matter and the worshippers of humanity
+harangue him in turn to explain to him his own existence. Man is too
+great to be the child of the dust; man is too miserable to be the divine
+summit of the universe. "If he exalts himself, I abase him; if he abases
+himself, I exalt him; and I contradict him continually, until he
+understands at last that he is an incomprehensible monster."[95]
+
+"The proper study of mankind is man;" and man remains an enigma for man,
+if he do not rise to God. So it is that our very nature is a living
+protest against atheism, and never allows its triumphs to be either
+general, or of long duration. A solid limit is thus set to our
+wanderings; and, to the errors of the understanding, as to the tides of
+the ocean, the Master of things has said, "Ye shall go no further."
+Therefore atheists may become famous, but, destitute of the ray which
+renders truly illustrious, humanity refuses them the aureole with which
+it encircles the brows of its benefactors. This aureole it reserves for
+the sages which lead it to God, for the artists which reveal to it some
+of the rays of the immortal light, for all those who remind it of the
+titles of its dignity, the pledges of its future, the sacred laws of the
+realm of spirits. Humanity desires to live; and to live it must believe;
+for it must believe in order to love and to act. Atheism is a crisis in
+a disease, a passing swoon over which the vital forces of nature
+triumph. Now the vital forces of humanity are neither extinct nor
+stupefied in our time. The world of literature is sick, and grievously
+sick in some of its departments; but even there again are manifesting
+themselves noble and powerful reactions. Then look in other directions.
+Contemplate the religious movement of society at large, the wide efforts
+making in the domain of active beneficence, the progressive conquests of
+civilization, the awakening of conscience on many subjects:--I could
+easily instance numerous facts in proof of what I advance, and say to
+you:
+
+
+     Know, by these speaking signs, a God to-day
+     As yesterday the same--the same for aye:
+     Veiling, revealing, at His sovereign will,
+     His glory,--and His people guarding still.[96]
+
+
+Wrestle then against the invasion of deadly doctrines, wrestle and do
+not fear. If men rise against God in the name of the modern mind, of the
+science of the age, of the progress of civilization, do not suffer
+yourselves to be stunned by these clamors. Let the past be to you the
+pledge of the future! To make of atheism a novelty, is an error. To make
+of it, in a general way, the characteristic of our epoch, is a calumny.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[40] Xenophon, _Memorab. of Socrates_, Bk. iv. 10.
+
+[41] _La Religion naturelle_. Preface.
+
+[42] Emile Saisset, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of March, 1845.
+
+[43] See the _Lettres sur les vérités, les plus importantes de la
+révélation_, by Albert de Haller, translated into French by one of his
+grandsons. Lausanne, Bridel, 1846.
+
+[44] _La Métaphysique et la Science_, 2 tom. Oct. 1858.
+
+[45] _Notice sur M. Littré_, page 57.
+
+[46] _Paroles de philosophie positive_, page 33.
+
+[47] _Idem_, page 30.
+
+[48] _Paroles de philosophie positive_, page 34.
+
+[49] _Aperçus généraux sur la doctrine positiviste_, par M. de Lombrail,
+ancien élčve de l'école polytechnique. The author says in his preface:
+"Auguste Comte examined this work with the conscientious attention which
+he was accustomed to give to the simplest task. He desired by his useful
+counsels to render it worthy of publication."
+
+[50] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of 15th Jan. 1860, page 367.
+
+[51]
+
+     Je soupçonne entre nous que vous croyez en Dieu.
+     N'allez pas dans vos vers en consigner l'aveu;
+     Craignez le ridicule, et respectez vos maîtres.
+     Croire en Dieu fut un tort permis ŕ nos ancętres.
+     Mais dans notre âge! Allons, il faut vous corriger
+     _Et suivre votre sičcle_, au lieu de le juger.
+
+[52]
+
+     Entre ces deux chemins j'hésite et je m'arręte.
+     Je voudrais ŕ l'écart suivre un plus doux sentier.
+     Il n'en existe pas, dit une voix secrčte:
+     En présence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.
+     Je le pense, en effet: les âmes tourmentées
+     Vers l'un et l'autre excčs se portent tour ŕ tour;
+     Mais les indifférents ne sont que des athées;
+     Ils ne dormiraient plus, s'ils doutaient un seul jour.
+
+[53] See, for example, _La Religion naturelle_, by Jules Simon; _Essai
+de philosophie religieuse_, by Emile Saisset; _De la connaissance de
+Dieu_, by A. Gratry; _La raison et la christianisme, douze lectures sur
+l'existence de Dieu_, by Charles Secrétan; _Essai sur la Providence_, by
+Ernest Bersot; _De la Providence_, by M. Damiron; _L'Idée de Dieu_, by
+M. Caro; _Théodicée, Etudes sur Dieu, la Création et la Providence_, par
+Amédée de Magerie.
+
+[54] See, for example, the _Etudes orientales_ of M. Franck, the
+_Bouddha_ of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire; _L'Histoire de la philosophie
+au XVIIIe siécle_, of M. Damiron.
+
+[55] _Philosophie de la liberté_, vol. i. p. 225.
+
+[56] _Toutes ces révoltes de la matičre en furie._
+
+[57] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, April, 1850.
+
+[58] _Qu'est-ce la religion?_ page 586 of the translation of Ewerbeck.
+
+[59] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15th April, 1850, p. 288.
+
+[60] General Report addressed to the _Conseil d'Etat_ of Neuchâtel on
+the secret German propaganda, and on the clubs of Young Germany in
+Switzerland, by Lardy, Doctor of law. Neuchâtel, 1845.
+
+[61] _Pourvu qu'on le délivre d'une vertu bourgeoise et d'une morale
+d'honnętes négociants_. Blätter der Gegenwart für sociales Leben.
+
+[62] See the _Chroniqueur Suisse_ of 19 Jan. 1865.
+
+[63] April, 1850, p. 292.
+
+[64] _Force et Matičre_, by Louis Büchner, Doctor in medicine:
+translated into French from the seventh edition of the German work, by
+Gamper, Leipzig, 1863.
+
+[65] My object is to point out the atheistical systems which are being
+produced in various parts of Europe, and not to estimate, in a general
+way, the tendency of contemporary philosophies. The reader, who would
+understand the position occupied by materialism in relation to German
+thought in general, may consult with advantage, _Le Matérialisme
+contemporain_, by Paul Janet, Paris, 1864; and the review of this work
+by M. Reichlin-Meldegg (_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_,
+Sechsundvierzigster Band). A Swiss writer, M. Böhner, has lately
+published a learned work on the subject entitled: _Le Matérialisme au
+point de vue des sciences naturelles et des progrčs de l'esprit humain_,
+by Nath. Böhner, member of the _Société helvétique des sciences
+naturelles_, translated from the German, by O. Bourrit, 1 vol. 8vo.
+(_Genčve, imprimerie Fick_), 1861.
+
+[66]
+
+                         ... Ces enfants de l'effroi,
+     Ces beaux riens qu'on adore, et sans savoir pourquoi,
+     Ces dieux que l'homme a faits et qui n'ont pas fait l'homme.
+                                           CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
+
+[67] From outer to inner things, and from inner to higher.
+
+[68] See the Report of Mr. H. Roberts, in the _Comptes rendus du Congrčs
+international de bienfaisance de Londres_, vol. ii. page 95, and the
+23rd _Bulletin de la Société genevoise d'utilité publique_, 1863.
+
+[69] Par son respect pour le jour du Dimanche.
+
+[70] revętit.
+
+[71] _La Paix méditations historiques et religieuses_, par A. Gratry,
+prętre de l'Oratoire.--Septičme méditation: l'Angleterre.
+
+[72] _The Constitution of Man_, by G. Combe. The popular edition was
+printed at the expense of Mr. Henderson.
+
+[73] _Infidelity: its aspects, causes, and agencies_, by Thomas Pearson.
+People's edition, 1854, page 263.
+
+[74] _Auguste Comte et la Philosophie positive_, par E. Littré, page
+276.
+
+[75] "Positivism, within the last quarter of a century, has become an
+active, and even fashionable mode of thought, and nowhere more so than
+amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in England." _The
+Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of modern Criticism, Lectures on M.
+Renan's 'Vie de Jésus,'_--by John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of the
+College of St. Mary in the University of St. Andrew. Macmillan and Co.,
+1864.
+
+[76] See Pearson: _Infidelity_, particularly page 316, and _Christianity
+and Secularism, the public discussion_--, particularly page 8.
+
+[77]--_dans le sičcle_.
+
+[78] Vapereau's _Dictionnaire des contemporains_--Art. HOLYOAKE.
+
+[79] I have had in view here the first numbers of _The Secular World_,
+and of _The National Reformer, Secular Advocate_, for 1864.
+
+[80] _The National Reformer_ of 2nd Jan. 1864.
+
+[81] MS. information.
+
+[82] Readers unacquainted with the Italian language will find a
+compendious exposition of M. Conti's philosophy, in a small volume
+published, in 1863, under the title of _Le Camposanto de Pise ou le
+Scepticisme_. (Paris, librairies Joël Cherbuliez et Auguste Durand; I
+vol. in-18.)
+
+[83] Such is the testimony rendered to him by M. Aug. Conti in his work,
+_La Philosophie italienne_. (Paris, Joël Cherbuliez et Auguste Durand;
+one small vol. 18mo.)
+
+[84] _Le Rationalisme_ (in French), published with an introduction, by
+M. D. Bancel, Brussels, 1858, page 27.
+
+[85] The learned author appears to intimate that the distractions of the
+Papacy, consequent on its political struggles for temporal power, hinder
+the salutary influence which it might otherwise exercise in the
+suppression of evil doctrines. The Translator feels it due to himself to
+state here, once for all, that he has no sympathy whatever with such a
+view of the influence of the Papacy. On the contrary, he is disposed to
+attribute to the Church of Rome most of the evils which afflict, not
+Italy only, but all the countries over which she has any power. Perhaps,
+having "felt the weight of too much liberty" in his own Church, the
+excellent author, fundamentally sound in his own views of Christian
+doctrine, as is proved abundantly by his writings, has been led by a
+natural reaction to give too much weight to the opposite principle of
+authority. The concluding pages of his former work, _La Vie Eternelle_,
+indicate a mind too painfully and sensitively averse to all controversy
+with a corrupt Church, in consideration of the acknowledged excellences
+of many of her individual members,--her Pascals, Fénélons, Martin Boos,
+Girards, Gratrys, and Lacordaires.--_Translator_.
+
+[86] _De l'autre rive_ (in Russian).
+
+[87] _De l'autre rive_. v. Consolatio.--This chapter is a dialogue
+between a lady and a doctor. I have considered the doctor as expressing
+the thoughts of the writer. The form of dialogue, however, always allows
+an author to express his thoughts, while declining, if need be, the
+responsibility of them.
+
+[88] _Le Rationalisme_, par Ausonio Franchi, page 19.--_Force et
+matičre_, par le docteur Büchner, page 262.--_Paroles de philosophie
+positive_, par Littré, page 36.--_La Métaphysique et la Science_, par
+Vacherot, page xiv. (Premičre edition.)
+
+[89] Ps. xiv. 1.
+
+[90] De Naturâ Deorum.
+
+[91] Nil audet magnum qui putat esse Deos.
+
+[92] See Bossuet: _Sermon sur la dignité de la religion_.
+
+[93] Gen. xlvii. 9.
+
+[94]
+
+     Quand tous les biens que l'homme envie
+     Déborderaient dans un seul coeur,
+     La mort seule au bout de la vie
+     Fait un supplice du bonheur.
+
+[95] Pascal.
+
+[96]
+
+     Reconnaissez, _Messieurs_, ŕ ces traits éclatants,
+     Un Dieu tel aujourd'hui qu'il fut dans tous les temps.
+     Il sait, quand il lui plaît, faire éclater sa gloire,
+     Et son peuple est toujours présent ŕ sa mémoire.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+_NATURE._
+
+(At Geneva, 27th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 25th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+The thoughts of man are numberless; and still, in their indefinite
+variety, they never relate but to one or another of these three objects:
+nature, or the world of material substances, which are revealed to our
+senses; created spirits, similar or superior to that spirit which is
+ourselves; and finally God, the Infinite Being, the universal Creator.
+Therefore there are two sorts of atheism, and there are only two. The
+mind stops at nature, and endeavors to find in material substances the
+universal principle of existence; or, rising above nature, the mind
+stops at humanity, without ascending to the Infinite Mind, to the
+Creator. We have seen how clearly these two doctrines appear in
+contemporary literature. We have now to enter upon the examination of
+them, and this will afford us matter for two lectures.
+
+The word nature has various meanings; we employ it here to designate
+matter, and the forces which set it in motion, those forces being
+conceived as blind and fatal, in opposition to the conscious and free
+force which constitutes mind. Matter and the laws of motion are the
+object of mechanics, of chemistry, and of physics. Do these sciences
+suffice for resolving the universal enigma? Such is precisely the
+question which offers itself to our examination.
+
+Let us first of all determine what, in presence of the spectacle of the
+universe, is the natural movement of human thought, when human thought
+possesses the idea of God. I open a book trivial enough in its form, but
+occasionally profound in its contents: the _Journey round my room_, of
+Xavier de Maistre. The author is relating how he had undertaken to make
+an artificial dove which was to sustain itself in the air by means of an
+ingenious mechanism. I read:
+
+"I had wrought unceasingly at its construction for more than three
+months. The day was come for the trial. I placed it on the edge of a
+table, after having carefully closed the door, in order to keep the
+discovery secret, and to give my friends a pleasing surprise. A thread
+held the mechanism motionless. Who can conceive the palpitations of my
+heart, and the agonies of my self-love, when I brought the scissors near
+to cut the fatal bond?--Zest!--the spring of the dove starts, and begins
+to unroll itself with a noise. I lift my eyes to see the bird pass; but,
+after making a few turns over and over, it falls, and goes off to hide
+itself under the table. Rosine (my dog), who was sleeping there, moves
+ruefully away. Rosine, who never sees a chicken, or a pigeon, or the
+smallest bird, without attacking and pursuing it, did not deign even to
+look at my dove which was floundering on the floor. This gave the
+finishing stroke to my self-esteem. I went to take an airing on the
+ramparts.
+
+"I was walking up and down, sad and out of spirits as one always is
+after a great hope disappointed, when, raising my eyes, I perceived a
+flight of cranes passing over my head. I stopped to have a good look at
+them. They were advancing in triangular order, like the English column
+at the battle of Fontenoy. I saw them traverse the sky from cloud to
+cloud.--Ah! how well they fly, said I to myself. With what assurance
+they seem to glide along the viewless path which they follow.--Shall I
+confess it? alas! may I be forgiven! the horrible feeling of envy for
+once, once only, entered my heart, and it was for the cranes. I pursued
+them, with jealous gaze, to the boundaries of the horizon. For a long
+while afterwards, motionless in the midst of the crowd which was moving
+about me, I kept observing the rapid movement of the swallows, and I was
+astonished to see them suspended in the air, just as if I had never
+before seen that phenomenon. A feeling of profound admiration, unknown
+to me till then, lighted up my soul. I seemed to myself to be looking
+upon nature for the first time. I heard with surprise the buzzing of the
+flies, the song of the birds, and that mysterious and confused noise of
+the living creation which involuntarily celebrates its Author. Ineffable
+concert, to which man alone has the sublime privilege of adding the
+accents of gratitude! Who is the author of this brilliant mechanism? I
+exclaimed in the transport which animated me. Who is He that, opening
+his creative hand, let fly the first swallow into the air? It is He who
+gave commandment to these trees to come forth from the ground, and to
+lift their branches toward the sky!"
+
+Here is a charming page, and containing, though apparently trivial in
+style, a good and sound philosophy. Let us translate this delightful
+description into the heavier language of science.
+
+The intellect is one of the things with which we are best acquainted;
+logic is the science of thought, and logic is perhaps, among all the
+sciences, the one best settled on its bases. The intellect discovers
+itself to us in the exercise of our activity. We pursue an object, we
+combine the means for attaining it, and it is the intellect which
+operates this combination. What happens if we compare the results of our
+activity with the results of the power manifested in the world? When we
+consider in their vast _ensemble_ the means of which nature disposes,
+when we remark the infinite number of the relations of things, the
+marvellous harmony of which universal life is the produce, we are
+dazzled by the splendor of a wisdom which surpasses our own as much as
+boundless space surpasses the imperceptible spot which we occupy upon
+the earth. Think of this: the science of nature is so vast that the
+least of its departments suffices to absorb one human lifetime. All our
+sciences are only in their very beginning; they are spelling out the
+first lines of an immense book. The elements of the universe are
+numberless; and yet, notwithstanding, all hangs together; all things are
+linked one to another in the closest connection. The _savants_ therefore
+find themselves in a strange embarrassment. They are obliged to
+circumscribe more and more the field of their researches, on pain of
+losing themselves in an endless study; and, on the other hand, in
+proportion as science advances, the mutual relation of all its branches
+becomes so manifest that it is ever more and more clearly seen that, in
+order to know any one thing thoroughly, it would be necessary to know
+all. It needs not that we seek very high or very far away for occasions
+of astonishment: the least of the objects which nature presents to our
+view contains abysses of wisdom.
+
+The acquired results of science appear simple through the effect of
+habit. The sun rises every day; who is still surprised at its rising?
+The solar system has been known a long while; it is taught in the
+humblest schools, and no longer surprises any one. But those who found
+out, after long efforts, what we learn without trouble, the discoverers,
+reckoned their discoveries very surprising. Kepler, one of the founders
+of modern astronomy, in the book to which he consigned his immortal
+discoveries, exclaims:[97] "The wisdom of the Lord is infinite, as are
+also His glory and His power. Ye heavens! sing His praises. Sun, moon,
+and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him,
+celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my
+soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him, and in Him, that all exists.
+What we know not is contained in Him as well as our vain science. To Him
+be praise, honor, and glory for ever and ever!" These words, Gentlemen,
+have not been copied from a book of the Church; they are read in a work
+which, as all allow, is one of the foundations of modern science.
+
+I pass on to another example, and I continue to keep you in good and
+high company. Newton set forth his discoveries in a large volume all
+bristling with figures and calculations.[98] The work of the
+mathematician ended, the author rises, by the consideration of the
+mutual interchange of the light of all the stars, to the idea of the
+unity of the creation; then he adds, and it is the conclusion of his
+entire work: "The Master of the heavens governs all things, not as being
+the soul of the world, but as being the Sovereign of the universe. It is
+on account of His sovereignty that we call Him the Sovereign God. He
+governs all things, those which are, and those which may be. He is the
+one God, and the same God, everywhere and always. We admire Him because
+of His perfections, we reverence and adore Him because of His
+sovereignty. A God without sovereignty, without providence, and without
+object in His works, would be only destiny or nature. Now, from a blind
+metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the same, could arise no
+variety; all that diversity of created things according to places and
+times (which constitutes the order and life of the universe) could only
+have been produced by the thought and will of a Being who is _the
+Being_, existing by Himself, and necessarily."
+
+Here, Sirs, are noble thoughts, expressed in noble style. I recommend
+you to read throughout the pages from which I have quoted a few
+fragments. Let us now analyze the ideas of this great astronomer as thus
+expounded. We may note these three affirmations:
+
+1. The universe displays an admirable order which reveals the wisdom of
+the Power which governs it.
+
+2. The universe lives; it is not fixed, and its variations suppose an
+intelligent Power which directs it.
+
+3. The variable existence of the universe shows that it is not
+necessary; it must have its cause in a Being who is _the_ Being,
+necessarily, by His proper nature.
+
+Such are the views of Newton. Examine this course of thought, and see if
+it is not natural. Observation reveals to us facts. Facts in themselves,
+isolated facts, are nothing for the mind; but in the facts of nature,
+human reason discovers an order, and in that order it recognizes its own
+proper laws. To keep within the domain of astronomy--there is harmony
+between our mind and the course of the stars. If you have any doubt
+about this, I appeal to the almanac. We there find it stated that in
+such a month, on such a day, at such an hour, there will be an eclipse
+of the sun or of the moon. How comes the editor of the almanac to know
+that? He has learnt it from the savants who have succeeded in explaining
+the phenomena of the skies. The savant therefore can in his study meet
+with the intelligence which directs the universe. If he makes no mistake
+in his calculations, the eclipse begins at the precise hour which he has
+indicated. If the eclipse did not take place at the instant foreseen, no
+one would suspect Nature of not following the course prescribed by the
+directing intelligence; the inference would be that there had been a
+fault in observation, or an error of figures on the part of the
+astronomer.
+
+When science, then, does its part well, the mind of man encounters
+another mind which is governing the world and maintaining it in order.
+The special science of nature stops there, as we shall explain further
+on; but this is not all that man requires, when he makes use of all his
+faculties. All is passing and changing in the domain of experience; and
+reason seeks instinctively the cause of changeable facts in an
+unchangeable Being, the cause of transient phenomena in an eternal
+Being. Nature, therefore, does not suffice to account to us for itself.
+It demands a power to direct it, an intelligence to regulate it; an
+absolute eternal Being as its cause. This is what reason imperatively
+requires; and when we possess the idea of God, nature reveals to us His
+power and His wisdom.
+
+This is an old argument, and they call it commonplace. It is
+commonplace, in fact; it has appeared over and over again in the
+discourses of Socrates, in the writings of Galen, of Kepler, of Newton,
+of Linnćus. Yes, this argument has fallen so low as to be public
+property, if we can say that truth falls when it shines with a splendor
+vivid enough to enlighten the masses. If I desired to bring together
+here the testimony of all the savants who have seen God in nature, the
+song of all the poets who have celebrated the glory of the Eternal as
+manifested by the creation, the enumeration would be long, and I should
+soon tire out your patience. You can understand therefore that if there
+are, as the misanthrope Rousseau says there are, philosophers who hold
+in such contempt vulgar opinions that they prefer error of their own
+discovery to truth found out by other people, then the ancient argument,
+which infers the wisdom of the Creator from the order of the creation,
+must be the object of but small esteem with them. Still I for my part
+take this old argument for a good one, and I mean to defend it.
+
+Nature is verily and indeed a marvel placed before the observation of
+our minds. The growth of a blade of grass, the habits of an ant, contain
+for an attentive observer prodigies of wisdom. A drop of dew reflecting
+the beams of morning, the play of light among the leaves of a tree,
+reveal to the poet and the artist treasures of poetry. But too often,
+blinded by habit, we are unable to see; and when our mind is asleep, it
+seems to us that the universe slumbers. A sudden flash of light can
+sometimes arouse us from this lethargy. If science all at once delivers
+up to us some one of those grand laws which reveal in thousands of
+phenomena the traces of one and the same mind, the astonishment of our
+intellect excites in our soul an emotion of adoration. When the first
+rays of morning light up with a pure brightness the lofty summits of our
+Alps; when the sun at his setting stretches a path of fire along the
+waters of our lake, who does not feel impelled to render glory to the
+supreme Artist? When dark cold fogs rest upon our valleys at the decline
+of autumn, it only needs sometimes to climb the mountain-side, in order
+to issue all at once from the gloomy region, and see the chain of high
+peaks, resplendent with light, mark themselves out upon a sky of
+incomparable blue. Often have I given myself the delight of this grand
+spectacle, and always at such a time my heart has uttered spontaneously
+from its depths that hymn of adoration:
+
+
+     Tout l'univers est plein de sa magnificence.
+     Qu'on l'adore, ce Dieu, qu'on l'invoque ŕ jamais![99]
+
+
+Such is, in the presence of nature, the spontaneous movement of the
+heart and of the reason. But a false wisdom obscures these clear
+verities by clouds of sophisms. When your heart feels impelled to render
+glory to God, there is danger lest importunate thoughts rise in your
+mind and counteract the impulse of your adoration. Perhaps you have
+heard it said, perhaps you have read, that the accents of spiritual
+song, those echoes, growing ever weaker, of by-gone ages, are no longer
+heard by a mind enlightened by modern science. I should wish to deliver
+you from this painful doubt. I should wish to protect you from the
+fascinations of a false science. I should wish that in the view of
+nature, even those who have as yet no wish to adore, with St. Paul, Him
+whose invisible perfections are clearly seen when we contemplate His
+works, may at least feel themselves free to admire, with Socrates, "the
+supreme God who maintains the works of creation in the flower of youth
+and in a vigor ever new." Let us examine a few of the prejudices which
+it is sought to disseminate, in order to deprive of their force the
+reasonings of Newton, and to turn us from the opinions of Kepler.
+
+It is said that science leads away from God, and that faith continues to
+be the lot only of the ignorant. Listen on this head first of all to the
+Italian Franchi. "The class of society in which infidels and sceptics
+especially abound is that of savants and men of letters,--men, in short,
+who have gone through studies, in the course of which they have
+certainly become acquainted with the famous demonstrations of the
+existence of God. But no sooner have they examined them with their own
+eyes, and submitted them to the criterion of their own judgment, than
+these demonstrations no longer demonstrate anything; these reasonings
+turn out to be only paralogisms."[100] Here we have the thesis in its
+general form: to become an infidel or a sceptic, it is enough to be a
+well educated man. The German Büchner will now show us the application
+of this notion to the special study of nature. "At this day, our hardest
+laborers in the sciences, our most indefatigable students of nature,
+profess materialistic sentiments."[101] The same tendencies are often
+manifested among French writers. The author of a recent astronomical
+treatise, for example, draws a veil of deceitful words over the profound
+faith of Kepler, and takes evident pleasure in throwing into relief the
+tokens of sympathy bestowed unfortunately by the learned Laplace upon
+atheism.[102] Here then we have open attempts to found a prejudice
+against religion on the authority of science; and these attempts disturb
+the minds of not a few. I ask two questions on this head. Is it true, in
+fact, that modern naturalists are generally irreligious? Is it possible
+that the science of nature, rightly considered, should lead to
+atheism?[103]
+
+Let us begin with the question of fact; and first of all let us settle
+clearly the bearing and object of this discussion. I wish to destroy a
+prejudice, and not to create one. I am not proposing to you to take the
+votes of savants, in order to know whether God exists. No. Though all
+the universities in Europe should unite to vote it dark at mid-day, I
+should not cease on that account to believe in the sun, and that,
+Gentlemen, in common with you all, and with the mass of my fellow-men. I
+have instituted a sort of inquiry in order to ascertain whether modern
+naturalists have in general been led to atheistical sentiments, as some
+would have us believe. In appealing to the recollections of my own
+earlier studies and subsequent reading, I have marked the names of the
+men best known in the various sciences, and I have inquired what
+religious opinions they may have publicly manifested. I will now give
+you briefly the result of my labor.
+
+I have left astronomy out of the question, considering that,
+notwithstanding the great notoriety of Laplace, we have in Kepler and
+Newton a weight of authority sufficient to counterbalance that which it
+is desired to connect with his name. Descending to the earth, we
+encounter first of all the general science of our globe, or geography.
+In this order of studies a German, Ritter, enjoys an incontestable
+preeminence. He is called, even in France, the "creator of scientific
+geography." Scientific geography rests for support on nearly all the
+sciences: it proceeds from the general results of chemistry, physics,
+and geology. Had then the vast knowledge of Ritter turned him away from
+God? I had read somewhere[104] that he was one of those savants who have
+best realized the union of science and faith. One of my friends who was
+personally acquainted with him has described him to me, not only as a
+man who adored the Creator in the view of the creation, but as an
+amiable and zealous Christian, who exerted himself to communicate to
+others his own convictions.
+
+From the general study of the globe, let us pass to that of the
+organized beings which people its surface. Does botany teach the human
+mind to dispense with God? Let us listen to Linnćus. I open the _System
+of Nature_,[105] and on the reverse of the title-page I read: "O Lord,
+how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth
+is full of Thy riches."[106] I turn over a few leaves, and I meet with a
+table which comprises, under the title, _Empire of Nature_, the general
+classification of beings. The commencement is as follows: "Eternal God,
+all-wise and almighty! I have seen Him as it were pass before me, and I
+remained confounded. I have discovered some traces of His footsteps in
+the works of the creation; and in those works, even in the least, even
+in those which seem most insignificant, what might! what wisdom! what
+inexplicable perfection!--If thou call Him _Destiny_, thou art not
+mistaken, it is He upon whom all depends. If thou call Him _Nature_,
+thou art not mistaken, it is He from whom all takes its origin. If thou
+call Him _Providence_, thou speakest truly; it is by His counsel that
+the universe subsists." Another great naturalist, George Cuvier, takes
+care to point out that "Linnćus used to seize with marked pleasure the
+numerous occasions which natural history offered him of making known the
+wisdom of Providence."[107] Thus modern botany was founded in a spirit
+of piety. Has it, at a later period, made any discoveries calculated to
+efface from the life of vegetables the marks of Divine intelligence?
+Allow me to introduce here a personal _souvenir_. I received lessons in
+my youth from an old man, who, having once been the teacher of De
+Candolle, remained his friend.[108] By a rather strange academical
+arrangement, M. Vaucher found himself set to teach us--not botany, for
+which he possessed both taste and genius,[109] but a science of which he
+knew but little, and which he liked still less. So it came to pass that
+a good part of the hour of lecture was often filled up with familiar
+conversations. These conversations took us far away from church history,
+which we were supposed to be learning. The misplaced botanist reverted,
+by a natural impulse, to his much-loved science; and I have seen him
+shed tears of tender emotion, in his Professor's chair, as he spoke to
+us of the God who made the primrose of the spring, and concealed the
+violet under the hedge by the wayside. Therefore is the recollection of
+that old man not only living in my memory, but also dear to my heart.
+Still he was a savant, an enthusiastic naturalist; and, in the broad
+light of the nineteenth century, he felt and spoke like Linnćus.
+
+Let us pass to the study of animals. I had the wish, some years ago, to
+procure the best of modern treatises upon physiology. I was directed to
+the work of Professor Müller, of Berlin. This book has not lost its
+value,--for, this very morning, a student of our faculty of sciences
+came to me to borrow it, by the advice of his masters. Müller was a
+great physiologist, and he made an open profession of the Christian
+religion. Have we not the right to conclude that he believed in God? In
+France, I could cite more than one name in support of my thesis; I
+confine myself to a single fact. The attention of the scientific world
+has very recently been occupied with the discoveries of M. Pasteur. M.
+Pasteur has ascertained that the decomposition of organized bodies,
+after death, is effected by the action of small animals almost
+imperceptible, the germs of which the larger animals carry in
+themselves, as living preparatives for their interment. The design of
+Providence reveals itself to his understanding, and he writes: "The
+immediate elements of living bodies would be in a manner indestructible,
+if from the beings which God has created were taken away the smallest,
+and, in appearance, the most useless. Life would thus become impossible,
+because the return to the atmosphere and to the mineral kingdom of all
+that has ceased to live would be all at once suspended."[110] In other
+words: I have studied facts hitherto incompletely observed, and my study
+has revealed to me a new manifestation of that Divine wisdom of which
+the universe bears the impression.
+
+England possesses a naturalist of the first order, whom his
+fellow-countrymen take a pleasure in comparing to George
+Cuvier--Professor Owen. This savant lectured, a few months ago, before a
+numerous auditory, on the relations of religion and natural
+science.[111] He is fully possessed of all the information which the
+times afford,--is not ignorant of modern discoveries,--is, in fact, one
+of the princes of contemporary science. Well, Gentlemen, Mr. Owen
+repeats, with reference to animals, what Newton was led to say by his
+contemplation of the heavens, and Linnćus by his study of the plants. He
+is not afraid to admire with Galen the marvellous wisdom which presided
+over the organization of living bodies. His discourse is entitled, _The
+Power of God in His Animal Creation_. The more we understand, he says,
+the more we admire, the more we adore. He pauses in view of the
+marvellous productions of nature, beside which the most delicate works
+of human industry appear, beneath the microscope, but coarse, rough
+hewings; he compares our most highly finished machines to the living
+machines made by the hand of God, and infers that, not to discern
+intelligence in the relation of means to ends, necessarily implies in
+the mind a defect similar to that of eyes which are unable to
+distinguish colors. Mr. Owen declares that such a state of mind and
+feeling in a naturalist may provoke blame from some and pity from
+others, and remains for him, so far as he is concerned, absolutely
+incomprehensible.
+
+Again, do the most learned chemists find in the study of the elements of
+matter a revelation of atheism? M. Liebig, I have been told, is one of
+the first chemists of our epoch. He believed he had discovered an
+application of chemistry to agriculture, the effect of which would be to
+furnish a remedy to the exhaustion of the soil. His discovery turned out
+false, and a more attentive study of his subject led him to ascertain
+that the object which he was pursuing was actually realized by Divine
+Providence in a way of which he had had no suspicion. The following is
+his own account of this, published in 1862: "After having submitted all
+the facts to a new and very searching examination, I discovered the
+cause of my error. I had sinned against the wisdom of the Creator, and I
+had received my just punishment. I was wishing to perfect His work, and,
+in my blindness, I thought that in the admirable chain of laws which
+preside over life at the surface of the earth, and maintain it ever in
+freshness, there was wanting a link which I, feeble and impotent worm,
+was to supply. Provision had been made for this beforehand, but in a way
+so wonderful, that the possibility of such a law had not so much as
+dawned upon the human understanding."[112] Here is a confession very
+noble in its humility; and to this chemist, who thus renders glory to
+God, no one of his colleagues could say: "If you had as much science as
+we, you would say no more about the wisdom of the Creator."
+
+Let us pass on to natural philosophers. I have taken a special interest
+in this part of my inquiry, because I had read in the productions of a
+literary man of Paris, that modern physics have placed those at fault
+who defend the doctrine of the living and true God. I inquired
+accordingly of a man, very well able to give me the information, whether
+there exists in Europe a natural philosopher holding a position of quite
+exceptional distinction. I received for reply: "You may say boldly that,
+by the unanimous consent of men of science, Mr. Faraday, in regard both
+to the greatness and range of his discoveries, is the first natural
+philosopher living." After having thus made myself sure, therefore, on
+this point, I took the liberty of writing to Mr. Faraday the following
+letter:
+
+
+                                       "GENEVA, 30th October, 1863.
+
+     "SIR,
+
+     "I have the intention of commencing shortly, at Geneva, and for an
+     auditory of men, a course of lectures designed to combat the
+     manifestations of contemporary atheism. To this deplorable error I
+     desire to oppose faith in God, as it has been given to the world by
+     the Gospel, faith in the Heavenly Father.
+
+     "One of my lectures will be specially devoted to the removal of
+     prejudices against religion which have their origin in natural
+     science. It is said very often, and very boldly, that modern
+     physics and modern chemistry demonstrate the unfounded character of
+     religious beliefs. These theses are maintained at Geneva as
+     elsewhere. I should wish to reply that natural science does not of
+     itself turn men from God, and that without being able to give
+     faith, it confirms the faith of those who believe: this I should
+     wish to establish by citing names invested, in science, with an
+     incontestable and solid renown. Will you, Sir, authorize me to make
+     use of your name?"
+
+
+Mr. Faraday, in reply, sent me the following letter, dated 6th Nov.
+1863.
+
+
+     "SIR,
+
+     ...."You have a full right to make use of my name: for although I
+     generally avoid mixing up things sacred and things profane, I have,
+     on one occasion, written and published a passage which accords to
+     you this right, and which I maintain. I send you a copy of it. I
+     hope you will find nothing in any other part of my researches, to
+     contradict or weaken in any way whatever the sense of this passage.
+
+     "I beg you to transmit my best remembrances to my friend M. de la
+     Rive...."
+
+
+The passage thus indicated establishes a line of demarcation, very
+strongly (perhaps too strongly) drawn between researches of the reason
+and the domain of religious truth, and contains a profession of positive
+faith in Revelation. The author affirms that he has never recognized any
+incompatibility between science and faith, and makes the following
+declaration: "Even in earthly matters I reckon that 'the invisible
+things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
+understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and
+Godhead.'"
+
+A literary man of Paris declares to us that natural science leads away
+from God: one of the first savants of our time informs us that the
+scientific contemplation of nature renders the wisdom of God manifest.
+The question is one of fact. To whom shall we give our confidence? For
+my part, since it is natural philosophy which is in question, I rank
+myself on the side of the Natural Philosopher.
+
+We will here terminate this review. It is time, however, which fails us,
+not subject-matter, for continuing it. You may have noticed that the
+name of no one of the savants of Switzerland figures in this inquiry.
+Nevertheless our country would have furnished a rich mine for my
+purpose. It contains (and it is one of its best privileges) a goodly
+number of savants, whom the observation of the facts of matter have not
+caused to forget the claims of mind, and who know how to raise their
+souls to the Author of the marvels which they study. You will understand
+therefore that it has not been from anxiety for my cause, but from a
+motive of discretion, that I have forborne to bring into this discussion
+the names of men in whom we have a near interest, and many of whom
+perhaps are present in this assembly. I will take advantage of Mr.
+Faraday's letter to make a single exception, by naming M. de la Rive.
+More than once, and in public, we have heard him distinctly point out
+the place occupied by the sciences of mind in relation to the natural
+sciences, and render glory to the Creator. And I do not think that any
+one, in Switzerland or elsewhere, can claim to speak with disdain, in
+the name of the physical sciences, of the religious convictions boldly
+professed by our learned fellow-countryman.[113]
+
+Recollect, Gentlemen, that I have not undertaken to prove the existence
+of God, by making appeal to the authority of men of science. All I have
+sought to do has been to destroy a prejudice. They tell us, and scream
+it at us, that the best naturalists become atheists. This is not true,
+as I think I have shown. There do exist atheists who cultivate the
+natural sciences,--no doubt of the fact. But even though half the whole
+number of naturalists were atheists, inasmuch as other naturalists, and
+those some of the greatest, find in their studies new motives to
+adoration, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true cause why
+these savants repudiate religion has nothing to do with their science.
+We shall come to be more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass
+now from the question of fact to considerations of sound reason.
+
+The weakness of the human mind leads it to forget the facts with which
+it is not occupied. All special culture of the intellect risks
+consequently the paralyzing a part of our faculties. Hegel, lost in
+abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by
+pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race. A
+geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and
+demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic
+masterpiece, "And what does that prove?" A physiologist absorbed in the
+study of sensible phenomena says: "Where is that soul they talk of? I
+have never seen it." These are phenomena of the same order. This
+infirmity of the mind, which leads certain savants to think that the
+ordinary subject of their studies is everything, must not be imputed to
+science. A man accustomed to the exclusive observation of material
+phenomena, may become a materialist by the effect of his mental habits,
+and this really happens, in fact, in too many instances; but the study
+in itself is not responsible for this result. Let us endeavor to prove
+this, by clearly defining the object of the natural sciences.
+
+When the matter of a phenomenon is given to us, the understanding
+proposes to itself three questions:
+
+1. How does the fact manifest itself? what is the mode of its existence?
+The answer gives us the law of the phenomenon. Bodies fall to the ground
+at a determined rate of speed: the determination of this rate is the law
+of their fall.
+
+2. What is the real effective power which produces the phenomenon? This
+is the inquiry after the cause.
+
+3. What is the intention which presided at the production of the
+phenomenon? This is the search after the object, which philosophers call
+the final cause.
+
+What we call understanding or explaining a fact, is answering these
+three questions; it is finding the law, the cause, the end. This
+analysis was made by Aristotle, and seems to have been well made. The
+science of nature, as it is conceived by the moderns, does not undertake
+to satisfy entirely the desires of the human mind. It confines itself
+to the first question; it classes phenomena; it then seeks their law;
+arrived at this, it stops. The cause and design of things remain out of
+the sphere of its investigations; the question of God therefore
+continues foreign to it.
+
+A story is told that when Buonaparte expressed his astonishment that the
+Marquis de la Place could have written a large book on the system of the
+universe, without making any mention of the Creator, the learned
+astronomer replied to his sovereign: "Sire, I had no need of that
+hypothesis." The answer is admissible if we regard only the science of
+nature. An astronomer has no need of God in order to follow out the
+series of his calculations, and compare their results with the course of
+the stars; a chemist has no need of God in order to ascertain the simple
+elements combined in composite bodies; a natural philosopher has no need
+of God in order to determine the laws of waves of sound or of electric
+currents. The science of nature does not demonstrate the existence of
+God; still less can it deny His existence. To deny God, it would be
+necessary for science to demonstrate that there is no order, and
+consequently no cause of the order to discover; for when we point out
+the harmony of the universe, we manifestly prepare a basis for the
+argument which, from the intelligence recognized in the phenomena, will
+infer the intelligence of the Power which governs them. To prove that
+there is no order would be to prove that there is no science. For any
+one who well understands the value of terms, the words _atheistical
+science_ contain a contradiction; they signify science which proves that
+there is no science.
+
+Such, Gentlemen, is the real state of the question. Our savants, when
+they remain faithful to their method, seek to determine the laws of
+phenomena, and do not occupy themselves either with the First Cause of
+nature, or with its general object; they leave the question of God on
+one side. Whence come then the negations of naturalists? They arise in
+this way: those savants who succeed in strictly confining themselves
+within the limits of their science are rare exceptions. Almost always
+the _man_ introduces his thoughts into the work of the savant, and the
+results of his study appear to him religious or irreligious, according
+to his views of religion. Newton ends his book with a hymn to the
+Creator; but it is not the _mathematical principles_ of nature which
+have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He perceives the rays of His
+glory because he believes in Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks
+that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled
+from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural
+science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very
+common in this matter, and in both directions. The religious mind does
+not understand how it is possible to contemplate the universe, and not
+see inscribed upon it distinctly the name of its Author; and the
+intrusion of atheism into the sciences of observation is veiled beneath
+confusions of ideas which it is of importance for us to dissipate.
+
+Modern science, as we have said, stops at laws, without troubling itself
+with causes. The laws which determine the series of facts as they offer
+themselves to observation express the mode of the action of the causes.
+There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and
+the manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks that his science
+is everything, he must conclude that we can know nothing beyond the
+laws, and that an insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power of
+which they express the action. But he rarely succeeds in keeping this
+position, and deceives his reason by confounding the laws which he
+discovers with the causes with which his mind is not able to dispense.
+He says first of all with Franchi, "the universe is what it is"; this is
+the general formula of all the truths of experience; then he adds with
+the same author, "it is because it is." This _because_ means nothing, or
+means that laws are their own causes. If it is asked, What is the cause
+of the motion of the stars? they will give for answer the astronomical
+formulć which express this motion, and will think that they have
+explained the phenomena by stating in what way they present themselves
+to observation. This is a curious example of that confusion of ideas
+which opens the door to atheism.
+
+An English naturalist, Mr. Darwin, has shown that in the successive life
+of animal generations, the favorable variations which are produced in
+the organization of a being are transmitted to its descendants and
+insure the perpetuity of its race, while the unpropitious variations
+disappear because they entail the destruction of the races in which they
+are produced. He tells us: "This preservation of favorable variations
+and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural
+Selection."[114] What does the author understand by law? He answers:
+"the series of facts as it is known to us."[115] Here we have the true
+definition of law: it is the simple expression of the series of the
+facts; the cause remains to be sought for. I open the book in another
+part. The author is speaking of the eye; and his doctrine is that the
+eye of the eagle was formed by the slow transformations of an extremely
+simple visual apparatus. There will have been then, in the development
+of animal existence, first of all a rudimentary eye, then an eye
+moderately well formed, and then the eye of the eagle, because the
+favorable modifications of the organ of sight will have been preserved
+and increased in the course of ages. Such is the series of facts, such
+is the law; suppose we grant it. What is the cause? The optician makes
+our spectacles; who made the eye of the eagle, by directing the slow
+transformations which at length produced it? Let us listen to the
+author: "There exists an intelligent power, and that intelligent power
+is natural selection, constantly on the watch for every alteration
+accidentally produced in the transparent layers, in order carefully to
+choose such of those alterations as may tend to produce a more distinct
+image.... Natural selection will choose with infallible skill each new
+improvement effected."[116] Natural selection is a law; a law is the
+series of facts; it seems that we must seek for the power which directs
+this series of facts; but, lo, the series of facts itself is transformed
+into a power--into an intelligent power--into a power which chooses with
+infallible skill! The confusion of ideas is complete. The mind is on a
+wrong scent; it concludes that the law explains everything, and has
+itself no need of explanation. The idea of the cause disappears, and, as
+Auguste Comte expresses it, "science conducts God with honor to its
+frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services."[117] This is not
+perhaps the idea of Mr. Darwin, but it is at any rate the idea of some
+of his disciples, as we shall see by-and-by.
+
+Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight. Let us now see the fate
+to which are consigned those other requirements of the reason--the
+eternal and the infinite. I take up Dr. Büchner's book, and I read: "We
+are incapable of forming an idea, even approximately, of the _eternal_
+and the _infinite_, because our mind, shut up within the limits of the
+senses, in what regards space and time, is quite unable to pass these
+bounds so as to rise to the height of these ideas." I follow the text,
+and thirteen lines further on, in the same page, I read, "Therefore
+matter and space must be eternal."[118] Observe well the use which this
+writer makes of the great ideas of the reason. Is it desired to employ
+them to prove the existence of God? He will have nothing to do with
+them. Is the object in question to deny God's existence? He makes use of
+them; and all in the same page. This is coarse work, no doubt, and Dr.
+Büchner damages his cause; but, under forms, often more subtle and more
+intelligent, the same sophism turns up in all systems of
+materialism.[119] It is affirmed that we have no real idea of the
+infinite, and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need which
+reason feels of this idea by applying it to matter.
+
+Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the natural sciences, in
+the interest of metaphysics. I am not attacking but defending them. I am
+endeavoring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them from the outrages
+which are offered to them by materialism, while it seeks to cover with
+their noble mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on the one
+hand, and theologians and philosophers on the other, are too often at
+war. They are men, and as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not
+unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or with jealous
+rivalries, or with the miserable struggles of envy: with these things
+the passions are chargeable. But never render the sciences responsible
+for the errors of their representatives. Take away human frailties, and
+you shall see harmony established; the study of matter will thus agree
+with the study of mind, and the idea of nature with the idea of God. You
+will see all the sciences rise together in a majestic harmony. I say
+rise, and I say it advisedly; for the sciences also form a part of that
+golden chain which should unite the earth to heaven.
+
+The assertion that the science of nature leads away from God, expresses
+nothing but a prejudice. It is not true in fact, and on principles of
+right reason it is impossible: the demonstration is complete. Atheism is
+a philosophy for which the natural sciences are in no degree
+responsible. We shall not undertake here the general discussion of this
+philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to the examination of the pretence
+which it puts forward to find a new support in the results of modern
+science.
+
+The nineteenth century bestows particular attention upon history, and it
+is not only to the annals of the human race that it directs its
+investigations. Geology and palćontology dive into the bowels of the
+earth in order to ask of the ground which carries us testimony as to
+what it carried of old. Astronomy goes yet further. It endeavors to
+conjecture what was the condition of our planet before the appearance of
+the first living being. It remarks that the sun is not fixed in the
+heavens, and that our earth does not twice travel over the same line in
+its annual revolutions. It appears that stars are seen in course of
+formation; it is suspected that some have wholly disappeared. Nature is
+not fixed, but is undergoing modifications--lives, in fact. The actual
+state of the universe is but a momentary phase in a development which
+supposes thousands of ages in the past, and seems to presage thousands
+more in the future. These conceptions are the result of solid and
+incontestable discoveries. They have disturbed men's minds, but what is
+their legitimate import? Why, Newton's argument receives new force from
+them. From a blind metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the
+same, said this great man, no variation could spring. The more it is
+demonstrated that the universe is in course of development and
+modification, the more clearly comes into view the necessity of the
+supreme Power which is the cause of its modifications, and of the
+Infinite intelligence which is directing them to their end. This appears
+to be solid reasoning, and nevertheless atheism has endeavored to strike
+its roots in the ground of modern discoveries. It does this in the
+following way.
+
+If the universe as it is, with the infinite variety of beings which
+people it and the marvellous relations which connect these beings
+mutually together, could be shown to have sprung all at once from
+nothing, or to have emerged from chaos at a given instant, in its full
+harmony, the boldest mind would not venture to regard this miracle of
+intelligence as the product of chance. But modern science, it is said,
+no longer admits of this simple explanation of things: "God created the
+heavens and the earth." This phrase is henceforward admissible only in
+the catechism. We know that all has been produced by slow degrees,
+starting from weak and shapeless rudiments. This grand marvel of the
+universe was not made all of one piece. Man is of recent date;
+quadrupeds at a certain epoch did not exist; animals had a beginning,
+and plants also. The earth was once bare. Formerly, it was perhaps only
+a gaseous mass revolving in space. In course of time, matter was
+condensed; in time it was organized in living cellules; in time these
+cellules became shapeless animals; in time these animals were perfected.
+Time appears therefore to be the "universal factor"; and for the ancient
+formula, "the universe is the creation of God," we are able to
+substitute this other formula, the result, most assuredly, of modern
+science, "the universe is the work of time."
+
+In all this, Gentlemen, I have invented nothing. All I have done has
+been to put into form the theory, the elements of which I have met with
+in various contemporary productions.[120] They bewilder us by heaping
+ages upon ages, and in order to explain nature they substitute the idea
+of time for the ideas of power and intelligence. They seem to suppose
+that what is produced little by little is sufficiently explained by the
+slowness of its formation.
+
+These aberrations of thought have recently been manifested in a striking
+manner on the occasion of the publication of Mr. Darwin's book. This
+naturalist has given his attention to the transformation of organized
+types. He has discovered that types vary more than is generally
+supposed; and that we probably take simple varieties for distinct
+species. His discoveries will, I suppose, leave traces strongly marked
+enough in the history of science. But Mr. Darwin is not merely an
+observer; he is a theorist, dominated evidently by a disposition to
+systematize. Now minds of this character, which render, no doubt, signal
+services to the sciences of observation, are all like Pyrrhus, who,
+gazing on Andromache as he walked by her side,
+
+
+     Still quaffed bewildering pleasure from the view.[121]
+
+
+Their theory is their lady-love; they love it passionately, and
+passionate love always strongly excites the imagination. Mr. Darwin then
+has put forth the hypothesis, that not only all animals, but all
+vegetables too, might have come from one and the same primitive type,
+from one and the same living cellule. This supposes that there was at
+the beginning but one single species, an elementary and very slightly
+defined organization, from which all that lives descended in the way of
+regular generation. The oak and the wild boar which eats its acorn, the
+cat and the flea which lodges in its fur, have common ancestors. The
+family, originally one, has been divided under the influence of soil,
+climate, food, moisture, mode of life, and by virtue of the natural
+selection which has preserved and accumulated the favorable
+modifications which have occurred in the organism. Mr. Darwin, I repeat,
+appears to me a man strongly disposed to systematize, but I do not on
+this account conclude that he is mistaken. The question is, what opinion
+we must form of his doctrine on principles of experimental science?
+Professor Owen[122] does not appear to allow it any value; M. Agassiz
+does not admit it at all;[123] and, without crossing the ocean, we
+might consult M. Pictet,[124] who would reply, that judging by the
+experimental data which we have at present, this doctrine is an
+hypothesis not confirmed by the observation of facts. We will leave this
+controversy to naturalists. What will remain eventually in their science
+of the system under discussion? The answer belongs to the future
+enlightened by experience and by the employment of a sage induction.
+What is the relation existing between these systematic views and the
+question of the Creator? This is the sole object of our study.
+
+The opinions of the English naturalist are very dubious as to the vital
+questions of religious philosophy. I have pointed out to you the
+confusion of his ideas in the use which he makes of natural selection.
+In the text of his book, he admits, in the special case of life, the
+intervention of the Creator for the production of the first living
+being, and he does not speak of man, except in an incidental sentence,
+which only attentive readers will take any notice of. If we do not take
+the liberty to look a little below the surface, we must say that Mr.
+Darwin remains on the ground of natural history. Therefore I spoke to
+you of the aberrations of philosophic thought which have been produced
+_on the occasion_ of his book. These aberrations are the following:
+
+First of all, natural selection has been taken for a cause, or rather as
+dispensing with the necessity for a cause, by means of a confusion of
+ideas for which the author is responsible. The system has therefore been
+understood as implying, that organized beings were formed without plan,
+without design, by the mere action of material causes, and as the result
+of modifications casual at first, and slowly accumulated. Divine
+intelligence and creative power thus seemed to be disappearing from the
+organization of the universe, and to disappear especially before the
+lapse of time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes. But
+while the system was taking wing, and soaring aloft, lo! the Creator at
+the commencement of things, and man conceived as a distinct being at the
+highest point of nature, have risen up as two idols and paralyzed its
+flight. To Mr. Darwin, however, have speedily succeeded disciples
+compromising their master's authority, and addressing him in some such
+language as this: "You, our master, do not fully follow out your own
+opinions; you strain off gnats,[125] and swallow camels. It is not more
+difficult to see in the living cellule a transformation of matter, and
+in man a transformation of the monkey, than to point out in a sponge the
+ancestor of the horse. Cast down your idols, and confess that matter
+developed in course of time, under favorable circumstances, is the
+origin of all that is." Matter, time, circumstances--these things have
+taken the place of God.
+
+This, Gentlemen, is a philosophy, properly so called, which vainly
+pretends to find a support in the observation of facts. Geoffroy
+Saint-Hilaire, the rival of Cuvier, set forth views analogous to those
+which Mr. Darwin has lately reproduced. But in his replies to the
+attacks which were made upon his system, he affirmed that his theory
+offered "one of the most glorious manifestations of creative power, and
+an additional motive for admiration, gratitude, and love."[126] Two
+different interpretations may therefore be given to the system. I wish
+to show you that these interpretations proceed in all cases from
+considerations external to the system. The system in itself, as a theory
+of natural history, could not in any way affect injuriously the great
+interests of spiritual truth.
+
+In order solidly to establish this assertion, I will suppose the
+hypotheses of the most advanced disciples of Mr. Darwin to have been
+verified by experimental science. I take for granted that it has been
+proved that all plants and all animals have descended, by way of regular
+generation, from living cellules originally similar; and that the
+material particles of the globe, at a given moment, drew together to
+form these cellules. And now where do we stand? Will God henceforward be
+a superfluous hypothesis? Do the atheistical consequences which it is
+desired to draw from this doctrine proceed logically from it? Most
+certainly not!
+
+I observe first of all that there exists a great question relative to
+the beginning of things. Matter is perfected and organized in process of
+time--but whence comes matter itself? Is it also formed little by little
+in process of time? Does non-existence become existence little by
+little? So it is said in the preface to the French translation of Mr.
+Darwin's book. But this appertains to high metaphysics; and I pass on.
+
+If time is the factor of all progress by a necessary law, this necessity
+must be everywhere the same. Have the elements of matter all the same
+age? If so, why have some followed the law of progress, and others not?
+Why has this mud and this coal remained mud and coal, age after age,
+while these other molecules have risen, in the hierarchy of the
+universe, to the dignity of life? Why have these mollusks remained
+mollusks throughout the succession of their generations, while others,
+happily transformed, have gradually mounted the steps of the ladder up
+to man? Whence comes this aristocracy of nature? Are the beings which we
+call inferior only the cadets of the universe, and are they too in their
+turn to mount all the steps of the ladder? Must we admit that there is
+going on the continual production, not only of living cellules which are
+beginning new series of generations, but also of new matter, which,
+setting out from the most rudimentary condition, is beginning the
+evolution which is to raise it into life? They do not venture to put
+forth theses of this nature, and, in order to account for the diversity
+of things, recourse is had to circumstances. The diversity of
+circumstances explains the diversity of developments. But whence can
+come the variety of circumstances in a world where all is produced in
+the way of fatal necessity, and without the intervention of a will and
+an intelligence? This is the remark of Newton. Study carefully the
+systems of materialism: their authors declare that to have recourse to
+God in order to account for the universe is a puerile conception
+unworthy of science, because all explanation must be referred to fixed
+and immutable laws; and then you will be for ever surprising them in the
+very act of the adoration of _circumstances_. Convenient deities these,
+which they summon to their aid in cases which they find embarrassing.
+
+But we will not insist on these preliminary considerations. We have
+allowed, for argument's sake, that all organized beings have proceeded
+by means of generation from cellules presenting to sensible observation
+similar appearances. Natural history cannot prove, nor even attempt to
+prove, more. Let us transport ourselves, in thought, to the moment at
+which the highest points of the continents were for the first time
+emerging from the primitive ocean. We see, on the parts of the soil
+which are half-dried, and in certain conditions of heat and electricity,
+particles of matter draw together and form those rudiments of organism
+which are called living cellules. These cellules have the marvellous
+faculty of self-propagation, and the faculty, not less marvellous, of
+transmitting to their posterity the favorable modifications which they
+have undergone. Generations succeed one another; gradually they form
+separate branches. New characteristics show themselves; the organisms
+become complicated, and becoming complicated they separate. The
+vegetable is distinguished from the animal; the plant which will become
+the palm-tree is distinguished from the oak which is in course of
+formation, and the ancestor of the future bird is already different from
+that of the fish. We follow up this great spectacle. The ages pass, they
+pass by thousands and by millions, they pass by tens of millions. We
+need not be stinting in our allowance of time; our imagination will be
+tired of conceiving of it sooner than thought of supplying it. And at
+what shall we have arrived at last? At the universe as it has been for
+some few thousands of years past; at the world with its vegetables of a
+thousand forms, grouped by classes and series, with the families of
+animals, with the relations of animals to plants, with the unnumbered
+harmonies of nature. Let us choose out one particular, on which to fix
+our attention. Shall it be a she-goat--
+
+
+     Upstretched on fragrant cytisus to browse?
+
+
+This will suit our purpose, although the cytisus, unless I am mistaken,
+has no perfume except in M. de Lamartine's verses. Let us fix our
+attention on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down, and the
+goat bending its pliant branches as it browses on the foliage. Here is a
+very small detail in the ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to
+help our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a naturalist who will
+answer for us the questions suggested by this simple spectacle. And what
+have we now before us? The various relations of the animal's
+organization to the vegetables on which it feeds. In the organization
+and functions of these two living beings, in the equilibrium and
+movements of their frames, in the circulation of sap and of blood, we
+have the application of the most secret laws of mechanism, of physics,
+and of chemistry. Then again, in the relations which the animal and the
+plant sustain with the ground which bears them, with the air they
+breathe, with the sun which enlightens them, with heat and light, with
+the moisture of the air and its electricity--in all this we see the
+universal relations which connect all the various parts of the wide
+universe with each one of its minutest details. In this simple spectacle
+we have, in fact, reciprocal relations, the balance of things, the
+harmony which maintains the universal life--intelligence, in short, in
+the organization of beings, in the characteristics which divide them, in
+the classes which unite them, in the relations of these classes amongst
+themselves;--wonders of intelligent design, of which the sciences we are
+so proud of are spelling out, letter by letter, line after line, the
+inexhaustible abysses: this is what we find everywhere. Let us now come
+back to our primitive cellules.
+
+All the living beings which people the surface of the globe are composed
+materially of some of the elements of the earth's substance. The birth
+therefore of the first living beings could only offer to the view the
+bringing together of some of the elements of the soil; this is not the
+matter in question. The primitive cellules were to all appearance
+alike. Weighed in scales, opened by the scalpel, placed beneath the
+microscope, they would have offered no appreciable difference; I grant
+it: it is the supposition we have agreed to make. Therefore they were
+identical, say you. I deny it, and here is my proof: If the cellules had
+been identical, they would not have given, in the successive development
+of their generations, the diverse beings which people the world, and the
+relations which unite them. Alike to your eyes, the cellules differed
+therefore by a concealed property which their development brought to
+light. You have told me as a matter of history how the organization of
+the world was manifested by slow degrees; you have given me no account
+of the cause of that organization.
+
+It is said in reply: "We do know the origin of those developments which
+you refer to a supposed intelligence. The living beings are transformed
+by the action of food, climate, soil, mode of life. They experience
+slight variations in the first instance; but these variations are
+established, and increase; and where you see a plan, types, and species,
+there is really only the result of modifications slowly accumulated.
+Nature disposes of periods which have no limit, and everything has come
+at its proper time, in the course of ages." They are always proposing to
+us to accept of time as the substitute for intelligence. I am tempted to
+say with Alcestis:
+
+
+     Time in this matter, Sirs, has nought to do.[127]
+
+
+You know what intelligence is; you know it by knowing yourself. Is
+there, or is there not, intelligence in the universe? Allow me to
+reproduce some old questions: If a machine implies intelligence, does
+the universe imply none? If a telescope implies intelligence in the
+optician, does the eye imply none in its author? The production of a
+variety of the camelia, or of a new breed of swine, demands of the
+gardener and the breeder the patient and prolonged employment of the
+understanding; and are our entire flora and fauna to be explained
+without any intervention of mind? And if there is intelligence in the
+universe, is this intelligence a chemical result of the combination of
+molecules? is it a physical result of caloric or of electricity? It is
+in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited time; what has
+time to do here? Whether the world as it now exists arose out of
+nothing, or whether it was slowly formed during thousands of ages, the
+question remains the same. With matter and time, you will not succeed in
+creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy
+utterly beyond our power. In the theory of _slow causes_, the adjective
+ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming
+slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a
+house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time
+has a relative meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or short,
+by taking human life as our measure. But they tell of insects which are
+born in the morning, arrive at mature age at mid-day, and only reach the
+evening if they are patriarchs of their race. Is it not easy to conceive
+of beings organized for an existence such that our centuries would be
+moments with them, and centuries heaped together one of our hours?
+Suppose one of these beings to be contemplating our geological periods,
+and slow causes will to him appear rapid causes, and the question of
+intelligence will be the same for him as for us.
+
+It is manifest that the attempt is being made to restore the worship of
+the old _Chronos_, to whom the ancients had erected temples. Let us
+look the idol in the face. Time appears at first to our imagination as
+the great destroyer. He is armed with a scythe, and passes gaunt and
+bald over the ruins of all that has lived. When he lifts up his great
+voice and cries--
+
+
+     Mighty nations famed in story
+       Into darkness I have hurled,--
+     Gone their myriads and their glory
+       (Lo! ye follow) from the world:
+     My dark shade for ever covers
+       Stars I quenched as on they rolled:--
+
+
+the beautiful, and frightened girl in the song is not singular as she
+exclaims in her terror:
+
+
+     Ah! we're young, and we are lovers,
+       Spare us, Reaper gaunt and old![128]
+
+
+Such is the first impression which time makes upon us. But birth
+succeeds to death. From an inexhaustible spring, nature sends gushing
+forth new products and new developments. Youth full of hope trips
+lightly over the ground, without a thought that the ground it treads on
+is the vast cemetery of all past generations. If we fix our thoughts on
+the permanence of life and the manifestations of progress, time appears
+to us as the great producer. Destroyer of all that is, producer of all
+that is to be, time has thus a double form. It is a mysterious tide,
+ever rising and ever receding; it is the power of death, and it is the
+power of life. All this, Gentlemen, is for the imagination. In the view
+of a calm reason, time is the simply negative condition of all
+development, as space is the negative condition of all motion. Just as
+without bodies and forces infinite space could not produce any motion;
+so, without the action of causes, ages heaped on ages could neither
+produce nor destroy a single atom of matter, or a single element of
+intelligence. Time is the scene of life and of death; it neither causes
+to be born, nor to die.
+
+The struggle which we are now maintaining against the philosophers of
+matter is as ancient as science, and was going on, nearly in the same
+terms, more than two thousand three hundred years ago. About five
+hundred years before the Christian era was born at Clazomenć, a city of
+Ionia, the son of Eubulus, who was to become famous by the name of
+Anaxagoras. He fixed his abode at Athens, and the Athenian people gave
+him a glorious surname,--they called him _Intelligence_. On what
+account? There were taught at that time doctrines which explained the
+world by the transformations of matter rising progressively to life and
+thought, without the intervention of a mind. The philosopher Anaximander
+gave out that the first animals had their origin in the watery element,
+and became modified by living in drier regions, so that man was only a
+fish slowly transformed. "I am quite willing to grant it," replied
+Anaxagoras; "but for your transformations there must be a transforming
+principle. Matter is the material of the world, no doubt; but it could
+not produce universal order except as ruled by intelligence." The
+Athenians admired this discovery. For us, Gentlemen, the discovery has
+been made a long while. Let us not then be talking in this discussion
+about modern science and the lights of the age. Our natural history is
+much advanced as compared with that of the Greeks; but the vital
+question has not varied. Does nature manifest the intervention of a
+directing mind, or do we see in it only a fortuitous aggregation of
+atoms?
+
+Intelligence radiates from the face of nature, and it is in vain that
+men endeavor to veil its splendor. Nevertheless I consent to forget all
+that has just been said, in order to intrench myself in an argument,
+which of itself is sufficient for the object we have in view to-day. Our
+object is to prove that material science does not contain the
+explanation of all the realities of the universe. Even though they had
+succeeded in persuading us that there is no intelligence in nature, it
+would still be necessary to explain the origin of that intelligence
+which is in us, and the existence of which cannot be disputed. Whence
+proceeds the mind which is in ourselves?
+
+Let us first of all give our attention to a strange contradiction. Those
+savants who make of the human soul a simple manifestation of matter, are
+the same who wish to explain nature without the intervention of the
+Divine intelligence. In order to keep out of view the design which is
+displayed in the organization of the world, they take a pleasure in
+finding nature at fault, and in pointing out its imperfections. Still,
+they do not pretend to be able to do better than nature; they would not
+undertake the responsibility of correcting the laws of life, and
+regulating the course of the seasons. They do not say, "We could make a
+better world," but "We can imagine a world more perfect than our own."
+Now what is our answer? Simply this: "You are right." Nature is not the
+supreme perfection, and therefore we will not worship it. How admirable
+soever be the visible universe, we have the faculty of conceiving more
+and better. We understand that the atmosphere might be purified, so that
+the tempest should not engulf the ships, nor the thunderbolt produce the
+conflagration. We dream of mountain-heights more majestic than the
+loftiest summits of our Alps, of waters more transparent than the pure
+crystal of our lakes, of valleys fresher and more peaceful than the
+loveliest which hide among our hills. The spectacle of nature awakens in
+us the powers of thought, and the sentiment of beauty draws us on to the
+pursuit of an ideal which surpasses all realities. Nature is not
+perfect: let us be forward to acknowledge it, and let us draw from the
+fact its legitimate consequence. The stream cannot rise higher than its
+source. If man conceives an ideal superior to nature, he is not himself
+the mere product of nature. By what strange contradiction is it affirmed
+at once that our spirit overpasses the bounds of all the realities
+which encompass it, and that it has not a source more elevated than
+those realities? Listen to a thought of that weighty writer
+Montesquieu:[129] "Those who have said that a blind fatality has
+produced all the effects which we see in the world, have said a great
+absurdity; for what greater absurdity than a blind fatality which should
+have produced intelligent beings?" Without restricting ourselves to this
+simple and solid argument, let us see how they will explain man by
+nature. For this end, we must examine the theory of the perfected
+monkey, which, introduced to us by the lectures of Professor Vogt and
+the spirited rejoinders of M. de Rougemont, made a great noise as it
+descended a short time ago from the mountains of Neuchâtel.[130] A
+celebrated orator said one day to an assembly of Frenchmen: "I am long,
+Gentlemen; but it is your own fault: it is your glory that I am
+recounting." Have not I the right to say to you: "I am long, Gentlemen,
+but it is worth while to be so; it is our own dignity which is in
+question."
+
+Man is a perfected monkey! I have three preliminary observations to make
+before I proceed to the direct examination of this theory.
+
+In the first place, this definition transgresses the first and most
+essential rules of logic. We must always define what is unknown by what
+is known. This is an elementary principle. What a man is, I know. To
+think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear, are functions of the mental
+life. These words answer to clear ideas, because those ideas result
+directly from our personal consciousness. But what is the soul of a
+monkey? The nature of animals is a mystery, one which is perhaps
+incapable of solution, and which, in all cases is wrapped in profound
+darkness, because the animal appears to us an intermediate link between
+the mechanism of nature and the functions of the spiritual life, which
+are the only two conceptions we have that are really clear and distinct.
+In taking the monkey therefore as our point of departure for the
+definition of man, we are defining what is clear by what is obscure.
+
+My second remark is this: If it is affirmed that there is but one
+species, including all the animals and man, so that man is only a monkey
+modified, and the monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal modified;
+when once we have established the reality of man we arrive at this
+result: all animals whatsoever are only inferior developments of
+humanity, living foetuses which, without having come to their full
+term, have nevertheless the faculty of living and reproducing
+themselves. The animal then is an incomplete man; a theory which raises
+great difficulties, but which is more serious and more easy to
+understand than the doctrine which would have man to be a consummation
+of the monkey.
+
+In fact,--and this is my third observation,--when the theory which I am
+examining is adopted, it must be carried out to its consequences, and
+the bearing of it clearly seen. Man, it is said, is the consummation of
+the monkey. The monkey is an improvement upon some quadruped or other,
+and this quadruped is an improvement upon another, and so on. We must
+descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most elementary
+manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter. If it is not
+admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must be
+admitted that man is a _mélange_ of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote,
+phosphorus--a _mélange_ which has been brought little by little to
+perfection. Such is the final inference from the doctrine which we are
+examining; and there are theorists who deduce it clearly. Now what is it
+that goes on in the minds of these savants? When the object is to banish
+God from nature, the creative Intelligence is resolved into thousands of
+ages. When it is desired to get rid in man of the reality of mind, they
+seek to resolve the human intelligence into a long series of
+modifications which have caused life to spring from matter, superior
+animals from simpler organisms, and man from the animal. Do not allow
+yourselves to be caught in this trap. Maintain firmly, that, whatever
+the degree of intelligence, of will, of spiritual essence, which may
+exist in animals, if that element is really found in them, it demands a
+cause, and cannot, without an enormous confusion of ideas, be regarded
+as a mere perfecting of matter. In fact, a thing in perfecting itself,
+realizes continually more fully its own proper idea, and does not become
+another thing. A perfect monkey would be of all monkeys the one which is
+most a monkey, and would not be a man. But let us leave the animals in
+the darkness in which they abide for our minds, and let us speak of what
+for us is less obscure.
+
+Our spiritual existence is a fact; it is of all facts the one which is
+best known to us; it is the fact without which no other fact would exist
+for us. And whence proceeds our spirit? To this question, natural
+history has no answer. It is easy to see this, though we grant once
+again to natural history, when made the most of by our adversaries, all
+that it can pretend to claim. Suppose it proved, that in the historical
+development of nature, man has a monkey for his mother. I will grant it,
+and grant it quite seriously in order to ascertain what will be the
+influence of this hypothesis upon the problem on which we are engaged.
+
+If all monkeys were fossils, and if we had a natural history, also
+fossil, setting forth to us the customs and habits of these animals; if
+the savages that are said to be the nearest neighbors to monkeys were
+all fossils; we should find ourselves in presence of a progressive and
+continued development of beings, and, for an inattentive mind, all would
+be easily explained by the slow and continued action of time. But this
+is not the case. All the elements of nature are before our eyes, from
+inorganic matter up to man. We do not see that time suffices for savages
+to become civilized, and still less for monkeys to become men. I was,
+in the spring of this year, in the _Jardin des plantes_ at Paris, musing
+on the question which we are discussing, and I took a good look at the
+monkeys. Come now, I said to myself, canst thou recognize them as thine
+ancestors? The question was badly put. The monkeys are not our
+ancestors, inasmuch as they are living at the same time with us; they
+can only be our cousins, and it would seem that they are the eldest
+branch, as they have best preserved the primitive type. But let us speak
+more seriously. The races of monkeys have lived as long or longer than
+we: it is neither time nor climate which has made men of them.
+Recollect, I pray you, that the words 'time' and 'progress' explain
+nothing. There must have occurred favorable circumstances to transform
+the earth's substance into living cellules, and the living cellules into
+plants clearly marked, and into animals properly so called; and in the
+same way there must have been a propitious circumstance to transform the
+monkey into man. I think so, in fact; and this propitious circumstance
+well deserves to be studied with attention.
+
+Man presents characteristics which distinguish him profoundly from the
+animal races: no one disputes it. He possesses speech; he is capable of
+religion; he exhibits the varied phenomena of civilization, while the
+animals succeed one another generations after generations in the
+unrecorded obscurity of a life for ever the same. Suppose we admit that
+human phenomena presented themselves at first in a very elementary form;
+in rudiments of language and rudiments of religion,--although the
+historical sciences do not quite give this result:--still suppose the
+case that at a given moment a branch of the monkey species presented the
+germ, as little developed as you please, but real, of new phenomena. One
+variety of the monkey species has been endowed with speech, has become
+religious, capable of civilization, and the other varieties of the
+species have not offered the same characteristics, although they have
+had the same number of ages in which to develop themselves. Observe well
+now my process of reasoning. Remark attentively whether I oppose
+theories to facts, whether I substitute oratorical declamations for
+arguments. I grant the hypotheses best calculated, as commonly thought,
+to contradict my theses. I assume that natural history demonstrates by
+solid proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of a monkey;
+and I ask: What is the circumstance which set apart in the animal
+species a branch which presented new phenomena? What is the cause? That
+monkey-author of our race which one day began to speak in the midst of
+his brother-monkeys, amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that
+monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity; that, looking up
+to heaven, said, My God! and that, retiring into himself, said: I!--that
+monkey which, while the female monkeys continued to give birth to their
+young, had sons by the partner of his life and pressed them to his
+heart; that monkey--what shall we say of it? What climate, what soil,
+what regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what drought, what
+light, what combination of phosphorus, what disengagement of
+electricity, separated from the animal races, not only man, but human
+society? humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again, its
+sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles; humanity with its arts,
+its sciences, its religion, its history in short, its history and its
+hopes of immortality? That monkey, what shall we say of it? Do you not
+see that the breath of the Spirit passed over it, and that God said unto
+it: Behold, thou art made in mine image: remember now thy Father who is
+in heaven? Do you not see that though we grant everything to the extreme
+pretensions of naturalists, the question comes up again whole and
+entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine
+that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature,
+that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an
+impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies
+the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first
+man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series
+of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth,
+by making it pass through the long series of animality--the question is
+a grave one, but it is of secondary importance. The first question is to
+know whether we are merely the ephemeral product of the encounter of
+atoms, or whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul, a reality
+in short, with which may connect itself another future than the
+dissolution of the sepulchre; whether there remains another hope than
+annihilation as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants
+after fame, only that evanescent memory which time bears away with
+everything beside.
+
+This is the question. Do not allow it to be put out of sight beneath
+details of physiology and researches of natural history, which can
+neither settle, nor so much as touch the problem. If therefore you fall
+in with any one of these philosophers of matter, bid him take this for
+all your answer: "There is one fact which stands out against your theory
+and suffices to overthrow it: that fact is--myself!" And since, to have
+the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is
+one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance
+of the conscience,--add boldly with Corneille's Medea:
+
+
+     I,--I say,--and it is enough.
+
+
+In fact, nature does not explain man, and to this conclusion has tended
+all that I have said to you to-day.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[97] _Harmonices mundi, libri quinque._
+
+[98] _Philosophić naturalis principia mathematica._
+
+[99]
+
+     The whole universe is full of His magnificence.
+     May this God be adored and invoked for ever!
+
+[100] _Le Rationalisme_, page 19.
+
+[101] _Force et Matičre_, page 262.
+
+[102] _Les Mondes Causeries astronomiques_ by Guillemin; see p. 122 (3rd
+edition), where Kepler is described as an intelligence "penetrated by a
+profound faith in nature and exalted by a noble pride." See also pages
+327 and 336.
+
+[103] The question discussed in these pages must not be confounded with
+that of the relations between the science of nature and the documents of
+revelation. Whether nature can be explained without God is one question.
+Whether geology is in accordance with the language of the book of
+Genesis is another question, as regards both its nature and its
+importance. This latter subject does not come within the scope of these
+lectures. I will merely call attention to the fact, that if nature and
+the sacred text are fixed elements, this is not the case with the
+interpretations of theologians, and the results of geology. It is
+difficult to pronounce upon the exact relation of two quantities more or
+less indeterminate.
+
+[104] In the writings of M. de Rougemont, if I am not mistaken.
+
+[105] _Systema naturć._
+
+[106] Ps. civ. 24.
+
+[107] _Biographie universelle._
+
+[108] _A. P. de Candolle_, by A. de la Rive, pp. 12 and 13.
+
+[109] M. Vaucher's principal title to scientific distinction is his
+_Histoire des conferves d'eau douce_, Genčve, an XI (1803), 4°.
+
+[110] _Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences_ of 20 April, 1863,
+page 738.
+
+[111] Exeter Hall Lectures--_The Power of God in His Animal Creation_,
+pamphlet in 12mo. This remarkable lecture contains a twofold
+protest--against the blindness of those savants who fail to recognize
+the presence of God in nature; and against the pretensions of those
+theologians who attack the certain results of the study of nature,
+relying upon texts more or less accurately interpreted.
+
+[112] _Chemistry applied to Agriculture and to Physiology_ (in German).
+Seventh edition. Introd. page 69.
+
+[113] Since these words were spoken, M. de la Rive has been named an
+associated member of the Institute of France (Academy of Sciences), and
+thus elevated to the first of scientific dignities. It might be shown, I
+believe, that the greater number of the eight associates of the Academy
+of Sciences to be found in the world, make profession of their faith in
+God the Creator, the Almighty and Holy One. The silence which others may
+have preserved on the subject would, moreover, be no authority for
+concluding that they do not share in beliefs and sentiments which they
+have not had the occasion perhaps of publicly expressing.
+
+[114] _On the Origin of Species_, page 81. Fifth edition.
+
+[115] _On the Origin of Species_. The text is--"the _necessary_ series
+of facts;" but it would be to do the writer wrong to impute to him the
+idea that observation reveals to us what is _necessary_, in the
+philosophical import of the word.
+
+[116] _On the Origin of Species._
+
+[117] Caro, _L'Idée de Dieu_, page 47.
+
+[118] _Force et Matičre_, page 181.
+
+[119] The Büchner proceeding is found again pretty exactly in _Les
+Mondes_ of M. Amédée Guillemin. This writer affirms (page 60 of the
+third edition) that science does not approach metaphysical questions;
+and asserts in the same page, ten lines further on, that astronomical
+experience leads our reason to the idea of _the eternity of the
+universe_. After that, he may laugh, if he will, at _lovers of the
+absolute_.
+
+[120] See in particular the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, passim.
+
+[121] S'enivrait en marchant du plaisir de la voir.
+
+[122] See the lecture above mentioned.
+
+[123] _Lettres sur les Etats-Unis d'Amérique_, by Lieutenant-Colonel
+Ferri Pisani, page 400.--Letter of 25 Sept. 1861.
+
+[124] On the origin of species, in the _Archives des sciences de la
+Bibliothčque universelle_, March, 1860.
+
+[125] Vous coulez des moucherons.
+
+[126] In his _Principes de philosophie zoologique_, a collection of
+answers made by Geoffroy, in the discussions of the _Académie des
+Sciences_, in 1830.
+
+[127] Voyons, Messieurs, le temps ne fait rien ŕ l'affaire.
+
+[128]
+
+     Sur cent premiers peuples célčbres,
+       J'ai plongé cent peuples fameux,
+     Dans un abîme de ténčbres
+       Oů vous disparaîtrez comme eux.
+     J'ai couvert d'une ombre éternelle
+       Des astres éteints dans leur cours.
+     --Ah! par pitié, lui dit ma belle,
+       Vieillard, épargnez nos amours!
+
+[129] _Esprit des Lois_, Bk. I. chap. 1.
+
+[130] _Leçons sur l'homme_, by Carl Vogt (lectures delivered during the
+winter of 1862-1863, at Neuchâtel and at Chaux-de-Fonds), 1 vol. 8vo.
+Paris, 1865.--_L'Homme et le Singe_, by Frédéric de Rougemont, pamphlet,
+12mo. Neuchâtel, 1863.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+_HUMANITY._
+
+(At Geneva, 1st. Dec., 1863.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+Man has need of God. If he be not fallen into the most abject
+degradation, he does not succeed in extinguishing the instinct which
+leads him to inquire after his Creator. A false wisdom labors to still
+the cravings which the truth alone can satisfy; but false wisdom remains
+powerless, and betrays itself continually by some outrageous
+contradiction. Here is a curious example of this:
+
+In a book which was famous in the last century, and which was called the
+gospel of atheism,[131] the Baron d'Holbach explains as follows the
+existence of the universe: "The universe, that vast assemblage of all
+that exists, everywhere presents to our view only matter and
+motion.--Nature is the grand whole which results from the assemblage of
+different material substances, from their different combinations, and
+from the different motions which we see in the universe."[132] Here is a
+clear doctrine: all that exists, the soul included, is nothing but
+matter in motion. I pass from the beginning to the end of the work, and
+I arrive at this conclusion: "O nature! sovereign of all beings! and ye,
+her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, truth! be ye for ever our sole
+divinities; to you it is that the incense and the homage of the earth
+are due."[133] If we try to translate this sort of hymn in accordance
+with the express definitions of the author, we shall obtain the
+following result: "O matter in motion! sovereign of all material
+substances in motion! and ye, virtue, reason, truth, who are various
+names of matter which moves, be ye the only divinities of that moving
+matter which is ourselves." Yet this author was no blockhead. What then
+passed in his mind? He laid down the thesis of materialism: bodies in
+motion are the only reality. But he is all the while a man. The need
+for adoration is not destroyed in his soul, and he deceives himself. He
+defines nature as consisting wholly of matter, and when he sets himself
+to worship it, he entirely forgets his definition. This is not on his
+part a piece of philosophical jugglery, but the manifestation of the
+real condition of our nature, which is always giving the lie, in one
+direction or another, to erroneous systems. The power of wholly
+maintaining himself in error has not been granted to man. He who denies
+God is always deifying something; and all worship which is not that of
+the Eternal and Infinite Mind is stultified by glaring contradictions.
+Here is a recent example of this: We were not a little surprised a short
+time since to see M. Ernest Renan deny clearly enough the immortality of
+our persons, and, in the opening of the very book in which this negation
+appears, to find him invoking the soul of his sister at rest with
+God.[134] Elsewhere, the same writer says that the Infinite Being does
+not exist, that absolute reason and absolute justice exist only in
+humanity, and he concludes his exposition of these views by an
+invocation of the Heavenly Father.[135] The Baron d'Holbach had put
+eight hundred and thirty-nine pages between his materialistic definition
+of the universe and his invocation of nature. Now-a-days everything goes
+faster; and M. Renan places but a few pages of the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ between his denial of God and his prayer to the Heavenly Father.
+With this difference, which is to the advantage of the writer of the
+eighteenth century, the process is absolutely the same. The philosopher
+declares God to be an imaginary being, and the future life an illusion;
+but the man protests, and, by a touching illusion of the heart, the man
+who in his system of doctrine has neither God nor hope, finds that he
+has a sister in the realms eternal, and a Father in the heavens. It is
+impossible not to see, especially in literary works destined to a
+success of fashion, the seductive influence of art, the precautions of
+prudence, the concessions made to public opinion; but we cannot wholly
+explain the incredible contradictions of the Holbachs and Renans,
+without allowing full weight to that need for God which shows itself
+even in the farthest wanderings of human thought by sudden and abrupt
+returns.
+
+The illusion which deifies matter in motion is gross enough. It belongs
+only to minds which Cicero called, in the aristocratic pride of a Roman
+gentleman, the plebeians of philosophy.[136] It requires, in fact, no
+great reflection to understand that truth, beauty, and goodness are
+neither atoms nor a certain movement of atoms. The attempt, which is to
+form the subject of our study to-day, that of deifying man, is a far
+more subtle one. Let us first of all inquire into the origin of the
+strange worship which humanity accords to itself.
+
+Nature, considered separately from the beings which receive sensible
+impressions from it, has neither heat nor light. In a world peopled by
+the blind, light would have no name. If all men were entirely paralyzed
+as to their sensations, the idea of heat would not exist. Light and
+heat, regarded as existing in matter itself, without reference to
+sensitive organizations, are, in the opinion of our natural
+philosophers, only determinate movements. In the same way, if nature
+were without any spectator whatever, beauty would not exist; if there
+were nowhere any intelligence, truth would no longer be. In the same way
+again, if there were no wills, goodness, which is nothing else than the
+law of the will, would be a word deprived of all meaning. Beauty
+expresses the object of the perceptions of the soul. Truth denotes the
+quality of the judgments of intelligences. Goodness (I speak of moral
+goodness) expresses a certain direction of the free will. There exists
+no means of causing to proceed from nature, or from matter, the
+attributes of the spiritual being. This is only done by imaginary
+transformations, by a course of arrant juggling. The flame does not feel
+its own heat, light does not see itself, the planets know nothing of the
+laws of Kepler. Materialism is the result of a modesty wholly misplaced
+which leads man to forget himself, in order to attribute gratuitously to
+nature realities which exist only in spiritual beings connected with
+nature by a marvellous harmony. In order therefore to account for the
+universe, we must raise ourselves above the atom in motion, and
+penetrate into a higher world where truth, beauty, goodness become the
+objects of thought. Truth, beauty, goodness conduct the mind to God,
+their eternal source. But there is a philosophy which endeavors to stop
+midway in the ascent of the Divine ladder, and thinks to satisfy itself
+in the contemplation of the true, the beautiful, the good, without
+connecting them with their cause. This philosophy considers the true,
+the beautiful, the good, as ideas which exist by themselves, without a
+supreme Spirit of which they are the manifestation. It has received, in
+consequence, the name of idealism.
+
+To conceive of ideas without a mind, ideas having an existence by
+themselves, is a thing impossible; such a conception is expressed by
+words which give back a hollow sound, because they contain nothing. We
+have already stated this thesis; let us now confirm it by an example. A
+literary Frenchman, M. Taine, would make us understand in what manner
+the universe may be explained without reference to God, and by means of
+a pure idea. Listen well, not to understand, but to make sure that you
+do not understand: "The universe forms a unique being, indivisible, of
+which all the beings are members. At the supreme summit of things, at
+the highest point of the luminous and inaccessible ether, pronounces
+itself the eternal axiom; and the prolonged resounding of this creative
+formula composes, by its inexhaustible undulations, the immensity of the
+universe. Every form, every change, every movement, every idea is one of
+its acts."[137]
+
+M. Taine is a man of humor, and the burlesque has a place in his
+philosophical writings; but in the words which I have just read to you
+he seems to have intended seriously to expound the system which replaces
+God by an idea. Try now to form a definite conception of this universe
+composed of the undulations of an axiom. Do you understand how an axiom
+undulates, and how the heavens and the earth are only the undulations of
+an axiom? Making all allowance for rhetoric and figures, do you
+understand what can be the acts of an axiom, and how an axiom
+_pronounces itself_ without being pronounced? You do not understand it,
+as neither do I. Such doctrines, then, as we have said, can only be the
+portion of a small number of thinkers who have lost, by dint of
+abstraction, the sentiment of reality. The ideas--truth, beauty,
+good--will only exist for the common order of men, under such a system,
+in the human mind, where we have cognizance of them; and thenceforward,
+the ideal, or God, is nothing else than the image of humanity which
+contemplates itself in a sort of mirage. Thus it is that the adoration
+of man by man is disengaged from the high theories of idealism. Let us
+proceed to the examination of this worship, which is cried up
+now-a-days in divers parts of the intellectual globe.
+
+I open the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of the 15th February, 1861. As the
+author of the article I refer to[138] appears to admit "that one
+assertion is not more true than another opposed to it,"[139] we will not
+be so simple as to ask whether he adopts the opinions which he
+propounds. He presents to us, in a rapid sketch, the principal
+tendencies of the modern mind. The modern mind is here characterized by
+one of its declared partisans; you will not take therefore for a wicked
+caricature the picture which he puts before us. Here then are the
+thoughts of the modern mind: "There is only one infinite, that of our
+desires and our aspirations, that of our needs and our efforts.[140] The
+true, the beautiful, the just are perpetually occurring; they are for
+ever in course of self-formation, because they are nothing else than the
+human mind, which, in unfolding itself, finds and knows itself
+again."[141] This is only the French translation of a saying celebrated
+in Germany: "God is not: He becomes." What we call God is the human
+mind. What was there at the beginning of things? The human mind, which
+did not know itself. What will there be in the end? The human mind,
+which, in unfolding itself, will have come to know itself, and will
+adore itself as the supreme God. If this be indeed the final object of
+the universe, it appears that, in the opinion of these philosophers, the
+consummation of all things must be near. Once that humanity, faithful to
+their doctrine, shall have pronounced the lofty utterance, "I am God,
+and there is none else," the world will no longer have any reason for
+existing.
+
+Such is the system of which we have to follow out the consequences. Let
+us take as our point of comparison the old ideas which we are urged to
+abandon.
+
+We usually explain human destinies by the concurrence of two causes,
+infinitely distinct, since the one is creative and the other created,
+but both of which we hold for real: man, and God. Humanity has received
+from its Author the free power which we call will, and the law of that
+will which we name conscience. The law proceeds from God, the liberty
+proceeds from God; but the acts of the created will, when it violates
+its law and revolts against its Author, are the creation of the
+creature. God is the eternal source of good, and liberty is a good; but
+God is not the source of evil, which is distinctly a revolt against Him,
+the abuse of the first of His gifts. Together with will, man has
+received understanding, and gives himself to the search after truth.
+Truth is the object of the understanding, its Divine law. Error is a
+deviation from the law of the understanding, as evil is a deviation from
+the law of the will. Lastly, with will and understanding, man has
+received the faculty of feeling. This faculty applies itself to the
+world of bodies, from which we receive pain or pleasure. But our faculty
+of feeling does not stop there. Above the animal life, the mind has
+enjoyments which are proper to it, and the object of which is beauty.
+Beauty is not only in nature and in works of art, it is everywhere, in
+whatever attracts our love. The sciences are beautiful, and the harmony
+of the truths which are discovered in their order and mutual dependence
+causes us to experience a feeling similar to that produced by the most
+delightful music. Virtue is beautiful; it shines in the view of the
+conscience with the purest brightness, and, as was said by one of the
+ancients, if it could reveal itself to our eyes in a sensible form, it
+would excite in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is ugly
+when once stripped of the delusive fascination of the passions; the
+vicious excesses of the lower nature are ugly and repulsive as soon as
+the intoxication is over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful
+errors but those which contain a larger portion of truth than the
+prosaic verities, which are nothing else than falsehoods put in a
+specious way. Beauty therefore is the law of our feelings, as truth is
+the law of our thought, and good the law of our will. We will not
+inquire now what secret relations shall one day bring together in an
+indissoluble unity of light, the good, the true, and the beautiful, and
+in a unity of darkness, evil, deformity, and falsehood. Let it suffice
+to have pointed out how a threefold aspiration leads man to God, under
+the guidance of the conscience, the understanding, and the feelings; and
+that a threefold rebellion estranges him from God, by sinking him into
+the dark regions of deformity, error, and evil. Humanity has therefore a
+law; it has been endowed with liberty, but that a liberty of which the
+legitimate end is determined. It advances towards this end, or it
+swerves from it. There is a rule above its acts. The thing as it is may
+not be the thing as it ought to be; rebellion is not obedience, and
+good is not evil.
+
+All these consequences are included in the idea of creation. The
+struggle between two opposite principles, a struggle which sums up human
+destiny, is a fact of which each one of us can easily assure himself in
+his own person. What will happen when man, sensible of the law of his
+nature, and conscious of this struggle, proceeds to encounter humanity?
+Each one of us carries humanity in his own bosom. But humanity, the
+character of man which is common to us, and which makes the spiritual
+unity of our species, is found to be altered by the influence of places,
+times, and circumstances. Our reason is encumbered by prejudices of
+birth and education, and by such as we have ourselves created in our
+minds in the exercise of our will. Our sense of beauty is vitiated and
+narrowed by local influences and habits. Our conscience is likewise
+subjected to influences which impair its free manifestation. Every one
+needs to enlarge his horizon. By seeking occasions of intercourse with
+our fellows, we shall learn to discriminate true and eternal beauty in
+the diversity of its manifestations; we shall distinguish the truth from
+the individual prepossessions of our own minds; good and evil,
+disengaged from the narrownesses of habit, will appear to us in their
+real and enduring nature. Our taste will be formed, our conscience
+purified, our mind enlarged; we shall more and more become men, in the
+high and full acceptation of the term. In order that the meeting
+together of the individual and of humanity may produce such fruits, God
+must dwell continually in the sanctuary of the conscience. The inner
+light is kindled in the intercourse of the soul with its Creator; it is
+afterwards brightened and nurtured by the soul's intercourse with the
+traces of God which humanity reveals. But this light makes manifest
+within us, and without us, great darkness. We have no right to abandon
+ourselves to every spectacle which strikes our view. If, in presence of
+what is passing in the world, we are tempted to regard the prosperity of
+the wicked with cowardly envy; if we would fill up, for the satisfaction
+of our evil desires, the abyss which separates the holy from the impure,
+the inner voice lifts itself up and cries to us: "Woe! woe to them who
+call evil good, and good evil."[142] God is our Master, even as He is
+our good and our hope. The fact of the revolts of humanity can have no
+effect against His sovereign will. Soldiers in the service of the
+Almighty, life is for us a conflict, and duty imposes on us a combat.
+
+Such, Sirs, is the explanation of our destinies, an old, and, if you
+like, a vulgar one. Let us now give our attention to the doctrine which
+deifies humanity, and follow out its consequences. Humanity carries
+within its bosom the idea of truth, the love of beauty, the sense of
+good. What does it need more? These noble aspirations mark for it the
+end of its efforts. What will be wanting to a life regulated by duty,
+enlightened by truth, ennobled by art? What will be wanting to such a
+life? Nothing, or everything. Nothing, if the search after good, truth,
+and beauty leads to God. Everything, if it be sought to carry it on
+without any reference to God, because from the moment that man desires
+to be the source of light to himself, the light will be changed into
+darkness, as we said at the beginning of this lecture. Put God out of
+view, and good, beauty, and truth will disappear; while you will see
+produced the decline of art, the dissolution of thought in scepticism,
+the absolute negation of morality. Let us consider with the attention
+it deserves, and in contemporary examples, this sad and curious
+spectacle.
+
+I open a treatise by M. Taine. The English historian Macaulay speaks of
+literary men who "have taken pains to strip vice of its odiousness, to
+render virtue ridiculous, to rank adultery among the elegant fashions
+and obligatory achievements of a man of taste." The honest Englishman
+takes the liberty to judge and to condemn men who have made so
+pernicious a use of their talents. This pretension to make the
+conscience speak is in the eyes of the French man of letters a gothic
+prejudice. Listen how he expresses himself on the subject: "Criticism in
+France has freer methods.--When we try to give an account of the life,
+or to describe the character, of a man, we are quite willing to consider
+him simply as an object of painting or of science.... We do not judge
+him, we only wish to represent him to the eyes and to set him
+intelligibly before the reason. We are curious inquirers and nothing
+more. That Peter or Paul was a knave matters little to us, that was the
+business of his contemporaries, who suffered from his vices--At this day
+we are out of his reach, and hatred has disappeared with the danger--I
+experience neither aversion nor disgust; I have left these feelings at
+the gate of history, and I taste the very deep and very pure pleasure of
+seeing a soul act according to a definite law--."[143] You understand,
+Gentlemen: the distinction between good and evil, as that between error
+and truth; these are old sandals which must be put off before entering
+into the temple of history; and the man of the nineteenth century, if he
+has taste and information, is merely an historian, and nothing more. The
+sacred emotion which generous actions produce in us, the indignation
+stirred in us by baseness and cruelty, are childish emotions which are
+to disappear in order that we may be free to contemplate vice and virtue
+with a pleasure always equal, very deep, and very pure. We have not here
+the aberration of a young and ill-regulated mind, but the doctrine of a
+school. I open again the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and there I encounter
+the theory of which M. Taine has made the application: "We no longer
+know anything of morals, but of manners; of principles, but of facts. We
+explain everything, and, as has been said, the mind ends _by approving
+of all that it explains_. Modern virtue is summed up in
+toleration.[144]--Immense novelty! That which is, has for us the right
+to be.[145]--In the eyes of the modern savant, all is true, all is right
+in its own place. The place of each thing constitutes its truth."[146]
+
+I cut short the enumeration of these enormities. All rule has
+disappeared, all morality is destroyed; there is no longer any
+difference between right and fact, between what is and what ought to be.
+And what is the real account to give of all this? It is as follows:
+Humanity is the highest point of the universe; above it there is
+nothing; humanity is God, if we consent to take that sacred name in a
+new sense. How then is it to be judged? In the name of what rule? since
+there is no rule: in the name of what law? since there is no law. All
+judgment is a personal prejudice, the act of a narrow mind. We do not
+judge God, we simply recount His dealings; we accept all His acts, and
+record them with equal veneration. All science is only a history, and
+the first requisite in a historian is to reduce to silence his
+conscience and his reason, as sorry and deceitful exhibitions of his
+petty personality, in order to accept all the acts of the
+humanity-deity, and establish their mutual connection. The deification
+of the human mind is the justification of all its acts, and, by a direct
+consequence, the annihilation of all morality. Let us look more in
+detail at the origin and development of these notions.
+
+The individual placing himself before humanity is to accept everything:
+this is the disposition recommended to us, in the name of the modern
+mind. Good and evil are narrow measures which minds behind the age
+persist, ridiculously enough, in wishing to apply to things. "We no
+longer transform the world to our image by bringing it to our standard;
+_on the contrary, we allow ourselves to be modified and fashioned by
+it_."[147] The individual goes therefore to meet humanity without any
+inner rule: he gives himself up, he abandons himself to the spectacle of
+facts. But the world is large, and history is long. Even those who spend
+their whole life in nothing else than in satisfying their curiosity,
+cannot see and know everything. To what then shall be directed that
+vague look, equally attracted to all points for want of any fixed rule?
+At what shall it stop? It will rest on that which shines most
+brilliantly, like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines more
+brightly than success; nothing more solicits the attention. The
+glorification of success is the first and most infallible consequence of
+moral indifference. In leaving ourselves to be fashioned by the world
+instead of bringing it to our standard, we shall begin by according our
+esteem to victory. This philosophy is come to us from Germany. It was
+set forth on one occasion, in France, with great _éclat_, by the
+brilliant eloquence of a man who has rendered signal services to
+philosophy, and whose entire works must not be judged of by the single
+particular which I am about to mention. In the year 1829, M. Cousin was
+developing at the Sorbonne the meaning of these verses of La Fontaine,
+which introduce the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb:
+
+
+     La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure:
+         Je vais le montrer tout ŕ l'heure.
+
+
+He had written as the programme of one of his lectures: _Morality of
+Victory_. Now see how he justified this surprising title: "I have
+absolved victory as necessary and useful; I now undertake to absolve it
+as just in the strictest sense of the word. Men do not usually see in
+success anything else than the triumph of strength, and an honorable
+sympathy draws us to the side of the vanquished; I hope I have shown
+that since there must always be a vanquished side, and since the
+vanquished side is always that which ought to be so, to accuse the
+conqueror is to take part against humanity, and to complain of the
+progress of civilization. We must go farther; we must prove that the
+vanquished deserved to be so, that the conqueror not only serves the
+interests of civilization, but that he is better, more moral than the
+vanquished, and that it is on that account he is the conqueror.... It is
+time that the philosophy of history should place at its feet the
+declamations of philanthropy."[148]
+
+These words are worth considering. When Brennus the Gaul was having the
+gold weighed which he exacted from the vanquished Romans, he threw his
+heavy sword into the balance, exclaiming, _Vć Victis!_ Woe to the
+conquered! He simply meant to say that he was the stronger, and did not
+foresee that a Gaul of the nineteenth century, availing himself of the
+labors of learned Germany, would demonstrate that being the stronger he
+was on that very account the more just. But we must not wander too far
+from our subject.
+
+When the spectacle of the world is freely indulged in without any
+application to it of the measure of the conscience, what first strikes
+the view is success. It is necessary therefore to begin with rendering
+glory to success by declaring victory good. Now, mark well here the
+conflict of the old notions with the so-called modern mind. From the old
+point of view, victory in the issue belongs to good, because while man
+is tossed in strife and tumult, God is leading him on; but the success
+of good is realized by conflict, and the victory is often reached only
+after a long series of defeats. There are bad triumphs and impious
+successes. What is proposed to us is, to put aside the rule of our own
+judgments, and to declare that victory is good in itself. The old point
+of view, that of the conscience, does not surrender without an energetic
+resistance; and that resistance shows itself in the very words of M.
+Cousin. His thesis is, that all victory is just. His intention is
+therefore to _approve_ victory. Why does he say _absolve_? it is the
+term which he employs. Since the matter in question is to absolve
+victory, it is placed on trial. It is accused of being, like fortune
+and fame, at one time on the side of good and justice, at another on the
+side of injustice and evil. Which then is the party accused? Victory.
+Who is the advocate? An eloquent professor. Who finally is the accuser?
+Do you not see? It is the human conscience; the conscience which
+protests in the soul of the orator against the theory of which he is
+enamoured, and which forces him to say _absolve_ when he should say
+_glorify_. And in fact the choice must be made: either to glorify
+victory, by treading under foot that narrow conscience which sometimes
+ranks itself with Cato on the side of the vanquished; or to glorify
+conscience by impeaching the victories which outrage it.
+
+It is not sufficient, however, to sacrifice the conscience in order to
+rescue from embarrassment the philosophy of success. It strikes on other
+rocks also. The same causes are by turns victorious and vanquished, and
+it is hard to make men understand that, in conflicts in which their
+dearest affections are engaged, they must beforehand, and in all cases,
+take part with the strongest. It will be in vain for the philosopher to
+say that the Swiss of Morgarten were right, for that they beat the
+Austrians; but that the heroes of Rotenthurm were greatly in the wrong,
+because, crushed without being vanquished, they were obliged to yield to
+numbers, and leave at last their country's soil to be trodden by the
+stranger;--the children of old Switzerland will find it hard to admit
+this doctrine. Even in France, in that nation so accustomed to encircle
+its soldiers' brows with laurel, this difficulty has risen up in the way
+of M. Cousin. Béranger, when asked for a souvenir of Waterloo,
+
+
+     Replied, with drooping eyelid, tear-bedewed:
+     Never that name shall sadden verse of mine.[149]
+
+
+But philosophy would be worth little if it had not at its disposal more
+extensive resources than those of a song-writer. M. Cousin therefore
+looked the difficulty in the face. Victory is always good. But how shall
+young Frenchmen be made to hear this with regard to that signal defeat
+of the armies of France? Listen: "It is not populations which appear on
+battle-fields, but ideas and causes. So at Leipzig and at Waterloo two
+causes came to the encounter, the cause of paternal monarchy and that of
+military democracy. Which of them carried the day, Gentlemen? Neither
+the one nor the other. Who was the conqueror and who the conquered at
+Waterloo? Gentlemen, there were none conquered. (_Applause._) No, I
+protest that there were none: the only conquerors were European
+civilization and the map. (_Unanimous and prolonged applause._)"[150]
+
+To make the youth of Paris applaud at the remembrance of Waterloo is
+perhaps one of the most brilliant triumphs of eloquence which the annals
+of history record. But this rhetorical success is not a triumph of
+truth. There were those who were conquered at Waterloo; and, to judge by
+what has been going on for some time past in Europe, it would seem that
+those who were conquered are bent on taking their revenge. We may infer
+from these facts that all triumphs are not good, since truth may be for
+a moment overcome by a false philosophy tricked out in the deceitful
+adornments of eloquence.
+
+But let us admit, whatever our opinion on the subject, that the Waterloo
+rock has been passed successfully; we have not yet pointed out the main
+difficulty which rises up in the way of this system. If victory is
+good, it seems at first sight that defeat is bad. But defeat is the
+necessary condition of victory; and being the condition of good, it
+seems therefore that it also is good; and the mind comes logically to
+this conclusion: "Victory is good;--defeat is good, since it is the
+condition of victory;--all is good." We set out with the glorification
+of victory, and, lo! we are arrived at the glorification of fact. All
+that is, has the right to be; in the eyes of the modern savant whatever
+is, is right. M. Cousin laid down the principle; he laid it down in a
+general manner in his philosophical eclecticism, of which it was easy to
+make use, as has in fact been done, in a sense contrary to his real
+intentions. Our young critics, wasting an inheritance of which they do
+not appear always to recognize the origin, are doing nothing else, very
+often, than catching as they die away the last vibrations of that
+surpassing eloquence.
+
+In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right and good: such is
+the axiom for which the labors of more than one modern historian had
+prepared us. We are to seek for the relation of facts one to another,
+that is to explain; and all that we explain, we must approve. Let us
+follow out this thought in a few examples.
+
+It was necessary that Louis XVI should be beheaded and the guillotine
+permanently set up, in order to manifest the result of the disorders of
+Louis XIV, of the shameful excesses of Louis XV, and of the licentious
+immorality of French society. It was necessary for Louis XIV to be an
+adulterer, Louis XV a debauchee, the clergy corrupt, and the nobility
+depraved, to bring about the shocks of the revolution. The facts
+mutually correspond; I explain, and I approve. In the eyes of the modern
+savant everything is right.
+
+It was necessary that Buonaparte should throw the _Corps législatif_ out
+of the window, that he should let loose his armies upon Europe, and
+leave thousands of dead bodies in the snows of Russia, in order to end
+the revolution, and extinguish the restless ardor of the French. It
+needed the massacres of September, the gloomy days of the Terror, the
+anarchy of the period of the Directory, to throw dismayed France into
+the arms of the crowned soldier who was to carry to so high a pitch her
+glory and her influence. The facts correspond; I explain, and I approve.
+In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right.
+
+I consider the character of Nero. I take him at the commencement of his
+reign, when, being forced to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, he
+exclaimed--"Would I were unable to write!" And then again I regard him
+after he has perpetrated acts such that to apply his name in future ages
+to the cruellest of tyrants shall appear to them a cruel injury. What
+has taken place in the interval? The development of his natural
+character, Agrippina, Narcissus ... I understand the play of all the
+springs which have made a monster. As I am out of his clutches, my
+detestation vanishes with the danger. "I taste the very deep and very
+pure pleasure of seeing a mind act according to a definite law." I
+understand, I explain, I approve. In the eyes of the modern savant,
+everything is right.
+
+It would be impossible, Gentlemen, to pursue this reasoning to its
+extreme limits without offending against the commonest decency. We
+should have to descend into blood and mire, continuing to declare the
+while that everything is right. I pause therefore, and leave the rest to
+your imaginations. Open the most dismal pages of history. Choose out the
+acts which inspire the most vivid horror and disgust, the blackest
+examples of ingratitude, the meanest instances of cowardice, the cases
+of most refined cruelty, and the most hideous debaucheries: thence let
+your thoughts pass to facts which bedew the eyelid with the tear of
+tenderest emotion, to the cases of most heroic self-devotion, to
+sacrifices the most humble in their greatness; and then try to apply the
+rule of the modern savant, and to say that all this is equally right and
+good, and that whatever is has the right to be. Open the book of your
+own heart. Think of one of those base temptations which assault the best
+of us, one of those thoughts which raise a blush in solitude; then think
+of the best, the purest, the most disinterested of the feelings which
+have ever been given to your soul; and try again to apply the rule of
+the modern savant, and to affirm that all this is equally good, and that
+all that is has the right to be. I know very well that in general these
+doctrines are applied to things looked at in the mass, and to the
+far-off past of history; but this is a poor subterfuge for the defenders
+of these monstrous theses. Things viewed in the mass are only the
+assemblage of things viewed in detail. If the distinction of good and
+evil do not exist for general facts, how should it exist for particular
+facts? And how can we apply to the past a rule which we refuse to apply
+to the present, seeing that the present is nothing else than the past
+of the future, and that the facts of our own time are matter for history
+to our posterity? These, I repeat, are but vain subterfuges. If humanity
+is always adorable, it is so in the faults of the meanest of men as in
+the splendid sins of the magnates of the earth; it is so to-day as it
+was thirty centuries ago; the god in growing old does not cease to be
+the same.
+
+When the mind is engaged in these pernicious ways, the spring of the
+moral life is broken, and the practical consequence is not long in
+appearing. The philosophers of success, having become the philosophers
+of the _fait accompli_, accept all and endure all; but in another sense
+than that in which charity accepts all, that it may transform all by the
+power of love. It is the morality of Philinte:
+
+
+     I take men quietly, and as they are:
+     And what they do I train my soul to bear.[151]
+
+
+These instructions are not very necessary. There will always be people
+enough found ready to applaud victory, and to fall in with the _fait
+accompli_. But is it not sad to see men of mind, men of heart too,
+perhaps, making themselves the theorists of baseness, and the
+philosophers of cowardice?
+
+There is still more to be said. From the glorification of success the
+mind passes necessarily, as we have just seen, to the glorification
+alike of all that is. It would appear at first sight that the adept in
+the doctrine must find himself in a condition of indifference with
+regard to what prejudiced men continue to call good and evil. This
+indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing
+is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed
+in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had
+as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that _nothing is evil_.[152] The
+members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with
+equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and
+smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of
+murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact
+reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of
+which it is easy to speculate.
+
+When man casts a vague glance over the world, extinguishing the while
+the inner light of conscience; when he resigns himself to the things he
+contemplates without applying to them any standard, what first strikes
+his attention, as we have said before, is success. And what next?
+Scandal. Nothing comes more into view than scandal. In a vast city,
+thousands of young men gain their livelihood laboriously, and devote
+themselves to the good of their families: no one speaks of them. A
+libertine loses other men's money at play, and blows out his brains: all
+the city knows it. Honest women live in retirement; the king's
+mistresses form the subject of general conversation. Crime and baseness
+hide themselves; but up to the limits of what the world calls infamy,
+evil delights in putting itself forward, because _éclat_ and noise
+supply the means of deadening the conscience; while, as regards the
+grand instincts of charity, it has been well said that--"the obscure
+acts of devotedness are the most magnificent." The poor and wretched
+shed tears in obscurity over benefits done secretly, while folly loves
+to display its glittering spangles, and shakes its bells in the public
+squares. There is in each one of us more evil than we think; but there
+is in the world more good than is commonly known. There are concealed
+virtues which only show themselves to the eye of the faith which looks
+for them, and of the attention which discovers them. Bethink you,
+especially, how the laws of morality set at defiance appear again
+triumphant in the sorrows of repentance; those laws have their hour, and
+that hour is usually a silent one. Let a poet of genius defile his works
+by the impure traces of a life spent in dissipation, and his brow shall
+shine in the sight of all with the twofold splendor of success and of
+scandal. But if, stretched on a bed of pain, he renders a tardy but
+sincere homage to the law which he has violated, to the truth which he
+has ignored, his voice will often be confined to the sick chamber; his
+companions in debauchery and infidelity will mount guard perhaps around
+his dwelling, in order to prevent the public from learning that their
+friend is a _defaulter_. The ball and the theatre make a noise and
+attract observation; but men turn their eyes from hospitals, those
+abodes in which, in the silence of sickness, or amidst the dull cries of
+pain, there germinate so many seeds of immortality. Yes, Sirs, evil is
+more apparent than good. The violations of the divine law have more
+_éclat_ than penitence. And what is the consequence? The man who
+abandons himself to the spectacle of the world, and who takes that
+spectacle for the rule of his thoughts, will see the world under a false
+aspect, and, in his estimation, evil will have more advantage over good
+than it has in reality. It will appear to him altogether dominant, and
+will thenceforward become his rule. From the glorification of success,
+we passed to the glorification of fact; from the glorification of fact,
+we arrive at last at the glorification of evil. We have seen how is
+illustrated the morality of victory. In the same current of ideas, a
+book famous now-a-days, and quite full of outrages to the conscience,
+supplies us with illustrations of the morality of falsehood. M. Ernest
+Renan, in his explanation of Christianity, has applied, point after
+point, the theory which I have just set forth to you. In order to
+estimate the grand movements of the human mind, he frees himself from
+the vulgar prejudices which make up the ordinary morals, and abandons
+himself to the impression of the spectacle which he contemplates. Jesus
+had a success without parallel. This success was based on charlatanism;
+and it is habitually so. To lead the nations by deceiving them is the
+lesson of history, and the good rule to follow. We find falsehood
+fortunate as matter of fact, we explain it, we approve it.
+
+Whither then are we bound, under the guidance of modern science? An
+irresistible current is drawing us on, and causing us to leave the
+morals of Philinthe in our rear. We are coming to those which Racine has
+engraven in immortal traits in the person of Mathan. When once
+conscience is put aside, all means are good in order to succeed; and the
+experience of the world teaches us that, to succeed, the worst means are
+often the best.
+
+It is not only at the theatre that such lessons are received; they come
+out but too commonly from the ordinary dealings of life. Set a young man
+face to face with the world as it exhibits itself, and tell him to give
+himself up to what he sees, to let himself be fashioned by life. He will
+soon come to know that strict probity is a virtue of the olden times,
+chastity a fantastic excellence, and conscientious scruples an honorable
+simplicity. Evil will become in his eyes the ordinary rule of life. When
+the socialist Proudhon wrote that celebrated sentence, "Property is
+robbery," there arose an immense outcry. Ought there not to arise a
+louder outcry around a theory which arrives by a fatal necessity at this
+consequence: "Evil is good"?
+
+But do these doctrines exercise any influence for the perversion of
+public morals? Much; their influence is disastrous. And do the men who
+profess them believe them, taking the word 'believe' in its real and
+deep meaning? No; they often do mischief which they do not mean to do,
+and do not see that they do. They are intoxicated with a bad philosophy,
+and intoxication renders blind. It is easy to prove that these
+optimists, who in theory find that everything is right, are perpetually
+contradicting themselves in practice. Address yourselves to one of them,
+and say to him: "Your doctrine is big with immorality. You do not
+yourself believe it; and when you pretend to believe it, you lie." This
+man who tolerates everything will not tolerate your freedom of speech.
+He will get angry, and, according to the old doctrines, he will have the
+right to be so, for insult is an evil. Then say to him: "Here you are,
+it seems to me, in contradiction with your system. Everything is right;
+the vivacity of my speech therefore is good. All that is has the right
+to be; my indignation is therefore a legitimate fact, and it appears to
+me that yours cannot be so unless you allow (an admission which would be
+contrary to your system) that mine is not so." If you have to do with a
+sensible man, he will begin to laugh. If you have met with a blockhead,
+he will be more angry than ever. This contradiction comes out in every
+page, and in a more serious manner, in the writings of our optimists.
+One cannot read them with attention, without meeting incessantly with
+the protest of their moral nature against the despotism of a false mode
+of reasoning. The man is at every moment making himself heard, the man
+who has a heart, a conscience, a reason, and who contradicts the
+philosopher without being aware of it. Contradictions these, honorable
+to the writer, but dangerous for the reader, because they serve to
+invest with brilliant colors doctrines which in themselves are hideous.
+
+No, Gentlemen, it is impossible to succeed in adoring humanity,
+preserving the while the least consistency of reasoning. In vain men
+wish to accept everything, to tolerate everything; in vain they wish to
+impose silence on the inner voice: that voice rebels against the
+outrage, and its revolt declares itself in the most manifest
+contradictions. The Humanity-God is divided, and the affirmation--
+"Everything is right"--will continue false as long as there shall be
+upon the earth a single conscience unsilenced, as long as there shall be
+in a single heart
+
+
+               . . . . . that mighty hate
+     Which in pure souls vice ever must create;[153]
+
+
+that hatred which is nothing else than the indirect manifestation of the
+sacred love of goodness.
+
+The doctrine that all is equally good, equally divine, in the
+development of humanity, explains nothing, because humanity, torn by a
+profound struggle, condemns its own acts, and protests against its
+degradations. It cries aloud to itself that there are principles above
+facts, a moral law superior to the acts of the will; and all the petty
+clamors of a deceitful and deceived philosophy cannot stifle that clear
+voice. Not only do these doctrines explain nothing, they do not even
+succeed in expressing themselves; language fails them. "Everything is
+right and good." What will these words mean, from the time there is no
+longer any rule of right? How is it possible to approve, when we have
+no power to blame? The idea of good implies the idea of evil; the
+opposition of good and evil supposes a standard applied to things, a law
+superior to fact. He who approves of everything may just as well despise
+everything. But contempt itself has no longer any meaning, if esteem is
+a word void of signification. We must say simply that all is as it is,
+and abandon those terms of speech which conscience has stamped with its
+own superscription. We must purify the dictionary, and consign to the
+history of obsolete expressions such terms as good, evil, esteem,
+contempt, vice, virtue, honor, infamy, and the like. The doctrine which,
+to be consistent with itself, ought to reduce us to a kind of stupid
+indifference, does such violence to human nature that its advocates are
+incapable of enunciating it without contradicting themselves by the very
+words they make use of.
+
+All these extravagances are the inevitable consequence of the adoration
+of humanity. The Humanity-God has no rule superior to itself. Whatever
+it does must be put on record merely, and not judged: it is the
+immolation of the conscience. But on what altar shall we stretch this
+great victim? Shall we sacrifice it to pure reason, to reason
+disengaged from all prejudice? Allow me to claim your attention yet a
+few minutes longer.
+
+The Humanity-God in all its acts escapes the judgment of the conscience.
+What measure shall we be able to apply to its thoughts? None. The God
+which cannot do evil, cannot be mistaken either. For the modern savant
+all is true, for exactly the same reason that all is right. The human
+mind unfolds itself in all directions; all these unfoldings are
+legitimate; all are to be accepted equally by a mind truly emancipated.
+Furnished with this rule, I make progress in the history of philosophy.
+The Greek Democritus affirms that the universe is only an infinite
+number of atoms moving as chance directs in the immensity of space: I
+record with veneration this unfolding of the human mind. The Greek Plato
+affirms that truth, beauty, good, like three eternal rays, penetrate the
+universe and constitute the only veritable realities: I record with
+equal veneration this other unfolding of the human mind. I pass to
+modern times. Descartes tells me that thought is the essence of man, and
+that reason alone is the organ of truth. Helvetius tells me that man is
+a mass of organized matter which receives its ideas only from the
+senses. These two theses are equally legitimate, and I admit them both.
+I quit now philosophers by profession to address myself to those
+literary journalists who deal out philosophy in crumbs for the use of
+_feuilletons_ and reviews. There I find all possible notions in the most
+astounding of jumbles. "The villain has his apologist; the good man his
+calumniator.... Marriage is honorable, so is adultery. Order is preached
+up, so is riot, so is assassination, provided it be politic."[154] I
+contemplate with a calm satisfaction, with a very deep and very pure
+pleasure, these various unfoldings of the human mind; I place them all,
+with the same feelings of devotion, in the pantheon of the intelligence.
+I cannot do otherwise, inasmuch as there is no rule of truth superior to
+the thoughts of men, and because the human mind is the supreme,
+universal, and infallible intelligence.
+
+But will our mind be able to entertain together two directly opposite
+assertions? Will contradiction no longer be the sign of error? We must
+come to this; we must acknowledge that the modern mind, breaking with
+superannuated traditions, has proclaimed the principle "that one
+assertion is not more true than an opposite assertion." We must proclaim
+that the thinker has not to disquiet himself "about the _real_
+contradictions into which he may fall; and that a true philosopher has
+absolutely nothing to do with consistency."[155] The fear of
+self-contradiction may be excused in Aristotle and Plato, in St. Anselm
+and St. Thomas, in Descartes and Leibnitz. These writers were still
+wrapped in the swaddling clothes of old errors; the light of the
+nineteenth century had not shone upon their cradles; but the epoch of
+enfranchisement is come. These things, Gentlemen, are printed
+now-a-days; they are printed at Paris, one of the metropolises of
+thought!
+
+Mark well whereabouts we are. We must admit--what? that all is true.
+But, if all is true, there is nothing true, just as if all is good,
+there is nothing good. There are thoughts in men's heads; to make
+history of them is an agreeable pastime; but there is no truth. We must
+not say that two contradictory propositions are equally true; that
+would be to make use of the old notion of truth; we must say that they
+are, and that is all about it. The night is approaching, the sun of
+intelligence is sinking towards the horizon, and thick vapors are
+obscuring its setting. But wait!
+
+If the Humanity-God is always right, it must be that two contradictory
+propositions can be true at the same time, since contradictions abound
+in the history of human thoughts. If two contradictory propositions can
+be true, there is no more truth. What then is our reason, of which truth
+is the object? We are seized with giddiness. Might not everything in the
+world be illusion? and myself--? Listen to a voice which reaches us,
+across the ages, from the countries crowned by the Himalayas. "Nothing
+exists.... By the study of first principles, one acquires this
+knowledge, absolute, incontestable, comprehensible to the intelligence
+alone: I neither am, nor does anything which is mine, nor do I myself,
+exist."[156] What is there beneath these strange lines? The feeling of
+giddiness, which seeks to steady itself by language. Here is now the
+modern echo of these ancient words. One of those writers who accept all,
+in the hope of understanding all, describes himself as having come at
+last to be aware that he is "only one of the most fugitive illusions in
+the bosom of the infinite illusion." One of his colleagues expresses
+himself on this subject as follows: "Is this the last word of all?--And
+why not?--The illusion which knows itself--is it in fact an illusion?
+Does it not in some sort triumph over itself? Does it not attain to _the
+sovereign reality_, that of the thought which thinks itself, that of the
+dream which knows itself a dream, that _of nothingness which ceases to
+be so_, in order to recognize itself and to assert itself?"[157] We are
+gone back to ancient India. You will remark here three stages of
+thought. The fugitive illusion is man. The infinite illusion is the
+universe. The universal principle of the appearances which compose the
+universe is nothingness. Here is the explanation of the universe!
+Nothingness takes life; nothingness takes life only to know itself to be
+nothingness; and the nothingness which says to itself, "I am
+nothingness," is the reason of existence of all that is. I said just now
+that the sun was declining to the horizon. Now the last glimmer of
+twilight has disappeared; night has closed in--a dark and starless
+night. Yes, Sirs, but there is never on the earth a night so dark as to
+warrant us in despairing of the return of the dawn. If the modern mind
+is such as it is described to us, it has lost all the rays of light; but
+the sun is not dead.
+
+The doctrine of non-existence and of illusion is entirely
+incomprehensible, in the sense in which to comprehend signifies to have
+a clear idea, and one capable of being directly apprehended. But, if one
+follows the chain of ideas as logically unrolled, in the way that a
+mathematician follows the transformations of an algebraical formula,
+without considering its real contents, it is easy to account for the
+origin of this theory. If the human mind has no rule superior to itself,
+if it is the absolute mind, God, all its thoughts are equally true,
+since we cannot point out error without having recourse to a rule of
+truth. If all doctrines are equally true, propositions directly and
+absolutely contradictory are equally true. If all is true, there is no
+truth; for truth is not conceived except in opposition to at least
+possible error. If there is no truth, the human reason, which seeks
+truth by a natural impulse belonging to its very essence, as the
+magnetized needle seeks the pole,--reason, I say, is a chimera. The
+truth which reason seeks is an exact relation of human thought to the
+reality of the world. If the search for this relation is chimerical, the
+two terms, mind, and the world, may be illusions. A fugitive illusion in
+presence of an infinite illusion: there is all. You see that these
+thoughts hang together with rigorous precision. The darkness is becoming
+visible to us, or, in other words, we are acquiring a perfect
+understanding of the origin and developments of the absurdity. Put God
+aside, the law of our will, the warrant of our thought; deify human
+nature; and a fatal current will run you aground twice over--on the
+shores of moral absurdity, and on those of intellectual absurdity. These
+sad shipwrecks are set before our eyes in striking examples; it has been
+easy to indicate their cause.
+
+The consideration of the beautiful would give occasion to analogous
+observations. The human mind becoming the object of our adoration, we
+must give up judging it in every particular, and suppress the rules of
+the ideal in art, as those of morals in the conduct, and truth in the
+intellect. We must form a system of ćsthetics which accepts all, and
+finds equally legitimate whatever affords recreation to the
+Humanity-God, in the great variety of its tastes. Then high aspirations
+are extinguished, the beautiful gives place to the agreeable; and since
+the ugly and misshapen please a vicious taste, room must be made for the
+ugly in the Pantheon of beauty. Art despoiled of its crown becomes the
+sad, and often the ignoble slave of the tastes and caprices of the
+public. I do not insist further. The pretension of the worshippers of
+humanity is to make their conscience wide enough to accept all, and to
+have their intellect broad enough to understand all. They explain all,
+except these three small particulars--the conscience, the heart, and the
+reason. Goodness and truth avenge themselves in the end for the long
+contempt cast upon them; and the first punishment those suffer who
+accept all, in the hope of understanding all, is no longer to understand
+what constitutes the life of humanity.
+
+Let us not, Sirs, be setting up altars to the human mind; for an
+adulterous incense stupefies it, and ends by destroying it. Man is
+great, he is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart, and the divine
+aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness, let us
+leave him in his proper place. Let us leave to him the struggles which
+make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him
+honor, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable
+testimony to his dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict,
+and hope; but let us not deify him; for, no sooner shall he have said,
+"I am God," than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall
+find himself naked and spoiled.
+
+Before they deified man, the pagans at least transfigured him by placing
+him in Olympus. At this day, it is humanity as it is upon earth that is
+proposed to our adoration, humanity with its profound miseries and its
+fearful defilements. They seek to throw a veil over the mad audacity of
+this attempt, by telling us of the progress which is to bring about, by
+little and little, the realization of our divinity. But, alas! our
+history is long already, and no reasonable induction justifies the vague
+hopes of heated imaginations. Great progress is being effected, but none
+which gives any promise that the profound needs of our nature can ever
+be satisfied in this life. Charity has appeared on the earth; but there
+are still poor amongst us, and it seems that there always will be. A
+breath of justice and humanity has penetrated social institutions; still
+politics have not become the domain of perfect truth and of absolute
+justice, and there seems small likelihood that they ever will. Industry
+has given birth to marvels; we devour space in these days, but we shall
+never go so fast that suffering and death will not succeed in overtaking
+us. The great sources of grief are not dried up; the song of our poets
+causes still the chords of sorrow to vibrate as in the days of yore.
+Progress is being accomplished, sure witness of a beneficent Hand which
+is guiding humanity in its destinies; but everything tells us that the
+soil of our planet will be always steeped in tears, that the atmosphere
+which envelops us will always resound with the vibrations of sorrow. Far
+as our view can stretch itself, we foresee a suffering humanity, which
+will not be able to find peace, joy, and hope, except in the expectation
+of new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
+
+If there be no God above humanity, no eternity above time, no divine
+world higher than our present place of sojourn; if our profoundest
+desires are to be for ever deceived; if the cries we raise to heaven are
+never to be heard; if all our hope is a future in which we shall be no
+more; if humanity as we know it is the perfection of the universe; if
+all this is so, then indeed the answer to the universal enigma is
+illusion and falsehood. Then, before the monster of destiny which brings
+us into being only to destroy us, which creates in our breast the desire
+of happiness only to deride our miseries; in view of that starry vault
+which speaks to us of the infinite, while yet there is no infinite; in
+presence of that lying nature which adorns itself with a thousand
+symbols of immortality, while yet there is no immortality; in presence
+of all these deceptions, man may be allowed to curse the day of his
+birth, or to abandon himself to the intoxication of thoughtless
+pleasure. But, a secret instinct tells us that wretchedness is a
+disorder, and thoughtless pleasure a degradation. Let us have confidence
+in this deep utterance of our nature. Good, truth, beauty descend as
+rays of streaming light into the shadows of our existence; let us follow
+them with the eye of faith to the divine focus from whence they
+proceed. All is fleeting, all is disappearing incessantly beneath our
+steps; but our soul is not staggered at this swift lapse of all things,
+only because she carries in herself the pledges of a changeless
+eternity. "The ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, man raises
+for a moment his eyes to heaven, and closes them again for ever; but
+during the fleeting instant which is granted to him, from all points of
+the sky and from the bounds of the universe, sets forth from every world
+a consoling ray and strikes his upward gaze, announcing to him that
+between that measureless space and himself there exists a close
+relation, and that he is allied to eternity."[158]
+
+And are these sublime _pressentiments_ only dreams after all? Dreams!
+Know you not that our dreams create nothing, and that they are never
+anything else than confused reminiscences and fantastic combinations of
+the realities of our waking consciousness? What then is that mysterious
+waking during which we have seen the eternal, the infinite, the
+perfection of goodness, the fulness of joy, all those sublime images
+which come to haunt our spirit during the dream of life? Recollections
+of our origin! foreshadowings of our destinies! While then all below is
+transitory, and is escaping from us in a ceaseless flight, let us
+abandon ourselves without fear to these instincts of the soul--
+
+
+     As a bird, if it light on a sprig too slight
+         The feathery freight to bear,
+     Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings,
+         Then drops--on the buoyant air.[159]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[131] _Systčme de la Nature_, published under the pseudonyme of
+Mirabaud.
+
+[132] _Systčme de la Nature_, Part I. chap. 1.
+
+[133] _Ibid._ Part II. chap. 14.
+
+[134] _Vie de Jésus._ Dedication.
+
+[135] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15 January, 1860.
+
+[136] Plebeii philosophi qui a Platone et Socrate et ab eâ familiâ
+dissident.
+
+[137] _Les philosophes français du XIXe sičcle_, chap. XIV.
+
+[138] _Hégel et l'Hégélianisme_ par M. Ed. Schérer.
+
+[139] Page 854.
+
+[140] Page 852.
+
+[141] Page 856.
+
+[142] Isa. xx. 20.
+
+[143] _Essais de critique et d'histoire_, pp. 8 and 9.
+
+[144] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15 Feb. 1861, page 855.
+
+[145] Page 853.
+
+[146] Page 854.
+
+[147] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of the 15th Feb. 1861, page 854.
+
+[148] _Introduction ŕ l'histoire de la philosophie_. Neuvičme leçon.
+
+[149]
+
+     Il répondit, baissant un oeil humide:
+     Jamais ce nom n'attristera mes vers.
+
+[150] _Introduction ŕ l'histoire de la philosophie._ Treizičme leçon.
+
+[151]
+
+     Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont,
+     J'accoutume mon âme ŕ souffrir ce qu'ils font.
+
+[152] _Nihil nefas ducere, hanc summam inter eos religionem esse._ (Tit.
+Liv. lib. xxxix. c. 13.)
+
+[153]
+
+             . . . . . . Ces haines vigoureuses
+     Que doit donner le vice aux âmes vertueuses.
+
+[154] _Mélanges de Töpffer._ De la mauvaise presse considerée comme
+excellente.
+
+[155] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15 Feb. 1861, page 854.--_Etudes
+critiques sur la littérature contemporaine_, par Edmond Scherer, page x.
+et xi.
+
+[156] Sa'nkya--ka'rika', 61 and 64. The text 61 in which occur the words
+"Nothing exists" is hard to understand, but there appears to be no doubt
+of the meaning of No. 64. _Non sum, non est meum, nec sum ego._
+
+[157] _Etudes critiques sur la littérature contemporaine_, par Edmond
+Scherer.--M. Sainte-Beuve, p. 354.
+
+[158] Xavier de Maistre.
+
+[159]
+
+     Soyons comme l'oiseau posé pour un instant
+         Sur des rameaux trop fręles,
+     Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,
+         Sachant qu'il a des ailes.--VICTOR HUGO.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+_THE CREATOR._
+
+(At Geneva, 4th Dec. 1863.--At Lausanne, 27th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+Man is not a simple product of nature; in vain does he labor to degrade
+himself by desiring to find the explanation of his spiritual being in
+matter brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the summit and
+principle of the universe; in vain does he labor to deify himself. He is
+great only by reason of the divine rays which inform his heart, his
+conscience, and his reason. From the moment that he believes himself to
+be the source of light, he passes into night. When thought has risen
+from nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its impetus be not
+strong enough to carry it on to God. These assertions do but translate
+the great facts of man's intellectual history. "There is no nation so
+barbarous," said Cicero,[160] "there are no men so savage as not to
+have some tincture of religion. Many there are who form false notions of
+the gods; ... but all admit the existence of a divine power and
+nature.... Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all nations is to
+be reckoned a law of nature." No discovery has diminished the value of
+these words of the Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of human
+society, there remains always some vestige of the religious sentiment.
+The knowledge of the Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition;
+but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world is found wherever
+there are men.
+
+Cicero brings forward this universal consent as a very strong proof of
+the existence of the gods. The supporters of atheism dispute the value
+of this argument. They say: "General opinion proves nothing. How many
+fabulous legends have been set up by the common belief into historic
+verities! All mankind believed for a long time that the sun revolved
+about the earth. Truth makes way in the world only by contradicting
+opinions generally received. The faith of the greater number is rather a
+mark of error than a sign of truth." This objection rests upon a
+confusion of ideas. Humanity has no testimony to render upon scientific
+questions, the solution of which is reserved for patient study; but
+humanity bears witness to its own nature. The universality of religion
+proves that the search after the divine is, as said the Roman orator, a
+law of nature. When therefore we rise from matter to man, and from man
+to God, we are not going in an arbitrary road, but are advancing
+according to the law of nature ascertained by the testimony of humanity.
+It needs a mind at once very daring and very frivolous not to feel the
+importance of this consideration.
+
+In our days atheism is being revived. In going over in your memory the
+symptoms of this revival, as we have pointed them out to you, you will
+perceive that the direct and primitive negation of God is comparatively
+rare; but that what is frequently attempted is, if I may venture so to
+speak, to effect the subtraction of God. Any religious theory whatever
+is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such remarks as these: "How
+is it that real sciences are formed? By observation on the one hand, and
+by reasoning on the other. By observation, and reasoning applied to
+observation, we obtain the science of nature and the science of
+humanity. But do we wish to rise above nature and humanity? We fail of
+all basis of observation; and reason works in a vacuum. There is
+therefore no possible way of reaching to God. Is God an object of
+experience? No. Can God be demonstrated _ŕ priori_ by syllogisms? No.
+The idea of God therefore cannot be established, as answering to a
+reality, either by the way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it
+is a mere hypothesis. We do not, however, it is added, in our view of
+the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid!) to exclude the sentiment of the
+Divine from the soul, nor the word _God_ from fine poetry. We accept
+religious thoughts as dreams full of charm. But is it a question of
+reality? then God is an hypothesis, and hypothesis has no admission into
+the science of realities."
+
+These ideas place those who accept them in a position which is not
+without its advantages. When a man of practical mind says with a smile,
+"Do you happen to believe in God?" one may reply to him, smiling in
+turn, "Have I said that God is a real Being?" And if a religious man
+asks, "Are you falling then into atheism?" one may assume an indignant
+tone, and say: "We have never denied God: whoever says we have is a
+slanderer!" So God remains, for the necessities of poetry and art. But
+as we cannot know either what He is, or whether He is, real life goes on
+in complete and entire independence of Him. The taking up of this
+position with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a literary
+artifice. In other cases it is seriously done. There are certain natures
+of extreme delicacy, which, touched by the breath of modern scepticism,
+have lost all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an
+instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in the absence of all
+belief, and they do not deny that which they believe no longer. Such a
+mind is in an exceptional position. Is it yours? and would you preserve
+it? Keep a solitary path, and do not seek to communicate your ideas to
+others. Contact with the public, and such an unfolding even of your own
+thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work of proselytism,
+would place you under the empire of those laws which govern the human
+mind in these matters. Now what are these laws? A poet has already
+answered for us this question:
+
+
+     En présence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.[161]
+
+
+A famous writer expands the same thought as follows: "Doubt about things
+which it highly concerns us to know," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a
+condition which does too great violence to the human mind; nor does it
+long bear up against it, but in spite of itself comes to a decision one
+way or another, and likes better to be mistaken than to believe
+nothing."[162] Such is the law. We have met with the pretension to
+maintain the mind independent of God, without either denying or
+asserting His existence, and we have seen how completely this pretension
+fails in the presence of facts. The sceptic makes vain efforts to
+continue in a state of doubt, but the ground fails him, and he slips
+into negation: he affirms that humanity has been mistaken, and that God
+is not. But neither does this negation succeed any the more in keeping
+its ground; it strikes too violently against all the instincts of our
+nature. The human mind is under an imperious necessity to worship
+something; if God fails it, it sets itself to adore nature or humanity;
+atheism is transformed into idolatry. Recollect the destinies of the
+critical school and of the positive philosophy! Let us now examine, with
+serious attention, that attempt to _eliminate_ God which is the
+starting-point in this course along which the mind is hurried so
+fatally.
+
+God is not, I grant, an object of experience. I grant it at least in
+this sense, that God is not an object of sensible experience. The
+experience of God (if I may be allowed the expression), the feeling of
+His action upon the soul, is not a phenomenon open to the observation of
+all, and apart from determined spiritual conditions. In order to be
+sensible of the action of God, we must draw near to Him. In order to
+draw near to Him, we must, if not believe with firm faith in His
+existence, at least not deny Him. The captives of Plato's cavern can
+have no experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery on
+those who speak to them of the sun. I grant again that God cannot
+possibly be the object of a demonstration such as the science of
+geometry requires; I grant it fully, I have already said so. Every man
+who reasons, affirms God in one sense; and the foundation of all
+reasoning cannot be the conclusion of a demonstration. God therefore, in
+the view of science formed according to our ordinary methods, is, I
+grant, an hypothesis. And here, Gentlemen, allow me a passing word of
+explanation.
+
+When I say that God is an hypothesis, I run the risk of exciting, in
+many of you, feelings of astonishment not unmixed with pain. But I must
+beg you to remember the nature of these lectures. We are here far from
+the calm retirement of the sanctuary, and from such words of solemn
+exhortation as flow from the lips of the religious teacher. I have
+introduced you to the ardent conflicts of contemporary thought, and into
+the midst of the clamors of the schools. The soul which is seeking to
+hold communion with God, and so from their fountain-head to be filled
+with strength and joy, has something better to do than to be listening
+to such discourses as these. Solitude, prayer, a calm activity pursued
+under the guidance of the conscience,--these are the best paths for such
+a soul, and the discussions in which we are now engaged are not perhaps
+altogether free from danger for one who has remained hitherto
+undisturbed in the first simplicity of his faith. But we are not masters
+of our own ways, and the circumstances of the present times impose upon
+us special duties. The barriers which separate the school and the world
+are everywhere thrown down. Everywhere shreds of philosophy, and very
+often of bad philosophy,--scattered fragments of theological science,
+and very often of a deplorable theological science,--are insinuating
+themselves into the current literature. There is not a literary review,
+there is scarcely a political journal, which does not speak on occasion,
+or without occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests.
+The most sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public
+opinion. At such a juncture, can men who preserve faith in their own
+soul remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow
+limits of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common
+ground, and fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For
+this purpose it is necessary to make use of terms which may alarm some
+consciences, and to state questions which run the risk of startling
+sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to
+combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only
+that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of
+negations is but a passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in
+their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of
+their passage upon the Rock of Ages.
+
+I now therefore resume my course of argument. God is neither an object
+of experience, nor yet of demonstration properly so called. In the view
+of science, as it is commonly understood, of science which follows out
+the chain of its deductions, without giving attention to the very
+foundations of all the work of the reason,--God, that chief of all
+realities for a believing heart, that experience of every hour, that
+evidence superior to all proof, God is an hypothesis. I grant it. Hence
+it is inferred that God has no place in science, for that hypothesis has
+no place in a science worthy of the name. But this I deny; and in
+support of this denial I proceed to show that the hypothesis which it is
+pretended to get quit of, is the generating principle of all human
+knowledge.
+
+Whence does science proceed? Does it result from mere experience? No.
+What does experience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience,
+separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own
+sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to
+demonstration,--a demonstration which constitutes his glory. It is easy,
+without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well
+that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the
+faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought
+does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not
+possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its
+tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no
+thoughts, and will know nothing.
+
+Is science formed by pure reason? No. No one can say what pure reason
+is, for the exercise of our thought is connected indissolubly with
+experience. But, without pausing at this consideration, let us ask what
+pure reason can do, if deprived of all objects of experience? One thing
+only, namely, take cognizance of itself. Now the reason, in taking
+cognizance of itself, only creates logic, that is to say, the theory of
+the laws of knowledge. Some philosophers, to be sure, have undertaken to
+prove that reason, by dint of self-contemplation, might arrive at the
+knowledge of all things. They have maintained that all the secrets of
+the universe are contained in our thought, and that by just reasoning
+one may form the science of astronomy without looking at the stars, and
+write the history of the human race without taking the trouble to search
+laboriously into the annals of the past. But these attempts to
+_construct_ facts, instead of observing them, have succeeded too ill to
+merit very serious attention.
+
+Science does not proceed therefore either from pure experience or from
+pure reason; whence does it really come? From the encounter of
+experience and of reason. Man observes, and he ascertains that facts are
+governed according to intelligent design. He creates mathematics, and
+discovers that the phenomena of the heavens and the earth are ruled
+according to the laws of the calculus. His thought meets in the facts
+with traces of a thought similar to his own. If any one of you doubts
+this, I once more appeal to the almanac. Science, then, has birth only
+from a meeting of experience with reason; how is this meeting effected?
+The whole question of the origin of science is here. This encounter is
+not necessary; it does not result simply from perseverance in
+observation. The encounter of mind and of facts constitutes a discovery.
+The thought which has governed nature may remain long veiled from our
+mind. All at once perhaps the veil is lifted, and the thought of man
+meets and recognizes itself in the phenomena which it is contemplating.
+We encounter in this case the exercise of a special faculty, which is
+neither the faculty of observing nor the faculty of reasoning, but the
+faculty of discovering. When a man possesses it to a certain degree, we
+call him a man of genius. Genius, or the faculty of discovering, is the
+generating principle of science. Still, strange to say, this principle
+is scarcely pointed out by a great number of logicians. They develop at
+length the rules of observation and the rules of reasoning; and it seems
+that, in their idea, the conjunction of reason and experience is
+effected all alone and of necessity. I taught logic myself in this way
+for twenty years, until one day, thinking better upon the subject, I was
+obliged to say to myself (forgive me this rather trivial quotation):
+
+
+     Tu n'avais oublié qu'un point:
+     C'était d'éclairer ta lanterne.[163]
+
+
+The meeting together of the understanding and of facts is a discovery;
+and discovery depends upon a faculty sung by poets, admired by mankind,
+and too little noticed by logicians--genius. Genius has for its
+characteristic a sudden illumination of the mind, a gratuitous gift and
+one which cannot be purchased. But let us hasten to supply a necessary
+explanation. Genius is a primitive fact, a gift; but the work of genius
+has conditions, or rather a condition--labor. Labor does not replace
+genius, but genius does not dispense with labor; nature only delivers up
+her secrets to those who observe her with long patience. Newton was
+asked one day how he had found out the system of the universe. He
+replied with a sublime _naďveté_: "By thinking continually about it." He
+so pointed out the condition of every great discovery; but he forgot the
+cause--the peculiar nature of his own intellect. It was necessary to be
+always pondering the motions of the stars; but it was necessary moreover
+to be Isaac Newton. So many had thought on the subject, as long perhaps
+as he, and had not made the discovery.
+
+Labor, the condition of discoveries, should have as its effect to
+recognize the methods really appropriate to the nature of the inquiries,
+and to keep the mind well informed in existing science. In fact, every
+scientific discovery supposes a series of previous discoveries which
+have brought the mind to the point at which it is possible to see
+something new. For this reason it is that a discovery often presents
+itself to two or three minds at once, when there are found, at the same
+epoch, two or three minds endowed with the same power. They see all
+together because the onward progress of science has brought them to the
+same summit: this is the condition; and because they have the same power
+of vision: this is the cause. There is therefore a method for putting
+ourselves on the road to discovery, but no method for making the
+discovery itself. The man of genius sees where others do not see; and
+when he has seen, everybody sees after him. If, furnished with Gyges'
+ring, you could gain access to the studies of savants at the moment when
+a great discovery has just been made, you would see more than one of
+them striking his forehead and exclaiming: "Fool that I was! how could I
+help seeing it? it was so simple." Truth appears simple when it has been
+discovered.
+
+Discovery therefore, which has labor for its condition, is the principle
+of the progress of science. Under what form does a discovery present
+itself to the mind of its author? As a supposition, or, which is the
+same thing, as an hypothesis. Hypothesis is the sole process by which
+progress in science is effected. If we supposed nothing, we should know
+nothing. In vain should we look at the sky and the earth to all
+eternity, our eye would never read the laws of astronomy in the stars of
+heaven, nor the laws of life upon the bark of trees or in the entrails
+of animals. This is true even of mathematics. The contemplation,
+prolonged indefinitely, of the series of numbers, or of the forms of
+space, would produce neither arithmetic nor geometry, if the human mind
+did not suppose relations between the numbers and the lines, which it
+can only demonstrate after it has supposed them. The conditions are very
+clearly seen which have prepared and made possible a fruitful
+supposition, but the hypothesis does not itself follow of any necessity.
+It appears like a flash of light passing suddenly through the mind.
+
+The carpenter's saw opens a plank from end to end on the sole conditions
+of labor and time; but the discovery of truth preserves always a sudden
+and unforeseen character. Archimedes leaps from a bath and rushes
+through the streets of Syracuse, crying out, "I have found it!" Why? The
+flash of genius has visited him unexpectedly. Pythagoras discovers a
+geometrical theorem; and he offers, it is said, a sacrifice to the gods,
+in testimony of his gratitude. He thought therefore, according to the
+fine remark of Malebranche, that labor and attention are a silent prayer
+which we address to the Master of truth: the labor is a prayer, and the
+discovery is an answer granted to it.
+
+When this wholly spontaneous character of discovery is not recognized,
+and when it is thought that the observation of facts naturally produces
+their explanation, it must needs be granted that a discovery is
+confirmed by the very fact that it is made. But this is by no means the
+case. Hypothesis does not carry on its brow, at the moment of its birth,
+the certain sign of its truth. A flash of light crosses the mind of the
+savant; but he must enter on a course, often a long course, of study, in
+order to know whether it is a true light, or a momentary glare. Every
+supposition suggested by observation must be confirmed by its agreement
+with the data of experience. Let us listen to a great discoverer--
+Kepler. He is giving an account of the discovery of one of the laws
+which have immortalized his name.
+
+"After I had found the real dimensions of the orbits, thanks to the
+observations of Brahe and the sustained effort of a long course of
+labor, I at length discovered the proportion of the periodic times to
+the extent of these orbits. And if you would like to know the precise
+date of the discovery,--it was on the eighth day of March in this year
+1618 that,--first of all conceived in my mind, then awkwardly essayed by
+calculations, rejected in consequence as false, then reproduced on the
+fifteenth of May with fresh energy,--it rose at last above the darkness
+of my understanding, so fully confirmed by my labor of seventeen years
+upon Brahe's observations, and by my own meditations perfectly agreeing
+with them, that I thought at first I was dreaming, and making some
+_petitio principii_; but there is no more doubt about it: it is a very
+certain and very exact proposition."[164]
+
+All the logic of discoveries is laid down in these lines; and these
+lines are a testimony rendered by one of the most competent of
+witnesses. You see in them the conditions of a good hypothesis: Kepler
+has long studied the phenomena of which he wishes to find the law; he
+has studied them by himself, and by means of the discoveries of his
+predecessor Brahe. The law has presented itself to his mind at a given
+moment, on the eighth of March, 1618. But he does not yet know whether
+it is a true light, or a deceptive gleam. He seeks the confirmation of
+his hypothesis; he does not find it, because he makes a mistake, and he
+rejects his idea as useless. The idea returns; a new course of labor
+confirms it; and so the hypothesis becomes a law, a certain proposition.
+
+Such is the regular march of thought. An hypothesis has no right to be
+brought forward until it has passed into the condition of a law, by
+being duly confirmed. There are minds, however, endowed with a sort of
+divination, which feel as by instinct the truth of a discovery, even
+before it has been confirmed. It is told of Copernicus, that having
+discovered, or re-discovered, the true system of planetary motion, he
+encountered an opponent who said to him: "If your system were true,
+Venus would have phases like the moon; now she has none, and therefore
+your system is false. What have you to reply?"--"I have no reply to
+make," said Copernicus, (the objection was a serious one in fact); "but
+God will grant that the answer shall be found."[165] Galileo appeared,
+and by means of the telescope it was ascertained that Venus has phases
+like the moon;--the confidence of Copernicus was justified. The
+scientific career of M. Ampčre, the illustrious natural philosopher,
+supplies an analogous fact. Trusting, like Copernicus, to a kind of
+intuition of truth, he read one day to the Academy of sciences the
+complete description of an experiment which he had never made. He made
+it subsequently, and the result answered completely to his
+anticipations. Genius is here raised to the second power, since it
+possesses at once the gift of discovery and the just presentiment of its
+confirmation; but these are exceptional cases, and in general we must
+say, with Mithridates, that--
+
+
+                         .... To be approved as true
+     Such projects must be proved, and carried through.[166]
+
+
+We would encourage no one to attempt adventures so perilous, but would
+call to mind in a great example what is the regular march of science.
+Newton, after he had discovered the law which regulates the motions of
+the heavens, sought the confirmation of it in an immense series of
+calculations. A true ascetic of science, he imposed on himself a regimen
+as severe as that of a Trappist monk, in order that his life might be
+wholly concentrated upon the operations of the understanding; and it was
+not until after fifteen months of persistent labor that he exclaimed: "I
+have discovered it! My calculations have really encountered the march of
+the stars. Glory to God! who has permitted us to catch a glimpse of the
+skirts of His ways!" And astronomy, placed upon a wider and firmer
+basis, went forward with new energy.
+
+It is thus that the human mind acquires knowledge. How then does
+hypothesis come to be made light of? How can it be seriously said that
+we have excluded hypothesis from the sphere of science, whereas the
+moment the faculty of supposing should cease to be in exercise, the
+march of science would be arrested; since, except a small number of
+principles the evidence of which is immediate, all the truths we
+possess are only suppositions confirmed by experiment? The reason is
+here: Our mind forms a thousand different suppositions at its own will
+and fancy; and it shrinks from that studious toil which alone puts it in
+a position to make fruitful suppositions. We are for ever tempted to be
+guessing, instead of setting ourselves, by patient observations, on the
+road to real discoveries. It is therefore with good reason that theories
+hastily built up have been condemned, and Lord Chancellor Bacon was
+right in thinking that the human mind requires lead to be attached to
+it, and not wings. Hence the inference has been drawn that the simplest
+plan would be to cut the wings of thought, without reflecting that
+thenceforward it would continue motionless. Because some had abused
+hypothesis, others must conclude that we could do without it altogether.
+
+Trivial and premature suppositions have therefore discredited
+hypothesis, by encumbering science with a crowd of vain imaginations;
+but this encumbrance would have been of small importance but for the
+obstinacy with which false theories have too often been maintained
+against the evidence of facts. If Ampčre had found his experiment fail,
+and had still continued to maintain his statements, he would not have
+given proof of a happy audacity, but of a ridiculous obstinacy. Genius
+itself makes mistakes, and experience alone distinguishes real laws from
+mere freaks of our thought. We have maintained the rights of reason in
+the spontaneous exercise of the faculty of discovery; but let us beware
+how we ignore the rights of experience. It alone prepares discoveries;
+it alone can confirm them. A system, however well put together, is
+convicted of error by the least fact which really contradicts it. A
+Greek philosopher was demonstrating by specious arguments that motion is
+impossible. Diogenes was one of his auditory, and he got up and began to
+walk: the answer was conclusive. You remember, if you have read Walter
+Scott, the learned demonstration of the antiquary who is settling the
+date of a Roman or Celtic ruin, I forget which; and the intervention of
+the beggar, who has no archćological system, but who has seen the
+edifice in question both built and fall to decay. Reason as much as you
+like; if your reasonings do not accord with facts, you will have woven
+spider's webs, of admirable fineness perhaps, but wanting in solidity.
+
+It is time to sum up these lengthened considerations. Science does not
+originate solely from experiment, nor does it proceed solely from
+reason; it results from the meeting together of experience and reason.
+Experience prepares the discovery, genius makes it, experience confirms
+it. What distinguishes the sciences is not the process of invention,
+which is everywhere the same; but the process of control over supposed
+truths. A mathematical discovery is confirmed by pure reasoning. A
+physical discovery is confirmed by sensible observation joined with
+calculation. A discovery in the order of morals is confirmed by
+observation of the facts of consciousness. Therefore it is that between
+the physical and moral sciences there exists a broad line of
+demarcation. Moral facts have not less certainty than physical
+phenomena; but moral facts falling under the influence of liberty, all
+men cannot perceive them equally under all conditions. An optical
+experiment presents itself to the eyes, and all the spectators see it
+alike, if at least they have one and the same visual organization; but a
+case of moral experience has a personal character, and is only
+communicated to another person on condition that he puts faith in the
+testimony of his fellow. In this order of things a man can observe
+directly only what he concurs in producing. With this reservation, we
+may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that
+of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be
+held as true when it accounts for facts.
+
+And so, Gentlemen, we conclude that every scientific truth is, in its
+origin, a supposition of the mind, the result of which is to produce the
+meeting together of experience and reason, and so to permit the rational
+reconstruction of the facts.
+
+Every system is shown to be at fault by facts, if facts contradict it.
+
+When a system explains the facts, we hold it as proved just to the
+extent to which it explains them. This accordance of our thought with
+the nature of things is the mark of what we call truth.
+
+If you grant me these premises, my demonstration is completed, and it
+only remains for me to draw my conclusions.
+
+It is said that the idea of God can have no place in a serious science,
+because this idea comes neither from experience nor from reason; that it
+is only an hypothesis, and that hypothesis has no place in science. I
+reply, grounding my answer on the preceding reasonings: No science is
+formed otherwise than by means of hypothesis. For the solution of the
+universal problem there exists in the world an hypothesis, proposed to
+all by tradition, and which bears in particular the names of Moses and
+of Jesus Christ. This hypothesis has the right to be examined. If it
+explains the facts, it must be held for true. The idea of God comes
+therefore within the regular compass of science; the attempt to exclude
+it is sophistical.
+
+Let us separate the idea of God from the whole body of Christian
+doctrine of which it forms part, in order that we may give it particular
+consideration. What is this hypothesis which bears the names of Moses
+and Jesus Christ? It is that the principle of the universe is the
+Eternal and Infinite Being. His power is the cause of all that exists;
+the consciousness of His infinite power constitutes His infinite
+intelligence. In Himself, He is _He who is_; in His relation with the
+world, He is the absolute cause, the Creator. This explanation of the
+universe is not the privilege of a few savants; it is taught and
+proposed to all; and this is no reason why we should despise it. If we
+further observe that this thought has renovated the world, that it
+upholds all our civilization, that thousands of our fellow-creatures
+raise their voice to tell us that it is only from this source they have
+drawn peace, light, and happiness, we shall understand perhaps that
+contempt would be foolish, and that everything on the contrary invites
+us to examine with the most serious attention an hypothesis which offers
+itself to us under conditions so exceptional.
+
+The hypothesis is stated. We must now submit it to the test of facts.
+Where shall we find the elements of its confirmation? Everywhere, since
+it is the first cause of all things which is in question: we shall find
+them in nature and in humanity; in the motions of the stars as they
+sweep through the depths of space, and in the rising of the sap which
+nourishes a blade of grass; in the revolutions of empires, and in the
+simplest elements of the life of one individual. There is no science of
+God; but every science, every study must terminate at that sacred Name.
+I shall not undertake, therefore, to enumerate all the confirmations of
+the thought which makes of the Creator the principle of the universe: to
+recount all the proofs of the infinite Being would require an eternal
+discourse. We have stammered forth a few of the words of this endless
+discourse, by showing that, without God, the understanding, the
+conscience, and the heart lose their support and fall: this formed the
+subject of our second lecture. We saw further that reason makes
+fruitless attempts to find the universal principle in the objects of our
+experience--nature and humanity. Let us follow up, although we shall not
+be able to complete it, the study of this inexhaustible subject, by
+showing that the idea of the Creator alone answers to the demands of the
+philosophic reason.
+
+Philosophy, in the highest acceptation of the term, is the search after
+a solution for the universal problem the terms of which may be stated as
+follows: Experience reveals to us that the world is composed of manifold
+and diverse beings; and, to come at once to the great division, there
+are in the world bodies which we are forced to suppose inert, and minds
+which we feel to be intelligent and free. The universe is made up of
+manifold existences; this is quite evident, and a matter of experience.
+Reason on the other hand forces us to seek for unity. To comprehend, is
+to reduce phenomena to their laws, to connect effects with their
+causes, consequences with their principles; it is to be always
+introducing unity into the diversity. All development of science would
+be at once arrested, if the mind could content itself with merely taking
+account of facts in the state of dispersion in which they are presented
+by experience. Each particular science gathers up a multitude of facts
+into a small number of formulć; and, above and beyond particular
+sciences, reason searches for the connection of all things with one
+single cause. To determine the relation of all particular existences
+with one existence which is their common cause; such is the universal
+problem. This problem has been very well expressed by Pythagoras in a
+celebrated formula, that of the _Uni-multiple_. In order to understand
+the universe, we must rise to a unity which may account for the
+multiplicity of things and for their harmony, which is unity itself
+maintained in diversity.
+
+If you well understand this thought, you will easily comprehend the
+source of the great errors which flow from too strong a disposition to
+systematize. Men of this mind attach themselves to inadequate
+conceptions, and look for unity where it does not exist. The barrier
+which we must oppose to this spirit of system is the careful
+enumeration of the facts which it forgets to notice. Materialism looks
+for unity in inert and unintelligent bodies; it suffices to oppose to it
+one fact--the reality of mind. Fatalism seeks unity in necessity. Point
+out to it that its destiny-god does not account for the fact of
+repentance, for example, which implies liberty, and it is enough. The
+worship of humanity forces you to exclaim with Pascal--A queer God,
+that! There is in the bitterness of this smile a sufficient condemnation
+of the doctrine. To seek for unity, is the foundation of all philosophy.
+To seek for unity too hastily and too low, is the source of the errors
+of absolute minds. Absolute minds, however great they may be in other
+respects, are weak minds, in that they do not succeed in preserving a
+clear view of the diversity of the facts to be explained. Take the
+problem of Pythagoras; keep hold of the two extremities of the chain;
+never allow yourselves to deny the diversity of things, for that
+diversity is plainly evidenced by human experience; beware of denying
+their unity, because it is the foundation of reason; then search and
+look through the histories of philosophy: you will find one hypothesis,
+and one only, which answers the requirements of the problem. It goes
+back, as I believe, to the origin of the world; it was glimpsed by
+Socrates, by Aristotle, and Plato; but, in its full light, it belongs
+only to men who have received the God of Moses, and who have studied in
+the school of Jesus Christ. If this hypothesis explains the facts, it is
+sound, for the property of truth is to explain, as the property of light
+is to enlighten.
+
+The doctrine of the Creator can alone account to us for the universe, by
+bringing us back to its first cause. The first cause of unity cannot be
+matter which could never produce mind; the first cause of unity cannot
+be the human mind, which, from the moment that it desires to take itself
+for the absolute being, is dissolved and annihilated. The unity which
+alone can have in itself the source of multiplicity, is neither matter
+nor idea, but power; power the essential characteristic of mind, and
+infinite, that is to say, creative power. The Creator alone could
+produce divers beings, because He is Almighty, and maintain harmony
+between those beings, because He is One. Thus is manifested an essential
+agreement between the requirements of philosophy and the religious
+sentiment; for religion, as we said at the beginning of these lectures,
+rests upon the idea of Divine power. Reason and faith meet together
+upon the lofty heights of truth. But let us not enter too far into the
+difficulties of philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to considerations
+of a less abstruse order.
+
+The Creator is the God of nature. All the visible universe is but the
+work of His power, the manifestation of His wisdom. The poet of the
+Hebrews invites to offer praise to the Most High, not only men of every
+age and of all nations, but the beasts of the field, the birds of the
+air, and the cedars of the forest, the rain and the wind, the hail and
+the tempest.[167] In the language of a modern poet:
+
+
+     Thee, Lord, the wide world glorifies;
+     The bird upon its nest replies;
+     And for one little drop of rain
+     Beings Thine eye doth not disdain
+     Ten thousand more repeat the strain.[168]
+
+
+And such thoughts are not vain freaks of the imagination. Man, the
+conscious representative of nature, the high-priest of the universe,
+feels himself urged by an impulse of his heart to translate the
+confused murmur of the creation into a hymn of praise to the Infinite
+Being, the absolute Source of life,--to Him who _is_, One, Eternal,--the
+first and absolute Cause of all existence.
+
+The Creator is the God of spirits. He is not only the God of humankind;
+"the immense city of God contains, no doubt, nobler citizens than man,
+in reasoning power so weak, and in affections so poor."[169] But let us
+speak of what is known to us: He is the God of humankind. All nations
+shall one day render glory to Him. Mighty words have resounded through
+the world: "Henceforth there is no longer either Greek or barbarian or
+Jew; but one and the same God for all." The idols have begun to fall;
+the gods of the nations have been hurled from their pedestals; they have
+fallen, they are falling, they will fall, until the knowledge of the
+only and sovereign Creator shall cover the earth as the waters cover the
+sea.
+
+The Creator shall one day be known of all His creatures; and in each of
+His creatures He will be the centre and the object of the whole soul;
+all the functions of the spiritual life lead on to Him. What is truth,
+beauty, good? We have already replied to the question, but we will
+repeat our answer.
+
+To possess truth is to know God; it is to know Him in the work of His
+hands, and it is to know Him in His absolute power, as the eternal
+source of all that is, of all that can ever be, of all actual or
+possible truth in the mind of His creatures. Truth binds us to Him, "and
+all _science_ is a hymn to His glory."[170]
+
+He is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who gives to the bird its
+song, and to the brook its murmur. He it is who has established between
+nature and man those mysterious relations which give rise to noble joys.
+He it is who opens, above and beyond nature, the prolific sources of
+art; the ideal is a distant reflection of His splendor.
+
+And goodness, again, is none other than He; it is His plan; it is His
+will in regard of spirits; it is the word addressed to the free
+creature, which says to it: Behold thy place in the universal harmony.
+
+Thus a triple ray descends from the uncreated light, and before that
+insufferable brightness I am dazzled and bewildered. There is no longer
+any distinction for me between profane and sacred; I no longer
+understand the difference of these terms. Wheresoever I meet with good,
+truth, beauty, be the man who brings them to me who he may, and come he
+whence he may, I feel that to despise in him that gleam, would be not
+only to be wanting to humanity, it would be to be wanting to my faith.
+If my prejudices or habits tend to shut up my heart or to narrow my
+mind, I hear a voice exclaiming to me: "Enlarge thy tent; lengthen thy
+cords; enlarge thy tent without measure. Be ye lift up, eternal gates,
+gates of the conscience and the heart! Let in the King of glory!" All
+truth, all beauty, all good is He. Where my God is, nothing is profane
+for me. To ignore any one of those rays would be to steal somewhat from
+His glory.
+
+Oh! the happy liberty of the heart, when it rests on the Author of all
+good and of all truth. But if the heart is at liberty, how well is it
+guarded too! What is the most beautiful jewel (if we may venture to use
+such language) in the immortal crown of this King of glory? Powerful, He
+created power; free, He created liberty. And to the free creature, in
+the hour of its creation, He said: "Behold! thou art made in mine own
+image! my will is written in thy conscience; become a worker together
+with me, and realize the plans of my love." And that voice--I hear it
+within myself. Ah! I know that voice well, I know the secret attraction
+which, in spite of all my miseries, draws me towards that which is
+beautiful, pure, holy, and says to me: This is the will of thy Father.
+But I know other voices also which speak within me only too loudly: the
+voice of rebellion and of cowardice, the voice of baseness and ignominy.
+There is war in my soul. Enlightened by this inner spectacle, I cast my
+eyes once more over that world in which I have seen shining everywhere
+some divine rays; and I see that by a triple gate, lofty and wide, evil
+has entered thither, accompanied by error and deformity. Then I
+understand that all may become profane; I understand that there is an
+erring science, a corrupting art, a moral system full of immorality. But
+these words take for me a new meaning. There is no sacred evil, there is
+no profane good; there are no sacred errors and profane truths. Where
+God is, all is holy; where there is rebellion against God, all is evil.
+And so the God who is my light is my fortress also; my heart is
+strengthened while it is set at liberty, and I can join the ancient song
+of Israel:
+
+
+     Jehovah is our strength and tower.
+
+
+Yes, Sirs, God is in all, because He is the universal principle of
+being; but He is not in all after the same manner. God is in the pure
+heart by the joy which He gives to it; He is in the frivolous heart by
+the void and the vexation which urge it to seek a better destiny; He is
+in the corrupt heart by that merciful remorse which does not permit it
+to wander, without warning, from the springs of life. God makes use of
+all for the good of His creatures. He is everywhere by the direct
+manifestation of His will, except in the acts of rebellious liberty, and
+in the shadow of pain which follows that evil light which leads astray
+from Him.
+
+Having said that the idea of God the Creator alone satisfies the reason,
+and raises up, upon the basis of reason, man's conscience and heart, I
+should wish to show you, in conclusion, that this idea renders an
+account of the great systems of error which divide the human mind
+between them. Truth bears this lofty mark, that it never overthrows a
+doctrine without causing any portion of truth which it may have
+contained to pass into its own bosom.
+
+What then,--apart from declared atheism, from the dualism which has
+almost disappeared, and from faith in God the Creator,--are the great
+systems which share the human mind between them? There are two: deism
+and pantheism.
+
+What is deism? It is a doctrine which acknowledges that there is one
+God, the cause of the universe; but a God who is in a manner withdrawn
+from His own work, and who leaves it to go on alone. God has regulated
+things in the mass, but not in detail, or, to employ an expression of
+Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who came at a later period to entertain better
+opinions), "God is like a king who governs his kingdom, but who does not
+trouble himself to ascertain whether all the taverns in it are good
+ones." The idea of a general government of God which does not descend to
+details--such is the essence of deism.
+
+What is pantheism, in the ordinary meaning of the word? We have already
+said: it is a doctrine which absorbs God in the universe, which
+confounds Him with nature, and makes of Him only the inert substance,
+the unconscious principle of the universe. These are the two great
+conceptions which wrestle, in the history of human thought, against the
+idea of the Creator. These two systems triumph easily one over the
+other, because each of them contains a portion of truth which is wanting
+to its antagonist. They cannot support themselves because each of them
+has in it a portion of error. This is what we must well understand.
+
+Deism contains a portion of truth; for it maintains a Creator
+essentially distinct from the Creation, or, according to an expression
+which I translate from an ancient Indian poem: "One single act of His
+created the Universe, and He remained Himself whole and entire." This
+thought is true. What is the error of deism? It is that it makes a God
+like to a man who works upon matter existing previously to his action,
+and who puts in operation forces independent of himself, and which he
+does nothing but employ. In this way a watchmaker makes a watch which
+goes afterwards without him, because the watchmaker only sets to work
+forces which have an independent existence, and which continue to act
+when he has ceased his labor. We work upon matter foreign to us. The
+workman did not make matter, but only disposes of it, and he can never
+do more than modify the action of forces which do not proceed from his
+will, and have not been regulated by his understanding. But the Being
+who is the cause of all cannot dispose of foreign forces which act
+afterwards by themselves, since there exists in His work no principle of
+action other than those which He has Himself placed in it.
+
+Deism results therefore from a confusion between the work of a creature
+placed in a preexisting world, and the work of the Supreme Will which is
+in itself the single and absolute cause of all. It contains an element
+of dualism: its God does not create; but organizes a world the being of
+which does not depend on him. Take what is true in deism--the existence
+of the only God; remember that the Creator is the absolute Cause of the
+universe; and the distinction between _ensemble_ and detail will vanish,
+and you will understand that God is too great that there should be
+anything small in His eyes:
+
+
+     God measures not our lot by line and square:
+       The grass-suspended drop of morning dew
+     Reflects a firmament as vast and fair
+       As Ocean from his boundless field of blue.[171]
+
+
+In other words, take what is true in deism, and accept all the
+consequences of it, and you will arrive at the full doctrine of the
+creation.
+
+Pantheism recognizes the omnipresence of God in the universe, or, if you
+like the terms of the school, the immanence of God; this is its portion
+of truth. When I open the Hindoos' songs of adoration, and find therein
+the unlimited enumeration of the manifestations of God in nature, I find
+nothing to complain of. But when, in those same hymns, I see liberty
+denied, the origin of evil attributed to the Holy One, and man cowering
+before Destiny, instead of turning his eyes freely towards the Heavenly
+Father, then I stand only more erect and say: You forget that if your
+God is the Cause of all, He is the Cause of liberty. If liberty exists,
+evil, the revolt of liberty, is not the work of the Creator. Your system
+contradicts itself. You make of God the universal Principle, and you are
+right; make of Him then the Author of free wills, so that He will be no
+longer the source of evil, and we shall be agreed.
+
+Deism and pantheism therefore, pushed to their legitimate consequences,
+are transformed and united in the truth. And you see plainly that I am
+not making, for my part, an arbitrary selection in these systems. I am
+walking by one sole light, the light which has been given to us, and
+which serves me everywhere as a guiding clue:--The Lord is God, and
+there is no other God but He.
+
+Such, Gentlemen, is the fundamental truth on which rests all religion,
+and all philosophy capable of accounting for facts. Such is the grand
+cause which claims all the efforts which we are wasting too often in
+barren conflicts--the cause of God. But do I say the truth? Is it the
+cause of God which is at stake? When a surgeon, by a successful
+operation, has restored sight to a blind man, we are not wont to say
+that he has rendered a service to the sun. This cause is our own; it is
+that of society at large, it is that of families, that of individuals;
+it is the cause which concerns our dignity, our happiness; it is the
+cause of all, even of those who attack it in words of which they do not
+calculate the import, and who, were they to succeed in banishing God
+from the public conscience, would, with us, recoil in terror at sight of
+the frightful abysses into which we all should fall together.
+
+It is time to sum up these considerations.
+
+Inert and unintelligent matter is not the cause of life and
+intelligence.
+
+Human consciences would be plunged in irremediable misery, if ever they
+could be persuaded that there is nothing superior to man.
+
+The universe is the work of wisdom and of power; it is the creation of
+the Infinite Mind. What can still be wanting to our hearts? The thought
+that God desires our good,--that He loves us. If it is so, we shall be
+able to understand that our cause is His, that He is not an impassible
+sun whose rays fall on us with indifference, but a Father who is moved
+at our sorrows, and who would have us find joy and peace in Him. This
+will be the subject of our next and concluding lecture.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[160] Firmissimum hoc afferri videtur, cur deos esse credamus, quod
+nulla gens tam fera, nemo omnium tam sit immanis, cujus mentem non
+imbuerit deorum opinio. Multi de diis prava sentiunt, id enim vitioso
+more effici solet; omnes tamen esse vim et naturam divinam
+arbitrantur.... Omni autem in re consentio omnium gentium, lex naturć
+putanda est.--_Tuscul._ i. 13.
+
+[161] _In presence of Heaven, we must believe or deny._ See Lecture III.
+
+[162] _Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard._
+
+[163]
+
+     Thou hadst only forgotten one point,
+     And that was, to light thy lantern.
+
+[164] _Harmonices mundi libri quinque_.
+
+[165] The authenticity of this reply is disputed; M. Arago gives it in
+different terms; but the question is of small consequence here as one of
+historical criticism, my object being not to establish a fact, but to
+put an idea in a strong light by means of an example.
+
+[166]
+
+                     .... Pour ętre approuvés
+     De semblables projets veulent ętre achevés.
+
+[167] Ps. cxlviii.
+
+[168]
+
+     Le monde entier te glorifie,
+     L'oiseau te chante sur son nid;
+     Et pour une goutte de pluie
+     Des milliers d'ętres t'ont beni.
+
+[169] Albert de Haller. _Lettres sur les vérités les plus importantes de
+la révélation_. Lettre 2.
+
+[170] Et toute la _science_ est un hymne ŕ sa gloire.
+
+[171]
+
+     Dieu ne mesure pas nos sorts ŕ l'étendue.
+     La goutte de rosée ŕ l'herbe suspendue
+     Y réfléchit un ciel aussi vaste, aussi pur
+     Que l'immense Océan dans ses plaines d'azur.
+                                          LAMARTINE.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+_THE FATHER._
+
+(At Geneva, 8th Dec. 1863.--At Lausanne, 1st Feb. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+We have proposed for solution the problem which includes all others
+whatsoever--the problem of the universe. What are the laws which govern
+the universe? They are those which are the objects of science, taking
+that word in its largest and most general meaning. What is the cause of
+the universe? The eternal power of the Infinite Mind. These are the two
+answers which we have hitherto obtained, but, as we have explained, a
+study is not complete if it confine itself to these two answers. When we
+know the law and the cause of an object submitted to our study, we
+further look for the end designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but
+the direct result of the constitution of our understanding. The universe
+is the creation of God. What is the design of the creation? I answer:
+the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made
+for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition of their life
+and development; spiritual beings are made for felicity. The moving
+spring of infinite power is goodness: this is my thesis. If I succeed in
+establishing it, it will follow that we shall in imagination see issuing
+from the supreme unity of the Infinite Being three rays: the power which
+creates the being of things; the intelligence which orders them; and the
+love which conducts them to their destination. It will also follow that
+I shall have justified the title under which these Lectures were
+announced: Power and wisdom are attributes of the Creator; the Father
+reveals Himself in goodness.
+
+What shall be our method? Can we enter into the counsels of God? By what
+means? To place our understanding in the midst of the Divine
+consciousness, there to behold the spring of the determinations of the
+Infinite Being, were an attempt so far exceeding our capacity, that it
+is impossible to point out any means whatever by which it could be made.
+This would be to conceive of God in His eternal essence, independently
+of His relation to the universe, to nature, and to our reason. I do not
+say merely that the attempt would be fruitless; I say that we have no
+means of attempting this metaphysical adventure. But might we not, in
+looking at the work of God, discern in it the evidence of its design?
+This is a process which we often follow in regard to our
+fellow-creatures. Do we wish to know the object which a man has in view
+in his labor? He may himself disclose that object to us directly in
+words, or we may endeavor to discover it. We watch him at work, and by
+observing the way in which he proceeds we sometimes come to know what
+his thoughts are, because we find ourselves in presence of the work of a
+mind, and we ourselves are mind. Can we in the same way, by looking at
+the universe, that grand work, succeed in discovering its end?
+
+The way on which we are entering raises two objections, which proceed
+from the difficulties felt by two classes of men of opposite views; and
+our first business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary
+difficulties.
+
+You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in proving the goodness
+of God, because evil is in the world. I am not inventing, Gentlemen. A
+letter containing this challenge has been addressed to me by one of
+you. It is manifest, since we propose to ourselves to recognize in the
+work the intention of the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness
+of the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its forms, sin,
+pain, imperfection, is the main objection which can be addressed to us.
+Evil is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge
+it. Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which
+comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in
+short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a
+culpable, system. The strongest minds have worn themselves out in such
+attempts with no result whatever. The great Leibnitz attempted an
+enterprise of this nature. His system consisted in extenuating evil as
+far as possible, and in pronouncing that amount of evil, of which he
+could not dissemble the existence, to be necessary. He failed. The
+strong intellectual armor of one of the greatest geniuses the world has
+ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft
+of Voltaire.
+
+
+     Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,
+     Sharpening the pangs ye make pretence to cure,
+     Poor comforters! in your attempts I see
+     Nought but the pride which feigns unreal glee!
+     O mortals, of such bliss how weak the spell!
+     Ye cry in doleful accents--"All is well!"--
+     And all things at the great deceit rebel.
+     Nay, if your minds to coin the flattery dare,
+     Your hearts as often lay the falsehood bare.
+     The gloomy truth admits of no disguise--
+     Evil is on the earth![172]
+
+
+For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our old neighbor of Ferney.
+Yes, evil is on the earth; and it constitutes, in the question which we
+are discussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of
+difficulties. Let us listen to a modern poet:
+
+
+     Why then so great, O Sovereign Lord,
+       Came evil from thy forming hand,
+       That Reason, yea, and Virtue stand
+     Aghast before the sight abhorred?
+
+     And how can deeds so hideous glare
+       Beneath the beams of holy light,
+       That on the lips of hapless wight
+     Dies at their view the trembling prayer?
+
+     Why do the many parts agree
+       So scantly in thy work sublime?
+       And what is pestilence, or crime,
+     Or death, O righteous God, to Thee?[173]
+
+
+We have only to put this poetry into common prose to obtain this
+argument, namely,--The presence of evil in the world is not compatible
+with the idea of the goodness of God. Here is the objection in all its
+force. And what is the answer? Simply this, that God did not create
+evil. It was not He who brought crime into the world. He created
+liberty, which is a good, and evil is the produce of created liberty in
+rebellion against the law of its being. I borrow from Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau the development of this thought. "If man," says he, "is a free
+agent, then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely enters not into
+the ordained system of Providence, and cannot be imputed to it. The
+Creator does not will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty
+which He gives him. He has made him free in order that he may do not
+evil but good by choice. To murmur because God does not hinder him from
+doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of an excellent nature,
+attached to his actions the moral character which ennobles them, and
+gave him a right to virtue. What! in order to prevent man from being
+wicked, must he needs be confined to instinct and made a mere brute? No;
+God of my soul, never will I reproach Thee with having made it in Thine
+image, in order that I might be free, good, and happy, like Thyself.
+
+"It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us unhappy and wicked.
+Our vexations and our cares come to us from ourselves."
+
+Such is Rousseau's answer to the objection drawn from the existence of
+evil. It is a good one. It is so good that it is impossible to find a
+better. If we are determined not to outrage the human conscience by
+denying the reality of evil; if God is the sovereign good, and if there
+is no other principle of things than He; evil cannot be accounted for
+otherwise than by the rebellion of the creature. But now, Rousseau's
+answer, excellent in itself and in the abstract, becomes profoundly
+inadequate, as the citizen of Geneva goes on to develop his theory. Evil
+comes from the creature; but each individual is not the exclusive source
+of the evils which he does and suffers. To attribute to each individual,
+not only the responsibility of his acts, but the origin of the evil
+germs which exist in his soul, is the untenable proposition of a
+desperate individualism. There is evidently among men a common property
+in evil; Rousseau sees it clearly enough, but he makes vain efforts to
+find in the organization of society and in the condition of civilization
+the causes of pain and of sin. When one has come to see clearly that the
+source of evil is in the creature, the close mutual connection of
+created wills and their relations with nature present a field for long
+and difficult study; and Rousseau has no sooner discerned the road to
+truth than he wanders away into byroads in which the solution of the
+problem escapes him. This problem, Gentlemen, I have the intention and
+desire of studying some day, if God permit, with those of you who may be
+willing to undertake it with me. We shall then have to deal with an
+objection, or rather with a difficulty. But this difficulty, which we
+cannot now dispose of, must not hinder us from stating our thesis. In
+every well-conducted study, the propositions to be maintained must be
+laid down and supported before dealing with objections. If it were
+maintained that evil is the principle of things, it would be necessary
+first of all to endeavor to establish the thesis, in which the existence
+of good would be brought forward, and would constitute the objection.
+The objection would have to be answered--Why has good appeared in the
+world? And I would just say in passing, that our libraries are full of
+treatises upon the origin of evil, and I have never met with one upon
+the origin of good. It appears therefore that reason has always
+admitted, by a sort of instinct, the identity of good, and of the
+principle of being. Our thesis is that the principle of the universe is
+good. We are going to try to demonstrate it. Afterwards the difficulty,
+evil, will present itself, of which it will be necessary to seek the
+explanation. This will be the natural sequel, and the necessary
+complement of the course of lectures which we are concluding to-day.
+
+I pass to another difficulty, another challenge which also has been
+addressed to me.
+
+Your object, Christians have said to me, is to establish that the
+principle and ground of all things is goodness. This you will not be
+able to do without departing from your prescribed plan, and entering
+upon the domain of Christian faith properly so called. In your
+examination of the universe will you leave out of view Jesus Christ and
+His work? Do you not know that it is by means of this work that the idea
+of the love of God has been implanted in the world, and that it is
+thence you have taken it? Do you think to climb to the loftiest heights
+of thought, and to make the ascent by some other road than over the
+mountain of Nazareth and the hill of Calvary?
+
+Gentlemen, I declared my whole mind on this subject at first starting.
+The complete idea of God demands, for its maintenance, the grand
+doctrinal foundations of our faith. Christian in its origin, firm faith
+in the love of God the Creator requires for its defence the armor of the
+Gospel. But before defending this belief, we must first establish it; we
+must show that it has natural roots in human nature. Christianity
+purifies and strengthens it, but it does not in an absolute sense create
+it. The mark of truth is that it does not strike us as something
+absolutely new, but that it finds an echo in the depths of our soul.
+When we meet with it, we seem to re-enter into the possession of our
+patrimony. The Cross of Jesus Christ is without all contradiction the
+most transcendent proof of the mercy of the Creator; but the Cross of
+Jesus Christ rather warrants the Christian in believing in the Divine
+love than gives him the idea of it. We must distinguish in the Gospel
+between the universal religion which it has restored, and the act itself
+of that restoration, which constitutes the Gospel in the special sense
+of the word. Now what I am here maintaining is the fact of the existence
+in modern society of the elements of the universal religion. I am far
+from sharing in the illusions of my fellow-countryman Rousseau, when he
+affirms that even if he had lived in a desert isle, and had never known
+a fellow-man, he would nevertheless have been able to write the
+_Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard_. I know very well that if I were
+a Brahmin, born at the foot of the Himalayas, or a Chinese mandarin, I
+should not be able to say all that I am saying respecting the goodness
+of God. The light which we have received--I know whence it radiates;
+but, by the help of that light, I seek its kindred rays everywhere, and
+everywhere I find them in humanity.
+
+Let us endeavor, then, according to our plan, to recognize in the
+universe the marks of the Divine goodness. Let us first of all
+interrogate the human soul, which is certainly one of the essential
+elements of the world; and let us interrogate it with regard to the
+great fact of religion.
+
+The universal religion presents to observation two principal forms of
+mental experience: the sense of the necessity for appeasing the Divine
+justice, and the sense of the necessity for obtaining the help of God.
+
+The sense of the necessity for appeasing justice reveals itself in
+sacrifices. There are sacrifices which are merely offerings of
+gratitude, and freewill gifts of love. But when you see the blood of
+animals flowing in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing forth
+upon the altars, you will be unable to escape the conviction that man,
+in presenting himself before the Deity, feels constrained to appease a
+justice which threatens him.
+
+The sense of the need of help shows itself in prayer; and this must be
+the especial object of our study, because it is in the fact of religious
+invocation that we shall encounter the idea, obscure perhaps, but real,
+of the goodness of the First Cause of the universe.
+
+Prayer is a fact of the universal religion. Whence is it that we derive
+a large part of what knowledge we have of the ancient civilizations of
+India and Egypt? From ruins: and the chief of these ruins are the ruins
+of temples, that is to say, of houses of prayer. Would we go further
+back than these monuments of stone? I interrogate those pioneers of
+science who are searching for the traces of antiquity in old
+languages,--in the ruins of speech. I inquire, for example, of my
+learned fellow-countryman, M. Adolphe Pictet: "You who have studied,
+with patient care, the first origins of our race--what have you
+discovered in the way of religion?" He replies: "When I have gone as far
+back as historical speculations can carry us by the aid of language, it
+appears to me that I no longer see temples built by the hand of man,
+but, beneath the open vault of heaven, I see our earliest ancestors
+sending up together the chant of prayer and the flame of
+sacrifice."[174]
+
+And now, from this remote antiquity, I come down to the paganism, in
+which modern civilization had its beginning. Tertullian teaches us that
+the pagans, seeming to forget their idols, and to offer a spontaneous
+testimony to the truth, were often wont to exclaim--Great God! Good God!
+What in their mind was the order of these two thoughts, the thought of
+greatness and that of goodness? The pediment of a temple at Rome bore
+this famous inscription, _Deo optimo maximo_; and Cicero explains to us
+that the God of the Capitol was by the Roman people named "very good" on
+account of the benefits conferred by him, and "very great" on account of
+his power.[175] It is the idea of goodness which here appears to be
+first. But let us go more directly to the root of the question: What do
+we gather from the universality of prayer? What is it to pray? To pray
+is to ask. Prayer may be mingled with thanksgivings, and with
+expressions of adoration, but in itself prayer is a petition. This
+petition rises to God: and when does it so rise? In distress, in
+anguish. It is misery, weakness, the heart cast down, the failing will,
+which unite to raise from earth to heaven that long cry which resounds
+across all the pages of history: Help!--I analyze this fact, and inquire
+what it means. A request is made, and for what? For strength, for
+tranquillity, for peace; for happiness under all its forms. And of whom
+is happiness asked? Of goodness. Justice is appeased, power is dreaded,
+but it is goodness which is invoked. It is so in human relations. The
+man who supplicates the fiercest tyrant only does so because he supposes
+that a fibre of goodness may still vibrate in that savage heart. Take
+from him that thought; persuade him that the last gleam of pity is
+extinct in the heart to which he appeals, and you will arrest the prayer
+on the lips of the suppliant. There will remain for him only the silence
+of despair, or the heroism of resignation.
+
+To sum up:--Religion is a universal fact. "There is no religion without
+prayer," said Voltaire, and he never said better. There is no prayer
+without a confused, perhaps, but real, conviction of the goodness of the
+First Cause of the universe. If you could stifle in man's heart the
+feeling that the Principle of things is good, you would silence over the
+whole globe that voice of prayer which is ever rising to God. Thus
+humanity itself testifies to the truth for which I am contending.
+Humanity prays; it believes therefore in the goodness of God. This fact
+is an argument. The heart of man is organized to believe that God is
+good: it is the mark set by the Worker Himself upon His work.
+
+Let us study now another of the elements of the universe. We have heard
+the answer of man's heart; let us ask for the answer of reason. Has
+reason nothing to tell us respecting the intentions of the Creator? Let
+us place it in presence of the idea of God--of the Infinite Being, and
+see what it will be able to teach us.
+
+To attain my object, I must explain more particularly than as yet I have
+done, a word rendered frivolous by the levity of our heart, a word
+defiled by the disorder of our passions, and too often by the
+unworthiness, and worse, of poets and novelists, but which still, in its
+virgin purity, is ever protesting against the outrages to which it has
+been subjected: that word is _love_.
+
+This word has two principal meanings. In the Platonic sense of it, it is
+the search after what is beautiful, great, noble, pure,--after what, as
+being of the very real nature of the soul, attracts, fills, and delights
+it. But there is another sort of love, which does not pursue greatness
+and beauty, but which gives itself; a love which seeks the wretched to
+enrich him, the poor to make him happy, the fallen to raise him up.
+These two kinds of love seem to follow different and even contrary laws.
+Here, for instance, is a description of what often occurs in a large
+city.[176] A man leaves his house in the evening in order to be present
+at performances in which I am willing to believe that everything bears
+the stamp of nobleness and grandeur, or at least of a pure and wholesome
+taste. He experiences keen enjoyment, and that of an elevated kind. The
+spectacle over, he returns to his dwelling, and at a still later hour he
+retires at length to his repose. He has not long extinguished his
+luxurious tapers, perhaps, when other men, who have slept while others
+were seeking amusement, rise before daylight, and, lighting their small
+lanterns, go forth to succor the unfortunate, without witnesses and
+without ostentation.
+
+I have taken this example from Xavier de Maistre. Let me give you
+another from scenes more familiar to ourselves. You know those pure
+summer mornings, when one may truly say that the Alp smiles and that the
+mountain invites. A young man quits his dwelling at the first dawning of
+the day, in his hand the tourist's staff, and his countenance beaming
+with joy. He starts on a mountain excursion. All day long he quaffs the
+pure air with delight, revels in the freedom of the pasture-grounds, in
+the view of the lofty summits and of the distant horizons. He reposes in
+the shade of the forest, drinks at the spring from the rock, and when he
+has gazed on the Alpine chain resplendent in the radiance of the setting
+sun, he lingers still to see--
+
+
+     Twilight its farewell to the hills delaying.[177]
+
+
+Noble enjoyments! This young man enjoys because he loves. The spectacle
+of the creation speaks to his heart and elevates his thoughts. He loves
+that enchanting nature, which blends in a marvellous union the
+impressions which in human relations are produced by the strong man's
+majesty and the maiden's sweetest smile.
+
+On this same summer-day, another man has also risen before the sun. He
+is devoted to the assuaging of human miseries, and he has had much to
+do. He has mounted gloomy staircases; he has entered dark chambers; he
+has spent time in hospitals, in the midst of the pains of sickness; he
+has come, in prisons, to the relief of pains which are sadder still.
+Day, as it dawned, gilded the summits of the Alps, but he saw not that
+pure light of the morning. Day, as it advanced, penetrated into the
+valleys, but he did not notice its progress. The sun set in his glory,
+but he had no opportunity to admire either the bright reflection of the
+waters, or the rosy tint of the mountains. And yet he too is joyful
+because he loves. He loves the fulfilment of stern duty, he loves
+poverty solaced, and suffering alleviated.
+
+Here are the two kinds of love. The disciple of Plato rises, far from
+the vulgarities of life, into the lofty regions of the ideal, and feeds
+on beauty. Vincent de Paul takes the place of a convict at the galleys
+that he may restore a father to his children. These two kinds of love
+seem to us to be contrary one to the other: the one seeks itself, and
+the other gives itself. Still they are both necessary to life, for in
+order to give we must receive. In the accomplishment of the works of
+goodness, the soul would be impoverished and would end by drying up in
+a purely mechanical exercise of beneficence, had it no spring from which
+to draw forth the living waters. Man must himself find joy in order to
+diffuse it amongst his fellows. But mark the incomparable marvel of the
+spiritual order of things! The love which gives itself is able to find
+its worthiest object and its purest satisfaction in the very act of
+kindness. There is joy in self-devotion; there is happiness in
+self-sacrifice: the fountain furnishes its own supplies. Thus are
+harmonized the two contrary tendencies of the heart of man. "It is more
+blessed to give than to receive;" words these, of Jesus Christ, which,
+forgotten by the Evangelists, have been recorded by the Apostle St.
+Paul. And since the thought is a beautiful one, it has adorned the
+strains of the poets: says Lamartine--
+
+
+     Dost thou happiness resign
+     To another? It is thine--
+     Larger for the largess--still![178]
+
+
+And Victor Hugo, personifying Charity, makes her speak as follows:
+
+
+     Dear to every man that lives,
+     Joy I bring to him who gives,
+     Joy I leave with him who takes.[179]
+
+
+And because this thought is profound as well as beautiful, it has been
+taken up by the philosophers. "To love," said Leibnitz, "is to place
+one's happiness in the happiness of another." Here is the connecting
+link between Platonic love and the love which is charity. Hear how a
+Christian orator comments upon these words:--"This sublime definition
+has no need of explanations: it is either understood at once, or it is
+not understood. The man who has loved understands it; and he who has not
+loved will never understand it. He who has loved knows that a shadow in
+the heart of the beloved one would darken his own: he knows that he
+would reckon no means too costly--watchings, labors, privations--by
+which to create a smile on the lips of the sorrowful; he knows that he
+would die to redeem a forfeited life; he knows that he would be happy
+in another's welfare, happy in his graces, happy in his virtues, happy
+in his glory, happy in his happiness. The man who has loved knows all
+this; he who has not loved knows nothing of it:--I pity him!"[180]
+
+But the great mistake, which seems peculiar to our nature, is that we
+are ever connecting happiness with the idea of receiving, and are always
+thinking of giving as of a loss to ourselves. We do not understand that
+selfishly to keep is to be impoverished, while freely to relinquish is
+to be enriched. Yet here is the grand discovery of the spiritual life;
+and once this discovery made, in order that the spiritual life may
+attain its object, it only remains to find the strength to put it into
+practice. Selfishness is wrong, no doubt, but it is not only wrong, it
+is ignorant, for it looks for happiness where it is not; and it is
+unhappy, for it wanders from the paths of peace.
+
+Let us now apply these considerations to the Infinite Being, and to the
+problem of the end of the creation. Leaving ourselves to the guidance of
+the laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall be able to
+attribute to the Creator in His work? Will creation be the effect of a
+necessity? No, Sirs, for in that case everything in the world would be a
+matter of fate, and liberty would remain inexplicable. If a blind power
+were directing the Almighty Will, we should return to the worship of
+destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out of a design of which
+the motive is interest? But what conceivable interest can influence Him
+who is the plentitude of being? Or will creation be a duty? But whence
+should come the obligation for the Being who is in Himself the absolute
+law? Creation can only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what
+love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness,
+of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some
+eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the
+revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was
+treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by Pčre
+Lacordaire.[181] He is entering upon this question: What can have been
+the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the
+Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the
+love which gives itself, which he designates by the term--goodness.
+"Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said
+to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard
+as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of
+its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before
+God, which preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give a name
+without betraying the truth?... There remained something, Sirs, be very
+sure, more generous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more
+powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and if you find it hard to
+understand me, if your own endowments are unknown to you, listen to
+Bossuet speaking of you:--'When God,' says he, 'made the heart of man,
+the first thing He planted there was goodness:' goodness; that is to
+say, that virtue which does not consult self-interest, which does not
+wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to be solicited by the
+attraction of the beautiful, but which stoops towards its object all the
+more, as it is poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy of
+contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man possesses that adorable
+faculty. It is not genius, nor glory, nor love, which measures the
+elevation of his soul,--it is goodness. This it is which gives to the
+human countenance its principal and most powerful charm; this it is
+which draws us together; this it is which brings into communication the
+good and the evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth, the
+great mediating principle. See, at the foot of the Alps, yon miserable
+_crétin_, which, eyeless, smileless, tearless, is not even conscious of
+its own degradation, and which looks like an effort of nature to insult
+itself in the dishonor of the greatest of its own productions: but
+beware how you imagine that that wretched object has not found the road
+to any heart, or that his debasement has deprived him of the love of all
+the world. No: he is beloved; he has a mother, he has brothers and
+sisters; he has a place at the cottage-hearth; he has the best place and
+the most sacred of all, just because of all he may seem to have the
+least claim to any. The bosom which nursed him supports him still, and
+the superstition of love never speaks of him but as of a blessing sent
+of God. Such is man!
+
+"But can I say, Such is man, without saying also, Such is God! From whom
+would man derive goodness, if God were not the primordial Ocean of
+goodness, and if, when He formed our heart, He had not first of all
+poured into it a drop from His own? Yes, God is good; yes, goodness is
+the attribute which includes in it all the rest; and it is not without
+reason that antiquity engraved on the pediment of its temples that
+famous inscription, in which goodness preceded greatness."
+
+Now, to say nothing of the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause
+at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all
+things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under
+the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love
+which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as
+any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the
+infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without
+falling into some degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in
+the abstract, if we wish to analyze it in its real substance, our view
+is confused. You understand well that goodness increases in the
+proportion in which its object is diminished. We are by so much more
+good as we stoop to that which is poorer and more miserable. What then
+shall be the infinite goodness? In order to find it, we must infinitely
+diminish its object: and here we encounter mystery. To diminish an
+object infinitely is an operation impossible to our thought. This
+mystery is encountered even in the mathematical sciences. We take a
+quantity, halve it, and again halve this half, and so on without end,
+but we shall never obtain the infinity of smallness; for the quantity
+indefinitely divided will always remain indefinitely divisible. At
+whatever degree of division we may have arrived, between what remains
+and nothingness there extends always the abyss of the infinite. So I
+seek for the object of infinite goodness: that object must be infinitely
+destitute. I diminish accordingly the existence of the universe: I
+extinguish all the rays of its beauty; I take from it order, life,
+measure, color, light; I reduce it until it is nothing but formless
+matter, a something--I know not what--which has no longer a name. Vain
+attempt! This nameless something, so long as it is anything, will not be
+_nothing_. Between it and nothing there will always be the infinite. If
+the goodness of God is applied to any object which was existing
+independently of Him, however poor and abject that object be conceived
+to have been, then God is no longer the unique, the absolute Creator. If
+imagination will cross the abyss, we shall come of necessity to
+say--what? that the object of infinite love must have been
+non-existence. This is what the orator already quoted has done:--"All
+perfection supposes an object to which to apply itself. The divine
+goodness therefore requires an object as vast and profound as itself.
+God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being
+without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being
+without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds
+which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a
+measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said to Time: Begin!"
+
+This, Gentlemen, is eloquence. The thought in itself does not bear a
+rigorous analysis; but do not think that the lustrous beauty of the
+language is only a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have
+arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the cloud is lighted
+up by the ray that issues from it. Our goodness, finite creatures as we
+are, is so much the greater as the object on which it is bestowed is
+less. Infinite goodness must create for itself an object. It does not
+love nothingness, but a creature which is nothing in itself, a creature
+simply possible, which, before owing to it the blessings of existence,
+shall owe to it that existence itself. The only being that we can
+represent to ourselves, by a sublime image, as stooping towards
+nothingness, is He whose look gives life. The creature is willed for
+itself, or,--to quote the words of Professor Secrétan, addressed to you
+last year,--the foundation of nature is grace.[182] We ask: What can
+have been the object of creation? Our reason answers: The Infinite Being
+can only act from goodness, He can have no other object than the
+happiness of His creatures.
+
+And now I recapitulate. We ask what is the object of creation; and
+whereas we cannot transport ourselves into the inaccessible light of the
+Divine consciousness, we question the work of God in order to discern
+the intentions of the Creator. From the fact that humanity prays, we
+gather the reply that man has a spontaneous belief in the goodness of
+the First Cause of the universe. We place reason in presence of the
+idea of the Infinite Being; reason declares to us that He who is the
+plenitude of Being could not have created except from the motive of
+love. We understand that God has made all for His own glory, and that
+His glory consists in the manifestation of His goodness. These thoughts,
+in their full light, belong to the Gospel revelation, but they appear,
+under a veil, in the conceptions which lie at the basis of pagan
+religions. Without entering the temple of idols, we may bow the knee
+before the pediment of the ancient sanctuary, and, beneath the open
+vault of heaven, adore, with the Roman people, that God whose goodness
+takes precedence of His greatness.
+
+The direct consequence of the principles which we have just laid down is
+that happiness is the object of our existence. Created by goodness, we
+can have no other end than blessedness.
+
+But beware of supposing that we can take for our guide our desire of
+happiness, and ourselves calculate its conditions. Happiness is our end;
+it is the will of our Father; but we must let ourselves be conducted
+into it. If, shutting our ears to the voice which lays upon us commands
+and obligations, we would take our destinies into our own hands; if we
+made the search after happiness our rule, understanding happiness in
+our own way, we should be taking for light fantastic gleams which would
+lead us into abysses of ruin. The unruly propensities of our heart would
+lead us to make ourselves the centre of the world. To "live for self" is
+the motto of selfishness, and the watchword of unhappiness. To live for
+God is the way to happiness. To live to God, that is to say, over the
+ruins of our shattered selfishness, to enter into order, to take our
+place in the spiritual edifice of charity, and to share in the joy which
+God allots to all His children--this is the end of our creation. Once
+lifted to the height of this thought, we are able to understand the
+great struggle which rent the conscience of the ancients, because in
+their times the light of truth illumined only at intervals the clouds of
+error which covered the world.
+
+There are in man two voices; the one leading him to happiness, the other
+calling him to holiness. The first impulse of his nature is to start in
+eager pursuit of mere enjoyment; but ere long the second voice is heard,
+the voice of conscience, striving to arrest him in his course. If man do
+not obey her call, conscience becomes his chastiser. Hence arises a
+painful struggle of conflicting feelings, and the human mind is the
+subject of a strong temptation to pacify itself by silencing one of the
+two voices. It is the history of antiquity. Socrates, the wise Socrates,
+had indeed cried aloud: Woe! woe to the man who separates the just from
+the useful; and had warned men that happiness may be found apart from
+what is right and good. Cicero put into beautiful Latin the lessons of
+the Grecian sage; but the torn heart of man was not long in tearing the
+mantle of the philosopher. From the thought, full and complete as it is,
+of Socrates issued two celebrated sects, one of which wished to
+establish man's life on the basis of duty without reference to
+happiness; and the other on the basis of happiness without reference to
+duty.
+
+The Stoics attached themselves to duty; but the need of happiness
+asserted itself in spite of them, and sought satisfaction in the gloomy
+pleasure of isolation, and in the savage joy of pride. The sage of these
+philosophers sets himself free, not only from all the cares of earth,
+but from all the bonds of the heart, from all natural affection.
+Finally, by a consequence, at once sad and odd, of the same doctrine,
+the highest point of self-possession is to prove that man is master of
+himself, by the emancipation of suicide and in the liberty of death. The
+Stoic philosopher declares himself insensible to the ills of life; he
+denies that pain is an evil; and, on the other hand, he claims the right
+to kill himself in order to escape from the ills of existence! So ended
+this famous school. At the same period, the herd of Epicurus' followers,
+giving themselves over to weak and shameful indulgences, were thus in
+fact laboring with all their might (this is Montesquieu's opinion) to
+prepare that enormous corruption under which were to sink together the
+glory of Rome and the civilization of the ancient world.
+
+This struggle which rent the ancient conscience, and which still rends
+the modern conscience wherever the goodness of God continues
+veiled--this great conflict is appeased when we have come to understand
+that goodness is the first principle of things, that happiness is our
+end, and that the stern voice of conscience is a friendly voice which
+warns us to shun those paths of error in which we should encounter
+wretchedness. The conscience is the voice of the Master; and the same
+authority which, speaking in the name of duty, bids us--"Be good,"
+adds, in the gentle accents of hope--"and thou shalt be happy."
+Happiness, duty,--these are the two aspects of the Divine Will. Love is
+the solution of the universal enigma. Therefore, surprising as the
+thought may be, it is our duty to be happy. Our profession of faith,
+when we look above, must be: "I believe in goodness;" and when we enter
+again into ourselves, our profession of faith should be: "I believe in
+happiness." And we do not believe in it. Not to believe in happiness is
+the root of our ills; it is the original misery which includes all our
+miseries. Triflers that we are, we give ourselves up to pleasure because
+we do not believe in joy: frivolous, we run after giddy excitement
+because we do not believe in peace: with hearts corrupt, we abandon
+ourselves to the devouring flame of the passions, because we do not
+believe in the serene light of true felicity. But the more the thought
+of God's love enters our mind, the more will faith in happiness issue
+from our soul as a blessed flower. Happiness is the end of our being; it
+is the will of the Father. To each one of us are these words addressed:
+God loves thee; be happy! If therefore (and I address myself more
+particularly to the younger of my hearers), if in the depth of your
+soul you are conscious of a sudden aspiration after true felicity, ah!
+do not suffer the holy flame to be extinguished, do not talk of
+illusions; do not, I pray you, resign yourselves to the prose of life;
+to a dreary and gloomy contentedness with a destiny which has no ideal.
+Your nature does not deceive you; it is you who deceive yourselves, if
+you seek your own welfare in the world of foolish or guilty chimeras.
+Listen to all the voices which speak to you of comfort; be attentive to
+all the words of peace. Seek, labor, pray, till you are able to utter,
+in quiet confidence, those words of the Psalmist:
+
+
+     In peace I lay me down to rest;
+     No fears of evil haunt my breast:
+     In peace I sleep till dawn of day,
+     For God, my God, is near alway:
+     On Him in faith my cares I roll;
+     He never sleeps who guards my soul.[183]
+
+
+God in the heart--this it is which adds zest to our enjoyments,
+sanctifies our affections, calms our griefs, and which, amidst the
+struggles, the sorrows, and the harrowing afflictions of life, suffers
+to rise from the heart to the countenance that sublime smile which can
+shine brightly even through tears.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[172]
+
+     Tristes calculateurs des misčres humaines,
+     Ne me consolez point, vous aigrissez mes peines;
+     Et je ne vois en vous que l'effort impuissant
+     D'un fier infortuné qui feint d'ętre content.
+     Quel bonheur, O mortels, et faible et misérable.
+     Vous criez: "Tout est bien" d'une voix lamentable;
+     L'univers vous dément, et votre propre coeur
+     Cent fois de votre esprit a réfuté l'erreur.
+     Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre.
+                                    DESASTRE DE LISBONNE.
+
+[173]
+
+     Pourquoi donc, O Maître supręme,
+     As-tu créé le mal si grand
+     Que la raison, la vertu męme
+     S'épouvantent en le voyant?
+
+     Comment, sous la sainte lumičre,
+     Voit-on des actes si hideux,
+     Qu'ils font expirer la pričre
+     Sur les lčvres du malheureux?
+
+     Pourquoi, dans ton oeuvre céleste,
+     Tant d'éléments si peu d'accord?
+     A quoi bon le crime et la peste,
+     O Dieu juste! pourquoi la mort?
+            ALFRED DE MUSSET, _Espoir en Dieu_.
+
+[174] _Les origines indo-européennes, ou les Aryas primitifs._--The
+above is a _résumé_, not a verbatim quotation.
+
+[175] Quocirca te, Capitoline, quem propter beneficia populus Romanus
+OPTIMUM, propter vim MAXIMUM nominavit. (_Pro domo sua_, LVII.)
+
+[176] See the _Voyage autour de ma chambre_ of Xavier de Maistre.
+
+[177] _Le crépuscule aux monts prolonger ses adieux._
+
+[178]
+
+     Tout le bonheur tu cčdes
+     Accroît ta félicité.
+
+[179]
+
+     Chčre ŕ tout homme quel qu'il soit,
+     J'apporte la joie ŕ qui donne
+     Et je la laisse ŕ qui reçoit.
+
+And Shakspeare--
+
+        ".... Mercy ... is twice bless'd,
+     It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes."
+                         _Merchant of Venice._--[TR.]
+
+[180] Lacordaire. _Conférences de 1848._
+
+[181] _Conférences de 1848_, p. 78.
+
+[182] _La raison et le Christianisme_: twelve lectures on the existence
+of God, one vol. 12mo. In the _Philosophie de la liberté_ (2 vols. 8vo.)
+M. Secrétan has set forth, in a severely scientific form, the arguments
+of which the reader has just seen the oratorical expression from the pen
+of Pčre Lacordaire. This agreement is worth notice, the dates showing
+that no communication was possible.
+
+[183]
+
+     Je me couche sans peur,
+     Je m'endors sans frayeur,
+     Sans crainte je m'éveille.
+     Dieu qui soutient ma foi
+     Est toujours prčs de moi,
+     Et jamais ne sommeille.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cambridge: Printed by John Wilson and Son.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Heavenly Father
+       Lectures on Modern Atheism
+
+Author: Ernest Naville
+
+Translator: Henry Downton
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18168]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEAVENLY FATHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Maddock, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+<h1>THE HEAVENLY FATHER.</h1>
+
+<h2>Lectures on Modern Atheism.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ERNEST NAVILLE,</h2>
+
+<h4>CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE (ACADEMY OF THE MORAL
+AND POLITICAL SCIENCES), LATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
+OF GENEVA.</h4>
+
+<p class='tbrk'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH</h4>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">By</span> HENRY DOWNTON, M.A.,</h3>
+
+<h4>ENGLISH CHAPLAIN AT GENEVA.</h4>
+
+<p class='tbrk'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&mdash;"To this deplorable error I desire to oppose faith in <span class="smcap">God</span> as it
+has been given to the world by the Gospel&mdash;faith in the <span class="smcap">HEAVENLY
+FATHER</span>."</p>
+
+<p class='right'><i>Author's Letter to Professor Faraday</i> (v. p. 193).</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class='tbrk'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BOSTON:<br />WILLIAM V. SPENCER<br />1867.</h3>
+
+<p class='tbrk'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>CAMBRIDGE:<br />PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#PREFACE">PREFACE.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#NOTE_BY_THE_TRANSLATOR">NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_I">LECTURE I.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">Our Idea of God</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_II">LECTURE II.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">Life without God</span></li>
+	<li class="subitem">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#PART_I"><span class="smcap">Part I.</span></a>&mdash;&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Individual</span></li>
+	<li class="subitem">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#PART_II"><span class="smcap">Part II.</span></a>&mdash;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Society</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_III">LECTURE III.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">The Revival Of Atheism</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_IV">LECTURE IV.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">Nature</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_V">LECTURE V.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">Humanity</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_VI">LECTURE VI.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">The Creator</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+<li><a href="#LECTURE_VII">LECTURE VII.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><span class="smcap">The Father</span></li>
+</ul></li>
+
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+<p>These Lectures, in their original form, were delivered at Geneva, and
+afterwards at Lausanne, before two auditories which together numbered
+about two thousand five hundred men. A Swiss Review published
+considerable portions of them, which had been taken down in short-hand,
+and on reading these portions, several persons, belonging to different
+countries, conceived the idea of translating the work when completed by
+the Author, and corrected for publication. Proof-sheets were accordingly
+sent to the translators as they came from the press: and thus this
+volume will appear pretty nearly at the same time in several of the
+languages of Europe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The hearty kindness with which my fellow-countrymen received my words
+has been to me both a delight and an encouragement. The expressions of
+sympathy which have reached me from abroad allow me to hope that these
+pages, notwithstanding the deficiencies and imperfections of which I am
+keenly sensible, reflect some few of the rays of the truth which God has
+deposited on the earth, thereby to unite in the same faith and hope men
+of every tongue and every nation.</p>
+
+<p class='right'>ERNEST NAVILLE.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Geneva</span>, <i>May, 1865</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="NOTE_BY_THE_TRANSLATOR" id="NOTE_BY_THE_TRANSLATOR"></a>NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.</h2>
+
+<p>The appearance of this translation so long after that of the original
+work is in contradiction to the foregoing statement of the Author, that
+it would appear at nearly the same time with it. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span> delay has been due
+to causes beyond the translator's control&mdash;in part to the difficulty of
+revising the press at so great a distance from the place of publication,
+the translator being resident at Geneva. This latter circumstance causes
+an exception in another particular as regards this translation, the
+proposal to translate the Lectures having been made to the Author, and
+kindly accepted by him, during the course of their delivery at Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>The mere statement by the Author of the numbers, large as they were, of
+those who formed the auditories, can give but a small idea of the
+enthusiasm with which they were received by the crowds which thronged to
+hear them, and which were composed of all classes of persons, from the
+most distinguished savant to the intelligent artisan.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be expected that the Lectures when read, even in the
+original, and still less in a translation, can produce the vivid
+impression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> which they made on those, who, with the translator, had the
+privilege of hearing them delivered,&mdash;the Author having few rivals, on
+the Continent or elsewhere, in the graces of polished eloquence; but the
+subjects treated are, it is to be feared, of increasing importance, not
+abroad only, but in England; and in fact one Lecture, the fourth, is in
+a large measure occupied with forms of atheism which owe their chief
+support to English authors. In that Lecture the Author shows that the
+spiritual origin of man cannot "be put out of sight beneath details of
+physiology and researches of natural history," and that these not only
+"cannot settle," but "cannot so much as touch the question."</p>
+
+<p>The same Lecture is occupied in part by a practical refutation of the
+prejudice against religion drawn from the irreligious character of many
+men of science. The Author's subject has led him in the present work to
+confine his illustrations on this head to the question of natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
+religion: but the translator will avow that a main motive with him to
+undertake the labor of this translation has been the wish to prove, in
+the instance of the distinguished Author himself, that men of
+incontestable eminence as metaphysical philosophers may hold and profess
+boldly their faith in doctrines, which many who affect to guide the
+religious opinions of our youth would teach them to despise as the
+heritage of narrow minds, and to cast away as incompatible with the
+highest intellectual cultivation. Such doctrines are those of the fall
+and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine agency in his
+recovery, his need of propitiation by the sacrifice of the
+God-Man&mdash;<i>l'Homme-Dieu</i>. These truths are explicitly stated by the
+Author in his former course of lectures&mdash;<i>La Vie Eternelle</i>,<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> in
+which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the
+portion of the righteous, he does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> shrink from declaring his belief
+in its awful counterpart, the eternal condemnation of the wicked.</p>
+
+<p>"The offence of the Cross" has not "ceased," and many finding that these
+are the opinions of this Author, will perhaps lay down his book as
+unworthy of their attention: yet the editor, biographer, and expositor
+of the great French thinker, Maine de Biran, will not need introduction
+to the intellectual magnates of our own or of any country. The
+translator will be thankful, if some of those,&mdash;the youth more
+especially,&mdash;of his own country, who have been dazzled by the glare of
+false science, shall find in this work a help to the reassuring of their
+faith, while they learn in a fresh example that there are men quite
+competent to deal with the profoundest problems which can exercise our
+thoughts, who at the same time have come to a conviction,&mdash;compatible as
+they believe with principles of the clearest reason,&mdash;of the truth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> of
+those very doctrines which form the substance of evangelical
+Christianity. In saying this, the translator is far from claiming the
+Author as belonging to the same school of theology with himself: but
+differing with him on some important points, he has yet believed that
+this volume is calculated to be of much use in the present condition of
+religious thought in England, and in this hope and prayer he commends it
+to the blessing of Him, whose being and attributes, as our God and
+Father in Jesus Christ, are therein asserted and defended.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Geneva</span>, <i>November, 1865</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A translation of this work, by an English lady, has been
+published by Mr. Dalton, 28, Cockspur street.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_I" id="LECTURE_I"></a>LECTURE I.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>OUR IDEA OF GOD</i>.</h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.&mdash;At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)</p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, a German writer published a
+piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with
+the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah
+who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the
+living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth
+century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon the obsequies of the Eternal.</p>
+
+<p>I was young when these strange words met my eyes, and they produced in
+me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven
+them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many
+tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> men
+of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind,
+are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion
+in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath
+the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science,
+beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the
+ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the
+foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy
+words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a
+shudder of fright through society&mdash;more than threatening war, more than
+possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the
+dark against the security of persons or of property&mdash;is, the number, the
+importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days
+to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.</p>
+
+<p>This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should
+wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this
+term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is,
+either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which
+so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who say that it
+is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution, who apply themselves to
+this work. They are too generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack
+upon a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by the intensity of
+their exertions, that in their own opinion they have something else to
+do than to give a finishing stroke to the dying.</p>
+
+<p>Present circumstances are serious, not for religion itself, which cannot
+be imperilled, but for minds which run the risk of losing their balance
+and their support. Let it be observed, however, that when it is said
+that we are living in extraordinary times, that we are passing through
+an unequalled crisis, that the like of what we see was never seen
+before, and so on, we must always regard conclusions of this nature with
+distrust. Our personal interest in the circumstances which immediately
+surround us produces on them for us the magnifying effect of a
+microscope: and our principal reason for thinking that our epoch is more
+extraordinary than others, is for the most part that we are living in
+our own epoch, and have not lived in others. A mind attentive to this
+fact, and so placed upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> its guard against all tendency to
+exaggeration, will easily perceive that religious thought has in former
+times passed through shocks as profound and as dangerous as those of
+which we are witnesses. Still the crisis is a real one. Taking into
+account its extent in our days, we may say that it is new for the
+generation to which we belong; and it is worthy of close consideration.
+To-day, as an introduction to this grave subject, I should wish first to
+determine as precisely as possible what is our idea of God; to inquire
+next from what sources we derive it; and lastly to point out, as clearly
+as I may, the limits and the nature of the discussion to which I invite
+you.</p>
+
+<p>In asking what sense we must give to the word "God," I am not going to
+propose to you a metaphysical definition, or any system of my own: I am
+inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the bosom of modern
+society, in the souls which live by this idea, in the hearts of which it
+constitutes the joy, in the consciences of which it is the support.</p>
+
+<p>When our thoughts rise above nature and humanity to that invisible Being
+whom we speak of as God, what is it which passes in our souls?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> They
+fear, they hope, they pray, they offer thanksgiving. If a man finds
+himself in one of those desperate positions in which all human help
+fails, he turns towards Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of
+one of those instances of revolting injustice which stir the conscience
+in its profoundest depths, and which could not on earth meet with
+adequate punishment, we think within ourselves,&mdash;There is a Judge on
+high! If we are reproved by our own conscience, the voice of that
+conscience, which disturbs and sometimes torments us, reminds us that
+though we may be shut out from all human view, there is no less an Eye
+which sees us, and a just award awaiting us. Thus it is (I am seeking to
+establish facts) that the thought of God operates, so to speak, in the
+souls of those who believe in Him. If you look for the meaning common to
+all these manifestations of man's heart, what do you find? Fear, hope,
+thanksgiving, prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power
+intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to act upon our
+destinies. This is the idea which is found at the basis of all
+religions; not only of the religion of the only God, but of the most
+degraded forms of idolatrous worship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> All religion rests upon the
+sentiment of one or more invisible Powers, superior to nature and to
+humanity.</p>
+
+<p>When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it disengages from the general
+sentiment of power the definite idea of the cause which becomes the
+explanation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by virtue of its very
+constitution, finds a need of conceiving of an absolute cause which
+escapes by its eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite character
+the bounds of limited existences; a principle, the necessary being of
+which depends on no other; in a word a unique cause, establishing by its
+unity the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with the idea of the
+sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches itself to it as the only thought
+which accounts to it for the world and for itself.</p>
+
+<p>The Creator is, first of all, He whose glory the heavens declare, while
+the earth makes known the work of His hands. He is the Mighty One and
+the Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who directs at once
+the chorus of stars in the depths of the heavens, and the drop of vital
+moisture in the herb which we tread under foot.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If, after having looked around, we turn our regard in upon ourselves, we
+then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like
+stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man
+to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty.
+Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments
+may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions,
+pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if
+all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues
+from the depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. Our
+aspirations toward these spiritual excellences are unlimited. Our
+thought sets out on its course: have we solved one question? immediately
+new questions arise, which press, no less than the former, for an
+answer. Our conscience speaks: have we come in a certain degree to
+realize what is right and good? immediately conscience demands of us
+still more. Is our feeling for beauty awakened? Well, sirs, when an
+artist is satisfied with the work of his hands, do you not know at once
+what to think of him? Do you not know that that man will never do any
+thing great, who does not see shining in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> his horizon an ideal which
+stamps as imperfect all that he has been able to realize? The voice
+which urges us on through life from the cradle to the grave, and which,
+without allowing us a moment's pause, is ever crying&mdash;Forward! forward!
+this voice is not more imperious than the noble instinct which, in the
+view of beauty, of truth, of good, is also saying to us&mdash;Forward!
+forward! and, with the American poet, <i>Excelsior!</i> higher, ever higher!
+Many of you know that instinct familiar to the <i>climbers of the
+Alps</i>,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> as they are called, who, arrived at one summit, have no rest
+so long as there remains a loftier height in view. Such is our destiny;
+but the last peak is veiled in shining clouds which conceal it from our
+sight. Perfection,&mdash;this is the point to which our nature aspires; but
+it is the ladder of Jacob: we see the foot which rests upon the earth;
+the summit hides itself from our feeble view amidst the splendors of the
+infinite.</p>
+
+<p>These objects of our highest desires&mdash;beauty in its supreme
+manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite truth&mdash;are united in one and
+the same thought&mdash;God! The attributes of the spiritual are never in us
+but as borrowed attributes; they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> dwell naturally in Him who is their
+source. God is the truth, not only because He knows all things, but
+because He is the very object of our thoughts; because, when we study
+the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws which He has
+imposed on things; because, to know truth is never any thing else than
+to know the creation or the Creator, the world or its eternal Cause. God
+it is who must be Himself the satisfaction of that craving of the
+conscience which urges us towards holiness. If we had arrived at the
+highest degree of virtue, what should we have done? We should have
+realized the plan which He has proposed to spiritual creatures in their
+freedom, at the same time that He is directing the stars in their
+courses by that other word which they accomplish without having heard
+it. God is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who has shed grace
+upon our valleys, and majesty upon our mountains; and He, again, it is
+(I quote St. Augustine) who acts within the souls of artists, those
+great artists, who, urged unceasingly towards the regions of the ideal,
+feel themselves drawn onwards towards a divine world.</p>
+
+<p>God then above all is He who <i>is</i>,&mdash;the Absolute, the Infinite, the
+Eternal,&mdash;in the ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> mysterious depths of His own essence. In His
+relation to the world, He is the cause; in His relation to the lofty
+aspirations of the soul, He is the ideal. He is the ideal, because being
+the absolute cause, He is the unique source, at the same time that He is
+the object, of our aspirations: He is the absolute cause, because being
+He who <i>is</i>, in His supreme unity, nothing could have existence except
+by the act of His power. We are able already to recognize here, in
+passing, the source at which are fed the most serious aberrations of
+religious thought. Are truth, holiness, beauty considered separately
+from the real and infinite Spirit in which is found their reason for
+existing? We see thus appear philosophies noble in their commencement,
+but which soon descend a fatal slope. The divine, so-called, is spoken
+of still; but the divine is an abstraction, and apart from God has no
+real existence. If truth, beauty, holiness are not the attributes of an
+eternal mind, but the simple expression of the tendencies of our soul,
+man may render at first a sort of worship to these lofty manifestations
+of his own nature; but logic, inexorable logic, forces him soon to
+dismiss the divine to the region of chimeras. These rays are
+extinguished together with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> their luminous centre; the soul loses the
+secret of its destinies, and, in the measureless grief which possesses
+it, it proclaims at length that all is vanity. We shall have, in the
+sequel, to be witnesses together of this sorrowful spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the basis of our idea of God: we must now discover its summit.
+Before the thought of this Sovereign Being, by whose Will are all
+things, and who is without cause and without beginning, our soul is
+overwhelmed. We are so feeble! the thought of absolute power crushes us.
+Creatures of a day, how should we understand the Eternal? Frail as we
+are, and evil, we tremble at the idea of holiness. But milder accents,
+as you know, have been heard upon the earth: This Sovereign God&mdash;He
+loves us. In proportion as this idea gains possession of our
+understanding, in the same proportion our soul has glimpses of the paths
+of peace. He loves us, and we take courage. He hears us, and prayer
+rises to Him with the hope of being heard. He governs all, and we
+confide in His Providence. When your gaze is directed towards the depths
+of the sky, does it never happen to you to remain in a manner terrified,
+as you contemplate those worlds which without end are added to other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+worlds? As you fix your thoughts upon the immeasurable abysses of the
+firmament,&mdash;as you say to yourselves that how far soever you put back
+the boundary of the skies, if the universe ended there, then the
+universe, with its suns and its groups of stars, would still be but a
+solitary lamp, shining as a point in the midst of the limitless
+darkness,&mdash;have you never experienced a sort of mysterious fright and
+giddiness? At such a time turn your eyes upon nearer objects. He who has
+made the heavens with their immensity, is He who makes the corn to
+spring forth for your sustenance, who clothes the fields with the
+flowers which rejoice your sight, who gives you the fresh breath of
+morning, and the calm of a lovely evening: it is He, without whose
+permission nothing occurs, who watches over you and over those you love.
+Possess yourselves thoroughly with this thought of love, then lift once
+more your eyes to the sky, and from every star, and from the worlds
+which are lost in the furthest depths of space, shall fall upon your
+brow, no longer clouded, a ray of love and of peace. Then with a feeling
+of sweet affiance you will adopt as your own those words of an ancient
+prophet: "Whither shall I go from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee
+from Thy Presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make
+my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the
+morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall
+Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me:"<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> then you will
+understand those grand and sweet words of Saint Augustine, some of the
+most beautiful that ever fell from the lips of a man: "Are you afraid of
+God? Run to His arms!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus our idea of God is completed,&mdash;the idea of Him whom, in a feeling
+of filial confidence, we name the Father, and whom we call the
+<i>Heavenly</i> Father, while we adore that absolute holiness, of which the
+pure brightness of the firmament is for us the visible and magnificent
+symbol. Goodness is the secret of the universe; goodness it is which has
+directed power, and placed wisdom at its service.</p>
+
+<p>My object is not to teach this idea, but to defend it: it is not, I say,
+to teach it, for we all possess it. There is no one here who has not
+received his portion of the sacred deposit. This sacred idea may be
+veiled by our sorrows, per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>verted by our errors, obscured by our faults;
+but, however thick be the layer of ashes heaped together in the depth of
+our souls&mdash;look closely: the sacred spark is not extinguished, and a
+favorable breath may still rekindle the flame.</p>
+
+<p>We have considered the essential elements of which our idea of God is
+composed. And whence comes this idea? What is its historical origin? I
+do not ask what is the historical origin of religion, for religion does
+not take its rise in history; it is met with everywhere and always in
+humanity. Those who deny this are compelled to "search in the darkness
+for some obscure example known only to themselves, as if all natural
+inclinations were destroyed by the corruption of a people, and as if, as
+soon as there are any monsters, the species were no longer any
+thing."<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> The consciousness of a world superior to the domain of
+experience is one of the attributes characteristic of our nature. "If
+there had ever been, or if there still anywhere existed, a people
+entirely destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an
+exceptional downfall which would be tantamount to a lapse into
+animality."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> not therefore inquiring after the origin of the
+idea and sentiment of the Deity, in a general sense, but after the
+origin of the idea of the only and Almighty Creator as we possess it. In
+fact, if religion is universal, distinct knowledge of the Creator is not
+so.</p>
+
+<p>Our own past strikes its roots into the historic soil which, in the
+matter of creeds, is known by the name of paganism or idolatry. At first
+sight what do we find in the opinions of that ancient world? No trace of
+the divine unity. Adoration is dispersed over a thousand different
+beings. Not only are the heavenly bodies adored and the powers of
+nature, but men, animals, and inanimate objects. The feeling of the
+holiness of God is not less wanting, it would seem, than the idea of His
+unity. Religion serves as a pretext for the unchaining of human
+passions. This is the case unfortunately with religion in general, and
+the true religion is no exception to the rule: but what characterizes
+paganism is that in its case religion, by its own proper nature, favors
+the development of immorality. Celebrated shrines become the dens of a
+prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered to the gods; the
+religious rites of ancient Asia, and those of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> Greece which fell under
+their influence, are notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false
+deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often also dishonored
+by frightful sacrifices. The ancient civilization of Mexico was elegant
+and even refined in some respects; but the altars were stained, every
+year, with the blood of thousands of human beings; and the votaries of
+this sanguinary worship devoured, in solemn banquets, the quivering
+limbs of the victims. Let us not look for examples too far removed from
+the civilization which has produced our own. In the Greek and Roman
+world, the stories of the gods were not very edifying, as every one
+knows: the worship of Bacchus gave no encouragement to temperance, and
+the festivals of Venus were not a school of chastity. It would be easy,
+by bringing together facts of this sort, to form a picture full of
+sombre coloring, and to conclude that our idea of God, the idea of the
+only and holy God, does not proceed from the impure sources of idolatry.
+The proceeding would be brief and convenient; but such an estimation of
+the facts, false because incomplete, would destroy the value of the
+conclusion. In pagan antiquity, in fact, the abominations of which I
+have just reminded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> you did not by themselves make up religious
+tradition. Side by side with a current of darkness and impurity, we meet
+with a current of pure ideas and of strong gleams of the day.</p>
+
+<p>Almost all the pagans seem to have had a glimpse of the Divine unity
+over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays of the Divine
+holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a Greek who wrote
+these words: "Nothing is accomplished on the earth without Thee, O God,
+save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in their folly."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> It was in
+a theatre at Athens that the chorus of a tragedy sang, more than two
+thousand years ago: "May destiny aid me to preserve unsullied the purity
+of my words and of all my actions, according to those sublime laws
+which, brought forth in the celestial heights, have Heaven alone for
+their father, to which the race of mortal men did not give birth, and
+which oblivion shall never entomb. In them is a supreme God, and one who
+waxes not old."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> It would be easy to multiply quotations of this
+order, and to show you in the documents of Grecian and Roman
+civilization numerous traces of the knowledge of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> only and holy God.
+Listen now to a voice which has come forth actually from the recesses of
+the sepulchre: it reaches us from ancient Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in
+popular practice complete. But, under the confused accents of
+superstition, the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar
+the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number
+of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred
+text which is called the <i>Book of the Dead</i>. Here is the translation of
+some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God
+who speaks: "I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that replenishes the
+earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of mortals. I am the
+Prince of the infinite ages. I am the great and mighty God, the Most
+High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of the armies
+which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise and who judge
+the evil-doers, and the persecutors of godly men. I discover and
+confound the liars.... I am the all-seeing Judge and Avenger ... the
+guardian of my laws in the land of righteousness."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>These words are found mingled, in the text from which I extract them,
+with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be acknowledged that the
+translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is still uncertain enough.
+Still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to the general sense
+and bearing of the recent discoveries of our savants. Myself a simple
+learner from the masters of the science, I can only point out to you the
+result of their studies. Now, this is what the masters tell us as to the
+actual state of mythological studies. Traces are found almost
+everywhere, in the midst of idolatrous superstitions, of a religion
+comparatively pure, and often stamped with a lofty morality. Paganism is
+not a simple fact: it offers to view in the same bed two currents, the
+one pure and the other impure. What is the relation between these two
+currents? A passage in a writer of the Latin Church throws a vivid light
+upon their actual relation in practical life. It is thus that Lactantius
+expresses himself: "When man (the pagan) finds himself in adversity,
+then it is that he has recourse to God (to the only God). If the horrors
+of war threaten him, if there appear a contagious disease, a drought, a
+tempest, then he has recourse to God....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> If he is overtaken by a storm
+at sea, and is in danger of perishing, immediately he calls upon God; if
+he finds himself in any urgent peril, he has recourse to God.... Thus
+men bethink themselves of God when they are in trouble; but as soon as
+the danger is past, and they are no longer in any fear, we see them
+return with joy to the temples of the false gods, make to them
+libations, and offer sacrifices to them."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> This is a striking picture
+of the workings of man's heart in all ages; for, as our author observes,
+"God is never so much forgotten of men as when they are quietly enjoying
+the favors and blessings which He sends them."<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> As regards our
+special object, this page reveals in a very instructive manner the
+religious condition of heathen antiquity. The thought of the sovereign
+God was stifled without being extinguished; it awoke beneath the
+pressure of anguish; but ordinary life, the life of every day, belonged
+to the easy worship of idols.</p>
+
+<p>It may now be asked what is the historical relation between the two
+currents of paganism of which we have just established the actual
+relation in practical life. Did humanity begin with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> coarse fetichism,
+and thence rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of
+a comparatively pure monotheism first show themselves in the most recent
+periods of idolatry? Contemporary science inclines more and more to
+answer in the negative. It is in the most ancient historical ground
+(allow me these geological terms) that the laborious investigators of
+the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut to the
+ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few years
+afterwards: in place of the tree cut down you will find coppice-wood;
+the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided amongst a
+multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the opinion
+which tends to prevail amongst our savants on the subject of the
+historical development of religions. The idea of the only God is at the
+root,&mdash;it is primitive; polytheism is derivative. A forgotten, and as it
+were slumbering, monotheism exists beneath the worship of idols; it is
+the concealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have absorbed all
+the sap. The ancient God (allow me once more a comparison) is like a
+sovereign confined in the interior of his palace: he is but seldom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+thought of, and only on great occasions; his ministers alone act,
+entertain requests, and receive the real homage.</p>
+
+<p>The proposition of the historical priority of monotheism is very
+important, and is not universally admitted. It will therefore be
+necessary to show you, by a few quotations at least, that I am not
+speaking rashly. One of the most accredited mythologists of our time,
+Professor Grimm, of Berlin, writes as follows: "The monotheistic form
+appears to be the more ancient, and that out of which antiquity in its
+infancy formed polytheism.... All mythologies lead us to this
+conclusion."<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Among the French savants devoted to the study of
+ancient Egypt, the Vicomte de Rong&eacute; stands in the foremost rank. This is
+what he tells us: "In Egypt the supreme God was called the one God,
+living indeed, He who made all that exists, who created other beings. He
+is the Generator existing alone who made the heaven and created the
+earth." The writer informs us that these ideas are often found
+reproduced "in writings the date of which is anterior to Moses, and many
+of which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns;" then he comes
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> this conclusion: "Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of
+doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the
+soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading
+superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious
+history of all antiquity."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> As regards the civilization which
+flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the
+subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns the religious
+idea, at the following conclusion: "To sum up: primitive monotheism of a
+character more or less vague, passing gradually into a polytheism still
+simple, such appears to have been the religion of the ancient
+Aryas."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> One of our fellow-countrymen, who cultivates with equal
+modesty and perseverance the study of religious antiquities, has
+procured the greater part of the recent works published on these
+subjects in France, Germany, and England. He has read them, pen in hand,
+and, at my urgent request, he has kindly allowed me to look over his
+notes which have been long accumulating. I find the following sentence
+in the manuscripts which he has shown me: "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> general impression of
+all the most distinguished mythologists of the present day is, that
+monotheism is at the foundation of all pagan mythology."</p>
+
+<p>The savants, I repeat, do not unanimously accept these conclusions:
+savants, like other men, are rarely unanimous. It is enough for my
+purpose to have shown that it is not merely the grand tradition
+guaranteed by the Christian faith, but also the most distinctly marked
+current of contemporary science, which tells us that God shone upon the
+cradle of our species. The august Form was veiled, and idolatry with its
+train of shameful rites shows itself in history as the result of a fall
+which calls for a restoration, rather than as the point of departure of
+a continued progress.</p>
+
+<p>The august Form was veiled. Who has lifted the veil? Not the priests of
+the idols. We meet in the history of paganism with movements of
+reformation, or, at the very least, of religious transformation:
+Buddhism is a memorable example of this; but it is not a return towards
+the pure traditions of India or of Egypt which has caused us to know the
+God whom we adore. Has the veil been lifted by reflection, that is to
+say by the labors of philosophers?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> Philosophy has rendered splendid
+services to the world. It has combated the abominations of idolatry; it
+has recognized in nature the proofs of an intelligent design; it has
+discerned in the reason the deeply felt need of unity; it has indicated
+in the conscience the sense of good, and shown its characteristics; it
+has contemplated the radiant image of the supreme beauty&mdash;still it is
+not philosophy which has restored for humanity the idea of God. Its
+lights mingled with darkness remained widely scattered, and without any
+focus powerful enough to give them strength for enlightening the world.
+To seek God, and consequently to know Him already in a certain measure;
+but to remain always before the altar of a God glimpsed only by an
+<i>&eacute;lite</i> of sages, and continuing for the multitudes the unknown God:
+such was the wisdom of the ancients. It prepared the soil; but it did
+not deposit in it the germ from which the idea of the Creator was to
+spring forth living and strong, to overshadow with its branches all the
+nations of the earth. And when this idea appeared in all its splendor,
+and began the conquest of the universe, the ancient philosophy, which
+had separated itself from heathen forms<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> of worship, and had covered
+them with its contempt, contracted an alliance with its old adversaries.
+It accepted the wildest interpretations of the common superstitions, in
+order to be able to league itself with the crowd in one and the same
+conflict with the new power which had just appeared in the world. And
+this sums up in brief compass the whole history of philosophy in the
+first period of our era.</p>
+
+<p>The monotheism of the moderns does not proceed historically from
+paganism; it was prepared by the ancient philosophy, without being
+produced by it. Whence comes it then? On this head there exists no
+serious difference of opinion. Our knowledge of God is the result of a
+traditional idea, handed down from generation to generation in a
+well-defined current of history. Much obscurity still rests upon man's
+earliest religious history, but the truth which I am pointing out to you
+is solidly and clearly established. Pass, in thought, over the
+terrestrial globe. All the superstitions of which history preserves the
+remembrance are practised at this day, either in Asia or in Africa, or
+in the isles of the Ocean. The most ridiculous and ferocious rites are
+practised still in the light of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> same sun which gilds, as he sets,
+the spires and domes of our churches. At this very day, there are
+nations upon the earth which prostrate themselves before animals, or
+which adore sacred trees. At this very day, perhaps at this hour in
+which I am addressing you, human victims are bound by the priests of
+idols; before you have left this room, their blood will have defiled the
+altars of false deities. At this very day, numerous nations, which have
+neither wanted time for self-development, nor any of the resources of
+civilization, nor clever poets, nor profound philosophers, belong to the
+religion of the Brahmins, or are instructed in the legends which serve
+as a mask to the pernicious doctrines of Buddha. Where do we meet with
+the clear idea of the Creator? In a unique tradition which proceeds from
+the Jews, which Christians have diffused, and which Mahomet corrupted.
+God is known, with that solid and general knowledge which founds a
+settled doctrine and a form of worship, under the influence of this
+tradition and nowhere else. We assert this as a simple fact of
+contemporary history; and there is scarcely any fact in history better
+established.</p>
+
+<p>The light comes to us from the Gospel. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> light did not appear as a
+sudden and absolutely new illumination. It had cast pale gleams on the
+soul of the heathen in their search after the unknown God; it had shone
+apart upon that strange and glorious people which bears the name of
+Israel. Israel had preserved the primitive light encompassed by
+temporary safe-guards. It was the flame of a lamp, too feeble to live in
+the open air, and which remained shut up in a vase, until the moment
+when it should have become strong enough to shine forth from its
+shattered envelope upon the world. The worship of Jehovah is a local
+worship; but this worship, localized for a time, is addressed to the
+only and sovereign God. To every nation which says to Israel as Athaliah
+to Joash:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>I have my God to serve&mdash;serve thou thine own,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Israel replies with Joash:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Nay, Madam, but my God is God alone;</div>
+<div>Him must thou fear: thy God is nought&mdash;a dream!<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Israel does not affirm merely that the God of Israel is the only true
+God, but affirms moreover<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> that the time will come when all the earth
+will acknowledge Him for the only and universal Lord. A grand thought, a
+grand hope, is in the soul of this people, and assures it that all
+nations shall one day look to Jerusalem. Its prophets threaten, warn,
+denounce chastisements, predict terrible catastrophes; but in the midst
+of their severer utterances breaks forth ever and again the song of
+future triumph:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Uplift, Jerusalem, thy queenly brow:</div>
+<div>Light of the nations, and their glory, thou!<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus is preserved in the ancient world the knowledge of God amongst an
+exceptional people, amidst the darkness of idolatry and the glimmerings
+of an imperfect wisdom. And not only is it preserved, but it shines with
+a brightness more and more vivid and pure. The conception of sovereignty
+which constitutes its foundation, is crowned as it advances by the
+conception of love. At length He appears by whom the universal Father
+was to be known of all.</p>
+
+<p>Have you not remarked the surprising simplicity with which Jesus speaks
+of His work? He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> speaks of the universe and of the future as a lawful
+proprietor speaks of his property. The field in which the Word shall be
+sown is the world. He introduces that worship in spirit and in truth
+before which all barriers shall fall. He knows that humanity belongs to
+Him; and when He foretells His peaceful conquest, one knows not which
+predominates in His words, simplicity or grandeur. Now this predicted
+work has been done, is being done, and will be done. No one entertains
+any serious doubt of this. The idea of God, as it exists amongst
+Christian peoples, bears on its brow the certain sign of victory.</p>
+
+<p>In many respects, we are passing through the world in times which are
+not extraordinary, and among things little worthy of lasting record.
+Still great events are being accomplished before our eyes. The ancient
+East is shaken to its foundations. The work of foreign missions is taken
+up again with fresh energy. Ships, as they leave the shores of Europe,
+carry with them,&mdash;together with those who travel for purposes of
+commerce, or from curiosity, or as soldiers,&mdash;those new crusaders who
+exclaim: God wills it! and are ready to march to their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> death in order
+to proclaim the God of life to nations plunged in darkness. The advances
+of industry, the developments of commerce, the calculations of ambition,
+all conspire to diffuse spiritual light over the globe. These are noble
+spectacles, revealing clearly the traces of a superior design, which the
+mighty of this world are accomplishing, even by the craft and violence
+of their policy: they are the manifest instruments of a Will to which
+oftentimes they are insensible. The knowledge of God is extending; and
+while it is extending, it is enriching itself with its own conquests.
+Just as it absorbed the living sap of the doctrines of the Greeks, so it
+is strengthening itself with the doctrines of the ancient East and of
+old Egypt, which an indefatigable science is bringing again to light.
+Christian thought is growing, not by receiving any foreign impulse from
+without, but like a vigorous tree, whose roots traverse new layers of a
+fertile soil. All truth comes naturally to the centre of truth as to its
+rallying-point; and to the universal prayer must be gathered all the
+pure accents gone astray in the superstitious invocations which rise
+from the banks of the Ganges or from the burning regions of Africa. The
+day will come, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> our planet, in its revolutions about the sun, shall
+receive on no point of its surface the rays of the orb of day, without
+sending back, over the ruins of idol-temples for ever overthrown, a song
+of thanksgiving to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, become through
+Jesus Christ the God of all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>We know now whence comes our idea of God: it is Christian in its origin.
+It proceeds from this source, not only for those who call themselves
+Christians, but for all those who, in the bosom of modern society,
+believe sincerely and seriously in God. But little study and reflection
+is required for the acknowledgment that the doctrines of our deists are
+the product of a reason which has been <i>evangelized</i> without their own
+knowledge. They have not invented, but have received the thought, which
+constitutes the support of their life. A mind of ordinary cultivation is
+free henceforward from all danger of falling into the artless error of
+J.J. Rousseau, when he pretended that even though he had been born in a
+desert island and had never known a human being, he would have been able
+to draw up the confession of faith of the <i>Vicaire Savoyard</i>. The habit
+of historical research has dispelled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> these illusions. A French writer,
+distinguished for solid erudition, wrote not long ago: "The civilized
+world has received from Judea the foundations of its faith. It has
+learned of it these two things which pagan antiquity never
+knew&mdash;holiness and charity; for all holiness is derived from belief in a
+personal, spiritual God, Creator of the universe; and all charity from
+the doctrine of human brotherhood!"<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> Religion, in its most general
+sense, is found wherever there are men; but distinct knowledge of the
+Heavenly Father is the fruit of that word which comes to us from the
+borders of the Jordan,&mdash;a word in which all the true elements of ancient
+wisdom are found to have mutually drawn together, and strengthened each
+other. In the very heart of our civilization, those men of mind who
+succeed in freeing themselves in good earnest from the influence of this
+word come, oftener than not, to throw off all belief in the real and
+true God, if they have strength of mind enough properly to understand
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>How is it that the full idea of the Creator,&mdash;an idea which true
+philosophers have sought after in all periods of history, and of which
+they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> have had, so to speak, glimpses and presentiments,&mdash;how is it that
+this idea is a living one only under the influence of the tradition
+which, proceeding originally from Abraham and Moses, has been continued
+by Jesus Christ? It is not impossible to point out the spiritual causes
+of this great historical phenomenon. Faith in God, in order to maintain
+itself in presence of the difficulties which rise in our minds, and&mdash;to
+come at once to the core of the question&mdash;the idea of the love of God,
+in order to maintain itself in presence of evil and of the power of evil
+on the earth, has need of resources which the Christian belief alone
+possesses. The knowledge of the Heavenly Father is essentially connected
+with the Gospel: this is the historical fact. This fact is accounted for
+by the existence of an organic bond between all the great Christian
+doctrines: this is my deliberate conviction. I frankly declare here my
+own opinions: to do so is for me a matter almost of honor and good
+faith; but I declare them, without desiring to lay any stress upon them
+in these lectures. My present object is to consider the idea of God by
+itself. I isolate it for my own purposes from Christian truth taken as a
+whole, but without making the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> separation in my thoughts. The thesis
+which I propose to maintain is common to all Christians, that is quite
+clear; but further; in a perfectly general sense, and in a merely
+abstract point of view, it is a proposition maintained equally by the
+disciples of Mahomet; it is maintained by J.J. Rousseau and the
+spiritualist philosophers who reproduce his thoughts. It is clear in
+fact that just as Jesus Christ is the corner-stone of all Christian
+doctrine, so God is the foundation common to all religions.</p>
+
+<p>Before concluding this lecture I desire to answer a question which may
+have suggested itself to some amongst you. What are we about when we
+take up a Christian idea in order to defend it by reasoning? Are we
+occupied about religion or philosophy? Are we treading upon the ground
+of faith, or on the ground of reason? Are we in the domain of tradition,
+or in that of free inquiry? I have no great love, Gentlemen, for hedges
+and enclosures. I know very well, better, perhaps, than many amongst
+you, because I have longer reflected on the subject, what are the
+differences which separate studies specially religious, from
+philosophical inquiries. But when the question relates to God, to the
+uni<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>versal cause, we find ourselves at the common root of religion and
+philosophy, and distinctions, which exist elsewhere, disappear. Besides,
+these distinctions are never so absolute as they are thought to be. You
+will understand this if you pay attention to these two considerations:
+there is no such thing as pure thought disengaged from every traditional
+element: there is no such thing as tradition received in a manner purely
+passive, and disengaged from all exercise of the reflective faculties.</p>
+
+<p>You think you are employed about philosophy when you shut yourself up in
+your own individual thoughts. A mistake! The most powerful genius of
+modern times failed in this enterprise. Descartes conceived the project
+of forgetting all that he had known, and of producing a system of
+doctrine which should come forth from his brain as Minerva sprang all
+armed from the brain of Jupiter. Now-a-days a mere schoolboy, if he has
+been well taught, ought to be able to prove that Descartes was mistaken,
+because the current of tradition entered his mind together with the
+words of the language. It is not so easy as we may suppose to break the
+ties by which God has bound us all together in mutual dependence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Man
+speaks, he only thinks by means of speech, and speech is a river which
+takes its rise in the very beginnings of history, and brings down to the
+existing generation the tribute of all the waters of the past. No one
+can isolate himself from the current, and place himself outside the
+intellectual society of his fellows. We have more light than we had on
+this subject, and the attempt of Descartes, which was of old the happy
+audacity of genius, could in our days be nothing but the foolish
+presumption of ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>As for the purely passive reception of tradition, this may be conceived
+when only unimportant legends are in question, or doctrines which occupy
+the mind only as matters of curiosity; but when life is at stake, and
+the interests of our whole existence, the mind labors upon the ideas
+which it receives. Religion is only living in any soul when all the
+faculties have come into exercise; and faith, by its own proper nature,
+seeks to understand. The distinction between traditional data therefore
+and pure philosophy is far from being so real or so extensive as it is
+commonly thought to be. But for lack of time, I might undertake to prove
+to you more at length that the labor of individual thought upon the
+common<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> tradition is the absolute and permanent law of development for
+the human mind.</p>
+
+<p>We have to steer between two extreme and contrary pretensions. What
+shall we say to those theologians who deny all power to man's reason,
+and consider the understanding as a receiver which does nothing but
+receive the liquid which is poured into it? to those theologians who,
+not content with despising Aristotle and Plato, think themselves obliged
+to vilify Socrates and calumniate Regulus? We will tell them that they
+depart from the grand Christian tradition, of which they believe
+themselves <i>par excellence</i> the representatives. We will add that they
+outrage their Master by seeming to believe that in order to exalt Him it
+is necessary to calumniate humanity. Again, what shall we say to those
+philosophers, who do not wish for truth except when they have succeeded
+in educing it by themselves? to those philosophers who draw a little
+circle about their own personal thought, and say: If truth discovers
+itself outside this circle we have no wish to see it; and who boast that
+they only are free, because they have abandoned the common beliefs? We
+will tell them that they are deceiving themselves by taking for their
+own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> personal thought the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of the tradition of the human race.
+We will add that their pretended independence is a veritable slavery. A
+strange sort of liberty that, which should forbid those who affect it to
+accept a faith which appeared to them to be true, because they were not
+the inventors of it. Listen to this wise reflection of a contemporary
+writer: "Philosophy allows us to range ourselves on the side of
+Platonism: why should it not also allow us to range ourselves on the
+side of the Christian faith, if there it is that we find wisdom and
+immutable truth? The choice ought to seem as free and as worthy of
+respect on the one side as on the other; and philosophy which claims
+liberty for itself, is least of all warranted in refusing it to
+others."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> To be free, is to look for truth wherever it may be found,
+and it is to obey truth wherever we meet with it. When the question
+therefore relates to God, or to the soul and its eternal destinies,&mdash;to
+the man who asks me, Are you occupied with religion or philosophy? I
+have only one answer to give: I am a man, and I am seeking truth.</p>
+
+<p>A final consideration will perhaps put these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> thoughts in a more
+striking light. If you think the most important of the discussions of
+our day to be that between natural and revealed religion, between deism
+and the Gospel, you have not well discerned the signs of the times. The
+fundamental discussion is now between men who believe in God, in the
+soul, and in truth, and men, who, denying truth, deny at the same time
+the soul and God. When these high problems are in question, periodicals
+and other publications, which have the widest circulation, and which
+gain admission into every household, bring us too often the works of
+writers without convictions, eager to spread amongst others the doubt
+which has devoured their own beliefs. They have received entire, and
+without losing an obole of it, the heritage of the Greek Sophists. They
+involve in fact in the same proscription Socrates and Jesus Christ, Paul
+of Tarsus and Plato of Athens: they have no more respect for the
+opinions of Descartes and Leibnitz than for those of Pascal and Bossuet.
+The great question of the day is to know whether our desire of truth is
+a chim&aelig;ra; whether our effort to reach the divine world is a spring into
+the empty void. When the question relates to God, inasmuch as He is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> the
+basis of reason no less than the object of faith, all the barriers which
+exist elsewhere disappear: to defend faith is to defend reason; to
+defend reason is to defend faith. The unbridled audacity of those who
+deny fundamental truths is bringing ancient adversaries, for a moment at
+least, to fight beneath the same flag. What they would rob us of, is not
+merely this or that article of a definite creed, but all faith whatever
+in Divine Providence, every hope which goes beyond the tomb, every look
+directed towards a world superior to our present destinies. But take
+courage. This flame lighted on the earth, and which is evermore directed
+towards heaven, has passed safely through rougher storms than those
+which now threaten it; it has shone brightly in thicker darkness than
+that in which men are laboring so hard to enshroud it. It is not going
+to be extinguished, be very sure, before the affected indifference of a
+few wits of our day, and the haughty disdain of a few contemporary
+journalists.</p>
+
+<p>In a word, Gentlemen,&mdash;to take the idea of God as it has been handed
+down to us, and to study its relation to the reason, the heart, and the
+conscience of man,&mdash;this is my proposed method<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> of proceeding. To show
+you that this idea is truth, because it satisfies the conscience, the
+heart, and the reason&mdash;this is the object I have in view. Of this object
+I am sure you feel the importance: nevertheless, and that we may be more
+alive to it still, I propose to you to sound with me the abysses of
+sorrow and darkness which are involved in those terrible words&mdash;"without
+God in the world."</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Aux <i>grimpeurs des Alpes</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Psalm cxxxix. 7-10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> J.J. Rousseau.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Les Origines Indo-Europ&eacute;ennes</i>, by Adolphe Pictet, ii.
+651.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Cleanthes, <i>Hymn to Jupiter</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Sophocles, <i>&OElig;dipus R.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Handbuch der gesammten &auml;gyptischen Alterthumskunde</i>, von
+Dr. Max Uhlemann. Leipzig, 1857.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Institutions divines</i>, ii. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Id.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Deutsche Mythol.</i> Third edition, page lxiv.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Annales de philosophie chr&eacute;tienne</i>, t. 59, p. 228.<i>r</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Les Origines Indo-Europ&eacute;ennes</i>, ii. 720.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> J'ai mon Dieu que je sers, vous servirez le v&ocirc;tre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i10'>Il faut craindre le mien;</div>
+<div>Lui seul est Dieu, Madame, et le v&ocirc;tre n'est rien.</div></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>L&egrave;ve, J&eacute;rusalem, l&egrave;ve ta t&ecirc;te alti&egrave;re!</div>
+<div>Les peuples &agrave; l'envi marchent &agrave; ta lumi&egrave;re.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Etudes Orientales</i>, par Adolphe Franck, p. 427.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Barth&eacute;lemy St. Hilaire, in the <i>S&eacute;ances et travaux de
+l'Acad&eacute;mie des sciences morales et politiques</i>, <span class="smcap">lxx</span>., p. 134.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_II" id="LECTURE_II"></a>LECTURE II.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>LIFE WITHOUT GOD</i>.</h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 20th Nov. 1863.&mdash;At Lausanne, 13th Jan. 1864.)</p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>I propose to examine to-day what are the consequences for human life of
+the total suppression of the idea of God. This suppression is the result
+of atheism properly so called: it is also the result of scepticism
+raised into a system. The soul which doubts, but which seeks, regrets,
+hopes, is not wholly separated from God. It gives Him a large share in
+its life, inasmuch as the desire which it feels to meet with Him, and
+the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full
+light, become the principal facts of its existence. But doubt adopted as
+a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so
+called, life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> without God, the mournful subject of our present study.</p>
+
+<p>Having God, the spiritual life has a firm base and an invincible hope.
+The vapors of earth may indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while
+fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the
+thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye
+of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has
+its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when
+in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice,
+and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the
+eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life
+and of joy in death: <i>My God!</i> Take God away, and life is decapitated.
+Even this comparison is not sufficient; life, rather, becomes like to a
+man who should have lost at once both his head and his heart. The
+immense subject which opens before us falls into an easy and natural
+division: we will fix our attention successively upon the individual and
+upon society.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>THE INDIVIDUAL</i>.</h3>
+
+<p>Man thinks, he feels, and he wills: these are the three great functions
+of the spiritual life. Let us inquire what, without God, would become,
+first, of thought, which is the instrument of all knowledge; next; of
+the conscience, which is the law of the will; then of the heart, which
+is the organ of the feelings. We will begin with thought.</p>
+
+<p>Let us go back to the origin of modern philosophy. The labors of
+Descartes will make us acquainted, under the form clearest for us, with
+a current of lofty thoughts which does honor to ancient civilization,
+and which has come down to us through the writings of Plato and St.
+Augustine. We have seen that Descartes deceived himself, when he thought
+to separate himself altogether from tradition, and forgot the while how
+intimately men's minds are bound together in a common possession of
+truth. He was mistaken, because he confounded the idea, natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> to the
+human mind, of an infinite reason, with the full idea of the Creator; so
+attributing to the efforts of his own philosophy that gift of truth
+which he had received from the Christian tradition. But, having so far
+recognized his error, listen now to this great man, and judge if he were
+again mistaken in those thoughts of his which I am about to reproduce to
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Descartes strives hard to doubt of all things, persuaded that truth will
+resist his efforts, and come forth triumphant from the trial. He doubts
+of what he has heard in the schools: his masters may have led him into
+error. He doubts of the evidence of his senses: his senses deceive him
+in the visions of the night; what if he were always dreaming, and if his
+waking hours were but another sleep with other dreams! He will doubt
+even of the certainty of reason: what if the reason were a warped and
+broken instrument? Reason is only worth what its cause may be worth. If
+man is the child of chance, his thoughts may be vain. If man is the
+creature of a wicked and cunning being, the light of reason may be only
+an <i>ignis fatuus</i> kindled by a malicious and mocking spirit. Here is a
+soul plunged in the lowest abysses of doubt; but it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> a manly soul
+which seeks in doubt a trial for truth, and not a comfortable pillow on
+which slothfully to repose. How does Descartes upraise himself? By a
+thought known to every one, and which was already found in St.
+Augustine: "<i>Cogito, ergo sum</i>. I think, therefore I am." Deceive me who
+will; if I am deceived, I exist. Here is a certainty protected from all
+assault: I am. But what a poor certainty is this! What does it avail me
+to have rescued my existence from the abysses of universal doubt, if
+above the deep waters which have swallowed up all belief floats only
+this naked and mortifying truth: I am; but I exist only perhaps to be
+the sport of errors without end. The first step therefore taken by the
+philosopher would be a fruitless one if it were not followed by a
+second. An eye is open, and says: I see; but it must have a warrant that
+the light by which it sees is not a fantastic brightness. No, replies
+Descartes; reason sees a true light; and this is how he proves it: I am,
+I know myself; that is certain. I know myself as a limited and imperfect
+being; that again is certain. I conceive then infinity and perfection;
+that is not less certain; for I should not have the idea of a limit if I
+did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> conceive of infinity, and the word <i>imperfect</i> would have no
+meaning for me, if I could not imagine perfection, of which imperfection
+is but the negation. Starting from this point, the philosopher proves by
+a series of reasonings that the conception of perfection by our minds
+demonstrates the real existence of that perfection: God is. He adds,
+that the existence of God is more certain than the most certain of all
+the theorems of geometry. You will observe, Gentlemen, that the man who
+speaks in this way is one of the greatest geometricians that ever lived.
+He has found God, he has found the light. Reason does not deceive, when
+it is faithful to its own laws: the senses do not deceive, when they are
+exercised according to the rules of the understanding. Error is a
+malady; it is not the radical condition of our nature; it is not without
+limits and without remedy, for the final cause of our being is God, that
+is to say truth and goodness.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>From everlasting God was true,</div>
+<div>For ever good and just will be,</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>says one of our old psalms. Faith in the veracity of God&mdash;such is the
+ground of the assurance of believers; such is also the foundation on
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> has been raised the greatest of modern philosophies. Without the
+knowledge of God and faith in his goodness, man remains plunged in
+irremediable doubt, possessing only this single, poor, and frightful
+certainty: I am; and I exist perhaps only to be eternally deceived.</p>
+
+<p>But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it&mdash;What
+a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that
+God is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good
+because God is. His reason demonstrates God to him, and God demonstrates
+his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once
+see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said
+again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple
+consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely
+that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very
+closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that
+have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a
+fault of logic which any schoolboy can discover? Self-sufficient levity
+of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading
+minds; and it very often happens to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> us to fail of understanding because
+we have failed in respect.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes,
+as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes
+is one of the most illustrious representatives.</p>
+
+<p>To recognize in the reason traces of God, and to show that in faith in
+God consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a
+vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed
+in is not reasoning, but analysis; we are establishing a fact in order
+to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the
+natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals
+to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of
+certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his
+individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is
+evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were
+thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages,
+when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of
+our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would
+contradict our own. We believe in a general reason,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> everywhere and
+always the same, and in which the reason of each individual
+participates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth
+which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere
+present; in other words, we believe in God considered as the source of
+the universal intelligence. To believe in one's reason, is to believe in
+God, in this sense: the fact of the confidence which we place in our own
+faculty of thought, supposes a concealed faith in eternal truth. This is
+the analysis of which I was speaking. It is a circle if you please, but
+it is a circle of light, outside of which there is, as we shall see by
+and by, nothing but darkness and hard contradictions.</p>
+
+<p>You deny the existence of God. On what ground do you rest this denial?
+On the ground of your reason. You believe then that your reason is good,
+you believe it very good, since you do not hesitate to trust it, while
+you undertake to prove false the fundamental instincts of human nature.
+But you would not venture to say that this reason which you believe in
+with a faith so firm is your own separate reason merely, your personal
+and exclusive property. You believe in the universal reason; you believe
+in God, con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>sidered at least as the source of the understanding. The man
+therefore who denies God, affirms Him in a certain sense at the same
+time that he denies Him. He denies Him in his words, in the external
+form of his thought; he affirms Him in reality, as the Supreme
+Intelligence, by the very trust which he places in his own thought. Our
+understanding is only the reflected ray of the Divine verity. Therefore
+it is that Descartes, as soon as he has laid the first foundations of
+his system, interrupts the chain of his reasonings to trace these lines:
+"Here I think it highly meet to pause for a while in contemplation of
+this all-perfect God, to ponder deliberately his marvellous attributes,
+to consider, admire, and adore the incomparable beauty of that immense
+light, at least so far as the strength of my mind, which remains in a
+manner dazzled by it, shall allow me to do so."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> Thus it is that
+while descending into the depths of the understanding, the philosopher
+who is supposed to be absorbed in pure abstractions, discovers all at
+once a sublime brightness, and exclaims with the ancient patriarch: "The
+<span class="smcap">Lord</span> is in this place, and I knew it not!"<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> God is everywhere; He is
+in the heights of heaven, He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> is in the depths of thought. Remember
+those celebrated words of Lord Chancellor Bacon: "A little knowledge
+inclineth the mind to atheism, but a further acquaintance therewith
+bringeth it back to religion."</p>
+
+<p>God is not demonstrated, in the ordinary sense which we attach to the
+word demonstrate;<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> He is pointed out<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> as the source of all light.
+The attempt to demonstrate God as anything else is demonstrated, by
+descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is
+arrived at&mdash;this attempt implies a contradiction. God is in fact the
+first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond
+which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human
+mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate God by
+mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of
+departure&mdash;this is literally to wish to light up the sun. If the sun of
+intelligences is extinguished, reason sets out on its way vaguely
+enlightened still with the remains of the light which it has reflected;
+but it is not long ere it is stumbling in darkness. Then it is that&mdash;be
+not deceived about it!&mdash;the doubts which Descartes called up by an act
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> his own will do in good earnest invade the soul. We possess a
+natural certainty, which does not suppose a clear view of God; we reason
+without thinking distinctly of the principles on which we reason, just
+as, when we are in a hurry, we take the shortest cut without thinking of
+the axiom of geometry which prescribes the straight line. But if we pass
+from the natural order of our thoughts into the domain of science, if we
+ask&mdash;what is it which guarantees to me the value of my reason? then the
+question is put, and many perish in the passage which separates natural
+faith from the domain of science,&mdash;that dangerous passage where doubt
+spreads out its perfidious fogs and its deceitful marshes. The moment
+the question is started of the worth of reason, and all the schools of
+scepticism do start it, our answer must be&mdash;<i>God</i>; and we must find
+light in this answer, or see thought invaded in its totality by an
+irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie;
+and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of
+Ecclesiastes.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> There are more souls ill of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> malady than are
+supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against God what
+they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which
+has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at
+last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in
+the shroud of a universal scorn.</p>
+
+<p>Without God reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to
+the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the
+style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere
+I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes,
+conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its
+necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the
+august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given us the light
+of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the
+works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He
+would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a
+spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the
+contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism.
+We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> admiration, no
+one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is
+another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is
+one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be
+the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must
+make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual
+heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience
+reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is
+evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty
+rebels: it subsists evermore, because it is the work of the Almighty.
+Humanity, in its strange destiny, has never ceased to outrage the rule
+which it acknowledges, and to pronounce upon its own acts a ceaseless
+condemnation. The laws which are investigated by the physical sciences
+are the plan of the Creator realized in nature: the law proposed to
+liberty is the plan of the Creator to be realized by the community of
+minds. Such is the explanation of the conscience: God is its solid
+foundation.</p>
+
+<p>Duty and God, morality and religion, are inseparable principles; all the
+efforts of a false philosophy have never succeeded, and never will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+succeed, in disjoining them. Men will never be prevented from believing
+that God is holy, and that His will is binding upon them: they will
+never be prevented from believing that holiness is divine, and that the
+will of God reveals itself in the admonitions of the conscience.
+Therefore the progress of religion and the progress of morality are
+closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea
+which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same
+time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the
+degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the
+man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other
+hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by
+error and the passions, the conscience protests, and by its protest
+purifies the religious conceptions. It has often been said, that in the
+onward march of humanity, morality is separated from faith, and comes at
+last to rest upon its own bases. It is a notion of the eighteenth
+century, which, although its root has been cut, is still throwing out
+shoots in our time. The attempt has been made to support this theory by
+the great name of Socrates. It is affirmed that the sage of Athens,
+breaking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> the bond which connects the earth with heaven, separated duty
+from its primitive source. Listen: Placed in the alternative of either
+renouncing his mission or dying, it is thus that Socrates addresses his
+judges: "Athenians, I honor you and I love you, but I will obey the
+Deity rather than you. My whole occupation is to persuade you, young and
+old, that before the care of the body and of riches, before every other
+care, is that of the soul and of its improvement. Know that this it is
+which the Deity prescribes to me, and I am persuaded that there can be
+nothing more advantageous to the republic than my zeal to fulfil the
+behest of the Deity."<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Does the man who speaks in this way appear to
+you to have wished to break the link which connects morality with
+religion? He separates himself from the established religion; he pursues
+with his biting raillery shameful objects of worship; his conscience
+protests. But, while it protests, it attaches itself immediately to a
+higher and holier idea of that God, of whose perfections the sage of
+Athens had succeeded in obtaining a glimpse.</p>
+
+<p>God then is the explanation of the conscience: He is moreover its
+support. It has need in sooth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> to be supported,&mdash;that voice which speaks
+within us; because it is unceasingly contradicted and denied. The
+spectacle which the world presents is not an edifying one; the facts
+which are taking place on the earth are not all of a nature to maintain
+the steadfastness of the moral feeling. Let us imagine an example, a
+striking example, such as it would be easy to find realized on a small
+scale in more commonplace events. A peaceable population, menaced in its
+most sacred rights, has taken up arms in the simplest and most
+legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the
+soldiers who are advancing to oppress it&mdash;mere instruments as they are
+in the hands of their leaders&mdash;but upon the leaders themselves. One of
+these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to
+which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one
+of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the
+soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter,
+pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have
+grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, when
+this man shall be receiving the praises of his superiors. Men will laud
+the bravery and daring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> of his exploit; his sovereign will place upon
+his breast a brilliant cross, the august sign of the world's redemption;
+he will return to his country amidst the acclamations of the multitude,
+and drink in with delight the shouts of triumph which greet him as he
+moves on his way. For such things as these, is there to be no penalty
+but troublesome recollections which may sometimes be banished, and a few
+timid protests soon hushed by the loud voice of success? Verily there
+are perpetrated beneath the sun acts which cry aloud for vengeance. Have
+you never felt it&mdash;that mighty cry&mdash;rising from your own bosom, at the
+sight of some odious crime, or on reading such and such a page of
+history? And it must be so; it must be that the cry for vengeance will
+rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer,
+and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in
+the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never
+be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be
+broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains
+of Philippi:&mdash;"Virtue! thou art but a name!"</p>
+
+<p>The conscience is a reality; but its voice is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> troublesome, and the
+captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil
+tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs
+the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes
+place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon
+the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such
+as these:&mdash;"This voice of duty&mdash;whence comes it? and what would it have?
+May not conscience be a prejudice, the result of education and of habit?
+It has little power, it seems, for it is braved with impunity. Many say
+that it is a factitious power from which one comes at last to deliver
+one's self by resisting it. Am I not the dupe of an illusion? I am
+losing joys which others allow themselves. Barriers encompass me on
+every hand, for there are for me prohibited actions, unwholesome
+beauties, culpable feelings. Others are free, and make a larger use of
+life in all directions. What if I too made trial of liberty!" Here lies
+the temptation. When the soul aspires to become larger than conscience
+and more tolerant than duty, it is not far from a fall. The honest woman
+will be tempted to repine at the liberty of the courtesan, and the man
+who is bound by his word will become capa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>ble of looking with envy on
+the liberty of the liar. Then come terrible experiences which teach at
+length that the unbinding of the passions is the hardest of slaveries,
+and that, in the struggle between inclination and duty, it is liberty
+which oppresses and law which sets free. Happy then is he who, feeling
+himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that God who is able to
+rescue him from the abyss, and strengthens his shaken conscience by
+replacing it on its solid foundation. "God speaks and reigns. All
+rebellion is transient in its nature; justice will at length be done.
+Justice may be slow in the eyes of the creature of a day, seeing that He
+who shall dispense it has eternity at his disposal." But if God be not a
+refuge for us from men and from the world, if, when we see all that is
+passing around us, we cannot cast a look beyond and above the earth, men
+may lose their faith in duty. And this faith is lost in fact. If there
+are not dead consciences, there are consciences at any rate singularly
+sunk in sleep. There are men for whom goodness, truth, justice, honor,
+seem to be a coinage of which they make use because it is current, but
+without for themselves attaching to it any value. These pieces of money
+have no longer in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> eyes any visible impression, because the
+conception of the almighty and just God is the impression which
+determines duty and guarantees its value.</p>
+
+<p>When the necessary alliance of moral order with religious thought is
+denied, the reality of conscience is opposed to what are called
+theological hypotheses always open to discussion. It is seen well enough
+that men may doubt of God, but it is supposed to be impossible to doubt
+of conscience. This is an illusion of generous minds. Those who would
+keep this illusion must not open the pages of the history of philosophy
+where the negation of duty does not occupy less space than the negation
+of God; they must not cast their eyes too much about them; they must
+also take care not to open the most widely circulated books, and the
+most fashionable periodicals: otherwise, as we shall see, they would not
+be long in finding out that this morality which they would fain have
+superior to all attacks, is perhaps what of all things is most attacked
+now-a-days, and that that conscience which it is impossible to deny is
+in fact the object of denials the most audacious on the part of a few of
+the present favorites of fame. The voice of duty is heard no doubt even
+when God does not come distinctly into mind;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> but when the questions are
+clearly put, if God is denied, conscience grows dim, and comes at last
+to be extinguished. This obscuration does not take place all at once:
+the potter's wheel goes on turning for a while, says an old Hindoo poem,
+after that the foot of the artisan is withdrawn from it. But the
+darkening takes place gradually with time: such at least is the general
+rule. There are exceptional men who seem to escape this law, and to bear
+in their bosom a God veiled from their own consciousness. Such men may
+be found, and even in considerable numbers, in a time like ours, when
+doubt is, in many cases, a prejudice which current opinion deposits on
+the surface of minds without penetrating them deeply. There are men all
+whose convictions have fallen into ruins, while their conscience
+continues standing like an isolated column, sole remaining witness of a
+demolished building. The meeting with these heroes of virtue inspires a
+mingled feeling of astonishment and respect. They are verily miracles of
+that divine goodness of which they are unable to pronounce the name. If
+there is a man on earth who ought to fall on both knees and shed burning
+tears of gratitude, it is the man who believes himself an atheist, and
+who has re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>ceived from Providence so keen a taste for what is noble and
+pure, so strong an aversion for evil, that his sense of duty remains
+firm even when it has lost all its supports. But the exception does not
+make the rule; and that which is realized in the case of a few is not
+realized long, and for all. You know those crusts of snow which are
+formed over the <i>crevasses</i> of our glaciers. These slight bridges are
+able to bear one person who remains suspended over the abyss, but let
+several attempt to pass together,&mdash;the frail support gives way, and the
+rash adventurers fall together into the gulf. Such is the destiny of
+those schools of philosophy in which the notion of God disappears, and
+of those civilizations in which the sense of God is extinguished; they
+fall into dark regions where the light of goodness shines no longer.</p>
+
+<p>After the mind and conscience, it remains for us to speak of the heart.
+Man, an intelligent and free being, has in his reason an instrument of
+knowledge, and in his conscience a rule for his will. But man is not
+sufficient for himself, and cannot live upon his own resources. If you
+inquire what the word heart expresses, in its most general acceptation,
+you will find that it always expresses a tendency of the soul to look,
+out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> itself, in things or persons, for the support and nourishment of
+its individual life. Does the question concern the relations of man with
+his fellows? The heart is the organ of communication of one soul with
+another, for receiving, or for giving, or for giving and receiving at
+the same time, in the enjoyment of the blessing of a mutual affection.
+The heart is in each of us what those marks are upon the scattered
+stones of a building in course of construction which indicate that they
+are to be united one to another. The philosopher suffices for himself,
+the stoics used to say; the heart is the negation of this haughty maxim.
+From the heart proceeds love, that son of abundance and of poverty, to
+speak with Plato, that needy one ever on the search for his lost
+heritage. Love has wings, said again the wisdom of the Greeks, wings
+which essay to carry him ever higher. Let us extricate the thought which
+is involved in these graceful figures: Our desires have no limits, and
+indefinite desires can be satisfied only by meeting with an infinite
+Being who can be an inexhaustible source of happiness, an eternal object
+of love. "Our heart is made for love," said Saint Augustine, the great
+Christian disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> finds
+repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not
+always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness,
+a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand
+instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due
+object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its
+indefinite aspirations attach themselves to objects which cannot satisfy
+them, and thence arise stupendous aberrations. With some, it is the
+pursuit of sensual gratifications; they rush with a kind of fury into
+the passions of their lower nature. With others it is the ardent pursuit
+of riches, power, fame,&mdash;feelings which are always crying more: More!
+and never: Enough. And the after-taste from the fruitless search after
+happiness in the paths of ambition and vanity is not less bitter perhaps
+than the after-taste from sensual enjoyments. Listen to the confession
+of a man whose works, full as they are of beauties, are disfigured by so
+many impure allusions, that the author appears to have indulged, more
+than most others, in the giddy follies and culpable pleasures of life:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>If, tired of mocking dreams, my restless heart</div>
+<div class='i2'>Returns to take its fill of waking joy,</div>
+<div>Full soon I loathe the pleasures which impart</div>
+<div class='i2'>No true delight, but kill me, while they cloy.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here are the accents of a true confession. These are moreover truths of
+daily experience. I have seen&mdash;and which of you could not render similar
+testimony?&mdash;I have seen the sick man, deprived of all the ordinary
+avocations and amusements of life, and with pain for his constant
+companion, I have seen him find joy in the thought of his God, and
+feeding, without satiety, on this bread of contentment. I have seen the
+face of the blind lighted up by a living faith, and radiant with a light
+of peace, for him sweeter and brighter than the rays of the sun. But
+where God is wanting, and all connection is broken with the source of
+joy, there you shall see the richest of the rich, the most prosperous
+among the ambitious, the man of fame whose renown is most widely
+extended,&mdash;you shall see these men carrying the heavy burden of
+discontent. Their brow, unillumined by the celestial ray, is furrowed by
+the lines of sadness. If you meet them in a moment of candor, these
+rich, ambitious, and famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> men will tell you with a sigh: "All this
+does not satisfy; we are but pursuing chimeras." Still they continue to
+run after these chimeras. They cry Vanity! Vanity! and they do not cease
+to pursue vanity. They flee from themselves: if they retired within
+themselves, they would find there ennui, inexorable ennui, which is but
+the sense of that place which God should fill left void in the depth of
+the soul. For the deceived heart, life becomes a bitter comedy. Those
+who do not succeed in blinding themselves by the dust of thoughtless
+folly, end oftentimes by wrapping themselves in disdain as with a cloak;
+they seek a sad and solitary satisfaction in the greatness of their
+contempt for life. But neither does this satisfy: disdain is not a
+beverage, and contempt is not food.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the destinies of the heart, to which God is wanting. But I
+hope, Gentlemen, that you have here some remonstrances to offer. I have
+just spoken of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I have
+made no allusion to those affections in which the heart manifests its
+highest qualities. Shall we forget the joys of pure love? the domestic
+hearth? friendship? country? Do not fear that, having given myself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> up
+to a fit of misanthropy, I am come hither to blaspheme the true
+happinesses of life. But do the affections of earth offer us sufficient
+guarantees? We have need of the infinite to answer to the immensity of
+our desires; in the presence of those we love, have we no need of the
+Eternal that we may lean our hearts on Him? Will not all human love
+become a source of torment, if we have no faith in the love of Him who
+will stamp holy affections with the seal of His own eternity?</p>
+
+<p>A single question will suffice to enlighten us on this head. Do you know
+the feeling of anxiety? We all know it, though in different degrees.
+Epidemical disease may appear. The cholera has started on its course; it
+has left the interior of Asia, and is approaching. The report is current
+that neighboring cities have begun to feel its ravages. Those we
+love&mdash;in a month, in a week, where will they be? War is declared. We
+hear of preparations for death; the sovereigns of Europe apply
+themselves to calculations which seem to portend torrents of blood. If
+war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have to take up arms,
+that daughter who will one day perhaps find herself at the mercy of an
+unbridled soldiery&mdash;&mdash;. But let us not look for examples<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> so far away.
+Have you no dear one in a distant land of whom you are expecting
+tidings? And those who are near you! To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps,
+while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is discovering its first
+symptoms&mdash;&mdash;. Have you received the hard lessons of death? If you see
+children playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it happen to
+none of you to think of another child, once the joy of your fireside,
+now lying beneath the sod? Does it never happen to you, by a sinister
+presentiment, to see features you love to gaze on convulsed with agony
+or pale in death? And yet you must either see the death of your beloved
+ones, or they must lay you in the earth; for every life ends with the
+tomb, and we do but walk over graves. When the soul has been thus
+wounded by anxiety, for this poisoned wound there is one remedy, but
+only one: "God reigns!" Nothing happens without the permission of His
+goodness. And of all those who are dear to us, we can say: "Father, to
+Thy hands I commit them." If we are without this trust, we shall only
+escape torment by levity. Without God our mind is sick; our conscience
+and our heart are sick also, and in a way more grievous still.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>M&eacute;ditation troisi&egrave;me</i>, at the end.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Gen. xxviii. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>D&eacute;montrer</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> "<i>On le montre</i>."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.... Let us hear the
+conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for
+this is the whole duty of man." (Eccles. i. and xii.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Apology.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Si mon c&oelig;ur, fatigu&eacute; du r&ecirc;ve qui l'obs&egrave;de,</div>
+<div class='i2'>A la r&eacute;alit&eacute; revient pour s'assouvir,</div>
+<div>Au fond des vains plaisirs que j'appelle &agrave; mon aide,</div>
+<div class='i2'>Je trouve un tel d&eacute;go&ucirc;t que je me sens mourir.</div></div>
+</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>SOCIETY.</i></h3>
+
+<p>We have just studied what life without God would be for the individual.
+Let us now direct our attention to those collections of human beings
+which form societies. We shall not speak here of the relations of civil
+with ecclesiastical authorities,&mdash;a complex question, the solution of
+which must vary with times, places, and circumstances. Let us only
+remark that the distinction between the temporal and spiritual order of
+things is one of the foundations of modern civilization. This
+distinction is based upon those great words which, eighteen hundred
+years ago, separated the domain of God from the domain of C&aelig;sar.
+Religion considered as a function of civil life; dogma supported by the
+word of a monarch or the vote of a body politic; the formula of that
+dogma imposed forcibly by a government on the lips of the
+governed&mdash;these are <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of paganism which have been struggling for
+centuries against the restraints<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> of Christian thought.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> The
+religious convictions of individuals do not belong to the State;
+religious sentiments are not amenable to human tribunals; and it would
+be hard to say whether it is the spiritual or the temporal order of
+things which suffers most from the confusion of these distinct domains.
+Religion should have its own proper life, and its special
+representatives; civil life ought to be set free from all tyranny
+exercised in the name of dogma; but religion is not the less on that
+account, by the influence which it exerts over the consciences of men,
+the necessary bond and strength of human society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You would sooner build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "than cause a
+State to subsist without religion." Some have contested in modern times
+this opinion of ancient wisdom. The philosophy of the last century, as
+we have said already, wished to separate duty from the idea of God. It
+pretended to give as the only foundation for society a civil morality,
+the rules and sanction of which were to be found upon earth. The men of
+blood who for a short time governed France, gave once as the order of
+the day&mdash;<i>Terror and all the virtues</i>: this was a terrible application
+of this theory. Virtue rested on a decree of political<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> power, and, for
+want of the judgment of God, the guillotine was the sanction of its
+precepts. Healthier views begin now to prevail in the schools of
+philosophy. One of the members of the <i>Institut de France</i>, M. Franck,
+has lately published a volume on the history of ancient
+civilization,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> with the express intention of showing that the
+conception which a people has of God is the true root of its social
+organization. According to the worth of the religious idea is that of
+the civil constitution. Before M. Franck, twenty years ago, a man of the
+very highest distinction as a public lecturer, indicated this movement
+of modern thought. M. Edgard Quinet, in his Lyons course, taught that
+the religious idea is the very substance of civilization, and the
+generating principle of political constitutions. He announced "a history
+of civilization by the monuments of human thought," and added: "Religion
+above all is the pillar of fire which goes before the nations in their
+march across the ages; it shall serve us as a guide."<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Benjamin
+Constant exhibits in the variation of his opinions the transition from
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> stand-point of the last century to that of the present. He had at
+first conceived of his work upon religion as a monument raised to
+atheism, he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the condition
+necessary to the existence of civilized societies.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Here is a real
+progress; and this progress brings us back to the thought above quoted
+from Plutarch. In fact, take away the idea of God, and the first
+consequence will be that you will sacrifice all the conquests of modern
+civilization; the next, that you will soon have rendered impossible the
+existence of any society whatever. I am going to ask your close
+attention to these two points successively.</p>
+
+<p>History does not offer to our view an uninterrupted progress, as certain
+optimists suppose; still less does it present the spectacle of an
+ever-increasing deterioration, as misanthropes affirm; and lastly, it is
+not true, as we hear it said sometimes, that all epochs are alike, as
+good one as another. There are times better than those which follow
+them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them.
+Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> and
+retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created
+liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is
+clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while
+man is in restless agitation, God is leading him on. The conquests of
+modern civilization are great and sacred realities. What are these
+conquests? Let us not stay at the surface of things, but go to the
+foundation. Societies fallen into a condition of barbarism have for
+their motto the famous saying of a Gallic chief: Woe to the vanquished!
+In institutions, as in manners, the triumph of force characterizes
+barbarous times. The right of the strongest is the twofold negation of
+justice and of love; and what characterizes civilization, issuing from
+the barbarous condition, the fragments of which it so long trails after
+it, is the establishment of that justice which founds States, and, upon
+the basis of justice, the development of the benevolence which renders
+communities happy. These are the two essential conditions of social
+progress. These conditions are necessary even to the progress of
+industry and of material welfare.</p>
+
+<p>Modern civilization,&mdash;that, namely, which we so designate, while we
+relegate, so to speak, into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> the past the contemporaneous societies of
+the vast East,&mdash;modern civilization possesses a power unknown to
+antiquity. Justice has a foundation in the conscience, benevolence has
+natural roots in the heart; but a moment has been when justice and love
+appeared in the world with new brightness, like rays disengaged from
+clouds. Modern civilization was then deposited on the earth in a
+powerful germ, of which nothing was any more to arrest the growth. That
+moment was when the idea of God appeared in its fulness: modern
+civilization was born of the Gospel. The knowledge of God strengthens
+justice, and the thought of the common Father develops benevolence.
+These theses are well known; let us confine ourselves to a few rapid
+illustrations.</p>
+
+<p>There exists an institution in which has been embodied the negation of
+social justice&mdash;Slavery. Slavery is at length disappearing before our
+eyes from the bosom of Christendom; and its final retreat is doing honor
+to Russia, and bathing America in blood. This is perhaps the greatest of
+the events which the annals of history will inscribe on the page of the
+nineteenth century. Now slavery was, in the past, an almost universal
+institution. The finest intellects of Greece de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>voted a portion of their
+labors to its justification. Rome, at the most brilliant period of its
+civilization, caused slaves to kill one another, in savage spectacles
+intended to delight the populace, or during sumptuous banquets for the
+amusement of wealthy debauchees!<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> How has slavery disappeared little
+by little! How has man been rediscovered beneath that living <i>thing</i> of
+which was made, one while an instrument of labor, and another while the
+sport of execrable passions? Inquire into this history. You will find
+the reason and the heart making their protests heard in antiquity, but
+without becoming efficacious. One day all is changed, and the
+foundations of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable epoch you will
+meet with a written document, the first in which is shown in its germ
+the great social fact which was about to have birth. It is not an
+emperor's decree, it is not the vote of a body politic, it is a letter a
+few lines long written by a prisoner to one of his friends. The
+substance of this letter was: "I send thee back thy slave; but in the
+name of God I beg of thee to receive him as thy brother; think of the
+common Master who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> is in heaven." This letter was addressed&mdash;"To
+Philemon;" the name of the writer was Paul. It is the first charter of
+slave emancipation. Ponder this fact, Gentlemen: contemplate the ancient
+institution of slavery shaken to its foundations, without being the
+object of any direct attack, by the breath of a new spirit. You will
+then understand how historians can tell us that the relations of states,
+belligerent rights, civil laws, political institutions, all these things
+of which the Gospel has never spoken, have been, and are being still,
+every day transformed by the slow action of the Gospel. God has
+appeared; justice is marching in His train.</p>
+
+<p>Justice is the foundation of society; but without the spirit of love,
+justice remains crippled, and never reaches its perfection. Justice
+maintains the rights of each; love seeks to realize the communication of
+advantages among all. Justice overthrows the artificial barriers raised
+between men by force and guile; love softens natural inequalities and
+causes them to turn to the general good. Need I tell you that the
+knowledge of God is a light of which the brightest ray is love to men?
+Benevolence, that feeling natural to our hearts, is strengthened,
+extended, transfig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>ured, by becoming charity;&mdash;charity, that union of
+the soul with the Heavenly Father, which descends again to earth in
+loving communion between all His children. The soul separated from God
+may be conscious of strong affections: but study well the character of a
+virtue which is nourished from purely human sources; you will see that
+it may for the most part be expressed in these terms&mdash;"To love one's
+friends heartily, and to hate one's enemies with a generous hatred; to
+esteem the honest and to despise the vicious." But that virtue which
+loves the vicious while it hates the vice, that virtue which will avenge
+itself only by overcoming evil with good, that virtue which, while it
+draws closer the bonds of private affections, makes a friend of every
+man, that virtue which we call divine, by a natural impulse of our
+heart&mdash;what is the source from which it flows? The following fact will
+sufficiently answer the question. On the fa&ccedil;ade of one the hospitals of
+the Christian world, are read these Latin words, the brief energy of
+which our language cannot render: <i>Deo in pauperibus</i>, "This edifice is
+consecrated to God in the person of the poor." Here is the secret of
+charity: it discerns the Divine image deposited in every human soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+But do not mistake here: we cannot love, with a love natural and direct,
+the rags of squalid poverty, the brands of vice, the languors and sores
+of sickness; but let God manifest Himself, and our eyes are opened. The
+beauty of souls breaks forth to our view beneath the wasting of the
+haggard frame, and from under the filth of vice. We love those immortal
+creatures fallen and degraded; a sacred desire possesses us to restore
+them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of
+rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of
+the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the
+noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is
+the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who
+desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that
+love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the
+hospital, which have at times thrown Christians into extravagances which
+our age has no reason to dread. God in the poor man, God in the sick
+man, God in the vicious man and the criminal; this, I repeat, is the
+grand secret of charity. Charity passes from the heart of men and from
+individual practice into social customs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> and institutions. Charity it is
+which, by degrees, takes from law its needless rigors, and from justice
+its useless tortures; which substitutes the prison in which it is sought
+to reform the guilty for the galley, which completes the corruption of
+the criminal; it is charity that opens public asylums for all forms of
+suffering; and that will realize, up to the limits of what is possible,
+all the hopes of philanthropy. If God ceases to be present to the mind
+and conscience of men, justice and love lose their power. Without the
+powerful action of justice and of love, society would descend again, by
+the ways of corruption, towards the struggles of barbarism. Observe,
+study well, all that is going on around us. Does our civilization appear
+to you sufficiently solid to give you the idea that it can henceforth
+dispense with the foundations on which it has reposed hitherto?</p>
+
+<p>The sentiments of justice and of benevolence which form the double basis
+of the progress of society, suppose a more general sentiment which is
+their common support&mdash;the sentiment of humanity. The idea that man has a
+value in himself, that he is, in virtue of his quality as man,
+independently of the places which he inhabits and of the position which
+he occupies in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> world, an object of justice and of love;&mdash;this idea
+includes in itself all the moral part of civilization. Social progress
+is only the recognition, ever more and more explicit, of the value of
+one soul, of the rights of one conscience. Now, the idea of humanity has
+the closest possible connection with the knowledge of God, considered as
+the Father of the human race. Ancient wisdom, superior to the worship of
+idols, had gained a glimpse of the fact that the philosopher is a
+citizen of the universe; and that famous line of Terence: "I am a man,
+and I reckon nothing human foreign to me," excited, it is said, the
+applause of the Roman spectators. But these were mere gleams,
+extinguished soon by the general current of thought. It was the pale
+dawn of the idea of humanity. Whence came the day?</p>
+
+<p>I will limit the question by defining it. The idea of humanity is the
+idea of the worth and consequently of the rights of each individual man.
+It is the idea of liberty; not of liberty interpreted by passion and
+selfishness as the inauguration of the license which violates right, but
+of liberty interpreted by reason and conscience as the limit which the
+action of each man encounters in the right of his neighbor. We are not
+speaking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> here of the equality of political rights, which is not always
+a guarantee of veritable liberty. We are speaking of a social condition
+such that man, in the exercise of his faculties, in the manifestation of
+his thoughts, in his efforts for the causes which he loves, so long as
+he does not violate the rights of others, does not meet with an
+arbitrary power to arrest him. Still farther to limit our subject, we
+shall speak of the most important manifestation of that liberty&mdash;liberty
+of conscience, of which religious liberty is the most ordinary and most
+complete manifestation. This is only one of the points of the subject,
+but it is a point which in reality supposes and includes all the rest.
+This liberty&mdash;whence does it come?</p>
+
+<p>It does not come from paganism. Paganism, with its national religions,
+could only produce fanaticism or doubt. Each people having its own
+particular religion, to exterminate the foreigner was to serve the cause
+of the gods of the country. A war-cry descended from the Olympus of each
+several nation&mdash;that Olympus which the gods quitted, in case of need, to
+take part in the quarrels of men. Did reason perceive the nothingness of
+these national divinities? Then scepticism appeared. The idea of the
+supreme<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> God being unsettled with all, and wholly obscured for the
+crowd, when men ceased to believe in the gods of the nation, they lost
+all belief whatsoever. For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at the
+decline of the ancient world. Those pantheons in which all religions
+were received, welcomed, protected, are the ever-memorable temples of
+scepticism. Now you know what voice made itself heard, when the ancient
+civilization was enfeebled by the spirit of doubt: "Henceforth there is
+neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free. Ye are all brethren, and for
+all there is one God, and one truth:" here behold the root of scepticism
+severed. And the same voice added: "This only God is the lawful Owner of
+His creatures; and when you presume to do violence to the consciences
+which belong to Him, you know not by what spirit you are animated:" here
+behold the fountain of fanaticism dried up. God is acknowledged; He is
+the Master of souls: faith founds liberty.</p>
+
+<p>The Witness to universal truth appears before Rome as represented by a
+deputy of C&aelig;sar. He is a fanatic, says the Roman; then he goes his way,
+and leaves Him to be put to death. But ere long, a dull hoarse murmur of
+the nations,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty
+empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and is speaking
+to the general conscience. Then Rome starts from her sleep; Rome; the
+politic tolerant Rome, sheds rivers of blood. Her tolerance allowed men
+to believe everything, but on condition that they believed seriously in
+nothing. Rome was directed by the sure instinct of despotism. She did
+not fear the gods of the Pantheon, because she could always place above
+them the statue of the Emperor: whereas what was now in question was,
+while leaving to C&aelig;sar the things which were C&aelig;sar's, to place a
+Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legislation above the
+legislation of the empire. Therefore the Roman city determined to give a
+death-blow to Christianity,&mdash;to the idea of universal truth, because if
+that idea gained entrance into the understanding, the cause of the
+liberty of souls was gained. So it was that indifference became
+ferocious, and that doubt led back to fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>I have told you whence liberty does not come; but whence comes it?
+Whence comes liberty? Ask any scholar of the Lyceums of France; he will
+answer you, without hesitation: Liberty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> comes from the French
+revolution!&mdash;No doubt, whispers an older comrade in his ear; but do not
+forget the philosophy of the eighteenth century which developed the
+principles which the revolution put in practice.&mdash;That is all very well,
+a Protestant will say; but let us consider the grand fact of the
+Reformation: it is from the sixteenth century that liberty has its
+date.&mdash;Well and good, adds an historian; but do you not know that the
+Germans were they who poured a generous and free blood into the
+impoverished blood of the men who had been fashioned by the slavery of
+the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed
+to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic
+causes. But this I venture to affirm,&mdash;that if any one thinks to fix
+definitely the hour when liberty was born in history, he is mistaken:
+for it has no other date than that of the human conscience, and I will
+say with M. Lamartine:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Give me the freedom which that hour had birth,</div>
+<div>With the free soul, when first in conscious worth</div>
+<div>The just man braved the stronger!<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his fellow men to acts
+which wounded his conscience,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> a man, relying upon God, felt himself
+stronger than the world. That Socrates had not studied, I fancy, in the
+school of the Encyclopedists, and was no German either, that I know of,
+who said to the judges of Athens, with death in prospect: "It is better
+to obey God than men." And when those words were repeated by the
+Apostles of the universal truth, the death of Socrates, that noble death
+which has justly gained for him the admiration of the universe, was
+reproduced in thousands and thousands of instances. Children, women,
+young girls, old men, perished in tortures to attest the rights of
+conscience; and the blood of martyrs, that seed of Christians, as a
+father of the Church called it,<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> was not less a seed of liberty.
+Liberty was not born in history; but if you wish to fix a date to its
+grandest outburst, you have it here; there is no other which can be
+compared with it.</p>
+
+<p>Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying so, that I am
+maintaining a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of
+conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church
+has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood
+rendered visible by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing,
+Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three
+remarks which I commend to your attention.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be forgotten that the Gospel first obtained extensive
+success when Roman society was in the lowest state of corruption, and
+that its representatives were but too much affected by the evils which
+it was their mission to combat.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians
+who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured
+over the new leaven a coarse paste hard to penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be forgotten, lastly, that if a cause might legitimately be
+condemned for the faults of its defenders, there are none, no, not a
+single one, which could remain erect before the tribunal which so should
+give judgment. Every cause in this world is more or less compromised by
+its representatives; but there are bad principles, which produce evil by
+their own development, and there are good principles which man abuses,
+but which by their very nature always end by raising a protest against
+the abuse. It is in the light of this indisputable truth that we are
+about to enter upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> a discussion of which you will appreciate the full
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>Sceptical writers affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening
+of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they
+recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of
+promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which
+would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in
+the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall have peace.
+Prisons have been built and the stake has been set up in the name of
+God: let us get rid of God, and we shall have toleration. Observe well
+the bearing of this mode of argument. Let us get rid of fire, and we
+shall have no more conflagrations; let us get rid of water, and no more
+people will be drowned. No doubt,&mdash;but humanity will perish of drought
+and of cold.</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine this subject seriously: it is well worth our while. If
+toleration proceeds from the enfeebling of religious belief, we ought
+among various nations to meet with toleration in an inverse proportion
+to the degree of their faith. This is a question then of history. Let us
+study facts. Recollecting first of all that ancient Rome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> did not draw
+forth a germ of liberty from its scepticism, let us throw a glance over
+existing communities.</p>
+
+<p>Sweden is far behind England in regard to liberty of conscience. Is it
+that religious convictions are weaker in England than in Sweden? Has the
+religious liberty which Great Britain practises sprung from
+indifference? Is it not rather that that land produces an energetic
+race, and that it has been so often drenched with the blood of the
+followers of different forms of worship, that that blood cried at length
+to heaven, and that the conscience of the people heard it? There is more
+religious liberty in France than in Spain. Is it the case that the true
+cause of the intolerance of the Spanish people is a more lively and more
+general faith than that of the French? That is not so certain.</p>
+
+<p>Switzerland is one of the countries in which is enjoyed the greatest
+liberty of opinion. Is Switzerland a land of indifference? Was not the
+comparative firmness of its citizens' convictions remarked during the
+conflicts of the last century? Do not the United States bear in large
+characters upon their banner this inscription: <span class="smcap">liberty of conscience</span>?
+America is not distinguished as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> country without religion; on the
+contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the
+multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects. Was it a
+sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect
+religious convictions? Assuredly not! William Penn was shut up in the
+Tower of London for the crime of free thought. Set free from prison, he
+crossed the ocean. While intolerance was reigning still on both shores
+of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all
+proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful. In vain I pass from
+old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that
+liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity
+of nations. I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most
+liberty where there is most real faith.</p>
+
+<p>Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the
+condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers
+causes. Let us simplify the question. Is it not, it will be said, the
+literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and
+founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my
+supposed questioner to go on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> If he is a Frenchman, he will name
+Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics.
+They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact,
+and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of
+noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that
+every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of
+which it is deprived. But it is one thing to claim for one's-self a
+liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is
+another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all. There was, as I
+am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which
+led Voltaire to consecrate to noble causes a pen so often sold to evil.
+Still it is impossible not to suspect that if that apostle of toleration
+had had a principality under his own sway, the fact of thinking
+differently from the master would very soon have figured among the
+number of delinquencies.</p>
+
+<p>The patriarch of Ferney wrote in favor of toleration; some friends of
+religious indifference have pleaded the cause of liberty of conscience:
+the fact is certain. But other writers, animated by a living faith, have
+also demanded liberty for all: the fact is not less certain. Some years
+ago, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> nearly the same epoch, the P&egrave;re Lacordaire and our own
+Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the
+attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of
+his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the
+vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays
+not God."<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on
+the borders of our lake, have gained entrance far and near into many
+hearts. I should like to take such and such a Parisian journalist, bring
+him into our midst, and get him to acquaint himself thoroughly with the
+results of our experience; I should like to conduct him to the cemetery
+of Clarens, place him by the tomb of Vinet, and tell him what that man
+was.&mdash;If, as he returned to his home, my journalist did not leave behind
+him at the French frontier, as contraband merchandise, all that he would
+have seen and learnt in our country, he would perhaps understand that
+the surest road by which to arrive at respect for the consciences of
+others is not indifference, but firmness of faith, in humility of heart,
+and largeness of thought. All the writers who have devoted their pen to
+the defence of the rights<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> of the human soul have not therefore been
+sceptics. Without continuing this discussion of proper names, let us
+settle what is here the true place of writers. Before there are men who
+demand liberty and digest the theory of it, there must be other men who
+take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated
+with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the
+sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the
+martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary
+writer, "is free men, rather than liberators of humanity."<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>In fact, liberty comes to us above all from those who have suffered for
+it. Its living springs are in the spirit of faith, and not, as they
+teach us, in the spirit of indifference. It is easy to understand, that
+where no one believes, the liberty to believe would not be claimed by
+any one.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now endeavor to penetrate below facts, in order to bring back the
+discussion to sure principles. Let us ask what, in regard to liberty of
+conscience, are the natural consequences of faith, and the natural
+consequences of scepticism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Faith does appear, at first sight, a source of intolerance. The man who
+believes, reckons himself in possession of the right in regard to truth,
+and to God; he has nothing to respect in error. Thus it is that belief
+naturally engenders persecution. This reasoning is specious, all the
+more as it is supported by numerous and terrible examples; but let us
+look at things more closely. Place yourselves face to face with any one
+of your convictions, no matter which; I hope there is no one of you so
+unfortunate as not to have any. Suppose that it were desired to impose
+upon you by force even the conviction which you have. Suppose that an
+officer of police came to say to you, pronouncing at the same time the
+words which best expressed your own thoughts: "you are commanded so to
+believe." What would happen? If you had never had a doubt of your faith,
+you would be tempted to doubt it, the moment any human power presumed to
+impose it upon you. The feeling of oppression would produce in your
+conscience a strong inclination to revolt. Let us analyze this feeling.
+You feel that it is words, not convictions, which are imposed by force;
+you feel that declarations extorted by fear from lying lips are an
+outrage to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> truth. You feel, in a word, that your belief is the right of
+God over you, and not the right of your neighbor. Men respect God's
+right over the souls of their fellow-men, in proportion as they are
+intelligent in their own faith. The fanaticism which would impose words
+by force is not an ardent but a blind faith. In order to bring it back
+into the paths of liberty, it is enough to restore to it its sight.</p>
+
+<p>The establishment of the Christian religion furnishes a great example in
+support of our thesis. The Christians, when persecuted by the empire,
+had never allowed themselves to reply to the violence of power by the
+violence of rebellion. There came, however, and soon enough, a time when
+they were sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, and had withal the
+consciousness of their strength; but they had no will to conquer the
+world, except by the arms of martyrdom, and heroism, and obedience. This
+was not the case during a few years only, it is the history of three
+centuries, an ever-memorable page of human annals, in which all ages
+will be able to learn what are the true weapons of truth. Christendom,
+too often forgetful of its origin, has in later times allowed the fury
+of persecution to cloak itself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> under a pretended regard for sacred
+interests; but the remedy has proceeded from the very evil. The
+Christian conscience has protested, in the name of the Gospel, against
+the crimes of which the Gospel was the pretext, and the passions of men
+the cause. "We must bewail the misery and error of our time," already
+St. Hilary was exclaiming, in the fourth century. "Men are thinking that
+God has need of the protection of men.... The Church is uttering threats
+of banishment and imprisonment, and desiring to compel belief by
+force,&mdash;the Church, which itself acquired strength in exile and in
+prisons!"</p>
+
+<p>True faith, then, possesses a principle by which it protests against
+abuses which it is sought to cloak under its name, and this protest
+comes at last to make itself heard. Faith suppressed, the passions will
+remain, for in order to be a saint, it is not enough to be a sceptic.
+The passions will look for other pretexts. Will not the spirit of doubt
+offer them such pretexts?</p>
+
+<p>It seems at first sight that doubt must promote toleration, since it
+does not allow any importance to be attached to opinions. This is a
+specious conclusion, similar to that which placed in belief the source
+of intolerant passions. Let us once more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> reflect a little. The first
+effect of doubt is certainly to dispose the mind to leave a free course
+to all opinions; but disdain is not the way to respect, and only respect
+can give solid bases to the spirit of liberty. Believers are in the eyes
+of the sceptic weak-minded persons, whom he treats at first with a
+gentle and patronizing compassion. But these weak minds grow obstinate;
+the sceptic perceives that they do not bend before his superiority, and
+dare perhaps to consider themselves as his equals. Then irritation
+arises, and, beneath the velvet paw, one feels the piercing of the claw.
+The sceptic has in fact a dogma; he has but one, but one he has after
+all&mdash;the negation of truth. The faith of others is a protest against
+that single dogma on which he has concentrated all the powers of his
+conviction. He is passionately in earnest for this negation; he feels
+himself the representative of an idea, of which he must secure the
+triumph. Now come such surmisings as these: "Here are men who think
+themselves the depositaries of truth! These pretended believers&mdash;may
+they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power;
+let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a
+cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> innocent weakness, takes
+then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the
+temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to
+get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the
+conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we
+should have in the State! If we proclaimed the true modern dogma,
+namely, that there is no dogma; if silencing, in short, fanatics who are
+behind their age, we decreed that every belief is a crime and every
+manifestation of faith a revolt, what quiet in society!" The incline is
+slippery, and what shall hold back the sceptic who is descending it?</p>
+
+<p>Faith carries with it the remedy for fanaticism, but where shall be
+found the remedy for the fanaticism of doubt? In the claims of God? God
+is but a word, or a worthless hypothesis. In respect for the convictions
+of others? All conviction is but weakness and folly. All this, be well
+assured, gives much matter for reflection. When I hear some men who call
+themselves liberal, tracing the ideal of the society which they desire,
+the bare imagination of their triumph frightens me, for I can understand
+that that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> society would enjoy the liberty of the Roman empire, and the
+toleration of the C&aelig;sars.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the consequences of scepticism for the leaders of a people.
+What will those consequences be for the people themselves? The spirit of
+indifference paralyzes the sources of generous sentiments, and ends in
+the same results as the spirit of cowardice. And do you not know the
+part which cowardice has played in history? If I may venture to call up
+here the most mournful recollections of modern times, do you not know
+that during the Reign of Terror, two or three hundred scoundrels
+instituted public massacres in the Capital of France, in the midst of a
+population shuddering with fright, but who let things go? Now the
+characteristic of indifference is the letting things go. If fanaticism
+has something to do with persecution, indifference has a great deal to
+do with it. The crimes which minds paralyzed by doubt allow to be
+perpetrated have besides a sadder character than those which are
+perpetrated by passions, which, wild and erring though they be, have a
+certain nobleness in their origin. If I must be bound to the stake, I
+had rather burn with the blind assent of a fanatical crowd, than in the
+presence of an indifferent populace who came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> to look on. For just as
+sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they find all spectacles
+equally instructive and curious.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have felt it necessary to insist on these considerations. Direct
+attacks upon religious truth are perhaps less dangerous than the efforts
+by which modern infidelity endeavors to estrange us from God, by
+persuading us that doubt is the guarantee of liberty, and that belief
+rivets the chains of bondage. Many consciences are disturbed by these
+affirmations. It concerns us therefore to know that God is the great
+Liberator of souls, and that forgetfulness of God is the road to
+slavery. The faith which seeks to propagate itself by force inflicts
+upon itself the harshest of contradictions. The spirit of doubt, in
+order to become the spirit of violence, has only to transform itself
+according to the laws of its proper nature.</p>
+
+<p>And now to sum up. One of the noblest spec<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>tacles that earth can show,
+is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which
+each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his
+brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable
+asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by
+sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses
+itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt every firm and noble
+conviction!</p>
+
+<p>To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up its source the stream of the
+veritable progress of modern society; it is to attack the foundations of
+liberty, justice, and love. The material conquests of civilization would
+serve thenceforward only to hasten the decomposition of the social body.
+The pure idea of God is the true cause of the great progress of the
+modern era; religion, in its generality, is, as Plutarch has told us,
+the necessary condition to the very existence of society. This is what
+remains for us to prove.</p>
+
+<p>"How sacred is the society of citizens," said Cicero, "when the immortal
+gods are interposed between them as judges and as witnesses."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> Let us
+raise still higher this lofty thought, and say:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> "How sacred is human
+society, when, beneath the eye of the common Father, the inequalities of
+life are accepted with patience and softened by love; when the poor and
+the rich, as they meet together, remember that the Lord is the Maker of
+them both; when a hope of immortality alleviates present evils, and when
+the consciousness of a common dignity reduces to their true value the
+passing differences of life!" Take away from human society God as
+mediator, and the hopes founded in God as a source of consolation, and
+what would you have remaining? The struggle of the poor against the
+rich, the envy of the ignorant directed against the man who has
+knowledge, the dullard's low jealousy of superior intelligence, hatred
+of all superiority, and, by an almost inevitable reaction, the obstinate
+defence of all abuses,&mdash;in one word, war&mdash;war admitting neither of
+remedy nor truce. Such is the most apparent danger which now threatens
+society.</p>
+
+<p>When I consider these facts with attention, I am astonished every day
+that society subsists at all, that the burning lava of unruly passions
+does not oftener make large fissures in the social soil, and overflow in
+devastating torrents, bearing away at once palace and cottage, field and
+work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>shop. This standing danger is drawing anxious attention, and we
+hear the old adage repeated: "There must be a religion for the people."
+There are men who wish to give the people a religion which they
+themselves do not possess, acting like a man who, at once poor and
+ostentatious, should give alms with counterfeit money. And what result
+do they attain? We must have a religion for the people, say the
+politicians, that they may secure the ends they have in view, and
+conduct at their own pleasure the herds at their disposal. We must have
+a religion for the people, say the rich, in order to keep peaceably
+their property and their incomes. We must have a religion for the
+people, say the <i>savants</i>, in order to remain quiet in their studies, or
+in their academic chairs. What are they doing&mdash;these men without God,
+who wish to preserve a faith for the use of the people? These
+<i>savants</i>,&mdash;they say, and print it, that religion is an error necessary
+for the multitudes who are incapable of rising to philosophy. Where is
+it that they say it, and print it? Is it in drawing-rooms with closed
+doors? Is it within the walls of Universities, or in scientific
+publications which are out of the reach of the masses? No. They say it
+in polit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>ical journals, in reviews read by all the world; they print it
+at full in books which are sold by thousands of copies. Their words are
+spreading like a deleterious miasma through all classes of society.
+Thoughtless men! (I am unwilling to suppose a cool calculation on their
+part of money or of fame which should oblige me to say&mdash;heartless men),
+thoughtless men! they do not see the inevitable consequences of their
+own proceeding. The people hear and understand. The intellectual
+barriers between the different classes of society are gradually becoming
+lower: this is one of the clearest of the ways of Providence in our
+time. Do you believe that the people will long consent to hear it said
+that they only live on errors, but that those errors are necessary for
+them? Do you not see that they are about to rise, and answer, in the
+sentiment of their own dignity, that they will no longer be deceived,
+and that they intend to deliver themselves also from superstition? Then,
+all restraining barriers removed, passions will have free course; and
+believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of
+study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of
+this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to
+destroy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are
+Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but
+whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation
+of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia,
+in January, 1757, "will render an eternal service to the human race, by
+destroying that infamous superstition, I do not say amongst the rabble,
+which is not worthy to be enlightened, and to which all yokes are
+suitable, but amongst honest people." A religion was necessary for the
+people; but Voltaire and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the
+French marquises, and the ladies who received their homage, could do
+without it.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire died before eating of the fruit of his works; and Alfred de
+Musset could only address to him his vengeful apostrophe at his tomb:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Sleep'st thou content, and does thy hideous smile</div>
+<div>Still flit, Voltaire, above thy fleshless bones?<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Voltaire was dead; but many of his friends and disciples were able to
+meditate, in the prisons of the Terror and as they mounted the steps of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> scaffold, on the nature of the terrible game which they had
+played&mdash;and lost.</p>
+
+<p>So it fares with men of letters who have no God, but who would have a
+religion for the people. Other men there are who would have a religion
+for the people, being themselves the while without restraint, because
+they are without religious convictions. They abandon themselves to the
+ardent pursuit of riches, excitements, worldly pleasures. These are they
+who have made a fortune by disgraceful means, perhaps the public sale of
+their consciences, and who by their luxurious extravagance overwhelm the
+honest and economical working-man. These are the courtesans who parade
+in broad daylight the splendid rewards of their own infamy. Let not such
+deceive themselves! The people see these things; they form their
+judgment of them, and if they give way to the bad instincts which are in
+us all, where God is not in the heart to restrain them, to their hatred
+is added contempt. If they are forcibly kept back from realizing their
+cherished hopes, they adjourn them, but without renouncing them.</p>
+
+<p>Put away all belief in God, and you will see the action and reaction of
+human passions forming, as it were, a mass of opposite electricities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+and preparing the thunder-peal and the furies of the tempest. Then
+appear those disorganized societies which are terrified at their own
+dissolution, until a strong man comes, and, taking advantage of this
+very terror, takes and chastises these societies, as one chastises an
+unruly child. It is a story at once old and new, because, in proportion
+as God withdraws from human society, in that same proportion the power
+of the sword replaces the empire of the conscience. There must be a
+religion for the people! Yes, Sirs, but for that people, wide as
+humanity, which includes us all.</p>
+
+<p>If the existence of God is denied, man falls into despair, and society
+into dissolution. What then is my inference? That atheism is false. Such
+a mode of arguing produces an outcry. "A matter of sentiment!" men
+exclaim. "You would build up a doctrine according to your own fancy! You
+do not discuss the question calmly, but appeal to interests and
+prejudices: you quit the domain of science, which takes cognizance only
+of facts and reasoning." Such expressions are common enough to make it
+worth while to study their value. Of course, science must not be an
+instrument of our caprice. We are bound to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> search for truth; and we are
+unfaithful to our obligations if we try to establish doctrines which
+serve our passions, or favor our interests, or flatter our tastes and
+our prejudices. But the conscience, the heart, the conditions of the
+existence of human society, are neither prejudices nor personal
+interests; they are eternal and living realities. We speak of the
+conscience, of the heart, of society, and they answer us: "We do not
+believe that there are true sciences in that domain; we only wish for
+facts." Occasionally we hear naturalists speak in this way. We only wish
+for facts! Then our thoughts, our feelings, our conscience are not
+facts! The man who will give the closest observation to the steps of a
+fly, or to a caterpillar's method of crawling, has not a moment's
+attention to give to the impulses of the heart, to the rules of duty, to
+the struggles of the will; and when addressed on the subject of these
+realities of the soul, the most certain of all realities, he will reply:
+"That is no business of mine, I want nothing but facts." Let us pass
+from this aberration, and listen for a moment to other objectors.</p>
+
+<p>We do not deny, it is often said, the reality of our feelings. Man
+desires happiness, and seeks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> it in religious belief; but this is an
+order of things which science cannot take account of. Science has only
+truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason.
+If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience,
+no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results.
+"There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning,
+than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may
+do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is
+certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it
+entails dangerous consequences."<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> So wrote the patriarch of modern
+sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; it is
+repeated to us, without end, in the columns of the leading journals of
+France, and in the pages of the <i>Revue des deux Mondes</i>. The adversaries
+of spiritual beliefs have changed their tactics. In the last century,
+they replied to minds alarmed for the consequences of their work: "Truth
+can never do harm."&mdash;"Truth can never do harm," retorted J.J. Rousseau:
+"I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> believe it as you do, and this it is that proves to me that your
+doctrines are not truth." The argument is conclusive. So the adversary
+has taken up another position; and he says at this day:&mdash;"Our doctrines
+do perhaps pain the heart, and wound the conscience, but this is no
+reason why they should be false: moral goodness, utility, happiness, are
+not signs by which we may know what is true."</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy, Gentlemen, has always assumed to be the universal
+explanation of things, and you will agree that it is on her part a
+humiliating avowal, that she is enclosed, namely, in a circle of pure
+reason, and leaves out of view, as being unable to give any account of
+them, the great realities which are called moral goodness and happiness.
+One might ask what are the bases of that science which disavows, without
+emotion, the most active powers of human nature. One might ask whether
+those who so speak, understand well the meaning of their own words; and
+inquire also what is the method which they employ, and the result at
+which they aim. One might ask whether these philosophers are not like
+astronomers who should say: "Here are our calculations. It matters
+nothing to us whether the stars in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> observed course do or do not
+agree with them. Science is sovereign; it is amenable only to its own
+laws, and visible realities cannot be objections in the way of its
+calculations." Let us leave these preliminary remarks, and let us come
+to the core of the controversy.</p>
+
+<p>They set the reason on one side, the conscience and heart upon the
+other, as an anatomist separates the organic portions of a corpse, and
+they say: Truth belongs only to the reason; the conscience and the heart
+have no admission into science. Listen to the following express
+declaration of the weightiest, perhaps, of French contemporary
+philosophers: "The God of the pure reason is the only true God; the God
+of the imagination, the God of the feelings, the God of the conscience,
+are only idols!"<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> It is impossible to accept this arbitrary division
+of the divine attributes. There is but one and the same God, the
+Substance of truth, the inexhaustible Source of beauty, the supreme Law
+of the wills created to accomplish the designs of His mercy. The
+conscience, the heart, the reason rise equally towards Him, following
+the triple ray which descends from His eternity upon our transitory
+existence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> We cannot therefore seriously admit that God of the pure
+reason, separated from the God of the conscience and of the heart. Still
+let us endeavor to make this concession, for argument's sake, to our
+philosopher. Let us suppose that the reason has a God to itself, a God
+for the metaphysicians who is not the God of the vulgar. Before we
+immolate upon His altar the conscience and the heart, it is worth our
+while to examine whether the statue of the God of the reason rests upon
+a solid pedestal. Here are the theses which are proposed to us: "It is
+impossible for our feelings to supply any light for science. Truth may
+be gloomy, and despair may gain its cause. Virtue may be wrong, and
+immorality may be the true. Reason alone judges of that which is." I
+answer: Human nature has always eagerly followed after happiness. Human
+nature has always acknowledged, even while violating it, a rule of duty.
+The heart is not an accident, the conscience is not a prejudice: they
+are, and by the same right as the reason, constituent elements of our
+spiritual existence. If there exist an irreconcilable antagonism between
+science and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and universal
+aspirations, is the victim of an illusion, if the con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>science in its
+clearest admonitions is only a teacher of error, what is our position?
+In what I am now saying, Gentlemen, I am not appealing to your feelings;
+the business is to follow, with calm attention, a piece of exact
+reasoning. If the heart deceives us, if the voice of duty leads us
+astray, the disorder is at the very core of our being; our nature is ill
+constructed. If our nature is ill constructed, what warrants to us our
+reason? Nothing. What assures us that our axioms are good, and that our
+reasonings have any value? Nothing. The life of the soul cannot be
+arbitrarily cloven in twain; it must be held for good in all its
+constituent elements, or enveloped wholly and entirely in the shades of
+doubt. If the heart and conscience deceive us, then reason may lead us
+astray, and the very idea of truth disappears. God is the light of the
+spiritual world. We prove His existence by showing that without Him all
+returns to darkness. This demonstration is as good as another.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Christian States have given the force of law to
+institutions, such, for instance, as monogamy, which date their origin
+from the Gospel records. Here we have the normal development of
+civilization: religious faith enlightens the general conscience, and
+reveals to it the true conditions of social progress. In this order of
+things, it is not a question of <i>beliefs</i>, but of <i>acts</i> imposed in the
+name of the interests of society. The state may take account of the
+religious beliefs of its subjects, and enter into such relations as may
+seem to it convenient with the ecclesiastical authorities: this is the
+basis of the system of concordats, a system which has nothing in it
+contrary to first principles, so long as liberty is maintained. But the
+establishment of <i>national</i> religions, decreed by the temporal power and
+varying in different states, manifestly supposes a foundation of
+scepticism. For the idea of truth, one and universal in itself, is
+substituted the idea of decisions obligatory for those only who are
+under the jurisdiction of a definite political body. If the State,
+without pretending to decree dogma, receives it from the hands of the
+Church, and imposes it upon its subjects, it seems at first that the
+temporal power has placed itself at the service of the Church, but that
+the idea of truth is preserved. But when the question is studied more
+closely, it is seen that this is not the case, and that the state usurps
+in fact, in this combination, the attributes of the spiritual power. In
+fact, before protecting <i>the true religion</i>, it is necessary to
+ascertain which it is; and in order to ascertain the true religion, the
+political power must constitute itself judge of religious truth. So we
+come back, by a <i>d&eacute;tour</i>, to the conception of national religions. The
+Emperor of Russia and the Emperor of Austria will inquire respectively
+which is the only true religion, to the exclusive maintenance of which
+they are to consecrate their temporal power. To the same question they
+will give two different replies; and each nation will have its own form
+of worship, just as each nation has its own ruler.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Etudes orientales</i>, 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Unit&eacute; morale des peuples modernes</i>,&mdash;a lecture delivered
+at Lyons, 10 April, 1839. This lecture is inserted after the <i>G&eacute;nie des
+Religions</i> in the complete works of the author.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Franck, <i>Philosophie du droit eccl&eacute;siastique</i>, pages 117
+and 118.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Schmidt, <i>Essai historique sur la Soci&eacute;t&eacute; civile dans le
+monde romain</i>. Bk. 1. ch. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>La libert&eacute; que j'aime est n&eacute;e avec notre &acirc;me</div>
+<div>Le jour o&ugrave; le plus juste a brav&eacute; le plus fort.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Tertullian.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Le P&egrave;re Lacordaire</i>, by the Comte de Montalembert, p.
+25.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>De l'autre rive</i>, by Iscander (in Russian). Iscander is
+the pseudonyme of M. Herzen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> "The man of thought knows that the world only belongs to
+him as a subject of study, and, even if he could reform it, perhaps he
+would find it so curious as it is that he would not have the courage to
+do so."&mdash;Ernest Renan, preface to <i>Etudes d'histoire religieuse</i>, 1857.
+The author has manifested better sentiments in 1859, in the preface to
+his <i>Essais de morale et de critique.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>De Legibus</i>, ii. 7.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire</div>
+<div>Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os d&eacute;charn&eacute;s?</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having
+access to the original, I re-translate the French translation.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tr</span>.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Vacherot, <i>La metaphysique et la science</i>. Preface, p.
+xxix.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_III" id="LECTURE_III"></a>LECTURE III.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM.</i></h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 24th Nov. 1863.&mdash;At Lausanne, 18th Jan. 1864.)</p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>The subject of the present Lecture will be&mdash;The revival of Atheism. And
+I do not employ the word 'atheism'&mdash;a term which has been so greatly
+abused&mdash;without mature reflection. When Socrates opposed the idea of the
+holy God to the impure idols of paganism; when he dethroned Jupiter and
+his train in order to celebrate "the supreme God, who made and who
+guides the world, who maintains the works of creation in the flower of
+youth, and in a vigor always new,"<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> they accused Socrates of being an
+atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence
+of God more certain than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as
+an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to
+worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world,
+the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down
+to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of
+the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of
+persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In
+an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best
+efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God,
+because they would not have been understood had they attempted to
+say&mdash;"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing
+them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines,
+apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of
+history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where
+liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names,
+for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In
+affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites
+of fame, are shaking the foundations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> of all religion, one exposes no
+one to severities which have disappeared from our manners, one only
+exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But
+candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of
+thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and,
+while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.</p>
+
+<p>Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted
+that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny
+God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every
+soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a
+secret hope, or by a secret dread? This is true, as I think; but we are
+speaking here of doctrines and not of men. It is true again that the
+negation of the Creator allows of the existence, in certain
+philosophies, of generous ideas and elevated conceptions. Such men,
+while they put God out of existence, desire to keep the true, the
+beautiful, the good; they hope to preserve the rays, while they
+extinguish the luminous centre from which they proceed. Such systems
+always tend to produce the deadly fruits pointed out in my last lecture;
+but men devoted to the severe labors of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> intellect often escape, by
+a noble inconsistency, the natural results of their theories. Therefore,
+in the inquiry on which we are about to enter, the term 'atheism'
+implies, with regard to persons, neither reproach nor contempt. It
+simply indicates a doctrine, the doctrine which denies God. This denial
+takes place in two ways: It is affirmed that nature, that is to say
+matter, force devoid of intelligence and of will, is the sole origin of
+things; or, the reality is acknowledged of those marks which raise mind
+above nature, but it is affirmed that humanity is the highest point of
+the universe, and that above it there is nothing. Such are the two forms
+of atheism.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you expect here the explanation of a doctrine which is often
+described as holding a sort of middle place between the negation and the
+affirmation of God, namely, pantheism. Pantheism, in the true sense of
+that word, is a system according to which God is all, and the universe
+nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek,
+Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime
+infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses
+in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is
+mani<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>fold and transitory a disdain which passes into negation. In the
+domain of experience, all is limited, temporary, imperfect; and reason
+seeks the perfect, the eternal, the infinite. The doctrine of creation
+alone explains how the universe subsists in presence of its first cause.
+In ignorance of this doctrine, some bold thinkers have cut the knot
+which they could not untie. They have declared that reason alone is
+right, and that experience is wrong: the world does not exist, it is but
+an illusion of the mind. Whence proceeds this illusion? If perfection
+alone exists, how comes that imperfect mind to exist which deceives
+itself in believing in the reality of the world? To this question the
+system has no answer. Such is true pantheism; but it is not to dangers
+so noble that most minds run the risk of succumbing. What is commonly
+understood by pantheism is the deification of the universe. The idea of
+God is not directly denied, but it undergoes a transformation which
+destroys it. God is no longer the eternal and Almighty Spirit, the
+Creator; but the unconscious principle, the substance of things, the
+whole. The universe alone exists; above it there is nothing; but the
+universe is infinite, eternal, divine. The higher wants of the reason,
+mingling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> with the data derived from experience, form an imposing and
+confused image, which, while it beguiles the imagination, perverts the
+understanding, deceives the heart, and places the conscience in peril.
+In a philosophical point of view, it is a contradiction of thought,
+which seeks the Infinite Being, and, being unable to discover Him, gives
+the character of infinity to realities bounded by experience. In a
+religious point of view, it is an aberration of the heart, which
+preserves the sentiment of adoration, but perverts it by dispersing it
+over the universe. "Pantheism," says M. Jules Simon, "is only the
+learned form of atheism; the universe deified is a universe without
+God."<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> From the moment that the reason endeavors to see distinctly,
+pantheism vanishes like a deceitful glare. Atheism disengages itself
+from the cloak which was concealing its true nature, and the mind
+remains in presence of nature only, or of humanity only. We will proceed
+to take a rapid glance at some few of the countries of Europe, in order
+to discover and point out in them the traces of this melancholy
+doctrine. Let us begin with France.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1844, just twenty years ago, some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> French writers,
+representing the philosophy, in some measure official, of the time,
+united to publish a <i>Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques</i>. M.
+Franck, the director of this useful and laborious enterprise, said in
+the preface to the work: "Atheism has well nigh completely disappeared
+from philosophy; the progress of a sound psychology will render its
+return for ever impossible." In speaking thus, he expressed the thoughts
+and hopes of the school of which he remains one of the most estimable
+representatives. A generous impulse was animating a group of intelligent
+and learned young men. Their hope was to translate Christianity into a
+purely rational doctrine, to purify religious notions without destroying
+them, and, while endowing humanity with a vigorous scientific culture,
+to leave to it its lofty hopes. The object in view was to establish a
+philosophy founded upon a serious faith in God; and to this philosophy
+was promised the progressive and pacific conquest of the human race.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
+Twenty years have passed, and things bear quite another aspect. To
+language expressive of security have succeeded the accents of anxiety
+and words of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> alarm. The cause which was proclaimed victorious is
+defended at this day like a besieged city. You will remark
+however,&mdash;that I may not leave you beyond measure discouraged by the
+facts of which I have to tell you,&mdash;you will remark, I say, that it is
+the efforts attempted in the cause of good which have helped to set me
+on the track of evil; it has often been the defence which has fixed my
+attention upon the attack.</p>
+
+<p>The materialism of the last century seems to have maintained a strong
+hold upon one part of the Paris school of medicine. We do find in France
+a good many physicians who, like Boerhave, render homage to religion,
+and a good many physiologists who, like the great Haller, are ready to
+defend beliefs of the spiritual order;<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> but, among men specially
+devoted to the study of matter, many succumb to the temptation of
+refusing to recognize anything as real which does not come under the
+experience of the senses. This however is not one of the points which
+offer themselves most strikingly for our examination. The atheistic
+manifestations of the socialist schools have more novelty, and perhaps
+more importance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Man is naturally a social being. Good and evil have their primitive seat
+in the heart of individuals, but good and evil are transferred into
+institutions of which the influence is morally beneficial or pernicious.
+If socialism consists in recognizing the importance of social
+institutions, in cherishing ideas of progress and hopes of reform, I
+trust that we are all socialists. Do we desire progress by the ever
+wider diffusion of justice and love? From the moment that, across the
+conscience whereon divine rays are falling, we have descried the eternal
+centre of light, we understand that God is the most implacable enemy of
+abuses. How is it then that atheism sometimes manifests itself in
+attempts at social reform? We may explain it, without so much as
+pointing out the influence, but too real, of the faults committed by the
+representatives of religion. Faith is a principle of action; it is, as
+history testifies, the grand source of the progress of human society;
+but faith is also a principle of patience. The brow of every believer is
+more or less illumined by the rays of His peace who is patient because
+He is eternal. Eager to effect good to the utmost extent of his ability,
+he accomplishes his work with that calm activity to which are reserved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+durable victories. In the impossible (for if the word impossible is not
+French, it is human) the believer recognizes one of the manifestations
+of the supreme Will, and immortal hope enables him to support the evils
+which he does not succeed in destroying. But this is not enough for
+impatient reformers. Ignorant of the profound sources of evil, they
+think that institutions can do everything, and that a change of laws
+would suffice to reform men's hearts; they believe that the organization
+of society alone hinders the realization of good and of happiness. The
+resignation of believers appears to them a stupid lethargy, and in their
+patient expectation of a judgment to come they see only an obstacle to
+the immediate triumph of justice on the earth. What if the nations were
+persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present
+life, so that all that is to be done is to make to ourselves a paradise
+as soon as may be here below! If they were persuaded that all appeal to
+the Judge in heaven is a chimerical hope, with what ardor would they
+throw themselves into schemes of revolution! Thus it is that certain
+political innovators are led to seek in the negation of God one of their
+means of action.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Two views, therefore, essentially diverse, govern the labors of the
+renovators of society. The one class desire to realize, in an ever
+larger measure, justice and love; religious convictions are the
+strongest support of their work. The other class would uproot from men's
+minds every principle of faith, in order the more readily to obtain the
+realization of their theories. These two classes of men seem at times to
+be fighting all together in the <i>m&ecirc;l&eacute;e</i> of opinions. They meet, as, in
+the doubtful glimmer of the dawn, might meet together laborious workmen
+who are anticipating the daylight, and evil-doers who are fleeing from
+the sun.</p>
+
+<p>In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools,
+it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into
+the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained
+and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some
+prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough
+for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of
+Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas. It
+discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a
+materialistic enthusiasm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> for corporeal indulgences. Disregarding the
+sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn
+our attention elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and
+elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred
+pages destined to maintain the thesis that God does not exist.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> Man
+conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection
+realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception
+of a real and perfect being: such is the usual process of metaphysical
+reasoning. For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one
+another; this is one of his fundamental theses. This thesis does but
+interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to
+raise ourselves higher. The world with which we are acquainted is
+imperfect; therefore&mdash;say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes&mdash;the
+perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to
+the world. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect,
+therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says
+M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the
+absolute rule of truth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> To say therefore of God that He is perfect, is
+to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never
+realized. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd
+and violent. If God is perfect, He does not exist. If God exists, He is
+not perfect. The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us
+to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His
+perfection. The author of this theory renders a worship to that ideal
+which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the
+world is gravitating by the law of progress. This worship is of too
+abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular
+by taking another shape, and it does so in this way: We conceive of that
+perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our
+thought. Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards
+perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human
+mind. The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is
+it that we must adore. We are here out of the region of pure
+abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.</p>
+
+<p>The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with
+chimeras, was founded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte. M.
+Littr&eacute; is at present one of its principal representatives. This writer,
+says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring "to set
+humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions,
+from deceitful idols and powers."<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> Let us say the same thing in
+simpler terms: M. Littr&eacute; professes the doctrines of a school which
+ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history. To ascertain
+phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such,
+say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge. As for the
+origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual
+fancy. "Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as
+he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in
+doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future."<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>"In spite of some appearances to the contrary," says M. Littr&eacute;, "the
+positive philosophy does not accept atheism."<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Why? Because atheism
+pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> that after a
+fashion is still theology. Minds "veritably emancipated" profess to know
+nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience. They do
+not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts. The attempt is a
+bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emancipating themselves
+from the laws of reason. The very writer whom I have just quoted is
+himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of
+a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very
+treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the
+"<i>eternal</i> motive powers of a <i>boundless</i> universe."<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> Boundless!
+eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the instincts of the reason
+coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing! Adoration
+is withdrawn from God, and it is given to the universe at large. What is
+it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct
+object of worship? Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in
+a work reviewed by Auguste Comte: "Man," he says, "has always adored
+humanity." Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and
+the brief summary of their history. This humanity-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>god has been long
+adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its worshippers;
+but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his
+worship and give it its true name.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p>The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard
+to whatever is not included in the domain of experience. But its foot
+slips, and it falls into the negation of God, from which it rises again
+by means of a humanitarian atheism. All these marks are met with again
+in the works of the critical school.</p>
+
+<p>The critics group themselves about M. Renan. The praises which they
+lavished a while ago on a bad book by that author seem at least to allow
+us to point him out as their chief. They derive their name from studies
+in history and arch&aelig;ology, with which we here have nothing to do. They
+are regarded as forming a philosophical and religious school, and it is
+in that connection that they claim our attention. Their influence is
+incon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>testable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is
+nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school
+engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings
+the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and
+to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and
+to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow
+particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and of
+philosophy; but this interest is purely historical. Nothing is more
+curious than the successive forms of human beliefs; but the period of
+beliefs is over. Religious faith no longer subsists except in minds
+which are behind the age; and philosophy, upheld in a final swoon by
+Hegel and Hamilton, has just yielded its last breath in the arms of M.
+Cousin: so M. Renan informs us.<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> To choose a side between the
+defenders of the idea of God and its opponents; to choose between Plato
+and Epicurus, between Origen and Celsus, between Descartes and Hobbes,
+between Leibnitz and Spinoza, would be to make one's self the Don
+Quixote of thought. An honest man may find amusement in reading the
+Amadis of Gaul; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> Knight of <i>la Manche</i> went mad through putting
+faith in the adventures of that hero. A like fate befalls those minds
+which are simple enough to believe still, in the midst of the nineteenth
+century, in the brave chimeras of former days. Let us study history, let
+us study nature; beyond that we do not know, and we never shall know,
+anything. Our fashionable men of letters develop their thesis with so
+much assurance; they lavish upon believers so many expressions of
+amiable disdain; they appear so sure of being the interpreters of the
+mind of the age, that they seem ready to repeat to young people dazzled
+by their success, the lesson which Gilbert had expressed in these terms:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Between ourselves&mdash;you own a God, I fear!</div>
+<div>Beware lest in your verse the fact appear:</div>
+<div>Dread the wits' laughter, friend, and know your betters:</div>
+<div>Our grandsires might have worn those old-world fetters;</div>
+<div>But in our days! Come, you must learn respect,&mdash;</div>
+<div>Content <i>your age to follow</i>, not direct.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>To believe in God would be vulgar; to deny the existence of God would be
+a want of taste; the divine world must remain as a subject for poetry.
+So our critics speak. Their direct affirmation is scepticism. But they
+follow the destinies of the positivist school; they do not succeed in
+maintaining their balance between the affirmation and negation of God.
+Alfred de Musset has described this position of the soul, and its
+inevitable issue. Must I hope in God? Must I reject all faith and all
+hope?</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Between these paths how difficult the choice!</div>
+<div class='i1'>Ah! might I find some smoother, easier way.</div>
+<div>"None such exists," whispers a secret voice,</div>
+<div class='i1'>"God <i>is</i>, or <i>is not</i>&mdash;own, or slight, His sway."</div>
+<div>In sooth, I think so: troubled souls in turn</div>
+<div class='i1'>By each extreme are tossed and harassed sore:</div>
+<div>They are but atheists, who feel no concern;</div>
+<div class='i1'>If once they doubted they would sleep no more.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The indifference of the critical philosophers is in fact only a
+transparent veil to atheistical doc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>trines. Faith in God the Creator is
+in their eyes a superstition; this is their only settled dogma. In other
+respects they indulge in theses the most contradictory. Most generally
+they deify man, declaring that there is no other God than the idea of
+humanity, no other infinite than the indefinite character of the
+aspirations of our own soul. At other times they proclaim an undisguised
+materialism, and look for the explanation of all things in atoms and in
+the law which governs them. They make to themselves a two-faced idol,
+one of these faces being called nature, and the other humanity. What
+strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language
+change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty, of
+religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted
+from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally
+different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their God
+is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a
+law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these
+equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of
+the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and
+captivated by success, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> deluged with writings which have the same
+effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of
+the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ever
+allowing it to form either a precise idea or a settled judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance
+over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no
+difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are
+multiplying with the object of defending the existence of God,
+Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against
+the rising flood of atheism.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> And here is a fact still more
+significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are
+recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are passing in review the
+worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of God,
+without having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention
+directed to contemporary productions.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there
+presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing principally
+as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed,
+doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the
+Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of
+speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped
+in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most
+directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been
+pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and
+on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or
+not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the
+following words: "I have only had one disciple who has understood
+me&mdash;and he has misunderstood me." A man distinguished in metaphysical
+research by taste, genius, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> science, and who has, in that respect,
+devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secr&eacute;tan, writes
+with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian
+system: "If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no
+answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one
+has ever understood it."<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here
+undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be
+enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to
+understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor,
+in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an
+eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to
+any mind. The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an
+inadmissible conception. They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the
+palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the
+act of an intelligence. This idea-God we have already encountered in the
+writings of M. Vacherot. We shall find it again more than once as we go
+on. In Germany,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> as in France, the theory only becomes popular by
+undergoing a transformation. The eternal idea manifests itself in the
+mind of man, and exists nowhere else. Above this idea there is nothing.
+Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored. And
+thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of
+1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the <i>Gazette d'Augsbourg</i>: "I
+begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel
+declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago." The deification of
+man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.
+Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was
+current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its
+popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found
+him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of
+an ecstatic contemplation. "Why, what are you doing there?" inquired the
+visitor. "I am adoring myself," replied the young adept in philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history
+of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it
+occupies a large place and demands the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> serious attention; I am
+tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.
+This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of
+atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M.
+Saint-R&eacute;n&eacute; Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of
+the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts
+of matter in a fury;<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> but it sums them all up in its formul&aelig;, it
+gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious
+authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be
+brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in
+its commencement, to favor at length <i>the revolts of matter run mad</i>.
+And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the
+development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is
+necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of
+destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the
+flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the
+moment that the flesh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and
+ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism
+into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There
+exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us
+there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us:
+the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an
+idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for
+Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to
+his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic
+sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really
+serviceable to humanity."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacrifices; the emancipation
+is incomplete. What is this humanity to which man owes himself? An
+abstraction, an idol still, an idol to be overthrown if he would obtain
+perfect independence. Listen to the German Stirmer, deducing from the
+doctrine its extreme consequences: "Perish the people," he exclaims,
+"perish Germany, perish all the nations of Europe; and let man, rid of
+all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> bonds, delivered from the last phantoms of religion, recover at
+length his full independence!"<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> All the mists of abstraction have now
+disappeared: here we are on ground which is hideously clear. Humanity is
+no longer in question, but the worship of <i>self</i>; it is the complete
+enfranchisement of selfishness.</p>
+
+<p>While the proud idealism of the Germans was thus, by its own weight,
+descending into the level flats of thought, a political movement was
+agitating Germany. Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an
+enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not
+simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the
+irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice.
+In the year 1845, the attention of the Swiss authorities was drawn to
+certain secret societies, composed of Germans, and having for their
+object a revolution in Germany, but which had established their basis of
+operations on the Swiss territory. The inquiries of the police issued in
+the discovery of twenty-seven clubs bound together by secret
+correspondence. Working-men were induced on various pretexts to attend
+meetings, of which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> real object was only gradually disclosed to
+them. If they were reckoned worthy, they were initiated into the plan of
+a social reform, the basis of which was atheism.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> One of the
+principal agents in this work of proselytism, Guillaume Marr, exclaimed:
+"Faith in a personal and living God is the origin and the fundamental
+cause of our miserable social condition." And he deduced as follows the
+practical consequence of his theory: "The idea of God is the key-stone
+of the arch of a tottering civilization; let us destroy it. The true
+road to liberty, to equality, and to happiness, is atheism. No safety on
+earth, so long as man holds on by a thread to heaven.&mdash;Let nothing
+henceforward shackle the spontaneity of the human mind. Let us teach man
+that there is no other God than himself, that he is the Alpha and the
+Omega of all things, the superior being, and the most real reality." We
+have still to explain the nature of this spontaneity, free from every
+shackle. One of the editors of the journal conducted by Marr discloses
+it by quoting some verses in which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> Henri Heine expresses the wish to
+see <i>great vices, bloody and colossal crimes</i>, provided he may be
+delivered from a <i>worthy-citizen virtue</i>, and an <i>honest-merchant
+morality</i>!<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> A little later, a journal of German Switzerland asserted,
+that in order to set free man's natural instincts and propensities, it
+is indispensable to destroy the idea of God.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<p>These, I am well aware, are the screams of a savage madness. But after
+all, and be this as it may, Marr was publishing his journal at Lausanne
+in 1845, and in 1848 he was named representative of the people, by a
+considerable majority, in one of the largest cities of Germany. And this
+was by no means an isolated fact. Atheism showed itself in the ephemeral
+parliament of Frankfort as a sort of party, of which M. Vogt, says the
+<i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, was the great orator.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<p>The German revolution was put down by the bayonet, but the doctrines of
+which it had revealed the existence, left vestiges for a long time in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> country of the terror which they had inspired. Alarm was felt for
+the various interests threatened, and noble souls were stirred with
+compassion by the conviction forced upon them of the spiritual miseries
+of their brethren. A powerful reaction took place, as well in the
+religious as the philosophical world. This reaction has produced
+salutary results; but the object is not fully attained. Open the
+journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these
+days, the principal centre of materialism. It is unhappily so rich in
+this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to
+furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor B&uuml;chner has published, under the title of <i>Force and Matter</i>, a
+small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately
+been translated into French.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> Materialism is there set forth with
+perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity.
+The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of
+experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the
+re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>searches of philosophy. It would seem therefore that the question of
+the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies.
+Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe
+infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in
+order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what
+journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by
+means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have
+occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that
+experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a
+metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out,
+Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good
+philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own
+without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues
+who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in
+making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of
+their own despotism.</p>
+
+<p>We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth
+with <i>&eacute;clat</i> by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+projects, and lastly materialism. The elements are the same as in
+France, but exhibit themselves in a different order. This diversity
+suggests some observations worth your attention.</p>
+
+<p>France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose
+to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the
+greater part of its atheistical manifestations. German atheism, having
+as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man
+was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> We may
+inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to
+the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural
+movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man,
+and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence. We are
+nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without
+leaving any trace of ever having been together. Is not this a thing to
+be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world? Why then are the
+apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and
+uttering shouts of triumph? It is that they feel themselves free,
+emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i10'> .&nbsp;&nbsp;.&nbsp;&nbsp;. that brood of idle fear</div>
+<div>Fine nothings worshipped,&mdash;<i>why</i>, doth not appear;</div>
+<div>The gods&mdash;whom man made, and who made not man.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Emancipation! Such is the watchword of materialism. Listen, for example,
+to the conclusion of Baron d'Holbach's <i>System of Nature</i>: "Break the
+chains," says he, "which are binding men. Send back those gods who are
+afflicting them to those imaginary regions from whence fear first drew
+them forth. Inspire with courage the intelligent being; give him energy;
+let him dare at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> length to love himself, to esteem himself, to feel his
+own dignity; let him dare to emancipate himself, let him be happy and
+free." Strange accents these, at the close of a large philosophical
+treatise intended to prove that there is nothing in the universe but
+matter. Whence proceeds the dignity of that fragment of matter which
+calls itself man? Understand well what passes in the mind of these
+philosophers. In proportion as man lowers his own origin, in the same
+proportion,&mdash;if he does not wish to make himself a brute, in order to
+live as do the animals,&mdash;he exalts himself in an inevitable sentiment of
+pride. In vain does he give out that the material frame is everything;
+he feels that thought is more than the material frame; and he accords to
+himself the first place in the universe. The materialist ignores the
+Eternal Mind in order to emancipate himself; and whatever he may say,
+his real deity is not the atom, but himself. The encyclopedists, sons of
+an age which yielded at once to noble influences and to guilty
+seductions, united the worship of progress to a degrading philosophy.
+Consider with what a feeling of pride they lowered man, and you will
+understand why eternal nature gave place to sacred humanity. When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+France had fallen into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little
+dust in an earthen vase which was offered for public adoration, but they
+led in procession through the streets of Paris a woman who was called
+the goddess Reason.</p>
+
+<p>So it was that materialism ended in the adoration of man. Let us
+endeavor to understand how the adoration of man turns again to
+materialism. The mind endowed with intelligence and will is more
+elevated in the scale of being than inert bodies. This is for us an
+evident truth. Could one demonstrate it by reasoning? I do not know; but
+in contesting it, we should contradict the plainest evidence. Reason is
+superior to matter. If, with the school which extends from Pythagoras to
+Saint Augustine, and from Saint Augustine to Descartes, we connect
+reason with God as its principle, the grand science of metaphysics is
+founded. But if reason does not rise to God, what will happen? This
+reason, which proclaims itself superior to matter, is not, as we have
+said already, the individual thought of Francis, Peter, or John. If an
+individual presented himself as being reason itself, the absolute
+reason, and said, "I am the truth," it would be necessary to take one of
+three courses. If we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> thought that he spoke truly, and if we received
+his testimony, it would be necessary to worship him, for he would be
+God. If it were feared that he spoke truly, and those who so feared were
+unwilling to acknowledge his rule, it would be necessary for them to
+kill him in order to endeavor to kill the truth. If it were thought that
+he spoke falsely, it would be necessary to watch him, and the moment he
+committed an act dangerous for society, to shut him up, for he would be
+a madman. But the philosophers make no such pretension. The reason of
+which they speak is the reason common to all, a reason which is not that
+of an individual, but that of which all rational individuals partake.
+This common, universal, eternal reason,&mdash;where and how does it exist?
+Reason manifests itself by ideas, and ideas are the acts of minds. To
+imagine an idea without a mind of which it is the act, is the same thing
+as to imagine a movement without a body of which it is also the act, in
+a different sense. Take away bodies, and there is no more movement. Take
+away intelligences, and there are no more ideas. The philosopher who
+speaks of an idea which is not the idea of an intelligence, utters words
+which have no mean<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>ing. The reason which is not that of any created
+individual remains therefore absolutely inconceivable without the
+eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible
+conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself
+in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of
+ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized
+with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is
+always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on
+shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the <i>positive</i> by a
+violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive
+materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty
+pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene
+Doctor B&uuml;chner and his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>The great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as it is often said to
+be, the combat of idealism against materialism. Idealism begins well,
+and we must not refuse to acknowledge the services which it has rendered
+to the cause of truth. But philosophy must follow the road traced out in
+an ancient adage: <i>Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad
+superiora</i>.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> If the mind does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> go to the end of this royal road;
+if idealism, having surmounted the fascinations of the senses, remains
+in ideas, without ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of matter
+and the worship of the idea call mutually one to another, and revolve in
+a fatal circle. The struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds
+one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied honor, the
+adversaries breakfast together, and gather strength to combat, in case
+of need, a common enemy. The great combat which forms the main subject
+of the history of ideas is the combat between belief in God and an
+atheistical philosophy. Whether atheism admits for its first principle
+an atom without a Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is a
+fact very important for the history of philosophy, but the importance of
+which is small enough in regard to the interests of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into Germany, let us now cross
+the British Channel, and observe what is going on in England.</p>
+
+<p>England, at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the
+eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion. France gave
+the patent of European circulation to ideas which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> proceeded in part
+from this foreign source. An active propaganda for the diffusion of
+impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain. A
+strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed
+various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books
+and respectable journals.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> These efforts were crowned with success.
+England, by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices for the
+diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its respect for the
+Lord's-day,<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> assumed<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> the characteristic marks of a Christian
+nation. Grand measures adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity,
+placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously philanthropic
+civilization; but as P&egrave;re Gratry has remarked, "more than in any other
+people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a>
+The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of
+this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in
+which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit
+of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy. A book is
+instanced, of materialistic tendency,<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> published in 1828, of which a
+popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it
+advocated. There was sold of this edition, in a short time, more than
+eighty thousand copies. A thoughtful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a
+statistical statement, according to which English publications, openly
+atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six hundred and forty
+thousand copies.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we pass from the current literature to scientific publications, we
+shall meet with facts of the same order. The Hegelianism and the
+scepticism of the critical school are creeping into the works of some
+theologians. The theories of positivism, reduced to shape in France,
+have passed the channel, and have obtained in England more attention
+perhaps than in the country of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> origin. They have been adopted by
+a distinguished author, Mr. Stuart Mill; and a female writer, Miss
+Martineau, has set them forth, in her mother-tongue, for the use of her
+fellow-countrymen.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> Positivism is even in vogue, and has become
+"<i>fashionable</i>" amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in
+Great Britain.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+
+<p>In less elevated regions of the intellectual world of England, an
+organized sect commends itself to our attention. This sect has given to
+its system of doctrine the name of <i>Secularism</i>. It has a social
+object&mdash;the destruction of the Established Church and the existing
+political order. It has a philosophy, the purport and bearing of which
+we will inquire of Mr. Holyoake. The following is the answer of the
+chief of the secularists:&mdash;"All that concerns the origin and end of
+things, God and the immortal soul, is absolutely impenetrable for the
+human mind. The existence of God, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> particular, must be referred to
+the number of abstract questions, with the ticket <i>not determined</i>. It
+is probable, however, that the nature which we know, must be the God
+whom we inquire after. What is called atheism is found <i>in suspension</i>
+in our theory."<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> The practical consequence of these views is, that
+all day-dreams relating to another world must be put aside, and we must
+manage so as to live to the best advantage possible in the present
+life.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> Hence the name of the system. <i>Secularism</i> teaches its
+disciples to have nothing to do with religion in any shape, that they
+may confine themselves strictly to the present life. It is an attempt of
+which the express object is to realize life without God.</p>
+
+<p>These doctrines formed the subject of public discussions, in London in
+1853, and at Glasgow in 1854. The meeting at Glasgow numbered, it is
+said, more than three thousand persons.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> The sect employs as its
+means of action open-air speeches, the publication of books and
+journals,<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> and assemblies for giving information and holding debates
+in lecture-rooms. There are five of these lecture-rooms in London. I
+have seen the programme, for 1864, of the meetings held at No. 12,
+Cleveland Street, under the direction of Messrs. Holyoake and J. Clark.
+There are, every Sunday,&mdash;a discourse at eleven o'clock, a discussion at
+three o'clock, a lecture at seven o'clock. The programme invites all
+free-thinkers to attend these meetings. Some of the assemblies are
+public; for others a small entrance fee is demanded. London is the
+principal centre of the association; but it has branches all over the
+country, and it numbers in Great Britain twenty-one lecture-rooms,
+particularly at Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and
+Edinburgh.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> Secularism naturally seeks to magnify, as much as may be,
+its own importance; and it is not to the declarations of its apostles
+that we must refer in order to estimate the extent and influence of its
+action. At the same time the existence of a society, the avowed object
+of which is the diffusion of practical atheism, cannot be regarded with
+indif<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>ference. At the present moment the affairs of the sect would not
+appear to be flourishing. A year ago a secularist orator had delivered a
+vehement speech in favor of virtue. Just as he had resumed his seat, a
+policeman entered the room and took him into custody. A few days
+afterwards the <i>Times</i> informed its readers that the orator of virtue
+had just been condemned for theft to twelve months' hard labor.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> In
+the <i>Secular World</i> of the 1st January, 1864, Mr. Holyoake complains
+that a great many <i>mauvais sujets</i> seem to seek in secularism a kind of
+cheap religion. He declares that he is going to use energetic efforts to
+purify the sect, and seems to intimate that he shall retire if his
+efforts fail. Let us leave him to wrestle against the invasion of the
+orators of virtue, and let us pass from England into Italy.</p>
+
+<p>While Italy is seeking to deliver itself from the bayonets of Austria,
+it is threatened with subjection to the influence of the most pernicious
+German doctrines. After having bent, like nearly all Europe, in the
+eighteenth century, beneath the blast of sensualism, Italy made a noble
+effort to renew more generous traditions. Two eminent men, Rosmini and
+Gioberti, the second espe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>cially, succeeded in exciting in the youth of
+Italy a passionate interest in doctrines in which liberty and vigor of
+thought were united with the confidence of faith. This intellectual
+movement preceded and prepared a national movement, the course of which
+has been precipitated by the intrigues of politics and the intervention
+of the arms of the foreigner. At the present time the influence of
+Rosmini and of Gioberti is on the decline. Hegelianism is being
+installed with a certain <i>&eacute;clat</i> in the university of Naples. Nothing
+warrants us in hoping that this system will not produce upon the shores
+of the Mediterranean the same depravation of philosophic thought which
+it has produced in Germany. In the ancient university of Pisa, M.
+Auguste Conti, a brave defender of Christian philosophy, steadfastly
+maintains the union of religion and of speculative inquiry,<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> and the
+centre of Italy is less affected perhaps than the extremities of the
+Peninsula by the spirit of infidelity. But as we go further north, we
+encounter in the writings of Ferrari the utterance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> of a gloomy
+scepticism, and in those of Ausonio Franchi, formerly a journalist at
+Turin, and now a Professor at Milan, the manifestations of an almost
+undisguised atheism. Ausonio Franchi, or rather the man who assumes that
+pseudonyme, is an ex-priest, who, "while maintaining severely the rule
+of good morals and the dignity of life,"<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> has turned with violent
+animosity against his former faith. He exerts some influence over the
+youth of Italy, and has met with warm admirers in England and Germany.
+Franchi's profession of faith reduces itself to these very simple
+terms:&mdash;"The world is what it is, and it is <i>because it is</i>; any other
+reason whatever of its essence and of its existence can be nothing but a
+sophism or an illusion."<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> All inquiry into the origin of things is a
+pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves to the experience of
+the present life, and look for nothing beyond it. The author treats with
+sufficient disdain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton, and
+Leibnitz. It has seemed to me that his understanding, a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> obscured
+by passion, misconceives the true purport of the reasonings which it
+rejects, and by thus impairing their force, assumes to itself the right
+to despise them.</p>
+
+<p>The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do not stop at Christian
+dogma. He denies all value to those higher aspirations of the human soul
+which constitute <i>reason</i>, in the philosophical meaning of the term.
+Now, this radical negation of the reason is what those Italians who do
+not scruple to practise it denominate <i>Rationalism</i>. And this very
+unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a
+general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which
+present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth.
+The Frenchmen, who call themselves the <i>critics</i>, are men who require
+that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but
+shall renounce the while all discrimination between truth and error. The
+term scepticism, in its primary signification, contains the idea of
+inquiring, of examining; and they give the name of <i>sceptics</i> to the
+philosophers who declare that there is nothing to discover, and
+consequently nothing to examine, or to search for! One is a
+<i>free-thinker</i> only on the express<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> condition of renouncing all such
+free exercise of thought as might lead to the acceptance of beliefs
+generally received. This is verily the carnival of language, and the
+<i>bal masqu&eacute;</i> of words. These corruptions of the meaning of terms are
+highly instructive. Doctrines contrary to the laws of human nature bear
+witness in this way to a secret shame in producing themselves under
+their true colors. Just as hypocrisy is an homage which vice pays to
+virtue, so these barbarisms are an homage which error pays to truth.</p>
+
+<p>To return to Italy: that beautiful and noble country has not escaped the
+revival of atheism. The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political
+struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged, will favor for a
+time, it may be feared, the development of evil doctrines.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> But the
+lively genius of the Italians will not be long in attaching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> itself
+again to the grand traditions of its past history; and the inhabitants
+of the land, whose soil was trodden by Pythagoras and Saint Augustine,
+will not link themselves with doctrines which always run those who hold
+them aground sooner or later upon the sad and gloomy shores of a vulgar
+empiricism.</p>
+
+<p>We have not leisure, Gentlemen, to extend our study to all parts of the
+globe, and besides, there are countries with regard to which information
+would fail me. Therefore I say nothing of Holland, where we should have,
+as I know, distressing facts to record. The silence imposed on Spain
+upon the subjects which we are discussing would render the study of that
+country a difficult one. I am wanting in data regarding America. Let us
+conclude our survey by a few words about Russia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If we are warranted in making general assertions in speaking of that
+immense empire, we may say that the Russian people, taken as a whole, is
+good and pious, badly instructed, and often the victim of ignorance or
+of superstition, but disposed to open its heart to elevated and pure
+influences. The clergy is ignorant, though with honorable and even
+brilliant exceptions. It is too much cut off from general society, and
+consigned to a sort of caste, of which it would be most desirable to
+break down the barriers, in order to allow the influence of the
+representatives of religion to extend itself more freely. The young
+nobles, and the university students in general, are, in too large a
+proportion, imbued with irreligious principles. Various atheistical
+writings, those of Feuerbach amongst others, have been translated into
+Russian, printed abroad, and furtively introduced into the empire. M.
+Herzen, a well-known writer, has published, under the pseudonyme of
+Iscander, a work full of talent, but in which come plainly into view the
+worst tendencies of our time.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> In his eyes, life is itself its own
+end and cause. Faith in God is the portion of the ignorant crowd, and
+atheism, like all the high truths of science,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> like the differential
+calculus and the laws of physics, is the exclusive possession of the
+philosophical few. When Robespierre declared atheism aristocratic, he
+was right in this sense, for atheism is above the reach of the vulgar;
+but when he concluded that atheism was false, he made a great mistake.
+This error, which led him to establish the worship of the Supreme Being,
+was one of the causes of his fall. When he began to follow in the wake
+of the <i>conservatives</i>, as a necessary consequence he would lose his
+power.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> The writings of Iscander have exerted a veritable influence
+in Russia. M. Herzen appears to have lost much of his repute, by the
+exaggerated and outrageous course he has taken in politics; but it is to
+be feared that the traces of his action are not altogether effaced.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian Empire has been for a long time, in the eyes of the West,
+only an immense garrison; but now for some years past it has been taking
+rank among the number of intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> powers, and nowhere in Europe is
+the ascending march of civilization displaying itself by signs so
+striking. The summons to liberty of so many millions of men, which has
+just been accomplished by the generous initiative of the ruling power,
+and with the consent of the nation, testifies that that vast social body
+is animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But in the solemn
+phase through which she is passing, Russia is exposed to a great danger.
+She is running the risk of substituting for a national development,
+drawn from the grand springs of human nature, a factitious civilization,
+in which would figure together the fashions of Paris, the morals of the
+<i>coulisses</i> of the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the
+West. May God preserve her!</p>
+
+<p>We have passed in review some of the symptoms of the revival of atheism,
+and it is impossible not to acknowledge the gravity of the facts which
+we have established. What must especially awaken solicitude is, that the
+irreligious manifestations of thought have assumed such a character of
+generality, that the sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce
+in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews, (I allude especially to
+the French-speaking public), widely-circulated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> journals which take good
+care not to violate propriety, and which could not with impunity offend
+the interests or prejudices of the social class from which their
+subscribers are recruited, are able to entertain without danger, and
+without exciting energetic protestations, the productions of an open, or
+scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are ample reasons for thoughtfulness;
+but this thoughtfulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to do
+with a challenge the very audacity of which inspires me with confidence,
+rather than with dread. In fact all the productions of irreligious
+philosophy rest on one and the same thought, the common watchword, of
+the secularism of the English, of the rationalism of the Italians, of
+the positivism of the French, and which may even be recognized, with a
+little attention, under the haughty formulas which bear the name of
+Hegel. And the thought is this: The earth is enough for us, away with
+heaven; man suffices for himself, away with God; reality suffices for
+us, away with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting ourselves with the
+world as it is. It is attempted ridiculously enough to place this wisdom
+under the patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are bidden,
+forsooth, to see in the negation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> real and living God, a conflict
+of progress with routine, of science with a blind tradition, of the
+modern mind with superannuated ideas.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> We know of old this defiance
+hurled against the aspirations of the heart, the conscience, and the
+reason. We know the destined issue of this ancient revolt of the
+intellect against the laws of its own nature. There were atheists in
+Palestine in the days when the Psalmist exclaimed, "The fool hath said
+in his heart, There is no God."<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> There were atheists at Rome when
+Cicero wrote,<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> that the opinion which recognizes gods appeared to him
+to come nearest to the resemblance of truth. A poet of the thirteenth
+century has expressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in vogue
+among a great many of our contemporaries: "He dares nothing great, who
+believes that there are gods."<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> There were atheists in the
+seventeenth century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound them,
+and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits of their time.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> And
+who, again, does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> not know that in the eighteenth century atheism
+marched with head aloft, and filled the world with its clamors. The
+attempt to do without God has nothing modern about it, it is met with at
+all epochs. The means employed now-a-days to attain this end have
+nothing new about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with the
+characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of which are transient
+crises. The moment the negation is blazoned openly, humanity protests.
+Why? Because man will never be persuaded to content himself with the
+earth, and with what the earth can give him: his nature absolutely
+forbids it. When we compare the reality with the desires of our souls,
+we can all say with the aged patriarch Jacob: "Few and evil have been
+the days of my pilgrimage;"<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> we can all say with Lamartine:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Though all the good desired of man</div>
+<div class='i1'>In one sole heart should overflow,</div>
+<div>Death, bounding still his mortal span,</div>
+<div class='i1'>Would turn the cup of joy to woe.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>And it is not the heart only which is concerned here; without God man
+remains inexplicable to his own reason. The spiritual creature of the
+Almighty, free by the act of creation, and capable of falling into
+slavery by rebellion,&mdash;he understands his nature and his destiny; but it
+is in vain that the apostles of matter and the worshippers of humanity
+harangue him in turn to explain to him his own existence. Man is too
+great to be the child of the dust; man is too miserable to be the divine
+summit of the universe. "If he exalts himself, I abase him; if he abases
+himself, I exalt him; and I contradict him continually, until he
+understands at last that he is an incomprehensible monster."<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The proper study of mankind is man;" and man remains an enigma for man,
+if he do not rise to God. So it is that our very nature is a living
+protest against atheism, and never allows its triumphs to be either
+general, or of long duration. A solid limit is thus set to our
+wanderings; and, to the errors of the understanding, as to the tides of
+the ocean, the Master of things has said, "Ye shall go no further."
+Therefore atheists may become famous, but, destitute of the ray which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+renders truly illustrious, humanity refuses them the aureole with which
+it encircles the brows of its benefactors. This aureole it reserves for
+the sages which lead it to God, for the artists which reveal to it some
+of the rays of the immortal light, for all those who remind it of the
+titles of its dignity, the pledges of its future, the sacred laws of the
+realm of spirits. Humanity desires to live; and to live it must believe;
+for it must believe in order to love and to act. Atheism is a crisis in
+a disease, a passing swoon over which the vital forces of nature
+triumph. Now the vital forces of humanity are neither extinct nor
+stupefied in our time. The world of literature is sick, and grievously
+sick in some of its departments; but even there again are manifesting
+themselves noble and powerful reactions. Then look in other directions.
+Contemplate the religious movement of society at large, the wide efforts
+making in the domain of active beneficence, the progressive conquests of
+civilization, the awakening of conscience on many subjects:&mdash;I could
+easily instance numerous facts in proof of what I advance, and say to
+you:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Know, by these speaking signs, a God to-day</div>
+<div>As yesterday the same&mdash;the same for aye:</div>
+<div>Veiling, revealing, at His sovereign will,</div>
+<div>His glory,&mdash;and His people guarding still.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Wrestle then against the invasion of deadly doctrines, wrestle and do
+not fear. If men rise against God in the name of the modern mind, of the
+science of the age, of the progress of civilization, do not suffer
+yourselves to be stunned by these clamors. Let the past be to you the
+pledge of the future! To make of atheism a novelty, is an error. To make
+of it, in a general way, the characteristic of our epoch, is a calumny.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Xenophon, <i>Memorab. of Socrates</i>, Bk. iv. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>La Religion naturelle</i>. Preface.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Emile Saisset, in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, of March,
+1845.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See the <i>Lettres sur les v&eacute;rit&eacute;s, les plus importantes de
+la r&eacute;v&eacute;lation</i>, by Albert de Haller, translated into French by one of
+his grandsons. Lausanne, Bridel, 1846.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>La M&eacute;taphysique et la Science</i>, 2 tom. Oct. 1858.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>Notice sur M. Littr&eacute;</i>, page 57.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Paroles de philosophie positive</i>, page 33.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Idem</i>, page 30.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Paroles de philosophie positive</i>, page 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Aper&ccedil;us g&eacute;n&eacute;raux sur la doctrine positiviste</i>, par M. de
+Lombrail, ancien &eacute;l&egrave;ve de l'&eacute;cole polytechnique. The author says in his
+preface: "Auguste Comte examined this work with the conscientious
+attention which he was accustomed to give to the simplest task. He
+desired by his useful counsels to render it worthy of publication."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, of 15th Jan. 1860, page 367.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Je soup&ccedil;onne entre nous que vous croyez en Dieu.</div>
+<div>N'allez pas dans vos vers en consigner l'aveu;</div>
+<div>Craignez le ridicule, et respectez vos ma&icirc;tres.</div>
+<div>Croire en Dieu fut un tort permis &agrave; nos anc&ecirc;tres.</div>
+<div>Mais dans notre &acirc;ge! Allons, il faut vous corriger</div>
+<div><i>Et suivre votre si&egrave;cle</i>, au lieu de le juger.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Entre ces deux chemins j'h&eacute;site et je m'arr&ecirc;te.</div>
+<div>Je voudrais &agrave; l'&eacute;cart suivre un plus doux sentier.</div>
+<div>Il n'en existe pas, dit une voix secr&egrave;te:</div>
+<div>En pr&eacute;sence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.</div>
+<div>Je le pense, en effet: les &acirc;mes tourment&eacute;es</div>
+<div>Vers l'un et l'autre exc&egrave;s se portent tour &agrave; tour;</div>
+<div>Mais les indiff&eacute;rents ne sont que des ath&eacute;es;</div>
+<div>Ils ne dormiraient plus, s'ils doutaient un seul jour.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> See, for example, <i>La Religion naturelle</i>, by Jules Simon;
+<i>Essai de philosophie religieuse</i>, by Emile Saisset; <i>De la connaissance
+de Dieu</i>, by A. Gratry; <i>La raison et la christianisme, douze lectures
+sur l'existence de Dieu</i>, by Charles Secr&eacute;tan; <i>Essai sur la
+Providence</i>, by Ernest Bersot; <i>De la Providence</i>, by M. Damiron;
+<i>L'Id&eacute;e de Dieu</i>, by M. Caro; <i>Th&eacute;odic&eacute;e, Etudes sur Dieu, la Cr&eacute;ation
+et la Providence</i>, par Am&eacute;d&eacute;e de Magerie.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> See, for example, the <i>Etudes orientales</i> of M. Franck,
+the <i>Bouddha</i> of M. Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire; <i>L'Histoire de la
+philosophie au XVIII<sup>e</sup> si&eacute;cle</i>, of M. Damiron.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Philosophie de la libert&eacute;</i>, vol. i. p. 225.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> <i>Toutes ces r&eacute;voltes de la mati&egrave;re en furie.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, April, 1850.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Qu'est-ce la religion?</i> page 586 of the translation of
+Ewerbeck.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> of 15th April, 1850, p. 288.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> General Report addressed to the <i>Conseil d'Etat</i> of
+Neuch&acirc;tel on the secret German propaganda, and on the clubs of Young
+Germany in Switzerland, by Lardy, Doctor of law. Neuch&acirc;tel, 1845.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>Pourvu qu'on le d&eacute;livre d'une vertu bourgeoise et d'une
+morale d'honn&ecirc;tes n&eacute;gociants</i>. Bl&auml;tter der Gegenwart f&uuml;r sociales
+Leben.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> See the <i>Chroniqueur Suisse</i> of 19 Jan. 1865.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> April, 1850, p. 292.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>Force et Mati&egrave;re</i>, by Louis B&uuml;chner, Doctor in medicine:
+translated into French from the seventh edition of the German work, by
+Gamper, Leipzig, 1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> My object is to point out the atheistical systems which
+are being produced in various parts of Europe, and not to estimate, in a
+general way, the tendency of contemporary philosophies. The reader, who
+would understand the position occupied by materialism in relation to
+German thought in general, may consult with advantage, <i>Le Mat&eacute;rialisme
+contemporain</i>, by Paul Janet, Paris, 1864; and the review of this work
+by M. Reichlin-Meldegg (<i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Philosophie</i>,
+Sechsundvierzigster Band). A Swiss writer, M. B&ouml;hner, has lately
+published a learned work on the subject entitled: <i>Le Mat&eacute;rialisme au
+point de vue des sciences naturelles et des progr&egrave;s de l'esprit humain</i>,
+by Nath. B&ouml;hner, member of the <i>Soci&eacute;t&eacute; helv&eacute;tique des sciences
+naturelles</i>, translated from the German, by O. Bourrit, 1 vol. 8vo.
+(<i>Gen&egrave;ve, imprimerie Fick</i>), 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i10'> .&nbsp;&nbsp;.&nbsp;&nbsp;. Ces enfants de l'effroi,</div>
+<div>Ces beaux riens qu'on adore, et sans savoir pourquoi,</div>
+<div>Ces dieux que l'homme a faits et qui n'ont pas fait l'homme.</div>
+<div class='right'><span class="smcap">Cyrano de Bergerac.</span></div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> From outer to inner things, and from inner to higher.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> See the Report of Mr. H. Roberts, in the <i>Comptes rendus
+du Congr&egrave;s international de bienfaisance de Londres</i>, vol. ii. page 95,
+and the 23rd <i>Bulletin de la Soci&eacute;t&eacute; genevoise d'utilit&eacute; publique</i>,
+1863.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> Par son respect pour le jour du Dimanche.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> rev&ecirc;tit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> <i>La Paix m&eacute;ditations historiques et religieuses</i>, par A.
+Gratry, pr&ecirc;tre de l'Oratoire.&mdash;Septi&egrave;me m&eacute;ditation: l'Angleterre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> <i>The Constitution of Man</i>, by G. Combe. The popular
+edition was printed at the expense of Mr. Henderson.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> <i>Infidelity: its aspects, causes, and agencies</i>, by Thomas
+Pearson. People's edition, 1854, page 263.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> <i>Auguste Comte et la Philosophie positive</i>, par E. Littr&eacute;,
+page 276.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> "Positivism, within the last quarter of a century, has
+become an active, and even fashionable mode of thought, and nowhere more
+so than amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in England."
+<i>The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of modern Criticism, Lectures
+on M. Renan's 'Vie de J&eacute;sus,'</i>&mdash;by John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of the
+College of St. Mary in the University of St. Andrew. Macmillan and Co.,
+1864.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> See Pearson: <i>Infidelity</i>, particularly page 316, and
+<i>Christianity and Secularism, the public discussion</i>&mdash;, particularly
+page 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>&mdash;<i>dans le si&egrave;cle</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Vapereau's <i>Dictionnaire des contemporains</i>&mdash;Art.
+<span class="smcap">Holyoake</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> I have had in view here the first numbers of <i>The Secular
+World</i>, and of <i>The National Reformer, Secular Advocate</i>, for 1864.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> <i>The National Reformer</i> of 2nd Jan. 1864.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> MS. information.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Readers unacquainted with the Italian language will find a
+compendious exposition of M. Conti's philosophy, in a small volume
+published, in 1863, under the title of <i>Le Camposanto de Pise ou le
+Scepticisme</i>. (Paris, librairies Jo&euml;l Cherbuliez et Auguste Durand; I
+vol. in-18.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> Such is the testimony rendered to him by M. Aug. Conti in
+his work, <i>La Philosophie italienne</i>. (Paris, Jo&euml;l Cherbuliez et Auguste
+Durand; one small vol. 18mo.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> <i>Le Rationalisme</i> (in French), published with an
+introduction, by M. D. Bancel, Brussels, 1858, page 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> The learned author appears to intimate that the
+distractions of the Papacy, consequent on its political struggles for
+temporal power, hinder the salutary influence which it might otherwise
+exercise in the suppression of evil doctrines. The Translator feels it
+due to himself to state here, once for all, that he has no sympathy
+whatever with such a view of the influence of the Papacy. On the
+contrary, he is disposed to attribute to the Church of Rome most of the
+evils which afflict, not Italy only, but all the countries over which
+she has any power. Perhaps, having "felt the weight of too much liberty"
+in his own Church, the excellent author, fundamentally sound in his own
+views of Christian doctrine, as is proved abundantly by his writings,
+has been led by a natural reaction to give too much weight to the
+opposite principle of authority. The concluding pages of his former
+work, <i>La Vie Eternelle</i>, indicate a mind too painfully and sensitively
+averse to all controversy with a corrupt Church, in consideration of the
+acknowledged excellences of many of her individual members,&mdash;her
+Pascals, F&eacute;n&eacute;lons, Martin Boos, Girards, Gratrys, and
+Lacordaires.&mdash;<i>Translator</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> <i>De l'autre rive</i> (in Russian).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> <i>De l'autre rive</i>. v. Consolatio.&mdash;This chapter is a
+dialogue between a lady and a doctor. I have considered the doctor as
+expressing the thoughts of the writer. The form of dialogue, however,
+always allows an author to express his thoughts, while declining, if
+need be, the responsibility of them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> <i>Le Rationalisme</i>, par Ausonio Franchi, page 19.&mdash;<i>Force
+et mati&egrave;re</i>, par le docteur B&uuml;chner, page 262.&mdash;<i>Paroles de philosophie
+positive</i>, par Littr&eacute;, page 36.&mdash;<i>La M&eacute;taphysique et la Science</i>, par
+Vacherot, page xiv. (Premi&egrave;re edition.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Ps. xiv. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> De Natur&acirc; Deorum.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> Nil audet magnum qui putat esse Deos.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> See Bossuet: <i>Sermon sur la dignit&eacute; de la religion</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Gen. xlvii. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Quand tous les biens que l'homme envie</div>
+<div>D&eacute;borderaient dans un seul c&oelig;ur,</div>
+<div>La mort seule au bout de la vie</div>
+<div>Fait un supplice du bonheur.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> Pascal.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Reconnaissez, <i>Messieurs</i>, &agrave; ces traits &eacute;clatants,</div>
+<div>Un Dieu tel aujourd'hui qu'il fut dans tous les temps.</div>
+<div>Il sait, quand il lui pla&icirc;t, faire &eacute;clater sa gloire,</div>
+<div>Et son peuple est toujours pr&eacute;sent &agrave; sa m&eacute;moire.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_IV" id="LECTURE_IV"></a>LECTURE IV.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>NATURE.</i></h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 27th Nov. 1863.&mdash;At Lausanne, 25th Jan. 1864.)</p>
+
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>The thoughts of man are numberless; and still, in their indefinite
+variety, they never relate but to one or another of these three objects:
+nature, or the world of material substances, which are revealed to our
+senses; created spirits, similar or superior to that spirit which is
+ourselves; and finally God, the Infinite Being, the universal Creator.
+Therefore there are two sorts of atheism, and there are only two. The
+mind stops at nature, and endeavors to find in material substances the
+universal principle of existence; or, rising above nature, the mind
+stops at humanity, without ascending to the Infinite Mind, to the
+Creator. We have seen how clearly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> these two doctrines appear in
+contemporary literature. We have now to enter upon the examination of
+them, and this will afford us matter for two lectures.</p>
+
+<p>The word nature has various meanings; we employ it here to designate
+matter, and the forces which set it in motion, those forces being
+conceived as blind and fatal, in opposition to the conscious and free
+force which constitutes mind. Matter and the laws of motion are the
+object of mechanics, of chemistry, and of physics. Do these sciences
+suffice for resolving the universal enigma? Such is precisely the
+question which offers itself to our examination.</p>
+
+<p>Let us first of all determine what, in presence of the spectacle of the
+universe, is the natural movement of human thought, when human thought
+possesses the idea of God. I open a book trivial enough in its form, but
+occasionally profound in its contents: the <i>Journey round my room</i>, of
+Xavier de Maistre. The author is relating how he had undertaken to make
+an artificial dove which was to sustain itself in the air by means of an
+ingenious mechanism. I read:</p>
+
+<p>"I had wrought unceasingly at its construction for more than three
+months. The day was come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> for the trial. I placed it on the edge of a
+table, after having carefully closed the door, in order to keep the
+discovery secret, and to give my friends a pleasing surprise. A thread
+held the mechanism motionless. Who can conceive the palpitations of my
+heart, and the agonies of my self-love, when I brought the scissors near
+to cut the fatal bond?&mdash;Zest!&mdash;the spring of the dove starts, and begins
+to unroll itself with a noise. I lift my eyes to see the bird pass; but,
+after making a few turns over and over, it falls, and goes off to hide
+itself under the table. Rosine (my dog), who was sleeping there, moves
+ruefully away. Rosine, who never sees a chicken, or a pigeon, or the
+smallest bird, without attacking and pursuing it, did not deign even to
+look at my dove which was floundering on the floor. This gave the
+finishing stroke to my self-esteem. I went to take an airing on the
+ramparts.</p>
+
+<p>"I was walking up and down, sad and out of spirits as one always is
+after a great hope disappointed, when, raising my eyes, I perceived a
+flight of cranes passing over my head. I stopped to have a good look at
+them. They were advancing in triangular order, like the English column
+at the battle of Fontenoy. I saw them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> traverse the sky from cloud to
+cloud.&mdash;Ah! how well they fly, said I to myself. With what assurance
+they seem to glide along the viewless path which they follow.&mdash;Shall I
+confess it? alas! may I be forgiven! the horrible feeling of envy for
+once, once only, entered my heart, and it was for the cranes. I pursued
+them, with jealous gaze, to the boundaries of the horizon. For a long
+while afterwards, motionless in the midst of the crowd which was moving
+about me, I kept observing the rapid movement of the swallows, and I was
+astonished to see them suspended in the air, just as if I had never
+before seen that phenomenon. A feeling of profound admiration, unknown
+to me till then, lighted up my soul. I seemed to myself to be looking
+upon nature for the first time. I heard with surprise the buzzing of the
+flies, the song of the birds, and that mysterious and confused noise of
+the living creation which involuntarily celebrates its Author. Ineffable
+concert, to which man alone has the sublime privilege of adding the
+accents of gratitude! Who is the author of this brilliant mechanism? I
+exclaimed in the transport which animated me. Who is He that, opening
+his creative hand, let fly the first swallow into the air? It is He who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+gave commandment to these trees to come forth from the ground, and to
+lift their branches toward the sky!"</p>
+
+<p>Here is a charming page, and containing, though apparently trivial in
+style, a good and sound philosophy. Let us translate this delightful
+description into the heavier language of science.</p>
+
+<p>The intellect is one of the things with which we are best acquainted;
+logic is the science of thought, and logic is perhaps, among all the
+sciences, the one best settled on its bases. The intellect discovers
+itself to us in the exercise of our activity. We pursue an object, we
+combine the means for attaining it, and it is the intellect which
+operates this combination. What happens if we compare the results of our
+activity with the results of the power manifested in the world? When we
+consider in their vast <i>ensemble</i> the means of which nature disposes,
+when we remark the infinite number of the relations of things, the
+marvellous harmony of which universal life is the produce, we are
+dazzled by the splendor of a wisdom which surpasses our own as much as
+boundless space surpasses the imperceptible spot which we occupy upon
+the earth. Think of this: the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> science of nature is so vast that the
+least of its departments suffices to absorb one human lifetime. All our
+sciences are only in their very beginning; they are spelling out the
+first lines of an immense book. The elements of the universe are
+numberless; and yet, notwithstanding, all hangs together; all things are
+linked one to another in the closest connection. The <i>savants</i> therefore
+find themselves in a strange embarrassment. They are obliged to
+circumscribe more and more the field of their researches, on pain of
+losing themselves in an endless study; and, on the other hand, in
+proportion as science advances, the mutual relation of all its branches
+becomes so manifest that it is ever more and more clearly seen that, in
+order to know any one thing thoroughly, it would be necessary to know
+all. It needs not that we seek very high or very far away for occasions
+of astonishment: the least of the objects which nature presents to our
+view contains abysses of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>The acquired results of science appear simple through the effect of
+habit. The sun rises every day; who is still surprised at its rising?
+The solar system has been known a long while; it is taught in the
+humblest schools, and no longer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> surprises any one. But those who found
+out, after long efforts, what we learn without trouble, the discoverers,
+reckoned their discoveries very surprising. Kepler, one of the founders
+of modern astronomy, in the book to which he consigned his immortal
+discoveries, exclaims:<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> "The wisdom of the Lord is infinite, as are
+also His glory and His power. Ye heavens! sing His praises. Sun, moon,
+and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him,
+celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my
+soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him, and in Him, that all exists.
+What we know not is contained in Him as well as our vain science. To Him
+be praise, honor, and glory for ever and ever!" These words, Gentlemen,
+have not been copied from a book of the Church; they are read in a work
+which, as all allow, is one of the foundations of modern science.</p>
+
+<p>I pass on to another example, and I continue to keep you in good and
+high company. Newton set forth his discoveries in a large volume all
+bristling with figures and calculations.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> The work of the
+mathematician ended, the author<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> rises, by the consideration of the
+mutual interchange of the light of all the stars, to the idea of the
+unity of the creation; then he adds, and it is the conclusion of his
+entire work: "The Master of the heavens governs all things, not as being
+the soul of the world, but as being the Sovereign of the universe. It is
+on account of His sovereignty that we call Him the Sovereign God. He
+governs all things, those which are, and those which may be. He is the
+one God, and the same God, everywhere and always. We admire Him because
+of His perfections, we reverence and adore Him because of His
+sovereignty. A God without sovereignty, without providence, and without
+object in His works, would be only destiny or nature. Now, from a blind
+metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the same, could arise no
+variety; all that diversity of created things according to places and
+times (which constitutes the order and life of the universe) could only
+have been produced by the thought and will of a Being who is <i>the
+Being</i>, existing by Himself, and necessarily."</p>
+
+<p>Here, Sirs, are noble thoughts, expressed in noble style. I recommend
+you to read throughout the pages from which I have quoted a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+fragments. Let us now analyze the ideas of this great astronomer as thus
+expounded. We may note these three affirmations:</p>
+
+<p>1. The universe displays an admirable order which reveals the wisdom of
+the Power which governs it.</p>
+
+<p>2. The universe lives; it is not fixed, and its variations suppose an
+intelligent Power which directs it.</p>
+
+<p>3. The variable existence of the universe shows that it is not
+necessary; it must have its cause in a Being who is <i>the</i> Being,
+necessarily, by His proper nature.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the views of Newton. Examine this course of thought, and see if
+it is not natural. Observation reveals to us facts. Facts in themselves,
+isolated facts, are nothing for the mind; but in the facts of nature,
+human reason discovers an order, and in that order it recognizes its own
+proper laws. To keep within the domain of astronomy&mdash;there is harmony
+between our mind and the course of the stars. If you have any doubt
+about this, I appeal to the almanac. We there find it stated that in
+such a month, on such a day, at such an hour, there will be an eclipse
+of the sun or of the moon. How comes the editor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> of the almanac to know
+that? He has learnt it from the savants who have succeeded in explaining
+the phenomena of the skies. The savant therefore can in his study meet
+with the intelligence which directs the universe. If he makes no mistake
+in his calculations, the eclipse begins at the precise hour which he has
+indicated. If the eclipse did not take place at the instant foreseen, no
+one would suspect Nature of not following the course prescribed by the
+directing intelligence; the inference would be that there had been a
+fault in observation, or an error of figures on the part of the
+astronomer.</p>
+
+<p>When science, then, does its part well, the mind of man encounters
+another mind which is governing the world and maintaining it in order.
+The special science of nature stops there, as we shall explain further
+on; but this is not all that man requires, when he makes use of all his
+faculties. All is passing and changing in the domain of experience; and
+reason seeks instinctively the cause of changeable facts in an
+unchangeable Being, the cause of transient phenomena in an eternal
+Being. Nature, therefore, does not suffice to account to us for itself.
+It demands a power to direct it, an intelligence to regulate it; an
+absolute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> eternal Being as its cause. This is what reason imperatively
+requires; and when we possess the idea of God, nature reveals to us His
+power and His wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>This is an old argument, and they call it commonplace. It is
+commonplace, in fact; it has appeared over and over again in the
+discourses of Socrates, in the writings of Galen, of Kepler, of Newton,
+of Linn&aelig;us. Yes, this argument has fallen so low as to be public
+property, if we can say that truth falls when it shines with a splendor
+vivid enough to enlighten the masses. If I desired to bring together
+here the testimony of all the savants who have seen God in nature, the
+song of all the poets who have celebrated the glory of the Eternal as
+manifested by the creation, the enumeration would be long, and I should
+soon tire out your patience. You can understand therefore that if there
+are, as the misanthrope Rousseau says there are, philosophers who hold
+in such contempt vulgar opinions that they prefer error of their own
+discovery to truth found out by other people, then the ancient argument,
+which infers the wisdom of the Creator from the order of the creation,
+must be the object of but small esteem with them. Still I for my part
+take this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> old argument for a good one, and I mean to defend it.</p>
+
+<p>Nature is verily and indeed a marvel placed before the observation of
+our minds. The growth of a blade of grass, the habits of an ant, contain
+for an attentive observer prodigies of wisdom. A drop of dew reflecting
+the beams of morning, the play of light among the leaves of a tree,
+reveal to the poet and the artist treasures of poetry. But too often,
+blinded by habit, we are unable to see; and when our mind is asleep, it
+seems to us that the universe slumbers. A sudden flash of light can
+sometimes arouse us from this lethargy. If science all at once delivers
+up to us some one of those grand laws which reveal in thousands of
+phenomena the traces of one and the same mind, the astonishment of our
+intellect excites in our soul an emotion of adoration. When the first
+rays of morning light up with a pure brightness the lofty summits of our
+Alps; when the sun at his setting stretches a path of fire along the
+waters of our lake, who does not feel impelled to render glory to the
+supreme Artist? When dark cold fogs rest upon our valleys at the decline
+of autumn, it only needs sometimes to climb the mountain-side, in order
+to issue all at once from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> gloomy region, and see the chain of high
+peaks, resplendent with light, mark themselves out upon a sky of
+incomparable blue. Often have I given myself the delight of this grand
+spectacle, and always at such a time my heart has uttered spontaneously
+from its depths that hymn of adoration:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza"><div>Tout l'univers est plein de sa magnificence.</div>
+<div>Qu'on l'adore, ce Dieu, qu'on l'invoque &agrave; jamais!<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Such is, in the presence of nature, the spontaneous movement of the
+heart and of the reason. But a false wisdom obscures these clear
+verities by clouds of sophisms. When your heart feels impelled to render
+glory to God, there is danger lest importunate thoughts rise in your
+mind and counteract the impulse of your adoration. Perhaps you have
+heard it said, perhaps you have read, that the accents of spiritual
+song, those echoes, growing ever weaker, of by-gone ages, are no longer
+heard by a mind enlightened by modern science. I should wish to deliver
+you from this painful doubt. I should wish to protect you from the
+fascinations of a false science. I should wish that in the view of
+nature, even those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> who have as yet no wish to adore, with St. Paul, Him
+whose invisible perfections are clearly seen when we contemplate His
+works, may at least feel themselves free to admire, with Socrates, "the
+supreme God who maintains the works of creation in the flower of youth
+and in a vigor ever new." Let us examine a few of the prejudices which
+it is sought to disseminate, in order to deprive of their force the
+reasonings of Newton, and to turn us from the opinions of Kepler.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that science leads away from God, and that faith continues to
+be the lot only of the ignorant. Listen on this head first of all to the
+Italian Franchi. "The class of society in which infidels and sceptics
+especially abound is that of savants and men of letters,&mdash;men, in short,
+who have gone through studies, in the course of which they have
+certainly become acquainted with the famous demonstrations of the
+existence of God. But no sooner have they examined them with their own
+eyes, and submitted them to the criterion of their own judgment, than
+these demonstrations no longer demonstrate anything; these reasonings
+turn out to be only paralogisms."<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> Here we have the thesis in its
+general form: to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> become an infidel or a sceptic, it is enough to be a
+well educated man. The German B&uuml;chner will now show us the application
+of this notion to the special study of nature. "At this day, our hardest
+laborers in the sciences, our most indefatigable students of nature,
+profess materialistic sentiments."<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> The same tendencies are often
+manifested among French writers. The author of a recent astronomical
+treatise, for example, draws a veil of deceitful words over the profound
+faith of Kepler, and takes evident pleasure in throwing into relief the
+tokens of sympathy bestowed unfortunately by the learned Laplace upon
+atheism.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> Here then we have open attempts to found a prejudice
+against religion on the authority of science; and these attempts disturb
+the minds of not a few. I ask two questions on this head. Is it true, in
+fact, that modern naturalists are generally irreligious? Is it possible
+that the science of nature, rightly considered, should lead to
+atheism?<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>Let us begin with the question of fact; and first of all let us settle
+clearly the bearing and object of this discussion. I wish to destroy a
+prejudice, and not to create one. I am not proposing to you to take the
+votes of savants, in order to know whether God exists. No. Though all
+the universities in Europe should unite to vote it dark at mid-day, I
+should not cease on that account to believe in the sun, and that,
+Gentlemen, in common with you all, and with the mass of my fellow-men. I
+have instituted a sort of inquiry in order to ascertain whether modern
+naturalists have in general been led to atheistical sentiments, as some
+would have us believe. In appealing to the recollections of my own
+earlier studies and subsequent reading, I have marked the names of the
+men best known in the various sciences, and I have inquired what
+religious opinions they may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> have publicly manifested. I will now give
+you briefly the result of my labor.</p>
+
+<p>I have left astronomy out of the question, considering that,
+notwithstanding the great notoriety of Laplace, we have in Kepler and
+Newton a weight of authority sufficient to counterbalance that which it
+is desired to connect with his name. Descending to the earth, we
+encounter first of all the general science of our globe, or geography.
+In this order of studies a German, Ritter, enjoys an incontestable
+preeminence. He is called, even in France, the "creator of scientific
+geography." Scientific geography rests for support on nearly all the
+sciences: it proceeds from the general results of chemistry, physics,
+and geology. Had then the vast knowledge of Ritter turned him away from
+God? I had read somewhere<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> that he was one of those savants who have
+best realized the union of science and faith. One of my friends who was
+personally acquainted with him has described him to me, not only as a
+man who adored the Creator in the view of the creation, but as an
+amiable and zealous Christian, who exerted himself to communicate to
+others his own convictions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the general study of the globe, let us pass to that of the
+organized beings which people its surface. Does botany teach the human
+mind to dispense with God? Let us listen to Linn&aelig;us. I open the <i>System
+of Nature</i>,<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> and on the reverse of the title-page I read: "O Lord,
+how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth
+is full of Thy riches."<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> I turn over a few leaves, and I meet with a
+table which comprises, under the title, <i>Empire of Nature</i>, the general
+classification of beings. The commencement is as follows: "Eternal God,
+all-wise and almighty! I have seen Him as it were pass before me, and I
+remained confounded. I have discovered some traces of His footsteps in
+the works of the creation; and in those works, even in the least, even
+in those which seem most insignificant, what might! what wisdom! what
+inexplicable perfection!&mdash;If thou call Him <i>Destiny</i>, thou art not
+mistaken, it is He upon whom all depends. If thou call Him <i>Nature</i>,
+thou art not mistaken, it is He from whom all takes its origin. If thou
+call Him <i>Providence</i>, thou speakest truly; it is by His counsel that
+the universe subsists." Another great naturalist, George<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Cuvier, takes
+care to point out that "Linn&aelig;us used to seize with marked pleasure the
+numerous occasions which natural history offered him of making known the
+wisdom of Providence."<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> Thus modern botany was founded in a spirit
+of piety. Has it, at a later period, made any discoveries calculated to
+efface from the life of vegetables the marks of Divine intelligence?
+Allow me to introduce here a personal <i>souvenir</i>. I received lessons in
+my youth from an old man, who, having once been the teacher of De
+Candolle, remained his friend.<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> By a rather strange academical
+arrangement, M. Vaucher found himself set to teach us&mdash;not botany, for
+which he possessed both taste and genius,<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> but a science of which he
+knew but little, and which he liked still less. So it came to pass that
+a good part of the hour of lecture was often filled up with familiar
+conversations. These conversations took us far away from church history,
+which we were supposed to be learning. The misplaced botanist reverted,
+by a natural impulse, to his much-loved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> science; and I have seen him
+shed tears of tender emotion, in his Professor's chair, as he spoke to
+us of the God who made the primrose of the spring, and concealed the
+violet under the hedge by the wayside. Therefore is the recollection of
+that old man not only living in my memory, but also dear to my heart.
+Still he was a savant, an enthusiastic naturalist; and, in the broad
+light of the nineteenth century, he felt and spoke like Linn&aelig;us.</p>
+
+<p>Let us pass to the study of animals. I had the wish, some years ago, to
+procure the best of modern treatises upon physiology. I was directed to
+the work of Professor M&uuml;ller, of Berlin. This book has not lost its
+value,&mdash;for, this very morning, a student of our faculty of sciences
+came to me to borrow it, by the advice of his masters. M&uuml;ller was a
+great physiologist, and he made an open profession of the Christian
+religion. Have we not the right to conclude that he believed in God? In
+France, I could cite more than one name in support of my thesis; I
+confine myself to a single fact. The attention of the scientific world
+has very recently been occupied with the discoveries of M. Pasteur. M.
+Pasteur has ascertained that the decomposition of organized bodies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+after death, is effected by the action of small animals almost
+imperceptible, the germs of which the larger animals carry in
+themselves, as living preparatives for their interment. The design of
+Providence reveals itself to his understanding, and he writes: "The
+immediate elements of living bodies would be in a manner indestructible,
+if from the beings which God has created were taken away the smallest,
+and, in appearance, the most useless. Life would thus become impossible,
+because the return to the atmosphere and to the mineral kingdom of all
+that has ceased to live would be all at once suspended."<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> In other
+words: I have studied facts hitherto incompletely observed, and my study
+has revealed to me a new manifestation of that Divine wisdom of which
+the universe bears the impression.</p>
+
+<p>England possesses a naturalist of the first order, whom his
+fellow-countrymen take a pleasure in comparing to George
+Cuvier&mdash;Professor Owen. This savant lectured, a few months ago, before a
+numerous auditory, on the relations of religion and natural
+science.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> He is fully possessed of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> all the information which the
+times afford,&mdash;is not ignorant of modern discoveries,&mdash;is, in fact, one
+of the princes of contemporary science. Well, Gentlemen, Mr. Owen
+repeats, with reference to animals, what Newton was led to say by his
+contemplation of the heavens, and Linn&aelig;us by his study of the plants. He
+is not afraid to admire with Galen the marvellous wisdom which presided
+over the organization of living bodies. His discourse is entitled, <i>The
+Power of God in His Animal Creation</i>. The more we understand, he says,
+the more we admire, the more we adore. He pauses in view of the
+marvellous productions of nature, beside which the most delicate works
+of human industry appear, beneath the microscope, but coarse, rough
+hewings; he compares our most highly finished machines to the living
+machines made by the hand of God, and infers that, not to discern
+intelligence in the relation of means to ends, necessarily implies in
+the mind a defect similar to that of eyes which are unable to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+distinguish colors. Mr. Owen declares that such a state of mind and
+feeling in a naturalist may provoke blame from some and pity from
+others, and remains for him, so far as he is concerned, absolutely
+incomprehensible.</p>
+
+<p>Again, do the most learned chemists find in the study of the elements of
+matter a revelation of atheism? M. Liebig, I have been told, is one of
+the first chemists of our epoch. He believed he had discovered an
+application of chemistry to agriculture, the effect of which would be to
+furnish a remedy to the exhaustion of the soil. His discovery turned out
+false, and a more attentive study of his subject led him to ascertain
+that the object which he was pursuing was actually realized by Divine
+Providence in a way of which he had had no suspicion. The following is
+his own account of this, published in 1862: "After having submitted all
+the facts to a new and very searching examination, I discovered the
+cause of my error. I had sinned against the wisdom of the Creator, and I
+had received my just punishment. I was wishing to perfect His work, and,
+in my blindness, I thought that in the admirable chain of laws which
+preside over life at the surface of the earth, and maintain it ever in
+freshness, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> was wanting a link which I, feeble and impotent worm,
+was to supply. Provision had been made for this beforehand, but in a way
+so wonderful, that the possibility of such a law had not so much as
+dawned upon the human understanding."<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> Here is a confession very
+noble in its humility; and to this chemist, who thus renders glory to
+God, no one of his colleagues could say: "If you had as much science as
+we, you would say no more about the wisdom of the Creator."</p>
+
+<p>Let us pass on to natural philosophers. I have taken a special interest
+in this part of my inquiry, because I had read in the productions of a
+literary man of Paris, that modern physics have placed those at fault
+who defend the doctrine of the living and true God. I inquired
+accordingly of a man, very well able to give me the information, whether
+there exists in Europe a natural philosopher holding a position of quite
+exceptional distinction. I received for reply: "You may say boldly that,
+by the unanimous consent of men of science, Mr. Faraday, in regard both
+to the greatness and range of his discoveries, is the first natural
+philosopher living." After having thus made myself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> sure, therefore, on
+this point, I took the liberty of writing to Mr. Faraday the following
+letter:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class='right'><span class="smcap">Geneva</span>, 30th October, 1863.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+
+<p>"I have the intention of commencing shortly, at Geneva, and for an
+auditory of men, a course of lectures designed to combat the
+manifestations of contemporary atheism. To this deplorable error I
+desire to oppose faith in God, as it has been given to the world by
+the Gospel, faith in the Heavenly Father.</p>
+
+<p>"One of my lectures will be specially devoted to the removal of
+prejudices against religion which have their origin in natural
+science. It is said very often, and very boldly, that modern
+physics and modern chemistry demonstrate the unfounded character of
+religious beliefs. These theses are maintained at Geneva as
+elsewhere. I should wish to reply that natural science does not of
+itself turn men from God, and that without being able to give
+faith, it confirms the faith of those who believe: this I should
+wish to establish by citing names invested, in science, with an
+incontestable and solid renown. Will you, Sir, authorize me to make
+use of your name?"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Mr. Faraday, in reply, sent me the following letter, dated 6th Nov.
+1863.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Sir</span>,</p>
+
+<p> .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. "You have a full right to make use of my name: for although I
+generally avoid mixing up things sacred and things profane, I have,
+on one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> occasion, written and published a passage which accords to
+you this right, and which I maintain. I send you a copy of it. I
+hope you will find nothing in any other part of my researches, to
+contradict or weaken in any way whatever the sense of this passage.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg you to transmit my best remembrances to my friend M. de la
+Rive...."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The passage thus indicated establishes a line of demarcation, very
+strongly (perhaps too strongly) drawn between researches of the reason
+and the domain of religious truth, and contains a profession of positive
+faith in Revelation. The author affirms that he has never recognized any
+incompatibility between science and faith, and makes the following
+declaration: "Even in earthly matters I reckon that 'the invisible
+things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
+understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and
+Godhead.'"</p>
+
+<p>A literary man of Paris declares to us that natural science leads away
+from God: one of the first savants of our time informs us that the
+scientific contemplation of nature renders the wisdom of God manifest.
+The question is one of fact. To whom shall we give our confidence? For
+my part, since it is natural philosophy which is in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> question, I rank
+myself on the side of the Natural Philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>We will here terminate this review. It is time, however, which fails us,
+not subject-matter, for continuing it. You may have noticed that the
+name of no one of the savants of Switzerland figures in this inquiry.
+Nevertheless our country would have furnished a rich mine for my
+purpose. It contains (and it is one of its best privileges) a goodly
+number of savants, whom the observation of the facts of matter have not
+caused to forget the claims of mind, and who know how to raise their
+souls to the Author of the marvels which they study. You will understand
+therefore that it has not been from anxiety for my cause, but from a
+motive of discretion, that I have forborne to bring into this discussion
+the names of men in whom we have a near interest, and many of whom
+perhaps are present in this assembly. I will take advantage of Mr.
+Faraday's letter to make a single exception, by naming M. de la Rive.
+More than once, and in public, we have heard him distinctly point out
+the place occupied by the sciences of mind in relation to the natural
+sciences, and render glory to the Creator. And I do not think that any
+one, in Switzerland or elsewhere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> can claim to speak with disdain, in
+the name of the physical sciences, of the religious convictions boldly
+professed by our learned fellow-countryman.<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p>
+
+<p>Recollect, Gentlemen, that I have not undertaken to prove the existence
+of God, by making appeal to the authority of men of science. All I have
+sought to do has been to destroy a prejudice. They tell us, and scream
+it at us, that the best naturalists become atheists. This is not true,
+as I think I have shown. There do exist atheists who cultivate the
+natural sciences,&mdash;no doubt of the fact. But even though half the whole
+number of naturalists were atheists, inasmuch as other naturalists, and
+those some of the greatest, find in their studies new motives to
+adoration, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true cause why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+these savants repudiate religion has nothing to do with their science.
+We shall come to be more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass
+now from the question of fact to considerations of sound reason.</p>
+
+<p>The weakness of the human mind leads it to forget the facts with which
+it is not occupied. All special culture of the intellect risks
+consequently the paralyzing a part of our faculties. Hegel, lost in
+abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by
+pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race. A
+geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and
+demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic
+masterpiece, "And what does that prove?" A physiologist absorbed in the
+study of sensible phenomena says: "Where is that soul they talk of? I
+have never seen it." These are phenomena of the same order. This
+infirmity of the mind, which leads certain savants to think that the
+ordinary subject of their studies is everything, must not be imputed to
+science. A man accustomed to the exclusive observation of material
+phenomena, may become a materialist by the effect of his mental habits,
+and this really happens, in fact, in too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> many instances; but the study
+in itself is not responsible for this result. Let us endeavor to prove
+this, by clearly defining the object of the natural sciences.</p>
+
+<p>When the matter of a phenomenon is given to us, the understanding
+proposes to itself three questions:</p>
+
+<p>1. How does the fact manifest itself? what is the mode of its existence?
+The answer gives us the law of the phenomenon. Bodies fall to the ground
+at a determined rate of speed: the determination of this rate is the law
+of their fall.</p>
+
+<p>2. What is the real effective power which produces the phenomenon? This
+is the inquiry after the cause.</p>
+
+<p>3. What is the intention which presided at the production of the
+phenomenon? This is the search after the object, which philosophers call
+the final cause.</p>
+
+<p>What we call understanding or explaining a fact, is answering these
+three questions; it is finding the law, the cause, the end. This
+analysis was made by Aristotle, and seems to have been well made. The
+science of nature, as it is conceived by the moderns, does not undertake
+to satisfy entirely the desires of the human mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> It confines itself
+to the first question; it classes phenomena; it then seeks their law;
+arrived at this, it stops. The cause and design of things remain out of
+the sphere of its investigations; the question of God therefore
+continues foreign to it.</p>
+
+<p>A story is told that when Buonaparte expressed his astonishment that the
+Marquis de la Place could have written a large book on the system of the
+universe, without making any mention of the Creator, the learned
+astronomer replied to his sovereign: "Sire, I had no need of that
+hypothesis." The answer is admissible if we regard only the science of
+nature. An astronomer has no need of God in order to follow out the
+series of his calculations, and compare their results with the course of
+the stars; a chemist has no need of God in order to ascertain the simple
+elements combined in composite bodies; a natural philosopher has no need
+of God in order to determine the laws of waves of sound or of electric
+currents. The science of nature does not demonstrate the existence of
+God; still less can it deny His existence. To deny God, it would be
+necessary for science to demonstrate that there is no order, and
+consequently no cause of the order to discover; for when we point out
+the harmony of the uni<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>verse, we manifestly prepare a basis for the
+argument which, from the intelligence recognized in the phenomena, will
+infer the intelligence of the Power which governs them. To prove that
+there is no order would be to prove that there is no science. For any
+one who well understands the value of terms, the words <i>atheistical
+science</i> contain a contradiction; they signify science which proves that
+there is no science.</p>
+
+<p>Such, Gentlemen, is the real state of the question. Our savants, when
+they remain faithful to their method, seek to determine the laws of
+phenomena, and do not occupy themselves either with the First Cause of
+nature, or with its general object; they leave the question of God on
+one side. Whence come then the negations of naturalists? They arise in
+this way: those savants who succeed in strictly confining themselves
+within the limits of their science are rare exceptions. Almost always
+the <i>man</i> introduces his thoughts into the work of the savant, and the
+results of his study appear to him religious or irreligious, according
+to his views of religion. Newton ends his book with a hymn to the
+Creator; but it is not the <i>mathematical principles</i> of nature which
+have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> perceives the rays of His
+glory because he believes in Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks
+that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled
+from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural
+science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very
+common in this matter, and in both directions. The religious mind does
+not understand how it is possible to contemplate the universe, and not
+see inscribed upon it distinctly the name of its Author; and the
+intrusion of atheism into the sciences of observation is veiled beneath
+confusions of ideas which it is of importance for us to dissipate.</p>
+
+<p>Modern science, as we have said, stops at laws, without troubling itself
+with causes. The laws which determine the series of facts as they offer
+themselves to observation express the mode of the action of the causes.
+There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and
+the manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks that his science
+is everything, he must conclude that we can know nothing beyond the
+laws, and that an insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power of
+which they express the action. But he rarely succeeds in keeping this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+position, and deceives his reason by confounding the laws which he
+discovers with the causes with which his mind is not able to dispense.
+He says first of all with Franchi, "the universe is what it is"; this is
+the general formula of all the truths of experience; then he adds with
+the same author, "it is because it is." This <i>because</i> means nothing, or
+means that laws are their own causes. If it is asked, What is the cause
+of the motion of the stars? they will give for answer the astronomical
+formul&aelig; which express this motion, and will think that they have
+explained the phenomena by stating in what way they present themselves
+to observation. This is a curious example of that confusion of ideas
+which opens the door to atheism.</p>
+
+<p>An English naturalist, Mr. Darwin, has shown that in the successive life
+of animal generations, the favorable variations which are produced in
+the organization of a being are transmitted to its descendants and
+insure the perpetuity of its race, while the unpropitious variations
+disappear because they entail the destruction of the races in which they
+are produced. He tells us: "This preservation of favorable variations
+and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural
+Selec<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>tion."<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> What does the author understand by law? He answers:
+"the series of facts as it is known to us."<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> Here we have the true
+definition of law: it is the simple expression of the series of the
+facts; the cause remains to be sought for. I open the book in another
+part. The author is speaking of the eye; and his doctrine is that the
+eye of the eagle was formed by the slow transformations of an extremely
+simple visual apparatus. There will have been then, in the development
+of animal existence, first of all a rudimentary eye, then an eye
+moderately well formed, and then the eye of the eagle, because the
+favorable modifications of the organ of sight will have been preserved
+and increased in the course of ages. Such is the series of facts, such
+is the law; suppose we grant it. What is the cause? The optician makes
+our spectacles; who made the eye of the eagle, by directing the slow
+transformations which at length produced it? Let us listen to the
+author: "There exists an intelligent power, and that intelligent power
+is nat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>ural selection, constantly on the watch for every alteration
+accidentally produced in the transparent layers, in order carefully to
+choose such of those alterations as may tend to produce a more distinct
+image.... Natural selection will choose with infallible skill each new
+improvement effected."<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> Natural selection is a law; a law is the
+series of facts; it seems that we must seek for the power which directs
+this series of facts; but, lo, the series of facts itself is transformed
+into a power&mdash;into an intelligent power&mdash;into a power which chooses with
+infallible skill! The confusion of ideas is complete. The mind is on a
+wrong scent; it concludes that the law explains everything, and has
+itself no need of explanation. The idea of the cause disappears, and, as
+Auguste Comte expresses it, "science conducts God with honor to its
+frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services."<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> This is not
+perhaps the idea of Mr. Darwin, but it is at any rate the idea of some
+of his disciples, as we shall see by-and-by.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight. Let us now see the fate
+to which are consigned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> those other requirements of the reason&mdash;the
+eternal and the infinite. I take up Dr. B&uuml;chner's book, and I read: "We
+are incapable of forming an idea, even approximately, of the <i>eternal</i>
+and the <i>infinite</i>, because our mind, shut up within the limits of the
+senses, in what regards space and time, is quite unable to pass these
+bounds so as to rise to the height of these ideas." I follow the text,
+and thirteen lines further on, in the same page, I read, "Therefore
+matter and space must be eternal."<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> Observe well the use which this
+writer makes of the great ideas of the reason. Is it desired to employ
+them to prove the existence of God? He will have nothing to do with
+them. Is the object in question to deny God's existence? He makes use of
+them; and all in the same page. This is coarse work, no doubt, and Dr.
+B&uuml;chner damages his cause; but, under forms, often more subtle and more
+intelligent, the same sophism turns up in all systems of
+materialism.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> It is affirmed that we have no real idea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> of the
+infinite, and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need which
+reason feels of this idea by applying it to matter.</p>
+
+<p>Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the natural sciences, in
+the interest of metaphysics. I am not attacking but defending them. I am
+endeavoring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them from the outrages
+which are offered to them by materialism, while it seeks to cover with
+their noble mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on the one
+hand, and theologians and philosophers on the other, are too often at
+war. They are men, and as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not
+unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or with jealous
+rivalries, or with the miserable struggles of envy: with these things
+the passions are chargeable. But never render the sciences responsible
+for the errors of their representatives. Take away human frailties, and
+you shall see harmony established; the study of matter will thus agree
+with the study of mind, and the idea of nature with the idea of God. You
+will see all the sciences rise together in a majestic harmony. I say
+rise, and I say it advisedly; for the sciences also form a part of that
+golden chain which should unite the earth to heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The assertion that the science of nature leads away from God, expresses
+nothing but a prejudice. It is not true in fact, and on principles of
+right reason it is impossible: the demonstration is complete. Atheism is
+a philosophy for which the natural sciences are in no degree
+responsible. We shall not undertake here the general discussion of this
+philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to the examination of the pretence
+which it puts forward to find a new support in the results of modern
+science.</p>
+
+<p>The nineteenth century bestows particular attention upon history, and it
+is not only to the annals of the human race that it directs its
+investigations. Geology and pal&aelig;ontology dive into the bowels of the
+earth in order to ask of the ground which carries us testimony as to
+what it carried of old. Astronomy goes yet further. It endeavors to
+conjecture what was the condition of our planet before the appearance of
+the first living being. It remarks that the sun is not fixed in the
+heavens, and that our earth does not twice travel over the same line in
+its annual revolutions. It appears that stars are seen in course of
+formation; it is suspected that some have wholly disappeared. Nature is
+not fixed, but is under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>going modifications&mdash;lives, in fact. The actual
+state of the universe is but a momentary phase in a development which
+supposes thousands of ages in the past, and seems to presage thousands
+more in the future. These conceptions are the result of solid and
+incontestable discoveries. They have disturbed men's minds, but what is
+their legitimate import? Why, Newton's argument receives new force from
+them. From a blind metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the
+same, said this great man, no variation could spring. The more it is
+demonstrated that the universe is in course of development and
+modification, the more clearly comes into view the necessity of the
+supreme Power which is the cause of its modifications, and of the
+Infinite intelligence which is directing them to their end. This appears
+to be solid reasoning, and nevertheless atheism has endeavored to strike
+its roots in the ground of modern discoveries. It does this in the
+following way.</p>
+
+<p>If the universe as it is, with the infinite variety of beings which
+people it and the marvellous relations which connect these beings
+mutually together, could be shown to have sprung all at once from
+nothing, or to have emerged from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> chaos at a given instant, in its full
+harmony, the boldest mind would not venture to regard this miracle of
+intelligence as the product of chance. But modern science, it is said,
+no longer admits of this simple explanation of things: "God created the
+heavens and the earth." This phrase is henceforward admissible only in
+the catechism. We know that all has been produced by slow degrees,
+starting from weak and shapeless rudiments. This grand marvel of the
+universe was not made all of one piece. Man is of recent date;
+quadrupeds at a certain epoch did not exist; animals had a beginning,
+and plants also. The earth was once bare. Formerly, it was perhaps only
+a gaseous mass revolving in space. In course of time, matter was
+condensed; in time it was organized in living cellules; in time these
+cellules became shapeless animals; in time these animals were perfected.
+Time appears therefore to be the "universal factor"; and for the ancient
+formula, "the universe is the creation of God," we are able to
+substitute this other formula, the result, most assuredly, of modern
+science, "the universe is the work of time."</p>
+
+<p>In all this, Gentlemen, I have invented nothing. All I have done has
+been to put into form the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> theory, the elements of which I have met with
+in various contemporary productions.<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> They bewilder us by heaping
+ages upon ages, and in order to explain nature they substitute the idea
+of time for the ideas of power and intelligence. They seem to suppose
+that what is produced little by little is sufficiently explained by the
+slowness of its formation.</p>
+
+<p>These aberrations of thought have recently been manifested in a striking
+manner on the occasion of the publication of Mr. Darwin's book. This
+naturalist has given his attention to the transformation of organized
+types. He has discovered that types vary more than is generally
+supposed; and that we probably take simple varieties for distinct
+species. His discoveries will, I suppose, leave traces strongly marked
+enough in the history of science. But Mr. Darwin is not merely an
+observer; he is a theorist, dominated evidently by a disposition to
+systematize. Now minds of this character, which render, no doubt, signal
+services to the sciences of observation, are all like Pyrrhus, who,
+gazing on Andromache as he walked by her side,</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Still quaffed bewildering pleasure from the view.<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>Their theory is their lady-love; they love it passionately, and
+passionate love always strongly excites the imagination. Mr. Darwin then
+has put forth the hypothesis, that not only all animals, but all
+vegetables too, might have come from one and the same primitive type,
+from one and the same living cellule. This supposes that there was at
+the beginning but one single species, an elementary and very slightly
+defined organization, from which all that lives descended in the way of
+regular generation. The oak and the wild boar which eats its acorn, the
+cat and the flea which lodges in its fur, have common ancestors. The
+family, originally one, has been divided under the influence of soil,
+climate, food, moisture, mode of life, and by virtue of the natural
+selection which has preserved and accumulated the favorable
+modifications which have occurred in the organism. Mr. Darwin, I repeat,
+appears to me a man strongly disposed to systematize, but I do not on
+this account conclude that he is mistaken. The question is, what opinion
+we must form of his doctrine on principles of experimental science?
+Professor Owen<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> does not appear to allow it any value; M. Agassiz
+does not admit it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> at all;<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> and, without crossing the ocean, we
+might consult M. Pictet,<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> who would reply, that judging by the
+experimental data which we have at present, this doctrine is an
+hypothesis not confirmed by the observation of facts. We will leave this
+controversy to naturalists. What will remain eventually in their science
+of the system under discussion? The answer belongs to the future
+enlightened by experience and by the employment of a sage induction.
+What is the relation existing between these systematic views and the
+question of the Creator? This is the sole object of our study.</p>
+
+<p>The opinions of the English naturalist are very dubious as to the vital
+questions of religious philosophy. I have pointed out to you the
+confusion of his ideas in the use which he makes of natural selection.
+In the text of his book, he admits, in the special case of life, the
+intervention of the Creator for the production of the first living
+being, and he does not speak of man, except in an incidental sentence,
+which only attentive readers will take any notice of. If we do not take
+the liberty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> to look a little below the surface, we must say that Mr.
+Darwin remains on the ground of natural history. Therefore I spoke to
+you of the aberrations of philosophic thought which have been produced
+<i>on the occasion</i> of his book. These aberrations are the following:</p>
+
+<p>First of all, natural selection has been taken for a cause, or rather as
+dispensing with the necessity for a cause, by means of a confusion of
+ideas for which the author is responsible. The system has therefore been
+understood as implying, that organized beings were formed without plan,
+without design, by the mere action of material causes, and as the result
+of modifications casual at first, and slowly accumulated. Divine
+intelligence and creative power thus seemed to be disappearing from the
+organization of the universe, and to disappear especially before the
+lapse of time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes. But
+while the system was taking wing, and soaring aloft, lo! the Creator at
+the commencement of things, and man conceived as a distinct being at the
+highest point of nature, have risen up as two idols and paralyzed its
+flight. To Mr. Darwin, however, have speedily succeeded disciples
+compromising their master's authority, and addressing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> him in some such
+language as this: "You, our master, do not fully follow out your own
+opinions; you strain off gnats,<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> and swallow camels. It is not more
+difficult to see in the living cellule a transformation of matter, and
+in man a transformation of the monkey, than to point out in a sponge the
+ancestor of the horse. Cast down your idols, and confess that matter
+developed in course of time, under favorable circumstances, is the
+origin of all that is." Matter, time, circumstances&mdash;these things have
+taken the place of God.</p>
+
+<p>This, Gentlemen, is a philosophy, properly so called, which vainly
+pretends to find a support in the observation of facts. Geoffroy
+Saint-Hilaire, the rival of Cuvier, set forth views analogous to those
+which Mr. Darwin has lately reproduced. But in his replies to the
+attacks which were made upon his system, he affirmed that his theory
+offered "one of the most glorious manifestations of creative power, and
+an additional motive for admiration, gratitude, and love."<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> Two
+differ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>ent interpretations may therefore be given to the system. I wish
+to show you that these interpretations proceed in all cases from
+considerations external to the system. The system in itself, as a theory
+of natural history, could not in any way affect injuriously the great
+interests of spiritual truth.</p>
+
+<p>In order solidly to establish this assertion, I will suppose the
+hypotheses of the most advanced disciples of Mr. Darwin to have been
+verified by experimental science. I take for granted that it has been
+proved that all plants and all animals have descended, by way of regular
+generation, from living cellules originally similar; and that the
+material particles of the globe, at a given moment, drew together to
+form these cellules. And now where do we stand? Will God henceforward be
+a superfluous hypothesis? Do the atheistical consequences which it is
+desired to draw from this doctrine proceed logically from it? Most
+certainly not!</p>
+
+<p>I observe first of all that there exists a great question relative to
+the beginning of things. Matter is perfected and organized in process of
+time&mdash;but whence comes matter itself? Is it also formed little by little
+in process of time? Does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> non-existence become existence little by
+little? So it is said in the preface to the French translation of Mr.
+Darwin's book. But this appertains to high metaphysics; and I pass on.</p>
+
+<p>If time is the factor of all progress by a necessary law, this necessity
+must be everywhere the same. Have the elements of matter all the same
+age? If so, why have some followed the law of progress, and others not?
+Why has this mud and this coal remained mud and coal, age after age,
+while these other molecules have risen, in the hierarchy of the
+universe, to the dignity of life? Why have these mollusks remained
+mollusks throughout the succession of their generations, while others,
+happily transformed, have gradually mounted the steps of the ladder up
+to man? Whence comes this aristocracy of nature? Are the beings which we
+call inferior only the cadets of the universe, and are they too in their
+turn to mount all the steps of the ladder? Must we admit that there is
+going on the continual production, not only of living cellules which are
+beginning new series of generations, but also of new matter, which,
+setting out from the most rudimentary condition, is beginning the
+evolution which is to raise it into life? They do not venture to put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+forth theses of this nature, and, in order to account for the diversity
+of things, recourse is had to circumstances. The diversity of
+circumstances explains the diversity of developments. But whence can
+come the variety of circumstances in a world where all is produced in
+the way of fatal necessity, and without the intervention of a will and
+an intelligence? This is the remark of Newton. Study carefully the
+systems of materialism: their authors declare that to have recourse to
+God in order to account for the universe is a puerile conception
+unworthy of science, because all explanation must be referred to fixed
+and immutable laws; and then you will be for ever surprising them in the
+very act of the adoration of <i>circumstances</i>. Convenient deities these,
+which they summon to their aid in cases which they find embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>But we will not insist on these preliminary considerations. We have
+allowed, for argument's sake, that all organized beings have proceeded
+by means of generation from cellules presenting to sensible observation
+similar appearances. Natural history cannot prove, nor even attempt to
+prove, more. Let us transport ourselves, in thought, to the moment at
+which the highest points of the continents were for the first time
+emerging from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> the primitive ocean. We see, on the parts of the soil
+which are half-dried, and in certain conditions of heat and electricity,
+particles of matter draw together and form those rudiments of organism
+which are called living cellules. These cellules have the marvellous
+faculty of self-propagation, and the faculty, not less marvellous, of
+transmitting to their posterity the favorable modifications which they
+have undergone. Generations succeed one another; gradually they form
+separate branches. New characteristics show themselves; the organisms
+become complicated, and becoming complicated they separate. The
+vegetable is distinguished from the animal; the plant which will become
+the palm-tree is distinguished from the oak which is in course of
+formation, and the ancestor of the future bird is already different from
+that of the fish. We follow up this great spectacle. The ages pass, they
+pass by thousands and by millions, they pass by tens of millions. We
+need not be stinting in our allowance of time; our imagination will be
+tired of conceiving of it sooner than thought of supplying it. And at
+what shall we have arrived at last? At the universe as it has been for
+some few thousands of years past; at the world with its vegetables of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+thousand forms, grouped by classes and series, with the families of
+animals, with the relations of animals to plants, with the unnumbered
+harmonies of nature. Let us choose out one particular, on which to fix
+our attention. Shall it be a she-goat&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Upstretched on fragrant cytisus to browse?</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This will suit our purpose, although the cytisus, unless I am mistaken,
+has no perfume except in M. de Lamartine's verses. Let us fix our
+attention on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down, and the
+goat bending its pliant branches as it browses on the foliage. Here is a
+very small detail in the ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to
+help our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a naturalist who will
+answer for us the questions suggested by this simple spectacle. And what
+have we now before us? The various relations of the animal's
+organization to the vegetables on which it feeds. In the organization
+and functions of these two living beings, in the equilibrium and
+movements of their frames, in the circulation of sap and of blood, we
+have the application of the most secret laws of mechanism, of physics,
+and of chemistry. Then again, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> relations which the animal and the
+plant sustain with the ground which bears them, with the air they
+breathe, with the sun which enlightens them, with heat and light, with
+the moisture of the air and its electricity&mdash;in all this we see the
+universal relations which connect all the various parts of the wide
+universe with each one of its minutest details. In this simple spectacle
+we have, in fact, reciprocal relations, the balance of things, the
+harmony which maintains the universal life&mdash;intelligence, in short, in
+the organization of beings, in the characteristics which divide them, in
+the classes which unite them, in the relations of these classes amongst
+themselves;&mdash;wonders of intelligent design, of which the sciences we are
+so proud of are spelling out, letter by letter, line after line, the
+inexhaustible abysses: this is what we find everywhere. Let us now come
+back to our primitive cellules.</p>
+
+<p>All the living beings which people the surface of the globe are composed
+materially of some of the elements of the earth's substance. The birth
+therefore of the first living beings could only offer to the view the
+bringing together of some of the elements of the soil; this is not the
+matter in question. The primitive cellules were to all appear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>ance
+alike. Weighed in scales, opened by the scalpel, placed beneath the
+microscope, they would have offered no appreciable difference; I grant
+it: it is the supposition we have agreed to make. Therefore they were
+identical, say you. I deny it, and here is my proof: If the cellules had
+been identical, they would not have given, in the successive development
+of their generations, the diverse beings which people the world, and the
+relations which unite them. Alike to your eyes, the cellules differed
+therefore by a concealed property which their development brought to
+light. You have told me as a matter of history how the organization of
+the world was manifested by slow degrees; you have given me no account
+of the cause of that organization.</p>
+
+<p>It is said in reply: "We do know the origin of those developments which
+you refer to a supposed intelligence. The living beings are transformed
+by the action of food, climate, soil, mode of life. They experience
+slight variations in the first instance; but these variations are
+established, and increase; and where you see a plan, types, and species,
+there is really only the result of modifications slowly accumulated.
+Nature disposes of periods which have no limit, and everything has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> come
+at its proper time, in the course of ages." They are always proposing to
+us to accept of time as the substitute for intelligence. I am tempted to
+say with Alcestis:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Time in this matter, Sirs, has nought to do.<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>You know what intelligence is; you know it by knowing yourself. Is
+there, or is there not, intelligence in the universe? Allow me to
+reproduce some old questions: If a machine implies intelligence, does
+the universe imply none? If a telescope implies intelligence in the
+optician, does the eye imply none in its author? The production of a
+variety of the camelia, or of a new breed of swine, demands of the
+gardener and the breeder the patient and prolonged employment of the
+understanding; and are our entire flora and fauna to be explained
+without any intervention of mind? And if there is intelligence in the
+universe, is this intelligence a chemical result of the combination of
+molecules? is it a physical result of caloric or of electricity? It is
+in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited time; what has
+time to do here? Whether the world as it now exists arose out of
+nothing, or whether it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> slowly formed during thousands of ages, the
+question remains the same. With matter and time, you will not succeed in
+creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy
+utterly beyond our power. In the theory of <i>slow causes</i>, the adjective
+ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming
+slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a
+house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time
+has a relative meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or short,
+by taking human life as our measure. But they tell of insects which are
+born in the morning, arrive at mature age at mid-day, and only reach the
+evening if they are patriarchs of their race. Is it not easy to conceive
+of beings organized for an existence such that our centuries would be
+moments with them, and centuries heaped together one of our hours?
+Suppose one of these beings to be contemplating our geological periods,
+and slow causes will to him appear rapid causes, and the question of
+intelligence will be the same for him as for us.</p>
+
+<p>It is manifest that the attempt is being made to restore the worship of
+the old <i>Chronos</i>, to whom the ancients had erected temples. Let us
+look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> the idol in the face. Time appears at first to our imagination as
+the great destroyer. He is armed with a scythe, and passes gaunt and
+bald over the ruins of all that has lived. When he lifts up his great
+voice and cries&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Mighty nations famed in story</div>
+<div class='i1'>Into darkness I have hurled,&mdash;</div>
+<div>Gone their myriads and their glory</div>
+<div class='i1'>(Lo! ye follow) from the world:</div>
+<div>My dark shade for ever covers</div>
+<div class='i1'>Stars I quenched as on they rolled:&mdash;</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>the beautiful, and frightened girl in the song is not singular as she
+exclaims in her terror:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Ah! we're young, and we are lovers,</div>
+<div class='i1'>Spare us, Reaper gaunt and old!<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Such is the first impression which time makes upon us. But birth
+succeeds to death. From an inexhaustible spring, nature sends gushing
+forth new products and new developments. Youth full of hope trips
+lightly over the ground, without a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> thought that the ground it treads on
+is the vast cemetery of all past generations. If we fix our thoughts on
+the permanence of life and the manifestations of progress, time appears
+to us as the great producer. Destroyer of all that is, producer of all
+that is to be, time has thus a double form. It is a mysterious tide,
+ever rising and ever receding; it is the power of death, and it is the
+power of life. All this, Gentlemen, is for the imagination. In the view
+of a calm reason, time is the simply negative condition of all
+development, as space is the negative condition of all motion. Just as
+without bodies and forces infinite space could not produce any motion;
+so, without the action of causes, ages heaped on ages could neither
+produce nor destroy a single atom of matter, or a single element of
+intelligence. Time is the scene of life and of death; it neither causes
+to be born, nor to die.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle which we are now maintaining against the philosophers of
+matter is as ancient as science, and was going on, nearly in the same
+terms, more than two thousand three hundred years ago. About five
+hundred years before the Christian era was born at Clazomen&aelig;, a city of
+Ionia, the son of Eubulus, who was to become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> famous by the name of
+Anaxagoras. He fixed his abode at Athens, and the Athenian people gave
+him a glorious surname,&mdash;they called him <i>Intelligence</i>. On what
+account? There were taught at that time doctrines which explained the
+world by the transformations of matter rising progressively to life and
+thought, without the intervention of a mind. The philosopher Anaximander
+gave out that the first animals had their origin in the watery element,
+and became modified by living in drier regions, so that man was only a
+fish slowly transformed. "I am quite willing to grant it," replied
+Anaxagoras; "but for your transformations there must be a transforming
+principle. Matter is the material of the world, no doubt; but it could
+not produce universal order except as ruled by intelligence." The
+Athenians admired this discovery. For us, Gentlemen, the discovery has
+been made a long while. Let us not then be talking in this discussion
+about modern science and the lights of the age. Our natural history is
+much advanced as compared with that of the Greeks; but the vital
+question has not varied. Does nature manifest the intervention of a
+directing mind, or do we see in it only a fortuitous aggregation of
+atoms?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Intelligence radiates from the face of nature, and it is in vain that
+men endeavor to veil its splendor. Nevertheless I consent to forget all
+that has just been said, in order to intrench myself in an argument,
+which of itself is sufficient for the object we have in view to-day. Our
+object is to prove that material science does not contain the
+explanation of all the realities of the universe. Even though they had
+succeeded in persuading us that there is no intelligence in nature, it
+would still be necessary to explain the origin of that intelligence
+which is in us, and the existence of which cannot be disputed. Whence
+proceeds the mind which is in ourselves?</p>
+
+<p>Let us first of all give our attention to a strange contradiction. Those
+savants who make of the human soul a simple manifestation of matter, are
+the same who wish to explain nature without the intervention of the
+Divine intelligence. In order to keep out of view the design which is
+displayed in the organization of the world, they take a pleasure in
+finding nature at fault, and in pointing out its imperfections. Still,
+they do not pretend to be able to do better than nature; they would not
+undertake the responsibility of correcting the laws of life, and
+regulating the course of the sea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>sons. They do not say, "We could make a
+better world," but "We can imagine a world more perfect than our own."
+Now what is our answer? Simply this: "You are right." Nature is not the
+supreme perfection, and therefore we will not worship it. How admirable
+soever be the visible universe, we have the faculty of conceiving more
+and better. We understand that the atmosphere might be purified, so that
+the tempest should not engulf the ships, nor the thunderbolt produce the
+conflagration. We dream of mountain-heights more majestic than the
+loftiest summits of our Alps, of waters more transparent than the pure
+crystal of our lakes, of valleys fresher and more peaceful than the
+loveliest which hide among our hills. The spectacle of nature awakens in
+us the powers of thought, and the sentiment of beauty draws us on to the
+pursuit of an ideal which surpasses all realities. Nature is not
+perfect: let us be forward to acknowledge it, and let us draw from the
+fact its legitimate consequence. The stream cannot rise higher than its
+source. If man conceives an ideal superior to nature, he is not himself
+the mere product of nature. By what strange contradiction is it affirmed
+at once that our spirit overpasses the bounds of all the realities
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> encompass it, and that it has not a source more elevated than
+those realities? Listen to a thought of that weighty writer
+Montesquieu:<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> "Those who have said that a blind fatality has
+produced all the effects which we see in the world, have said a great
+absurdity; for what greater absurdity than a blind fatality which should
+have produced intelligent beings?" Without restricting ourselves to this
+simple and solid argument, let us see how they will explain man by
+nature. For this end, we must examine the theory of the perfected
+monkey, which, introduced to us by the lectures of Professor Vogt and
+the spirited rejoinders of M. de Rougemont, made a great noise as it
+descended a short time ago from the mountains of Neuch&acirc;tel.<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> A
+celebrated orator said one day to an assembly of Frenchmen: "I am long,
+Gentlemen; but it is your own fault: it is your glory that I am
+recounting." Have not I the right to say to you: "I am long, Gentlemen,
+but it is worth while to be so; it is our own dignity which is in
+question."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Man is a perfected monkey! I have three preliminary observations to make
+before I proceed to the direct examination of this theory.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, this definition transgresses the first and most
+essential rules of logic. We must always define what is unknown by what
+is known. This is an elementary principle. What a man is, I know. To
+think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear, are functions of the mental
+life. These words answer to clear ideas, because those ideas result
+directly from our personal consciousness. But what is the soul of a
+monkey? The nature of animals is a mystery, one which is perhaps
+incapable of solution, and which, in all cases is wrapped in profound
+darkness, because the animal appears to us an intermediate link between
+the mechanism of nature and the functions of the spiritual life, which
+are the only two conceptions we have that are really clear and distinct.
+In taking the monkey therefore as our point of departure for the
+definition of man, we are defining what is clear by what is obscure.</p>
+
+<p>My second remark is this: If it is affirmed that there is but one
+species, including all the animals and man, so that man is only a monkey
+modified, and the monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> modified;
+when once we have established the reality of man we arrive at this
+result: all animals whatsoever are only inferior developments of
+humanity, living f&oelig;tuses which, without having come to their full
+term, have nevertheless the faculty of living and reproducing
+themselves. The animal then is an incomplete man; a theory which raises
+great difficulties, but which is more serious and more easy to
+understand than the doctrine which would have man to be a consummation
+of the monkey.</p>
+
+<p>In fact,&mdash;and this is my third observation,&mdash;when the theory which I am
+examining is adopted, it must be carried out to its consequences, and
+the bearing of it clearly seen. Man, it is said, is the consummation of
+the monkey. The monkey is an improvement upon some quadruped or other,
+and this quadruped is an improvement upon another, and so on. We must
+descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most elementary
+manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter. If it is not
+admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must be
+admitted that man is a <i>m&eacute;lange</i> of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote,
+phosphorus&mdash;a <i>m&eacute;lange</i> which has been brought little by little to
+perfection. Such is the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> final inference from the doctrine which we are
+examining; and there are theorists who deduce it clearly. Now what is it
+that goes on in the minds of these savants? When the object is to banish
+God from nature, the creative Intelligence is resolved into thousands of
+ages. When it is desired to get rid in man of the reality of mind, they
+seek to resolve the human intelligence into a long series of
+modifications which have caused life to spring from matter, superior
+animals from simpler organisms, and man from the animal. Do not allow
+yourselves to be caught in this trap. Maintain firmly, that, whatever
+the degree of intelligence, of will, of spiritual essence, which may
+exist in animals, if that element is really found in them, it demands a
+cause, and cannot, without an enormous confusion of ideas, be regarded
+as a mere perfecting of matter. In fact, a thing in perfecting itself,
+realizes continually more fully its own proper idea, and does not become
+another thing. A perfect monkey would be of all monkeys the one which is
+most a monkey, and would not be a man. But let us leave the animals in
+the darkness in which they abide for our minds, and let us speak of what
+for us is less obscure.</p>
+
+<p>Our spiritual existence is a fact; it is of all facts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> the one which is
+best known to us; it is the fact without which no other fact would exist
+for us. And whence proceeds our spirit? To this question, natural
+history has no answer. It is easy to see this, though we grant once
+again to natural history, when made the most of by our adversaries, all
+that it can pretend to claim. Suppose it proved, that in the historical
+development of nature, man has a monkey for his mother. I will grant it,
+and grant it quite seriously in order to ascertain what will be the
+influence of this hypothesis upon the problem on which we are engaged.</p>
+
+<p>If all monkeys were fossils, and if we had a natural history, also
+fossil, setting forth to us the customs and habits of these animals; if
+the savages that are said to be the nearest neighbors to monkeys were
+all fossils; we should find ourselves in presence of a progressive and
+continued development of beings, and, for an inattentive mind, all would
+be easily explained by the slow and continued action of time. But this
+is not the case. All the elements of nature are before our eyes, from
+inorganic matter up to man. We do not see that time suffices for savages
+to become civilized, and still less for monkeys to become<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> men. I was,
+in the spring of this year, in the <i>Jardin des plantes</i> at Paris, musing
+on the question which we are discussing, and I took a good look at the
+monkeys. Come now, I said to myself, canst thou recognize them as thine
+ancestors? The question was badly put. The monkeys are not our
+ancestors, inasmuch as they are living at the same time with us; they
+can only be our cousins, and it would seem that they are the eldest
+branch, as they have best preserved the primitive type. But let us speak
+more seriously. The races of monkeys have lived as long or longer than
+we: it is neither time nor climate which has made men of them.
+Recollect, I pray you, that the words 'time' and 'progress' explain
+nothing. There must have occurred favorable circumstances to transform
+the earth's substance into living cellules, and the living cellules into
+plants clearly marked, and into animals properly so called; and in the
+same way there must have been a propitious circumstance to transform the
+monkey into man. I think so, in fact; and this propitious circumstance
+well deserves to be studied with attention.</p>
+
+<p>Man presents characteristics which distinguish him profoundly from the
+animal races: no one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> disputes it. He possesses speech; he is capable of
+religion; he exhibits the varied phenomena of civilization, while the
+animals succeed one another generations after generations in the
+unrecorded obscurity of a life for ever the same. Suppose we admit that
+human phenomena presented themselves at first in a very elementary form;
+in rudiments of language and rudiments of religion,&mdash;although the
+historical sciences do not quite give this result:&mdash;still suppose the
+case that at a given moment a branch of the monkey species presented the
+germ, as little developed as you please, but real, of new phenomena. One
+variety of the monkey species has been endowed with speech, has become
+religious, capable of civilization, and the other varieties of the
+species have not offered the same characteristics, although they have
+had the same number of ages in which to develop themselves. Observe well
+now my process of reasoning. Remark attentively whether I oppose
+theories to facts, whether I substitute oratorical declamations for
+arguments. I grant the hypotheses best calculated, as commonly thought,
+to contradict my theses. I assume that natural history demonstrates by
+solid proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of a mon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>key;
+and I ask: What is the circumstance which set apart in the animal
+species a branch which presented new phenomena? What is the cause? That
+monkey-author of our race which one day began to speak in the midst of
+his brother-monkeys, amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that
+monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity; that, looking up
+to heaven, said, My God! and that, retiring into himself, said: I!&mdash;that
+monkey which, while the female monkeys continued to give birth to their
+young, had sons by the partner of his life and pressed them to his
+heart; that monkey&mdash;what shall we say of it? What climate, what soil,
+what regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what drought, what
+light, what combination of phosphorus, what disengagement of
+electricity, separated from the animal races, not only man, but human
+society? humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again, its
+sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles; humanity with its arts,
+its sciences, its religion, its history in short, its history and its
+hopes of immortality? That monkey, what shall we say of it? Do you not
+see that the breath of the Spirit passed over it, and that God said unto
+it: Behold, thou art made in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> mine image: remember now thy Father who is
+in heaven? Do you not see that though we grant everything to the extreme
+pretensions of naturalists, the question comes up again whole and
+entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine
+that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature,
+that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an
+impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies
+the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first
+man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series
+of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth,
+by making it pass through the long series of animality&mdash;the question is
+a grave one, but it is of secondary importance. The first question is to
+know whether we are merely the ephemeral product of the encounter of
+atoms, or whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul, a reality
+in short, with which may connect itself another future than the
+dissolution of the sepulchre; whether there remains another hope than
+annihilation as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants
+after fame, only that evanescent memory which time bears away with
+everything beside.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This is the question. Do not allow it to be put out of sight beneath
+details of physiology and researches of natural history, which can
+neither settle, nor so much as touch the problem. If therefore you fall
+in with any one of these philosophers of matter, bid him take this for
+all your answer: "There is one fact which stands out against your theory
+and suffices to overthrow it: that fact is&mdash;myself!" And since, to have
+the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is
+one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance
+of the conscience,&mdash;add boldly with Corneille's Medea:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>I,&mdash;I say,&mdash;and it is enough.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In fact, nature does not explain man, and to this conclusion has tended
+all that I have said to you to-day.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> <i>Harmonices mundi, libri quinque.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> <i>Philosophi&aelig; naturalis principia mathematica.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>The whole universe is full of His magnificence.</div>
+<div>May this God be adored and invoked for ever!</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> <i>Le Rationalisme</i>, page 19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Force et Mati&egrave;re</i>, page 262.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> <i>Les Mondes Causeries astronomiques</i> by Guillemin; see p.
+122 (3rd edition), where Kepler is described as an intelligence
+"penetrated by a profound faith in nature and exalted by a noble pride."
+See also pages 327 and 336.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> The question discussed in these pages must not be
+confounded with that of the relations between the science of nature and
+the documents of revelation. Whether nature can be explained without God
+is one question. Whether geology is in accordance with the language of
+the book of Genesis is another question, as regards both its nature and
+its importance. This latter subject does not come within the scope of
+these lectures. I will merely call attention to the fact, that if nature
+and the sacred text are fixed elements, this is not the case with the
+interpretations of theologians, and the results of geology. It is
+difficult to pronounce upon the exact relation of two quantities more or
+less indeterminate.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> In the writings of M. de Rougemont, if I am not
+mistaken.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> <i>Systema natur&aelig;.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> Ps. civ. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> <i>Biographie universelle.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> <i>A. P. de Candolle</i>, by A. de la Rive, pp. 12 and 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> M. Vaucher's principal title to scientific distinction is
+his <i>Histoire des conferves d'eau douce</i>, Gen&egrave;ve, an <span class="smcap">xi</span> (1803), 4&deg;.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> <i>Comptes rendus de l'Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences</i> of 20 April,
+1863, page 738.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> Exeter Hall Lectures&mdash;<i>The Power of God in His Animal
+Creation</i>, pamphlet in 12mo. This remarkable lecture contains a twofold
+protest&mdash;against the blindness of those savants who fail to recognize
+the presence of God in nature; and against the pretensions of those
+theologians who attack the certain results of the study of nature,
+relying upon texts more or less accurately interpreted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> <i>Chemistry applied to Agriculture and to Physiology</i> (in
+German). Seventh edition. Introd. page 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> Since these words were spoken, M. de la Rive has been
+named an associated member of the Institute of France (Academy of
+Sciences), and thus elevated to the first of scientific dignities. It
+might be shown, I believe, that the greater number of the eight
+associates of the Academy of Sciences to be found in the world, make
+profession of their faith in God the Creator, the Almighty and Holy One.
+The silence which others may have preserved on the subject would,
+moreover, be no authority for concluding that they do not share in
+beliefs and sentiments which they have not had the occasion perhaps of
+publicly expressing.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> <i>On the Origin of Species</i>, page 81. Fifth edition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> <i>On the Origin of Species</i>. The text is&mdash;"the <i>necessary</i>
+series of facts;" but it would be to do the writer wrong to impute to
+him the idea that observation reveals to us what is <i>necessary</i>, in the
+philosophical import of the word.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> <i>On the Origin of Species.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> Caro, <i>L'Id&eacute;e de Dieu</i>, page 47.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> <i>Force et Mati&egrave;re</i>, page 181.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> The B&uuml;chner proceeding is found again pretty exactly in
+<i>Les Mondes</i> of M. Am&eacute;d&eacute;e Guillemin. This writer affirms (page 60 of the
+third edition) that science does not approach metaphysical questions;
+and asserts in the same page, ten lines further on, that astronomical
+experience leads our reason to the idea of <i>the eternity of the
+universe</i>. After that, he may laugh, if he will, at <i>lovers of the
+absolute</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> See in particular the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, passim.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> S'enivrait en marchant du plaisir de la voir.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> See the lecture above mentioned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> <i>Lettres sur les Etats-Unis d'Am&eacute;rique</i>, by
+Lieutenant-Colonel Ferri Pisani, page 400.&mdash;Letter of 25 Sept. 1861.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> On the origin of species, in the <i>Archives des sciences
+de la Biblioth&egrave;que universelle</i>, March, 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Vous coulez des moucherons.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> In his <i>Principes de philosophie zoologique</i>, a
+collection of answers made by Geoffroy, in the discussions of the
+<i>Acad&eacute;mie des Sciences</i>, in 1830.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> Voyons, Messieurs, le temps ne fait rien &agrave; l'affaire.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Sur cent premiers peuples c&eacute;l&egrave;bres,</div>
+<div class='i1'>J'ai plong&eacute; cent peuples fameux,</div>
+<div>Dans un ab&icirc;me de t&eacute;n&egrave;bres</div>
+<div class='i1'>O&ugrave; vous dispara&icirc;trez comme eux.</div>
+<div>J'ai couvert d'une ombre &eacute;ternelle</div>
+<div class='i1'>Des astres &eacute;teints dans leur cours.</div>
+<div>&mdash;Ah! par piti&eacute;, lui dit ma belle,</div>
+<div class='i1'>Vieillard, &eacute;pargnez nos amours!</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> <i>Esprit des Lois</i>, Bk. I. chap. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> <i>Le&ccedil;ons sur l'homme</i>, by Carl Vogt (lectures delivered
+during the winter of 1862-1863, at Neuch&acirc;tel and at Chaux-de-Fonds), 1
+vol. 8vo. Paris, 1865.&mdash;<i>L'Homme et le Singe</i>, by Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric de Rougemont,
+pamphlet, 12mo. Neuch&acirc;tel, 1863.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_V" id="LECTURE_V"></a>LECTURE V.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>HUMANITY</i>.</h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 1st. Dec., 1863.)</p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>Man has need of God. If he be not fallen into the most abject
+degradation, he does not succeed in extinguishing the instinct which
+leads him to inquire after his Creator. A false wisdom labors to still
+the cravings which the truth alone can satisfy; but false wisdom remains
+powerless, and betrays itself continually by some outrageous
+contradiction. Here is a curious example of this:</p>
+
+<p>In a book which was famous in the last century, and which was called the
+gospel of atheism,<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> the Baron d'Holbach explains as follows the
+existence of the universe: "The universe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> that vast assemblage of all
+that exists, everywhere presents to our view only matter and
+motion.&mdash;Nature is the grand whole which results from the assemblage of
+different material substances, from their different combinations, and
+from the different motions which we see in the universe."<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> Here is a
+clear doctrine: all that exists, the soul included, is nothing but
+matter in motion. I pass from the beginning to the end of the work, and
+I arrive at this conclusion: "O nature! sovereign of all beings! and ye,
+her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, truth! be ye for ever our sole
+divinities; to you it is that the incense and the homage of the earth
+are due."<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> If we try to translate this sort of hymn in accordance
+with the express definitions of the author, we shall obtain the
+following result: "O matter in motion! sovereign of all material
+substances in motion! and ye, virtue, reason, truth, who are various
+names of matter which moves, be ye the only divinities of that moving
+matter which is ourselves." Yet this author was no blockhead. What then
+passed in his mind? He laid down the thesis of materialism: bodies in
+motion are the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> only reality. But he is all the while a man. The need
+for adoration is not destroyed in his soul, and he deceives himself. He
+defines nature as consisting wholly of matter, and when he sets himself
+to worship it, he entirely forgets his definition. This is not on his
+part a piece of philosophical jugglery, but the manifestation of the
+real condition of our nature, which is always giving the lie, in one
+direction or another, to erroneous systems. The power of wholly
+maintaining himself in error has not been granted to man. He who denies
+God is always deifying something; and all worship which is not that of
+the Eternal and Infinite Mind is stultified by glaring contradictions.
+Here is a recent example of this: We were not a little surprised a short
+time since to see M. Ernest Renan deny clearly enough the immortality of
+our persons, and, in the opening of the very book in which this negation
+appears, to find him invoking the soul of his sister at rest with
+God.<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> Elsewhere, the same writer says that the Infinite Being does
+not exist, that absolute reason and absolute justice exist only in
+humanity, and he concludes his exposition of these views by an
+invocation of the Heavenly Father.<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> The Baron<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> d'Holbach had put
+eight hundred and thirty-nine pages between his materialistic definition
+of the universe and his invocation of nature. Now-a-days everything goes
+faster; and M. Renan places but a few pages of the <i>Revue des Deux
+Mondes</i> between his denial of God and his prayer to the Heavenly Father.
+With this difference, which is to the advantage of the writer of the
+eighteenth century, the process is absolutely the same. The philosopher
+declares God to be an imaginary being, and the future life an illusion;
+but the man protests, and, by a touching illusion of the heart, the man
+who in his system of doctrine has neither God nor hope, finds that he
+has a sister in the realms eternal, and a Father in the heavens. It is
+impossible not to see, especially in literary works destined to a
+success of fashion, the seductive influence of art, the precautions of
+prudence, the concessions made to public opinion; but we cannot wholly
+explain the incredible contradictions of the Holbachs and Renans,
+without allowing full weight to that need for God which shows itself
+even in the farthest wanderings of human thought by sudden and abrupt
+returns.</p>
+
+<p>The illusion which deifies matter in motion is gross enough. It belongs
+only to minds which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> Cicero called, in the aristocratic pride of a Roman
+gentleman, the plebeians of philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> It requires, in fact, no
+great reflection to understand that truth, beauty, and goodness are
+neither atoms nor a certain movement of atoms. The attempt, which is to
+form the subject of our study to-day, that of deifying man, is a far
+more subtle one. Let us first of all inquire into the origin of the
+strange worship which humanity accords to itself.</p>
+
+<p>Nature, considered separately from the beings which receive sensible
+impressions from it, has neither heat nor light. In a world peopled by
+the blind, light would have no name. If all men were entirely paralyzed
+as to their sensations, the idea of heat would not exist. Light and
+heat, regarded as existing in matter itself, without reference to
+sensitive organizations, are, in the opinion of our natural
+philosophers, only determinate movements. In the same way, if nature
+were without any spectator whatever, beauty would not exist; if there
+were nowhere any intelligence, truth would no longer be. In the same way
+again, if there were no wills, goodness, which is nothing else than the
+law of the will, would be a word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> deprived of all meaning. Beauty
+expresses the object of the perceptions of the soul. Truth denotes the
+quality of the judgments of intelligences. Goodness (I speak of moral
+goodness) expresses a certain direction of the free will. There exists
+no means of causing to proceed from nature, or from matter, the
+attributes of the spiritual being. This is only done by imaginary
+transformations, by a course of arrant juggling. The flame does not feel
+its own heat, light does not see itself, the planets know nothing of the
+laws of Kepler. Materialism is the result of a modesty wholly misplaced
+which leads man to forget himself, in order to attribute gratuitously to
+nature realities which exist only in spiritual beings connected with
+nature by a marvellous harmony. In order therefore to account for the
+universe, we must raise ourselves above the atom in motion, and
+penetrate into a higher world where truth, beauty, goodness become the
+objects of thought. Truth, beauty, goodness conduct the mind to God,
+their eternal source. But there is a philosophy which endeavors to stop
+midway in the ascent of the Divine ladder, and thinks to satisfy itself
+in the contemplation of the true, the beautiful, the good, without
+connecting them with their cause.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> This philosophy considers the true,
+the beautiful, the good, as ideas which exist by themselves, without a
+supreme Spirit of which they are the manifestation. It has received, in
+consequence, the name of idealism.</p>
+
+<p>To conceive of ideas without a mind, ideas having an existence by
+themselves, is a thing impossible; such a conception is expressed by
+words which give back a hollow sound, because they contain nothing. We
+have already stated this thesis; let us now confirm it by an example. A
+literary Frenchman, M. Taine, would make us understand in what manner
+the universe may be explained without reference to God, and by means of
+a pure idea. Listen well, not to understand, but to make sure that you
+do not understand: "The universe forms a unique being, indivisible, of
+which all the beings are members. At the supreme summit of things, at
+the highest point of the luminous and inaccessible ether, pronounces
+itself the eternal axiom; and the prolonged resounding of this creative
+formula composes, by its inexhaustible undulations, the immensity of the
+universe. Every form, every change, every movement, every idea is one of
+its acts."<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>M. Taine is a man of humor, and the burlesque has a place in his
+philosophical writings; but in the words which I have just read to you
+he seems to have intended seriously to expound the system which replaces
+God by an idea. Try now to form a definite conception of this universe
+composed of the undulations of an axiom. Do you understand how an axiom
+undulates, and how the heavens and the earth are only the undulations of
+an axiom? Making all allowance for rhetoric and figures, do you
+understand what can be the acts of an axiom, and how an axiom
+<i>pronounces itself</i> without being pronounced? You do not understand it,
+as neither do I. Such doctrines, then, as we have said, can only be the
+portion of a small number of thinkers who have lost, by dint of
+abstraction, the sentiment of reality. The ideas&mdash;truth, beauty,
+good&mdash;will only exist for the common order of men, under such a system,
+in the human mind, where we have cognizance of them; and thenceforward,
+the ideal, or God, is nothing else than the image of humanity which
+contemplates itself in a sort of mirage. Thus it is that the adoration
+of man by man is disengaged from the high theories of idealism. Let us
+proceed to the examination of this worship, which is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> cried up
+now-a-days in divers parts of the intellectual globe.</p>
+
+<p>I open the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, of the 15th February, 1861. As the
+author of the article I refer to<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> appears to admit "that one
+assertion is not more true than another opposed to it,"<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> we will not
+be so simple as to ask whether he adopts the opinions which he
+propounds. He presents to us, in a rapid sketch, the principal
+tendencies of the modern mind. The modern mind is here characterized by
+one of its declared partisans; you will not take therefore for a wicked
+caricature the picture which he puts before us. Here then are the
+thoughts of the modern mind: "There is only one infinite, that of our
+desires and our aspirations, that of our needs and our efforts.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> The
+true, the beautiful, the just are perpetually occurring; they are for
+ever in course of self-formation, because they are nothing else than the
+human mind, which, in unfolding itself, finds and knows itself
+again."<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a> This is only the French translation of a saying celebrated
+in Germany: "God is not: He becomes." What we call God is the human
+mind. What was there at the beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> of things? The human mind, which
+did not know itself. What will there be in the end? The human mind,
+which, in unfolding itself, will have come to know itself, and will
+adore itself as the supreme God. If this be indeed the final object of
+the universe, it appears that, in the opinion of these philosophers, the
+consummation of all things must be near. Once that humanity, faithful to
+their doctrine, shall have pronounced the lofty utterance, "I am God,
+and there is none else," the world will no longer have any reason for
+existing.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the system of which we have to follow out the consequences. Let
+us take as our point of comparison the old ideas which we are urged to
+abandon.</p>
+
+<p>We usually explain human destinies by the concurrence of two causes,
+infinitely distinct, since the one is creative and the other created,
+but both of which we hold for real: man, and God. Humanity has received
+from its Author the free power which we call will, and the law of that
+will which we name conscience. The law proceeds from God, the liberty
+proceeds from God; but the acts of the created will, when it violates
+its law and revolts against its Author, are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> the creation of the
+creature. God is the eternal source of good, and liberty is a good; but
+God is not the source of evil, which is distinctly a revolt against Him,
+the abuse of the first of His gifts. Together with will, man has
+received understanding, and gives himself to the search after truth.
+Truth is the object of the understanding, its Divine law. Error is a
+deviation from the law of the understanding, as evil is a deviation from
+the law of the will. Lastly, with will and understanding, man has
+received the faculty of feeling. This faculty applies itself to the
+world of bodies, from which we receive pain or pleasure. But our faculty
+of feeling does not stop there. Above the animal life, the mind has
+enjoyments which are proper to it, and the object of which is beauty.
+Beauty is not only in nature and in works of art, it is everywhere, in
+whatever attracts our love. The sciences are beautiful, and the harmony
+of the truths which are discovered in their order and mutual dependence
+causes us to experience a feeling similar to that produced by the most
+delightful music. Virtue is beautiful; it shines in the view of the
+conscience with the purest brightness, and, as was said by one of the
+ancients, if it could reveal itself to our eyes in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> sensible form, it
+would excite in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is ugly
+when once stripped of the delusive fascination of the passions; the
+vicious excesses of the lower nature are ugly and repulsive as soon as
+the intoxication is over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful
+errors but those which contain a larger portion of truth than the
+prosaic verities, which are nothing else than falsehoods put in a
+specious way. Beauty therefore is the law of our feelings, as truth is
+the law of our thought, and good the law of our will. We will not
+inquire now what secret relations shall one day bring together in an
+indissoluble unity of light, the good, the true, and the beautiful, and
+in a unity of darkness, evil, deformity, and falsehood. Let it suffice
+to have pointed out how a threefold aspiration leads man to God, under
+the guidance of the conscience, the understanding, and the feelings; and
+that a threefold rebellion estranges him from God, by sinking him into
+the dark regions of deformity, error, and evil. Humanity has therefore a
+law; it has been endowed with liberty, but that a liberty of which the
+legitimate end is determined. It advances towards this end, or it
+swerves from it. There is a rule above its acts. The thing as it is may
+not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> be the thing as it ought to be; rebellion is not obedience, and
+good is not evil.</p>
+
+<p>All these consequences are included in the idea of creation. The
+struggle between two opposite principles, a struggle which sums up human
+destiny, is a fact of which each one of us can easily assure himself in
+his own person. What will happen when man, sensible of the law of his
+nature, and conscious of this struggle, proceeds to encounter humanity?
+Each one of us carries humanity in his own bosom. But humanity, the
+character of man which is common to us, and which makes the spiritual
+unity of our species, is found to be altered by the influence of places,
+times, and circumstances. Our reason is encumbered by prejudices of
+birth and education, and by such as we have ourselves created in our
+minds in the exercise of our will. Our sense of beauty is vitiated and
+narrowed by local influences and habits. Our conscience is likewise
+subjected to influences which impair its free manifestation. Every one
+needs to enlarge his horizon. By seeking occasions of intercourse with
+our fellows, we shall learn to discriminate true and eternal beauty in
+the diversity of its manifestations; we shall distinguish the truth from
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> individual prepossessions of our own minds; good and evil,
+disengaged from the narrownesses of habit, will appear to us in their
+real and enduring nature. Our taste will be formed, our conscience
+purified, our mind enlarged; we shall more and more become men, in the
+high and full acceptation of the term. In order that the meeting
+together of the individual and of humanity may produce such fruits, God
+must dwell continually in the sanctuary of the conscience. The inner
+light is kindled in the intercourse of the soul with its Creator; it is
+afterwards brightened and nurtured by the soul's intercourse with the
+traces of God which humanity reveals. But this light makes manifest
+within us, and without us, great darkness. We have no right to abandon
+ourselves to every spectacle which strikes our view. If, in presence of
+what is passing in the world, we are tempted to regard the prosperity of
+the wicked with cowardly envy; if we would fill up, for the satisfaction
+of our evil desires, the abyss which separates the holy from the impure,
+the inner voice lifts itself up and cries to us: "Woe! woe to them who
+call evil good, and good evil."<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> God is our Master, even as He is
+our good and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> our hope. The fact of the revolts of humanity can have no
+effect against His sovereign will. Soldiers in the service of the
+Almighty, life is for us a conflict, and duty imposes on us a combat.</p>
+
+<p>Such, Sirs, is the explanation of our destinies, an old, and, if you
+like, a vulgar one. Let us now give our attention to the doctrine which
+deifies humanity, and follow out its consequences. Humanity carries
+within its bosom the idea of truth, the love of beauty, the sense of
+good. What does it need more? These noble aspirations mark for it the
+end of its efforts. What will be wanting to a life regulated by duty,
+enlightened by truth, ennobled by art? What will be wanting to such a
+life? Nothing, or everything. Nothing, if the search after good, truth,
+and beauty leads to God. Everything, if it be sought to carry it on
+without any reference to God, because from the moment that man desires
+to be the source of light to himself, the light will be changed into
+darkness, as we said at the beginning of this lecture. Put God out of
+view, and good, beauty, and truth will disappear; while you will see
+produced the decline of art, the dissolution of thought in scepticism,
+the absolute negation of morality.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> Let us consider with the attention
+it deserves, and in contemporary examples, this sad and curious
+spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>I open a treatise by M. Taine. The English historian Macaulay speaks of
+literary men who "have taken pains to strip vice of its odiousness, to
+render virtue ridiculous, to rank adultery among the elegant fashions
+and obligatory achievements of a man of taste." The honest Englishman
+takes the liberty to judge and to condemn men who have made so
+pernicious a use of their talents. This pretension to make the
+conscience speak is in the eyes of the French man of letters a gothic
+prejudice. Listen how he expresses himself on the subject: "Criticism in
+France has freer methods.&mdash;When we try to give an account of the life,
+or to describe the character, of a man, we are quite willing to consider
+him simply as an object of painting or of science.... We do not judge
+him, we only wish to represent him to the eyes and to set him
+intelligibly before the reason. We are curious inquirers and nothing
+more. That Peter or Paul was a knave matters little to us, that was the
+business of his contemporaries, who suffered from his vices&mdash;At this day
+we are out of his reach, and hatred<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> has disappeared with the danger&mdash;I
+experience neither aversion nor disgust; I have left these feelings at
+the gate of history, and I taste the very deep and very pure pleasure of
+seeing a soul act according to a definite law&mdash;."<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> You understand,
+Gentlemen: the distinction between good and evil, as that between error
+and truth; these are old sandals which must be put off before entering
+into the temple of history; and the man of the nineteenth century, if he
+has taste and information, is merely an historian, and nothing more. The
+sacred emotion which generous actions produce in us, the indignation
+stirred in us by baseness and cruelty, are childish emotions which are
+to disappear in order that we may be free to contemplate vice and virtue
+with a pleasure always equal, very deep, and very pure. We have not here
+the aberration of a young and ill-regulated mind, but the doctrine of a
+school. I open again the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, and there I encounter
+the theory of which M. Taine has made the application: "We no longer
+know anything of morals, but of manners; of principles, but of facts. We
+explain everything, and, as has been said, the mind ends <i>by approving
+of all that it explains</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Modern virtue is summed up in
+toleration.<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a>&mdash;Immense novelty! That which is, has for us the right
+to be.<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a>&mdash;In the eyes of the modern savant, all is true, all is right
+in its own place. The place of each thing constitutes its truth."<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p>
+
+<p>I cut short the enumeration of these enormities. All rule has
+disappeared, all morality is destroyed; there is no longer any
+difference between right and fact, between what is and what ought to be.
+And what is the real account to give of all this? It is as follows:
+Humanity is the highest point of the universe; above it there is
+nothing; humanity is God, if we consent to take that sacred name in a
+new sense. How then is it to be judged? In the name of what rule? since
+there is no rule: in the name of what law? since there is no law. All
+judgment is a personal prejudice, the act of a narrow mind. We do not
+judge God, we simply recount His dealings; we accept all His acts, and
+record them with equal veneration. All science is only a history, and
+the first requisite in a historian is to reduce to silence his
+conscience and his reason, as sorry and deceitful exhibitions of his
+petty personality,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> in order to accept all the acts of the
+humanity-deity, and establish their mutual connection. The deification
+of the human mind is the justification of all its acts, and, by a direct
+consequence, the annihilation of all morality. Let us look more in
+detail at the origin and development of these notions.</p>
+
+<p>The individual placing himself before humanity is to accept everything:
+this is the disposition recommended to us, in the name of the modern
+mind. Good and evil are narrow measures which minds behind the age
+persist, ridiculously enough, in wishing to apply to things. "We no
+longer transform the world to our image by bringing it to our standard;
+<i>on the contrary, we allow ourselves to be modified and fashioned by
+it</i>."<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> The individual goes therefore to meet humanity without any
+inner rule: he gives himself up, he abandons himself to the spectacle of
+facts. But the world is large, and history is long. Even those who spend
+their whole life in nothing else than in satisfying their curiosity,
+cannot see and know everything. To what then shall be directed that
+vague look, equally attracted to all points for want of any fixed rule?
+At what shall it stop?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> It will rest on that which shines most
+brilliantly, like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines more
+brightly than success; nothing more solicits the attention. The
+glorification of success is the first and most infallible consequence of
+moral indifference. In leaving ourselves to be fashioned by the world
+instead of bringing it to our standard, we shall begin by according our
+esteem to victory. This philosophy is come to us from Germany. It was
+set forth on one occasion, in France, with great <i>&eacute;clat</i>, by the
+brilliant eloquence of a man who has rendered signal services to
+philosophy, and whose entire works must not be judged of by the single
+particular which I am about to mention. In the year 1829, M. Cousin was
+developing at the Sorbonne the meaning of these verses of La Fontaine,
+which introduce the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure:</div>
+<div class='i2'>Je vais le montrer tout &agrave; l'heure.</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He had written as the programme of one of his lectures: <i>Morality of
+Victory</i>. Now see how he justified this surprising title: "I have
+absolved victory as necessary and useful; I now undertake to absolve it
+as just in the strictest sense of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> word. Men do not usually see in
+success anything else than the triumph of strength, and an honorable
+sympathy draws us to the side of the vanquished; I hope I have shown
+that since there must always be a vanquished side, and since the
+vanquished side is always that which ought to be so, to accuse the
+conqueror is to take part against humanity, and to complain of the
+progress of civilization. We must go farther; we must prove that the
+vanquished deserved to be so, that the conqueror not only serves the
+interests of civilization, but that he is better, more moral than the
+vanquished, and that it is on that account he is the conqueror.... It is
+time that the philosophy of history should place at its feet the
+declamations of philanthropy."<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+<p>These words are worth considering. When Brennus the Gaul was having the
+gold weighed which he exacted from the vanquished Romans, he threw his
+heavy sword into the balance, exclaiming, <i>V&aelig; Victis!</i> Woe to the
+conquered! He simply meant to say that he was the stronger, and did not
+foresee that a Gaul of the nineteenth century, availing himself of the
+labors of learned Germany, would demonstrate that being the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> stronger he
+was on that very account the more just. But we must not wander too far
+from our subject.</p>
+
+<p>When the spectacle of the world is freely indulged in without any
+application to it of the measure of the conscience, what first strikes
+the view is success. It is necessary therefore to begin with rendering
+glory to success by declaring victory good. Now, mark well here the
+conflict of the old notions with the so-called modern mind. From the old
+point of view, victory in the issue belongs to good, because while man
+is tossed in strife and tumult, God is leading him on; but the success
+of good is realized by conflict, and the victory is often reached only
+after a long series of defeats. There are bad triumphs and impious
+successes. What is proposed to us is, to put aside the rule of our own
+judgments, and to declare that victory is good in itself. The old point
+of view, that of the conscience, does not surrender without an energetic
+resistance; and that resistance shows itself in the very words of M.
+Cousin. His thesis is, that all victory is just. His intention is
+therefore to <i>approve</i> victory. Why does he say <i>absolve</i>? it is the
+term which he employs. Since the matter in question is to absolve
+victory,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> it is placed on trial. It is accused of being, like fortune
+and fame, at one time on the side of good and justice, at another on the
+side of injustice and evil. Which then is the party accused? Victory.
+Who is the advocate? An eloquent professor. Who finally is the accuser?
+Do you not see? It is the human conscience; the conscience which
+protests in the soul of the orator against the theory of which he is
+enamoured, and which forces him to say <i>absolve</i> when he should say
+<i>glorify</i>. And in fact the choice must be made: either to glorify
+victory, by treading under foot that narrow conscience which sometimes
+ranks itself with Cato on the side of the vanquished; or to glorify
+conscience by impeaching the victories which outrage it.</p>
+
+<p>It is not sufficient, however, to sacrifice the conscience in order to
+rescue from embarrassment the philosophy of success. It strikes on other
+rocks also. The same causes are by turns victorious and vanquished, and
+it is hard to make men understand that, in conflicts in which their
+dearest affections are engaged, they must beforehand, and in all cases,
+take part with the strongest. It will be in vain for the philosopher to
+say that the Swiss of Morgarten were right, for that they beat the
+Austrians; but that the heroes of Rotenthurm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> were greatly in the wrong,
+because, crushed without being vanquished, they were obliged to yield to
+numbers, and leave at last their country's soil to be trodden by the
+stranger;&mdash;the children of old Switzerland will find it hard to admit
+this doctrine. Even in France, in that nation so accustomed to encircle
+its soldiers' brows with laurel, this difficulty has risen up in the way
+of M. Cousin. B&eacute;ranger, when asked for a souvenir of Waterloo,</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Replied, with drooping eyelid, tear-bedewed:</div>
+<div>Never that name shall sadden verse of mine.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But philosophy would be worth little if it had not at its disposal more
+extensive resources than those of a song-writer. M. Cousin therefore
+looked the difficulty in the face. Victory is always good. But how shall
+young Frenchmen be made to hear this with regard to that signal defeat
+of the armies of France? Listen: "It is not populations which appear on
+battle-fields, but ideas and causes. So at Leipzig and at Waterloo two
+causes came to the encounter, the cause of paternal monarchy and that of
+military democracy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> Which of them carried the day, Gentlemen? Neither
+the one nor the other. Who was the conqueror and who the conquered at
+Waterloo? Gentlemen, there were none conquered. (<i>Applause.</i>) No, I
+protest that there were none: the only conquerors were European
+civilization and the map. (<i>Unanimous and prolonged applause.</i>)"<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
+
+<p>To make the youth of Paris applaud at the remembrance of Waterloo is
+perhaps one of the most brilliant triumphs of eloquence which the annals
+of history record. But this rhetorical success is not a triumph of
+truth. There were those who were conquered at Waterloo; and, to judge by
+what has been going on for some time past in Europe, it would seem that
+those who were conquered are bent on taking their revenge. We may infer
+from these facts that all triumphs are not good, since truth may be for
+a moment overcome by a false philosophy tricked out in the deceitful
+adornments of eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>But let us admit, whatever our opinion on the subject, that the Waterloo
+rock has been passed successfully; we have not yet pointed out the main
+difficulty which rises up in the way of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> system. If victory is
+good, it seems at first sight that defeat is bad. But defeat is the
+necessary condition of victory; and being the condition of good, it
+seems therefore that it also is good; and the mind comes logically to
+this conclusion: "Victory is good;&mdash;defeat is good, since it is the
+condition of victory;&mdash;all is good." We set out with the glorification
+of victory, and, lo! we are arrived at the glorification of fact. All
+that is, has the right to be; in the eyes of the modern savant whatever
+is, is right. M. Cousin laid down the principle; he laid it down in a
+general manner in his philosophical eclecticism, of which it was easy to
+make use, as has in fact been done, in a sense contrary to his real
+intentions. Our young critics, wasting an inheritance of which they do
+not appear always to recognize the origin, are doing nothing else, very
+often, than catching as they die away the last vibrations of that
+surpassing eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right and good: such is
+the axiom for which the labors of more than one modern historian had
+prepared us. We are to seek for the relation of facts one to another,
+that is to explain; and all that we explain, we must approve. Let us
+follow out this thought in a few examples.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was necessary that Louis XVI should be beheaded and the guillotine
+permanently set up, in order to manifest the result of the disorders of
+Louis XIV, of the shameful excesses of Louis XV, and of the licentious
+immorality of French society. It was necessary for Louis XIV to be an
+adulterer, Louis XV a debauchee, the clergy corrupt, and the nobility
+depraved, to bring about the shocks of the revolution. The facts
+mutually correspond; I explain, and I approve. In the eyes of the modern
+savant everything is right.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary that Buonaparte should throw the <i>Corps l&eacute;gislatif</i> out
+of the window, that he should let loose his armies upon Europe, and
+leave thousands of dead bodies in the snows of Russia, in order to end
+the revolution, and extinguish the restless ardor of the French. It
+needed the massacres of September, the gloomy days of the Terror, the
+anarchy of the period of the Directory, to throw dismayed France into
+the arms of the crowned soldier who was to carry to so high a pitch her
+glory and her influence. The facts correspond; I explain, and I approve.
+In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right.</p>
+
+<p>I consider the character of Nero. I take him at the commencement of his
+reign, when, being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> forced to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, he
+exclaimed&mdash;"Would I were unable to write!" And then again I regard him
+after he has perpetrated acts such that to apply his name in future ages
+to the cruellest of tyrants shall appear to them a cruel injury. What
+has taken place in the interval? The development of his natural
+character, Agrippina, Narcissus ... I understand the play of all the
+springs which have made a monster. As I am out of his clutches, my
+detestation vanishes with the danger. "I taste the very deep and very
+pure pleasure of seeing a mind act according to a definite law." I
+understand, I explain, I approve. In the eyes of the modern savant,
+everything is right.</p>
+
+<p>It would be impossible, Gentlemen, to pursue this reasoning to its
+extreme limits without offending against the commonest decency. We
+should have to descend into blood and mire, continuing to declare the
+while that everything is right. I pause therefore, and leave the rest to
+your imaginations. Open the most dismal pages of history. Choose out the
+acts which inspire the most vivid horror and disgust, the blackest
+examples of ingratitude, the meanest instances of cowardice, the cases
+of most refined cruelty, and the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> hideous debaucheries: thence let
+your thoughts pass to facts which bedew the eyelid with the tear of
+tenderest emotion, to the cases of most heroic self-devotion, to
+sacrifices the most humble in their greatness; and then try to apply the
+rule of the modern savant, and to say that all this is equally right and
+good, and that whatever is has the right to be. Open the book of your
+own heart. Think of one of those base temptations which assault the best
+of us, one of those thoughts which raise a blush in solitude; then think
+of the best, the purest, the most disinterested of the feelings which
+have ever been given to your soul; and try again to apply the rule of
+the modern savant, and to affirm that all this is equally good, and that
+all that is has the right to be. I know very well that in general these
+doctrines are applied to things looked at in the mass, and to the
+far-off past of history; but this is a poor subterfuge for the defenders
+of these monstrous theses. Things viewed in the mass are only the
+assemblage of things viewed in detail. If the distinction of good and
+evil do not exist for general facts, how should it exist for particular
+facts? And how can we apply to the past a rule which we refuse to apply
+to the present, seeing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> that the present is nothing else than the past
+of the future, and that the facts of our own time are matter for history
+to our posterity? These, I repeat, are but vain subterfuges. If humanity
+is always adorable, it is so in the faults of the meanest of men as in
+the splendid sins of the magnates of the earth; it is so to-day as it
+was thirty centuries ago; the god in growing old does not cease to be
+the same.</p>
+
+<p>When the mind is engaged in these pernicious ways, the spring of the
+moral life is broken, and the practical consequence is not long in
+appearing. The philosophers of success, having become the philosophers
+of the <i>fait accompli</i>, accept all and endure all; but in another sense
+than that in which charity accepts all, that it may transform all by the
+power of love. It is the morality of Philinte:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>I take men quietly, and as they are:</div>
+<div>And what they do I train my soul to bear.<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>These instructions are not very necessary. There will always be people
+enough found ready to applaud victory, and to fall in with the <i>fait<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+accompli</i>. But is it not sad to see men of mind, men of heart too,
+perhaps, making themselves the theorists of baseness, and the
+philosophers of cowardice?</p>
+
+<p>There is still more to be said. From the glorification of success the
+mind passes necessarily, as we have just seen, to the glorification
+alike of all that is. It would appear at first sight that the adept in
+the doctrine must find himself in a condition of indifference with
+regard to what prejudiced men continue to call good and evil. This
+indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing
+is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed
+in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had
+as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that <i>nothing is evil</i>.<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> The
+members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with
+equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and
+smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of
+murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact
+reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of
+which it is easy to speculate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When man casts a vague glance over the world, extinguishing the while
+the inner light of conscience; when he resigns himself to the things he
+contemplates without applying to them any standard, what first strikes
+his attention, as we have said before, is success. And what next?
+Scandal. Nothing comes more into view than scandal. In a vast city,
+thousands of young men gain their livelihood laboriously, and devote
+themselves to the good of their families: no one speaks of them. A
+libertine loses other men's money at play, and blows out his brains: all
+the city knows it. Honest women live in retirement; the king's
+mistresses form the subject of general conversation. Crime and baseness
+hide themselves; but up to the limits of what the world calls infamy,
+evil delights in putting itself forward, because <i>&eacute;clat</i> and noise
+supply the means of deadening the conscience; while, as regards the
+grand instincts of charity, it has been well said that&mdash;"the obscure
+acts of devotedness are the most magnificent." The poor and wretched
+shed tears in obscurity over benefits done secretly, while folly loves
+to display its glittering spangles, and shakes its bells in the public
+squares. There is in each one of us more evil than we think; but there
+is in the world more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> good than is commonly known. There are concealed
+virtues which only show themselves to the eye of the faith which looks
+for them, and of the attention which discovers them. Bethink you,
+especially, how the laws of morality set at defiance appear again
+triumphant in the sorrows of repentance; those laws have their hour, and
+that hour is usually a silent one. Let a poet of genius defile his works
+by the impure traces of a life spent in dissipation, and his brow shall
+shine in the sight of all with the twofold splendor of success and of
+scandal. But if, stretched on a bed of pain, he renders a tardy but
+sincere homage to the law which he has violated, to the truth which he
+has ignored, his voice will often be confined to the sick chamber; his
+companions in debauchery and infidelity will mount guard perhaps around
+his dwelling, in order to prevent the public from learning that their
+friend is a <i>defaulter</i>. The ball and the theatre make a noise and
+attract observation; but men turn their eyes from hospitals, those
+abodes in which, in the silence of sickness, or amidst the dull cries of
+pain, there germinate so many seeds of immortality. Yes, Sirs, evil is
+more apparent than good. The violations of the divine law have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> more
+<i>&eacute;clat</i> than penitence. And what is the consequence? The man who
+abandons himself to the spectacle of the world, and who takes that
+spectacle for the rule of his thoughts, will see the world under a false
+aspect, and, in his estimation, evil will have more advantage over good
+than it has in reality. It will appear to him altogether dominant, and
+will thenceforward become his rule. From the glorification of success,
+we passed to the glorification of fact; from the glorification of fact,
+we arrive at last at the glorification of evil. We have seen how is
+illustrated the morality of victory. In the same current of ideas, a
+book famous now-a-days, and quite full of outrages to the conscience,
+supplies us with illustrations of the morality of falsehood. M. Ernest
+Renan, in his explanation of Christianity, has applied, point after
+point, the theory which I have just set forth to you. In order to
+estimate the grand movements of the human mind, he frees himself from
+the vulgar prejudices which make up the ordinary morals, and abandons
+himself to the impression of the spectacle which he contemplates. Jesus
+had a success without parallel. This success was based on charlatanism;
+and it is habitually so. To lead the nations by deceiving them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> is the
+lesson of history, and the good rule to follow. We find falsehood
+fortunate as matter of fact, we explain it, we approve it.</p>
+
+<p>Whither then are we bound, under the guidance of modern science? An
+irresistible current is drawing us on, and causing us to leave the
+morals of Philinthe in our rear. We are coming to those which Racine has
+engraven in immortal traits in the person of Mathan. When once
+conscience is put aside, all means are good in order to succeed; and the
+experience of the world teaches us that, to succeed, the worst means are
+often the best.</p>
+
+<p>It is not only at the theatre that such lessons are received; they come
+out but too commonly from the ordinary dealings of life. Set a young man
+face to face with the world as it exhibits itself, and tell him to give
+himself up to what he sees, to let himself be fashioned by life. He will
+soon come to know that strict probity is a virtue of the olden times,
+chastity a fantastic excellence, and conscientious scruples an honorable
+simplicity. Evil will become in his eyes the ordinary rule of life. When
+the socialist Proudhon wrote that celebrated sentence, "Property is
+robbery," there arose an immense outcry. Ought there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> not to arise a
+louder outcry around a theory which arrives by a fatal necessity at this
+consequence: "Evil is good"?</p>
+
+<p>But do these doctrines exercise any influence for the perversion of
+public morals? Much; their influence is disastrous. And do the men who
+profess them believe them, taking the word 'believe' in its real and
+deep meaning? No; they often do mischief which they do not mean to do,
+and do not see that they do. They are intoxicated with a bad philosophy,
+and intoxication renders blind. It is easy to prove that these
+optimists, who in theory find that everything is right, are perpetually
+contradicting themselves in practice. Address yourselves to one of them,
+and say to him: "Your doctrine is big with immorality. You do not
+yourself believe it; and when you pretend to believe it, you lie." This
+man who tolerates everything will not tolerate your freedom of speech.
+He will get angry, and, according to the old doctrines, he will have the
+right to be so, for insult is an evil. Then say to him: "Here you are,
+it seems to me, in contradiction with your system. Everything is right;
+the vivacity of my speech therefore is good. All that is has the right
+to be; my indignation is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> therefore a legitimate fact, and it appears to
+me that yours cannot be so unless you allow (an admission which would be
+contrary to your system) that mine is not so." If you have to do with a
+sensible man, he will begin to laugh. If you have met with a blockhead,
+he will be more angry than ever. This contradiction comes out in every
+page, and in a more serious manner, in the writings of our optimists.
+One cannot read them with attention, without meeting incessantly with
+the protest of their moral nature against the despotism of a false mode
+of reasoning. The man is at every moment making himself heard, the man
+who has a heart, a conscience, a reason, and who contradicts the
+philosopher without being aware of it. Contradictions these, honorable
+to the writer, but dangerous for the reader, because they serve to
+invest with brilliant colors doctrines which in themselves are hideous.</p>
+
+<p>No, Gentlemen, it is impossible to succeed in adoring humanity,
+preserving the while the least consistency of reasoning. In vain men
+wish to accept everything, to tolerate everything; in vain they wish to
+impose silence on the inner voice: that voice rebels against the
+outrage, and its revolt declares itself in the most manifest
+contradic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>tions. The Humanity-God is divided, and the
+affirmation&mdash;"Everything is right"&mdash;will continue false as long as there
+shall be upon the earth a single conscience unsilenced, as long as there
+shall be in a single heart</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i6'> .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; that mighty hate</div>
+<div>Which in pure souls vice ever must create;<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>that hatred which is nothing else than the indirect manifestation of the
+sacred love of goodness.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine that all is equally good, equally divine, in the
+development of humanity, explains nothing, because humanity, torn by a
+profound struggle, condemns its own acts, and protests against its
+degradations. It cries aloud to itself that there are principles above
+facts, a moral law superior to the acts of the will; and all the petty
+clamors of a deceitful and deceived philosophy cannot stifle that clear
+voice. Not only do these doctrines explain nothing, they do not even
+succeed in expressing themselves; language fails them. "Everything is
+right and good." What will these words mean, from the time there is no
+longer any rule of right? How is it possible to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> approve, when we have
+no power to blame? The idea of good implies the idea of evil; the
+opposition of good and evil supposes a standard applied to things, a law
+superior to fact. He who approves of everything may just as well despise
+everything. But contempt itself has no longer any meaning, if esteem is
+a word void of signification. We must say simply that all is as it is,
+and abandon those terms of speech which conscience has stamped with its
+own superscription. We must purify the dictionary, and consign to the
+history of obsolete expressions such terms as good, evil, esteem,
+contempt, vice, virtue, honor, infamy, and the like. The doctrine which,
+to be consistent with itself, ought to reduce us to a kind of stupid
+indifference, does such violence to human nature that its advocates are
+incapable of enunciating it without contradicting themselves by the very
+words they make use of.</p>
+
+<p>All these extravagances are the inevitable consequence of the adoration
+of humanity. The Humanity-God has no rule superior to itself. Whatever
+it does must be put on record merely, and not judged: it is the
+immolation of the conscience. But on what altar shall we stretch this
+great victim? Shall we sacrifice it to pure reason,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> to reason
+disengaged from all prejudice? Allow me to claim your attention yet a
+few minutes longer.</p>
+
+<p>The Humanity-God in all its acts escapes the judgment of the conscience.
+What measure shall we be able to apply to its thoughts? None. The God
+which cannot do evil, cannot be mistaken either. For the modern savant
+all is true, for exactly the same reason that all is right. The human
+mind unfolds itself in all directions; all these unfoldings are
+legitimate; all are to be accepted equally by a mind truly emancipated.
+Furnished with this rule, I make progress in the history of philosophy.
+The Greek Democritus affirms that the universe is only an infinite
+number of atoms moving as chance directs in the immensity of space: I
+record with veneration this unfolding of the human mind. The Greek Plato
+affirms that truth, beauty, good, like three eternal rays, penetrate the
+universe and constitute the only veritable realities: I record with
+equal veneration this other unfolding of the human mind. I pass to
+modern times. Descartes tells me that thought is the essence of man, and
+that reason alone is the organ of truth. Helvetius tells me that man is
+a mass of organ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>ized matter which receives its ideas only from the
+senses. These two theses are equally legitimate, and I admit them both.
+I quit now philosophers by profession to address myself to those
+literary journalists who deal out philosophy in crumbs for the use of
+<i>feuilletons</i> and reviews. There I find all possible notions in the most
+astounding of jumbles. "The villain has his apologist; the good man his
+calumniator.... Marriage is honorable, so is adultery. Order is preached
+up, so is riot, so is assassination, provided it be politic."<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> I
+contemplate with a calm satisfaction, with a very deep and very pure
+pleasure, these various unfoldings of the human mind; I place them all,
+with the same feelings of devotion, in the pantheon of the intelligence.
+I cannot do otherwise, inasmuch as there is no rule of truth superior to
+the thoughts of men, and because the human mind is the supreme,
+universal, and infallible intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>But will our mind be able to entertain together two directly opposite
+assertions? Will contradiction no longer be the sign of error? We must
+come to this; we must acknowledge that the modern mind, breaking with
+superannuated tra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>ditions, has proclaimed the principle "that one
+assertion is not more true than an opposite assertion." We must proclaim
+that the thinker has not to disquiet himself "about the <i>real</i>
+contradictions into which he may fall; and that a true philosopher has
+absolutely nothing to do with consistency."<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> The fear of
+self-contradiction may be excused in Aristotle and Plato, in St. Anselm
+and St. Thomas, in Descartes and Leibnitz. These writers were still
+wrapped in the swaddling clothes of old errors; the light of the
+nineteenth century had not shone upon their cradles; but the epoch of
+enfranchisement is come. These things, Gentlemen, are printed
+now-a-days; they are printed at Paris, one of the metropolises of
+thought!</p>
+
+<p>Mark well whereabouts we are. We must admit&mdash;what? that all is true.
+But, if all is true, there is nothing true, just as if all is good,
+there is nothing good. There are thoughts in men's heads; to make
+history of them is an agreeable pastime; but there is no truth. We must
+not say that two contradictory propositions are equally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> true; that
+would be to make use of the old notion of truth; we must say that they
+are, and that is all about it. The night is approaching, the sun of
+intelligence is sinking towards the horizon, and thick vapors are
+obscuring its setting. But wait!</p>
+
+<p>If the Humanity-God is always right, it must be that two contradictory
+propositions can be true at the same time, since contradictions abound
+in the history of human thoughts. If two contradictory propositions can
+be true, there is no more truth. What then is our reason, of which truth
+is the object? We are seized with giddiness. Might not everything in the
+world be illusion? and myself&mdash;? Listen to a voice which reaches us,
+across the ages, from the countries crowned by the Himalayas. "Nothing
+exists.... By the study of first principles, one acquires this
+knowledge, absolute, incontestable, comprehensible to the intelligence
+alone: I neither am, nor does anything which is mine, nor do I myself,
+exist."<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> What is there beneath these strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> lines? The feeling of
+giddiness, which seeks to steady itself by language. Here is now the
+modern echo of these ancient words. One of those writers who accept all,
+in the hope of understanding all, describes himself as having come at
+last to be aware that he is "only one of the most fugitive illusions in
+the bosom of the infinite illusion." One of his colleagues expresses
+himself on this subject as follows: "Is this the last word of all?&mdash;And
+why not?&mdash;The illusion which knows itself&mdash;is it in fact an illusion?
+Does it not in some sort triumph over itself? Does it not attain to <i>the
+sovereign reality</i>, that of the thought which thinks itself, that of the
+dream which knows itself a dream, that <i>of nothingness which ceases to
+be so</i>, in order to recognize itself and to assert itself?"<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> We are
+gone back to ancient India. You will remark here three stages of
+thought. The fugitive illusion is man. The infinite illusion is the
+universe. The universal principle of the appearances which compose the
+universe is nothingness. Here is the explanation of the universe!
+Nothingness takes life; nothingness takes life only to know itself to be
+nothingness; and the nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>ness which says to itself, "I am
+nothingness," is the reason of existence of all that is. I said just now
+that the sun was declining to the horizon. Now the last glimmer of
+twilight has disappeared; night has closed in&mdash;a dark and starless
+night. Yes, Sirs, but there is never on the earth a night so dark as to
+warrant us in despairing of the return of the dawn. If the modern mind
+is such as it is described to us, it has lost all the rays of light; but
+the sun is not dead.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of non-existence and of illusion is entirely
+incomprehensible, in the sense in which to comprehend signifies to have
+a clear idea, and one capable of being directly apprehended. But, if one
+follows the chain of ideas as logically unrolled, in the way that a
+mathematician follows the transformations of an algebraical formula,
+without considering its real contents, it is easy to account for the
+origin of this theory. If the human mind has no rule superior to itself,
+if it is the absolute mind, God, all its thoughts are equally true,
+since we cannot point out error without having recourse to a rule of
+truth. If all doctrines are equally true, propositions directly and
+absolutely contradictory are equally true. If all is true, there is no
+truth; for truth is not con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>ceived except in opposition to at least
+possible error. If there is no truth, the human reason, which seeks
+truth by a natural impulse belonging to its very essence, as the
+magnetized needle seeks the pole,&mdash;reason, I say, is a chimera. The
+truth which reason seeks is an exact relation of human thought to the
+reality of the world. If the search for this relation is chimerical, the
+two terms, mind, and the world, may be illusions. A fugitive illusion in
+presence of an infinite illusion: there is all. You see that these
+thoughts hang together with rigorous precision. The darkness is becoming
+visible to us, or, in other words, we are acquiring a perfect
+understanding of the origin and developments of the absurdity. Put God
+aside, the law of our will, the warrant of our thought; deify human
+nature; and a fatal current will run you aground twice over&mdash;on the
+shores of moral absurdity, and on those of intellectual absurdity. These
+sad shipwrecks are set before our eyes in striking examples; it has been
+easy to indicate their cause.</p>
+
+<p>The consideration of the beautiful would give occasion to analogous
+observations. The human mind becoming the object of our adoration, we
+must give up judging it in every particular, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> suppress the rules of
+the ideal in art, as those of morals in the conduct, and truth in the
+intellect. We must form a system of &aelig;sthetics which accepts all, and
+finds equally legitimate whatever affords recreation to the
+Humanity-God, in the great variety of its tastes. Then high aspirations
+are extinguished, the beautiful gives place to the agreeable; and since
+the ugly and misshapen please a vicious taste, room must be made for the
+ugly in the Pantheon of beauty. Art despoiled of its crown becomes the
+sad, and often the ignoble slave of the tastes and caprices of the
+public. I do not insist further. The pretension of the worshippers of
+humanity is to make their conscience wide enough to accept all, and to
+have their intellect broad enough to understand all. They explain all,
+except these three small particulars&mdash;the conscience, the heart, and the
+reason. Goodness and truth avenge themselves in the end for the long
+contempt cast upon them; and the first punishment those suffer who
+accept all, in the hope of understanding all, is no longer to understand
+what constitutes the life of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Let us not, Sirs, be setting up altars to the human mind; for an
+adulterous incense stupefies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> it, and ends by destroying it. Man is
+great, he is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart, and the divine
+aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness, let us
+leave him in his proper place. Let us leave to him the struggles which
+make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him
+honor, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable
+testimony to his dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict,
+and hope; but let us not deify him; for, no sooner shall he have said,
+"I am God," than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall
+find himself naked and spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>Before they deified man, the pagans at least transfigured him by placing
+him in Olympus. At this day, it is humanity as it is upon earth that is
+proposed to our adoration, humanity with its profound miseries and its
+fearful defilements. They seek to throw a veil over the mad audacity of
+this attempt, by telling us of the progress which is to bring about, by
+little and little, the realization of our divinity. But, alas! our
+history is long already, and no reasonable induction justifies the vague
+hopes of heated imaginations. Great progress is being effected, but none
+which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> gives any promise that the profound needs of our nature can ever
+be satisfied in this life. Charity has appeared on the earth; but there
+are still poor amongst us, and it seems that there always will be. A
+breath of justice and humanity has penetrated social institutions; still
+politics have not become the domain of perfect truth and of absolute
+justice, and there seems small likelihood that they ever will. Industry
+has given birth to marvels; we devour space in these days, but we shall
+never go so fast that suffering and death will not succeed in overtaking
+us. The great sources of grief are not dried up; the song of our poets
+causes still the chords of sorrow to vibrate as in the days of yore.
+Progress is being accomplished, sure witness of a beneficent Hand which
+is guiding humanity in its destinies; but everything tells us that the
+soil of our planet will be always steeped in tears, that the atmosphere
+which envelops us will always resound with the vibrations of sorrow. Far
+as our view can stretch itself, we foresee a suffering humanity, which
+will not be able to find peace, joy, and hope, except in the expectation
+of new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>If there be no God above humanity, no eternity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> above time, no divine
+world higher than our present place of sojourn; if our profoundest
+desires are to be for ever deceived; if the cries we raise to heaven are
+never to be heard; if all our hope is a future in which we shall be no
+more; if humanity as we know it is the perfection of the universe; if
+all this is so, then indeed the answer to the universal enigma is
+illusion and falsehood. Then, before the monster of destiny which brings
+us into being only to destroy us, which creates in our breast the desire
+of happiness only to deride our miseries; in view of that starry vault
+which speaks to us of the infinite, while yet there is no infinite; in
+presence of that lying nature which adorns itself with a thousand
+symbols of immortality, while yet there is no immortality; in presence
+of all these deceptions, man may be allowed to curse the day of his
+birth, or to abandon himself to the intoxication of thoughtless
+pleasure. But, a secret instinct tells us that wretchedness is a
+disorder, and thoughtless pleasure a degradation. Let us have confidence
+in this deep utterance of our nature. Good, truth, beauty descend as
+rays of streaming light into the shadows of our existence; let us follow
+them with the eye of faith to the divine focus from whence they
+proceed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> All is fleeting, all is disappearing incessantly beneath our
+steps; but our soul is not staggered at this swift lapse of all things,
+only because she carries in herself the pledges of a changeless
+eternity. "The ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, man raises
+for a moment his eyes to heaven, and closes them again for ever; but
+during the fleeting instant which is granted to him, from all points of
+the sky and from the bounds of the universe, sets forth from every world
+a consoling ray and strikes his upward gaze, announcing to him that
+between that measureless space and himself there exists a close
+relation, and that he is allied to eternity."<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></p>
+
+<p>And are these sublime <i>pressentiments</i> only dreams after all? Dreams!
+Know you not that our dreams create nothing, and that they are never
+anything else than confused reminiscences and fantastic combinations of
+the realities of our waking consciousness? What then is that mysterious
+waking during which we have seen the eternal, the infinite, the
+perfection of goodness, the fulness of joy, all those sublime images
+which come to haunt our spirit during the dream of life? Recollections
+of our origin! foreshadowings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> our destinies! While then all below is
+transitory, and is escaping from us in a ceaseless flight, let us
+abandon ourselves without fear to these instincts of the soul&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>As a bird, if it light on a sprig too slight</div>
+<div class='i2'>The feathery freight to bear,</div>
+<div>Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings,</div>
+<div class='i2'>Then drops&mdash;on the buoyant air.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> <i>Syst&egrave;me de la Nature</i>, published under the pseudonyme of
+Mirabaud.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> <i>Syst&egrave;me de la Nature</i>, Part I. chap. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> Part II. chap. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Vie de J&eacute;sus.</i> Dedication.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> of 15 January, 1860.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Plebeii philosophi qui a Platone et Socrate et ab e&acirc;
+famili&acirc; dissident.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> <i>Les philosophes fran&ccedil;ais du XIX<sup>e</sup> si&egrave;cle</i>, chap. XIV.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> <i>H&eacute;gel et l'H&eacute;g&eacute;lianisme</i> par M. Ed. Sch&eacute;rer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> Page 854.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> Page 852.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> Page 856.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> Isa. xx. 20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> <i>Essais de critique et d'histoire</i>, pp. 8 and 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, 15 Feb. 1861, page 855.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Page 853.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> Page 854.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> of the 15th Feb. 1861, page 854.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> <i>Introduction &agrave; l'histoire de la philosophie</i>. Neuvi&egrave;me
+le&ccedil;on.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Il r&eacute;pondit, baissant un &oelig;il humide:</div>
+<div>Jamais ce nom n'attristera mes vers.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> <i>Introduction &agrave; l'histoire de la philosophie.</i> Treizi&egrave;me
+le&ccedil;on.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont,</div>
+<div>J'accoutume mon &acirc;me &agrave; souffrir ce qu'ils font.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> <i>Nihil nefas ducere, hanc summam inter eos religionem
+esse.</i> (Tit. Liv. lib. xxxix. c. 13.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i6'> .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; Ces haines vigoureuses</div>
+<div>Que doit donner le vice aux &acirc;mes vertueuses.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> <i>M&eacute;langes de T&ouml;pffer.</i> De la mauvaise presse consider&eacute;e
+comme excellente.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> of 15 Feb. 1861, page
+854.&mdash;<i>Etudes critiques sur la litt&eacute;rature contemporaine</i>, par Edmond
+Scherer, page x. et xi.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> Sa'nkya&mdash;ka'rika', 61 and 64. The text 61 in which occur
+the words "Nothing exists" is hard to understand, but there appears to
+be no doubt of the meaning of No. 64. <i>Non sum, non est meum, nec sum
+ego.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> <i>Etudes critiques sur la litt&eacute;rature contemporaine</i>, par
+Edmond Scherer.&mdash;M. Sainte-Beuve, p. 354.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> Xavier de Maistre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Soyons comme l'oiseau pos&eacute; pour un instant</div>
+<div class='i2'>Sur des rameaux trop fr&ecirc;les,</div>
+<div>Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,</div>
+<div class='i2'>Sachant qu'il a des ailes.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Victor Hugo</span>.</div></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VI" id="LECTURE_VI"></a>LECTURE VI.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>THE CREATOR.</i></h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 4th Dec. 1863.&mdash;At Lausanne, 27th Jan. 1864.)</p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>Man is not a simple product of nature; in vain does he labor to degrade
+himself by desiring to find the explanation of his spiritual being in
+matter brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the summit and
+principle of the universe; in vain does he labor to deify himself. He is
+great only by reason of the divine rays which inform his heart, his
+conscience, and his reason. From the moment that he believes himself to
+be the source of light, he passes into night. When thought has risen
+from nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its impetus be not
+strong enough to carry it on to God. These assertions do but translate
+the great facts of man's intellectual history. "There is no nation so
+barbarous,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> said Cicero,<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> "there are no men so savage as not to
+have some tincture of religion. Many there are who form false notions of
+the gods; ... but all admit the existence of a divine power and
+nature.... Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all nations is to
+be reckoned a law of nature." No discovery has diminished the value of
+these words of the Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of human
+society, there remains always some vestige of the religious sentiment.
+The knowledge of the Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition;
+but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world is found wherever
+there are men.</p>
+
+<p>Cicero brings forward this universal consent as a very strong proof of
+the existence of the gods. The supporters of atheism dispute the value
+of this argument. They say: "General opinion proves nothing. How many
+fabulous legends have been set up by the common belief into his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>toric
+verities! All mankind believed for a long time that the sun revolved
+about the earth. Truth makes way in the world only by contradicting
+opinions generally received. The faith of the greater number is rather a
+mark of error than a sign of truth." This objection rests upon a
+confusion of ideas. Humanity has no testimony to render upon scientific
+questions, the solution of which is reserved for patient study; but
+humanity bears witness to its own nature. The universality of religion
+proves that the search after the divine is, as said the Roman orator, a
+law of nature. When therefore we rise from matter to man, and from man
+to God, we are not going in an arbitrary road, but are advancing
+according to the law of nature ascertained by the testimony of humanity.
+It needs a mind at once very daring and very frivolous not to feel the
+importance of this consideration.</p>
+
+<p>In our days atheism is being revived. In going over in your memory the
+symptoms of this revival, as we have pointed them out to you, you will
+perceive that the direct and primitive negation of God is comparatively
+rare; but that what is frequently attempted is, if I may venture so to
+speak, to effect the subtraction of God. Any religious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> theory whatever
+is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such remarks as these: "How
+is it that real sciences are formed? By observation on the one hand, and
+by reasoning on the other. By observation, and reasoning applied to
+observation, we obtain the science of nature and the science of
+humanity. But do we wish to rise above nature and humanity? We fail of
+all basis of observation; and reason works in a vacuum. There is
+therefore no possible way of reaching to God. Is God an object of
+experience? No. Can God be demonstrated <i>&agrave; priori</i> by syllogisms? No.
+The idea of God therefore cannot be established, as answering to a
+reality, either by the way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it
+is a mere hypothesis. We do not, however, it is added, in our view of
+the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid!) to exclude the sentiment of the
+Divine from the soul, nor the word <i>God</i> from fine poetry. We accept
+religious thoughts as dreams full of charm. But is it a question of
+reality? then God is an hypothesis, and hypothesis has no admission into
+the science of realities."</p>
+
+<p>These ideas place those who accept them in a position which is not
+without its advantages. When a man of practical mind says with a smile,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+"Do you happen to believe in God?" one may reply to him, smiling in
+turn, "Have I said that God is a real Being?" And if a religious man
+asks, "Are you falling then into atheism?" one may assume an indignant
+tone, and say: "We have never denied God: whoever says we have is a
+slanderer!" So God remains, for the necessities of poetry and art. But
+as we cannot know either what He is, or whether He is, real life goes on
+in complete and entire independence of Him. The taking up of this
+position with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a literary
+artifice. In other cases it is seriously done. There are certain natures
+of extreme delicacy, which, touched by the breath of modern scepticism,
+have lost all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an
+instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in the absence of all
+belief, and they do not deny that which they believe no longer. Such a
+mind is in an exceptional position. Is it yours? and would you preserve
+it? Keep a solitary path, and do not seek to communicate your ideas to
+others. Contact with the public, and such an unfolding even of your own
+thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work of proselytism,
+would place you under the empire of those laws which govern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> the human
+mind in these matters. Now what are these laws? A poet has already
+answered for us this question:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>En pr&eacute;sence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>A famous writer expands the same thought as follows: "Doubt about things
+which it highly concerns us to know," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a
+condition which does too great violence to the human mind; nor does it
+long bear up against it, but in spite of itself comes to a decision one
+way or another, and likes better to be mistaken than to believe
+nothing."<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> Such is the law. We have met with the pretension to
+maintain the mind independent of God, without either denying or
+asserting His existence, and we have seen how completely this pretension
+fails in the presence of facts. The sceptic makes vain efforts to
+continue in a state of doubt, but the ground fails him, and he slips
+into negation: he affirms that humanity has been mistaken, and that God
+is not. But neither does this negation succeed any the more in keeping
+its ground; it strikes too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> violently against all the instincts of our
+nature. The human mind is under an imperious necessity to worship
+something; if God fails it, it sets itself to adore nature or humanity;
+atheism is transformed into idolatry. Recollect the destinies of the
+critical school and of the positive philosophy! Let us now examine, with
+serious attention, that attempt to <i>eliminate</i> God which is the
+starting-point in this course along which the mind is hurried so
+fatally.</p>
+
+<p>God is not, I grant, an object of experience. I grant it at least in
+this sense, that God is not an object of sensible experience. The
+experience of God (if I may be allowed the expression), the feeling of
+His action upon the soul, is not a phenomenon open to the observation of
+all, and apart from determined spiritual conditions. In order to be
+sensible of the action of God, we must draw near to Him. In order to
+draw near to Him, we must, if not believe with firm faith in His
+existence, at least not deny Him. The captives of Plato's cavern can
+have no experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery on
+those who speak to them of the sun. I grant again that God cannot
+possibly be the object of a demonstration such as the science of
+geometry requires; I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> grant it fully, I have already said so. Every man
+who reasons, affirms God in one sense; and the foundation of all
+reasoning cannot be the conclusion of a demonstration. God therefore, in
+the view of science formed according to our ordinary methods, is, I
+grant, an hypothesis. And here, Gentlemen, allow me a passing word of
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>When I say that God is an hypothesis, I run the risk of exciting, in
+many of you, feelings of astonishment not unmixed with pain. But I must
+beg you to remember the nature of these lectures. We are here far from
+the calm retirement of the sanctuary, and from such words of solemn
+exhortation as flow from the lips of the religious teacher. I have
+introduced you to the ardent conflicts of contemporary thought, and into
+the midst of the clamors of the schools. The soul which is seeking to
+hold communion with God, and so from their fountain-head to be filled
+with strength and joy, has something better to do than to be listening
+to such discourses as these. Solitude, prayer, a calm activity pursued
+under the guidance of the conscience,&mdash;these are the best paths for such
+a soul, and the discussions in which we are now engaged are not perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+altogether free from danger for one who has remained hitherto
+undisturbed in the first simplicity of his faith. But we are not masters
+of our own ways, and the circumstances of the present times impose upon
+us special duties. The barriers which separate the school and the world
+are everywhere thrown down. Everywhere shreds of philosophy, and very
+often of bad philosophy,&mdash;scattered fragments of theological science,
+and very often of a deplorable theological science,&mdash;are insinuating
+themselves into the current literature. There is not a literary review,
+there is scarcely a political journal, which does not speak on occasion,
+or without occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests.
+The most sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public
+opinion. At such a juncture, can men who preserve faith in their own
+soul remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow
+limits of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common
+ground, and fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For
+this purpose it is necessary to make use of terms which may alarm some
+consciences, and to state questions which run the risk of startling
+sincerely religious persons. But there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> is no help for it, if we are to
+combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only
+that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of
+negations is but a passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in
+their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of
+their passage upon the Rock of Ages.</p>
+
+<p>I now therefore resume my course of argument. God is neither an object
+of experience, nor yet of demonstration properly so called. In the view
+of science, as it is commonly understood, of science which follows out
+the chain of its deductions, without giving attention to the very
+foundations of all the work of the reason,&mdash;God, that chief of all
+realities for a believing heart, that experience of every hour, that
+evidence superior to all proof, God is an hypothesis. I grant it. Hence
+it is inferred that God has no place in science, for that hypothesis has
+no place in a science worthy of the name. But this I deny; and in
+support of this denial I proceed to show that the hypothesis which it is
+pretended to get quit of, is the generating principle of all human
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Whence does science proceed? Does it result from mere experience? No.
+What does expe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>rience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience,
+separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own
+sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to
+demonstration,&mdash;a demonstration which constitutes his glory. It is easy,
+without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well
+that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the
+faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought
+does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not
+possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its
+tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no
+thoughts, and will know nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Is science formed by pure reason? No. No one can say what pure reason
+is, for the exercise of our thought is connected indissolubly with
+experience. But, without pausing at this consideration, let us ask what
+pure reason can do, if deprived of all objects of experience? One thing
+only, namely, take cognizance of itself. Now the reason, in taking
+cognizance of itself, only creates logic, that is to say, the theory of
+the laws of knowledge. Some philosophers, to be sure, have undertaken to
+prove that reason, by dint of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> self-contemplation, might arrive at the
+knowledge of all things. They have maintained that all the secrets of
+the universe are contained in our thought, and that by just reasoning
+one may form the science of astronomy without looking at the stars, and
+write the history of the human race without taking the trouble to search
+laboriously into the annals of the past. But these attempts to
+<i>construct</i> facts, instead of observing them, have succeeded too ill to
+merit very serious attention.</p>
+
+<p>Science does not proceed therefore either from pure experience or from
+pure reason; whence does it really come? From the encounter of
+experience and of reason. Man observes, and he ascertains that facts are
+governed according to intelligent design. He creates mathematics, and
+discovers that the phenomena of the heavens and the earth are ruled
+according to the laws of the calculus. His thought meets in the facts
+with traces of a thought similar to his own. If any one of you doubts
+this, I once more appeal to the almanac. Science, then, has birth only
+from a meeting of experience with reason; how is this meeting effected?
+The whole question of the origin of science is here. This encounter is
+not necessary; it does not result simply from perseverance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> in
+observation. The encounter of mind and of facts constitutes a discovery.
+The thought which has governed nature may remain long veiled from our
+mind. All at once perhaps the veil is lifted, and the thought of man
+meets and recognizes itself in the phenomena which it is contemplating.
+We encounter in this case the exercise of a special faculty, which is
+neither the faculty of observing nor the faculty of reasoning, but the
+faculty of discovering. When a man possesses it to a certain degree, we
+call him a man of genius. Genius, or the faculty of discovering, is the
+generating principle of science. Still, strange to say, this principle
+is scarcely pointed out by a great number of logicians. They develop at
+length the rules of observation and the rules of reasoning; and it seems
+that, in their idea, the conjunction of reason and experience is
+effected all alone and of necessity. I taught logic myself in this way
+for twenty years, until one day, thinking better upon the subject, I was
+obliged to say to myself (forgive me this rather trivial quotation):</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Tu n'avais oubli&eacute; qu'un point:</div>
+<div>C'&eacute;tait d'&eacute;clairer ta lanterne.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>The meeting together of the understanding and of facts is a discovery;
+and discovery depends upon a faculty sung by poets, admired by mankind,
+and too little noticed by logicians&mdash;genius. Genius has for its
+characteristic a sudden illumination of the mind, a gratuitous gift and
+one which cannot be purchased. But let us hasten to supply a necessary
+explanation. Genius is a primitive fact, a gift; but the work of genius
+has conditions, or rather a condition&mdash;labor. Labor does not replace
+genius, but genius does not dispense with labor; nature only delivers up
+her secrets to those who observe her with long patience. Newton was
+asked one day how he had found out the system of the universe. He
+replied with a sublime <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>: "By thinking continually about it." He
+so pointed out the condition of every great discovery; but he forgot the
+cause&mdash;the peculiar nature of his own intellect. It was necessary to be
+always pondering the motions of the stars; but it was necessary moreover
+to be Isaac Newton. So many had thought on the subject, as long perhaps
+as he, and had not made the discovery.</p>
+
+<p>Labor, the condition of discoveries, should have as its effect to
+recognize the methods really appropriate to the nature of the inquiries,
+and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> keep the mind well informed in existing science. In fact, every
+scientific discovery supposes a series of previous discoveries which
+have brought the mind to the point at which it is possible to see
+something new. For this reason it is that a discovery often presents
+itself to two or three minds at once, when there are found, at the same
+epoch, two or three minds endowed with the same power. They see all
+together because the onward progress of science has brought them to the
+same summit: this is the condition; and because they have the same power
+of vision: this is the cause. There is therefore a method for putting
+ourselves on the road to discovery, but no method for making the
+discovery itself. The man of genius sees where others do not see; and
+when he has seen, everybody sees after him. If, furnished with Gyges'
+ring, you could gain access to the studies of savants at the moment when
+a great discovery has just been made, you would see more than one of
+them striking his forehead and exclaiming: "Fool that I was! how could I
+help seeing it? it was so simple." Truth appears simple when it has been
+discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Discovery therefore, which has labor for its condition, is the principle
+of the progress of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> science. Under what form does a discovery present
+itself to the mind of its author? As a supposition, or, which is the
+same thing, as an hypothesis. Hypothesis is the sole process by which
+progress in science is effected. If we supposed nothing, we should know
+nothing. In vain should we look at the sky and the earth to all
+eternity, our eye would never read the laws of astronomy in the stars of
+heaven, nor the laws of life upon the bark of trees or in the entrails
+of animals. This is true even of mathematics. The contemplation,
+prolonged indefinitely, of the series of numbers, or of the forms of
+space, would produce neither arithmetic nor geometry, if the human mind
+did not suppose relations between the numbers and the lines, which it
+can only demonstrate after it has supposed them. The conditions are very
+clearly seen which have prepared and made possible a fruitful
+supposition, but the hypothesis does not itself follow of any necessity.
+It appears like a flash of light passing suddenly through the mind.</p>
+
+<p>The carpenter's saw opens a plank from end to end on the sole conditions
+of labor and time; but the discovery of truth preserves always a sudden
+and unforeseen character. Archimedes leaps from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> a bath and rushes
+through the streets of Syracuse, crying out, "I have found it!" Why? The
+flash of genius has visited him unexpectedly. Pythagoras discovers a
+geometrical theorem; and he offers, it is said, a sacrifice to the gods,
+in testimony of his gratitude. He thought therefore, according to the
+fine remark of Malebranche, that labor and attention are a silent prayer
+which we address to the Master of truth: the labor is a prayer, and the
+discovery is an answer granted to it.</p>
+
+<p>When this wholly spontaneous character of discovery is not recognized,
+and when it is thought that the observation of facts naturally produces
+their explanation, it must needs be granted that a discovery is
+confirmed by the very fact that it is made. But this is by no means the
+case. Hypothesis does not carry on its brow, at the moment of its birth,
+the certain sign of its truth. A flash of light crosses the mind of the
+savant; but he must enter on a course, often a long course, of study, in
+order to know whether it is a true light, or a momentary glare. Every
+supposition suggested by observation must be confirmed by its agreement
+with the data of experience. Let us listen to a great
+discoverer&mdash;Kepler. He is giv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>ing an account of the discovery of one of
+the laws which have immortalized his name.</p>
+
+<p>"After I had found the real dimensions of the orbits, thanks to the
+observations of Brahe and the sustained effort of a long course of
+labor, I at length discovered the proportion of the periodic times to
+the extent of these orbits. And if you would like to know the precise
+date of the discovery,&mdash;it was on the eighth day of March in this year
+1618 that,&mdash;first of all conceived in my mind, then awkwardly essayed by
+calculations, rejected in consequence as false, then reproduced on the
+fifteenth of May with fresh energy,&mdash;it rose at last above the darkness
+of my understanding, so fully confirmed by my labor of seventeen years
+upon Brahe's observations, and by my own meditations perfectly agreeing
+with them, that I thought at first I was dreaming, and making some
+<i>petitio principii</i>; but there is no more doubt about it: it is a very
+certain and very exact proposition."<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></p>
+
+<p>All the logic of discoveries is laid down in these lines; and these
+lines are a testimony rendered by one of the most competent of
+witnesses. You see in them the conditions of a good hypoth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>esis: Kepler
+has long studied the phenomena of which he wishes to find the law; he
+has studied them by himself, and by means of the discoveries of his
+predecessor Brahe. The law has presented itself to his mind at a given
+moment, on the eighth of March, 1618. But he does not yet know whether
+it is a true light, or a deceptive gleam. He seeks the confirmation of
+his hypothesis; he does not find it, because he makes a mistake, and he
+rejects his idea as useless. The idea returns; a new course of labor
+confirms it; and so the hypothesis becomes a law, a certain proposition.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the regular march of thought. An hypothesis has no right to be
+brought forward until it has passed into the condition of a law, by
+being duly confirmed. There are minds, however, endowed with a sort of
+divination, which feel as by instinct the truth of a discovery, even
+before it has been confirmed. It is told of Copernicus, that having
+discovered, or re-discovered, the true system of planetary motion, he
+encountered an opponent who said to him: "If your system were true,
+Venus would have phases like the moon; now she has none, and therefore
+your system is false. What have you to reply?"&mdash;"I have no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> reply to
+make," said Copernicus, (the objection was a serious one in fact); "but
+God will grant that the answer shall be found."<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> Galileo appeared,
+and by means of the telescope it was ascertained that Venus has phases
+like the moon;&mdash;the confidence of Copernicus was justified. The
+scientific career of M. Amp&egrave;re, the illustrious natural philosopher,
+supplies an analogous fact. Trusting, like Copernicus, to a kind of
+intuition of truth, he read one day to the Academy of sciences the
+complete description of an experiment which he had never made. He made
+it subsequently, and the result answered completely to his
+anticipations. Genius is here raised to the second power, since it
+possesses at once the gift of discovery and the just presentiment of its
+confirmation; but these are exceptional cases, and in general we must
+say, with Mithridates, that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i6'> .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; To be approved as true</div>
+<div>Such projects must be proved, and carried through.<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>We would encourage no one to attempt adventures so perilous, but would
+call to mind in a great example what is the regular march of science.
+Newton, after he had discovered the law which regulates the motions of
+the heavens, sought the confirmation of it in an immense series of
+calculations. A true ascetic of science, he imposed on himself a regimen
+as severe as that of a Trappist monk, in order that his life might be
+wholly concentrated upon the operations of the understanding; and it was
+not until after fifteen months of persistent labor that he exclaimed: "I
+have discovered it! My calculations have really encountered the march of
+the stars. Glory to God! who has permitted us to catch a glimpse of the
+skirts of His ways!" And astronomy, placed upon a wider and firmer
+basis, went forward with new energy.</p>
+
+<p>It is thus that the human mind acquires knowledge. How then does
+hypothesis come to be made light of? How can it be seriously said that
+we have excluded hypothesis from the sphere of science, whereas the
+moment the faculty of supposing should cease to be in exercise, the
+march of science would be arrested; since, except a small number of
+principles the evidence of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> is immediate, all the truths we
+possess are only suppositions confirmed by experiment? The reason is
+here: Our mind forms a thousand different suppositions at its own will
+and fancy; and it shrinks from that studious toil which alone puts it in
+a position to make fruitful suppositions. We are for ever tempted to be
+guessing, instead of setting ourselves, by patient observations, on the
+road to real discoveries. It is therefore with good reason that theories
+hastily built up have been condemned, and Lord Chancellor Bacon was
+right in thinking that the human mind requires lead to be attached to
+it, and not wings. Hence the inference has been drawn that the simplest
+plan would be to cut the wings of thought, without reflecting that
+thenceforward it would continue motionless. Because some had abused
+hypothesis, others must conclude that we could do without it altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Trivial and premature suppositions have therefore discredited
+hypothesis, by encumbering science with a crowd of vain imaginations;
+but this encumbrance would have been of small importance but for the
+obstinacy with which false theories have too often been maintained
+against the evidence of facts. If Amp&egrave;re had found his ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>periment fail,
+and had still continued to maintain his statements, he would not have
+given proof of a happy audacity, but of a ridiculous obstinacy. Genius
+itself makes mistakes, and experience alone distinguishes real laws from
+mere freaks of our thought. We have maintained the rights of reason in
+the spontaneous exercise of the faculty of discovery; but let us beware
+how we ignore the rights of experience. It alone prepares discoveries;
+it alone can confirm them. A system, however well put together, is
+convicted of error by the least fact which really contradicts it. A
+Greek philosopher was demonstrating by specious arguments that motion is
+impossible. Diogenes was one of his auditory, and he got up and began to
+walk: the answer was conclusive. You remember, if you have read Walter
+Scott, the learned demonstration of the antiquary who is settling the
+date of a Roman or Celtic ruin, I forget which; and the intervention of
+the beggar, who has no arch&aelig;ological system, but who has seen the
+edifice in question both built and fall to decay. Reason as much as you
+like; if your reasonings do not accord with facts, you will have woven
+spider's webs, of admirable fineness perhaps, but wanting in solidity.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>It is time to sum up these lengthened considerations. Science does not
+originate solely from experiment, nor does it proceed solely from
+reason; it results from the meeting together of experience and reason.
+Experience prepares the discovery, genius makes it, experience confirms
+it. What distinguishes the sciences is not the process of invention,
+which is everywhere the same; but the process of control over supposed
+truths. A mathematical discovery is confirmed by pure reasoning. A
+physical discovery is confirmed by sensible observation joined with
+calculation. A discovery in the order of morals is confirmed by
+observation of the facts of consciousness. Therefore it is that between
+the physical and moral sciences there exists a broad line of
+demarcation. Moral facts have not less certainty than physical
+phenomena; but moral facts falling under the influence of liberty, all
+men cannot perceive them equally under all conditions. An optical
+experiment presents itself to the eyes, and all the spectators see it
+alike, if at least they have one and the same visual organization; but a
+case of moral experience has a personal character, and is only
+communicated to another person on condition that he puts faith in the
+testimony of his fellow. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> this order of things a man can observe
+directly only what he concurs in producing. With this reservation, we
+may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that
+of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be
+held as true when it accounts for facts.</p>
+
+<p>And so, Gentlemen, we conclude that every scientific truth is, in its
+origin, a supposition of the mind, the result of which is to produce the
+meeting together of experience and reason, and so to permit the rational
+reconstruction of the facts.</p>
+
+<p>Every system is shown to be at fault by facts, if facts contradict it.</p>
+
+<p>When a system explains the facts, we hold it as proved just to the
+extent to which it explains them. This accordance of our thought with
+the nature of things is the mark of what we call truth.</p>
+
+<p>If you grant me these premises, my demonstration is completed, and it
+only remains for me to draw my conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the idea of God can have no place in a serious science,
+because this idea comes neither from experience nor from reason; that it
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> only an hypothesis, and that hypothesis has no place in science. I
+reply, grounding my answer on the preceding reasonings: No science is
+formed otherwise than by means of hypothesis. For the solution of the
+universal problem there exists in the world an hypothesis, proposed to
+all by tradition, and which bears in particular the names of Moses and
+of Jesus Christ. This hypothesis has the right to be examined. If it
+explains the facts, it must be held for true. The idea of God comes
+therefore within the regular compass of science; the attempt to exclude
+it is sophistical.</p>
+
+<p>Let us separate the idea of God from the whole body of Christian
+doctrine of which it forms part, in order that we may give it particular
+consideration. What is this hypothesis which bears the names of Moses
+and Jesus Christ? It is that the principle of the universe is the
+Eternal and Infinite Being. His power is the cause of all that exists;
+the consciousness of His infinite power constitutes His infinite
+intelligence. In Himself, He is <i>He who is</i>; in His relation with the
+world, He is the absolute cause, the Creator. This explanation of the
+universe is not the privilege of a few savants; it is taught and
+proposed to all;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> and this is no reason why we should despise it. If we
+further observe that this thought has renovated the world, that it
+upholds all our civilization, that thousands of our fellow-creatures
+raise their voice to tell us that it is only from this source they have
+drawn peace, light, and happiness, we shall understand perhaps that
+contempt would be foolish, and that everything on the contrary invites
+us to examine with the most serious attention an hypothesis which offers
+itself to us under conditions so exceptional.</p>
+
+<p>The hypothesis is stated. We must now submit it to the test of facts.
+Where shall we find the elements of its confirmation? Everywhere, since
+it is the first cause of all things which is in question: we shall find
+them in nature and in humanity; in the motions of the stars as they
+sweep through the depths of space, and in the rising of the sap which
+nourishes a blade of grass; in the revolutions of empires, and in the
+simplest elements of the life of one individual. There is no science of
+God; but every science, every study must terminate at that sacred Name.
+I shall not undertake, therefore, to enumerate all the confirmations of
+the thought which makes of the Creator the principle of the universe: to
+recount all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> proofs of the infinite Being would require an eternal
+discourse. We have stammered forth a few of the words of this endless
+discourse, by showing that, without God, the understanding, the
+conscience, and the heart lose their support and fall: this formed the
+subject of our second lecture. We saw further that reason makes
+fruitless attempts to find the universal principle in the objects of our
+experience&mdash;nature and humanity. Let us follow up, although we shall not
+be able to complete it, the study of this inexhaustible subject, by
+showing that the idea of the Creator alone answers to the demands of the
+philosophic reason.</p>
+
+<p>Philosophy, in the highest acceptation of the term, is the search after
+a solution for the universal problem the terms of which may be stated as
+follows: Experience reveals to us that the world is composed of manifold
+and diverse beings; and, to come at once to the great division, there
+are in the world bodies which we are forced to suppose inert, and minds
+which we feel to be intelligent and free. The universe is made up of
+manifold existences; this is quite evident, and a matter of experience.
+Reason on the other hand forces us to seek for unity. To comprehend, is
+to reduce phenomena to their laws, to connect effects with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> their
+causes, consequences with their principles; it is to be always
+introducing unity into the diversity. All development of science would
+be at once arrested, if the mind could content itself with merely taking
+account of facts in the state of dispersion in which they are presented
+by experience. Each particular science gathers up a multitude of facts
+into a small number of formul&aelig;; and, above and beyond particular
+sciences, reason searches for the connection of all things with one
+single cause. To determine the relation of all particular existences
+with one existence which is their common cause; such is the universal
+problem. This problem has been very well expressed by Pythagoras in a
+celebrated formula, that of the <i>Uni-multiple</i>. In order to understand
+the universe, we must rise to a unity which may account for the
+multiplicity of things and for their harmony, which is unity itself
+maintained in diversity.</p>
+
+<p>If you well understand this thought, you will easily comprehend the
+source of the great errors which flow from too strong a disposition to
+systematize. Men of this mind attach themselves to inadequate
+conceptions, and look for unity where it does not exist. The barrier
+which we must oppose to this spirit of system is the careful
+enu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>meration of the facts which it forgets to notice. Materialism looks
+for unity in inert and unintelligent bodies; it suffices to oppose to it
+one fact&mdash;the reality of mind. Fatalism seeks unity in necessity. Point
+out to it that its destiny-god does not account for the fact of
+repentance, for example, which implies liberty, and it is enough. The
+worship of humanity forces you to exclaim with Pascal&mdash;A queer God,
+that! There is in the bitterness of this smile a sufficient condemnation
+of the doctrine. To seek for unity, is the foundation of all philosophy.
+To seek for unity too hastily and too low, is the source of the errors
+of absolute minds. Absolute minds, however great they may be in other
+respects, are weak minds, in that they do not succeed in preserving a
+clear view of the diversity of the facts to be explained. Take the
+problem of Pythagoras; keep hold of the two extremities of the chain;
+never allow yourselves to deny the diversity of things, for that
+diversity is plainly evidenced by human experience; beware of denying
+their unity, because it is the foundation of reason; then search and
+look through the histories of philosophy: you will find one hypothesis,
+and one only, which answers the requirements of the problem. It goes
+back, as I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> believe, to the origin of the world; it was glimpsed by
+Socrates, by Aristotle, and Plato; but, in its full light, it belongs
+only to men who have received the God of Moses, and who have studied in
+the school of Jesus Christ. If this hypothesis explains the facts, it is
+sound, for the property of truth is to explain, as the property of light
+is to enlighten.</p>
+
+<p>The doctrine of the Creator can alone account to us for the universe, by
+bringing us back to its first cause. The first cause of unity cannot be
+matter which could never produce mind; the first cause of unity cannot
+be the human mind, which, from the moment that it desires to take itself
+for the absolute being, is dissolved and annihilated. The unity which
+alone can have in itself the source of multiplicity, is neither matter
+nor idea, but power; power the essential characteristic of mind, and
+infinite, that is to say, creative power. The Creator alone could
+produce divers beings, because He is Almighty, and maintain harmony
+between those beings, because He is One. Thus is manifested an essential
+agreement between the requirements of philosophy and the religious
+sentiment; for religion, as we said at the beginning of these lectures,
+rests<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> upon the idea of Divine power. Reason and faith meet together
+upon the lofty heights of truth. But let us not enter too far into the
+difficulties of philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to considerations
+of a less abstruse order.</p>
+
+<p>The Creator is the God of nature. All the visible universe is but the
+work of His power, the manifestation of His wisdom. The poet of the
+Hebrews invites to offer praise to the Most High, not only men of every
+age and of all nations, but the beasts of the field, the birds of the
+air, and the cedars of the forest, the rain and the wind, the hail and
+the tempest.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> In the language of a modern poet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Thee, Lord, the wide world glorifies;</div>
+<div>The bird upon its nest replies;</div>
+<div>And for one little drop of rain</div>
+<div>Beings Thine eye doth not disdain</div>
+<div>Ten thousand more repeat the strain.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And such thoughts are not vain freaks of the imagination. Man, the
+conscious representative of nature, the high-priest of the universe,
+feels<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> himself urged by an impulse of his heart to translate the
+confused murmur of the creation into a hymn of praise to the Infinite
+Being, the absolute Source of life,&mdash;to Him who <i>is</i>, One, Eternal,&mdash;the
+first and absolute Cause of all existence.</p>
+
+<p>The Creator is the God of spirits. He is not only the God of humankind;
+"the immense city of God contains, no doubt, nobler citizens than man,
+in reasoning power so weak, and in affections so poor."<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> But let us
+speak of what is known to us: He is the God of humankind. All nations
+shall one day render glory to Him. Mighty words have resounded through
+the world: "Henceforth there is no longer either Greek or barbarian or
+Jew; but one and the same God for all." The idols have begun to fall;
+the gods of the nations have been hurled from their pedestals; they have
+fallen, they are falling, they will fall, until the knowledge of the
+only and sovereign Creator shall cover the earth as the waters cover the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>The Creator shall one day be known of all His creatures; and in each of
+His creatures He will be the centre and the object of the whole soul;
+all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> the functions of the spiritual life lead on to Him. What is truth,
+beauty, good? We have already replied to the question, but we will
+repeat our answer.</p>
+
+<p>To possess truth is to know God; it is to know Him in the work of His
+hands, and it is to know Him in His absolute power, as the eternal
+source of all that is, of all that can ever be, of all actual or
+possible truth in the mind of His creatures. Truth binds us to Him, "and
+all <i>science</i> is a hymn to His glory."<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+<p>He is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who gives to the bird its
+song, and to the brook its murmur. He it is who has established between
+nature and man those mysterious relations which give rise to noble joys.
+He it is who opens, above and beyond nature, the prolific sources of
+art; the ideal is a distant reflection of His splendor.</p>
+
+<p>And goodness, again, is none other than He; it is His plan; it is His
+will in regard of spirits; it is the word addressed to the free
+creature, which says to it: Behold thy place in the universal harmony.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a triple ray descends from the uncreated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> light, and before that
+insufferable brightness I am dazzled and bewildered. There is no longer
+any distinction for me between profane and sacred; I no longer
+understand the difference of these terms. Wheresoever I meet with good,
+truth, beauty, be the man who brings them to me who he may, and come he
+whence he may, I feel that to despise in him that gleam, would be not
+only to be wanting to humanity, it would be to be wanting to my faith.
+If my prejudices or habits tend to shut up my heart or to narrow my
+mind, I hear a voice exclaiming to me: "Enlarge thy tent; lengthen thy
+cords; enlarge thy tent without measure. Be ye lift up, eternal gates,
+gates of the conscience and the heart! Let in the King of glory!" All
+truth, all beauty, all good is He. Where my God is, nothing is profane
+for me. To ignore any one of those rays would be to steal somewhat from
+His glory.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! the happy liberty of the heart, when it rests on the Author of all
+good and of all truth. But if the heart is at liberty, how well is it
+guarded too! What is the most beautiful jewel (if we may venture to use
+such language) in the immortal crown of this King of glory? Powerful, He
+created power; free, He created liberty. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> to the free creature, in
+the hour of its creation, He said: "Behold! thou art made in mine own
+image! my will is written in thy conscience; become a worker together
+with me, and realize the plans of my love." And that voice&mdash;I hear it
+within myself. Ah! I know that voice well, I know the secret attraction
+which, in spite of all my miseries, draws me towards that which is
+beautiful, pure, holy, and says to me: This is the will of thy Father.
+But I know other voices also which speak within me only too loudly: the
+voice of rebellion and of cowardice, the voice of baseness and ignominy.
+There is war in my soul. Enlightened by this inner spectacle, I cast my
+eyes once more over that world in which I have seen shining everywhere
+some divine rays; and I see that by a triple gate, lofty and wide, evil
+has entered thither, accompanied by error and deformity. Then I
+understand that all may become profane; I understand that there is an
+erring science, a corrupting art, a moral system full of immorality. But
+these words take for me a new meaning. There is no sacred evil, there is
+no profane good; there are no sacred errors and profane truths. Where
+God is, all is holy; where there is rebellion against God, all is evil.
+And so the God who is my light is my fortress also; my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> heart is
+strengthened while it is set at liberty, and I can join the ancient song
+of Israel:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Jehovah is our strength and tower.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Yes, Sirs, God is in all, because He is the universal principle of
+being; but He is not in all after the same manner. God is in the pure
+heart by the joy which He gives to it; He is in the frivolous heart by
+the void and the vexation which urge it to seek a better destiny; He is
+in the corrupt heart by that merciful remorse which does not permit it
+to wander, without warning, from the springs of life. God makes use of
+all for the good of His creatures. He is everywhere by the direct
+manifestation of His will, except in the acts of rebellious liberty, and
+in the shadow of pain which follows that evil light which leads astray
+from Him.</p>
+
+<p>Having said that the idea of God the Creator alone satisfies the reason,
+and raises up, upon the basis of reason, man's conscience and heart, I
+should wish to show you, in conclusion, that this idea renders an
+account of the great systems of error which divide the human mind
+between them. Truth bears this lofty mark, that it never overthrows a
+doctrine without causing any portion of truth which it may have
+contained to pass into its own bosom.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What then,&mdash;apart from declared atheism, from the dualism which has
+almost disappeared, and from faith in God the Creator,&mdash;are the great
+systems which share the human mind between them? There are two: deism
+and pantheism.</p>
+
+<p>What is deism? It is a doctrine which acknowledges that there is one
+God, the cause of the universe; but a God who is in a manner withdrawn
+from His own work, and who leaves it to go on alone. God has regulated
+things in the mass, but not in detail, or, to employ an expression of
+Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who came at a later period to entertain better
+opinions), "God is like a king who governs his kingdom, but who does not
+trouble himself to ascertain whether all the taverns in it are good
+ones." The idea of a general government of God which does not descend to
+details&mdash;such is the essence of deism.</p>
+
+<p>What is pantheism, in the ordinary meaning of the word? We have already
+said: it is a doctrine which absorbs God in the universe, which
+confounds Him with nature, and makes of Him only the inert substance,
+the unconscious principle of the universe. These are the two great
+conceptions which wrestle, in the history of human thought, against the
+idea of the Creator. These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> two systems triumph easily one over the
+other, because each of them contains a portion of truth which is wanting
+to its antagonist. They cannot support themselves because each of them
+has in it a portion of error. This is what we must well understand.</p>
+
+<p>Deism contains a portion of truth; for it maintains a Creator
+essentially distinct from the Creation, or, according to an expression
+which I translate from an ancient Indian poem: "One single act of His
+created the Universe, and He remained Himself whole and entire." This
+thought is true. What is the error of deism? It is that it makes a God
+like to a man who works upon matter existing previously to his action,
+and who puts in operation forces independent of himself, and which he
+does nothing but employ. In this way a watchmaker makes a watch which
+goes afterwards without him, because the watchmaker only sets to work
+forces which have an independent existence, and which continue to act
+when he has ceased his labor. We work upon matter foreign to us. The
+workman did not make matter, but only disposes of it, and he can never
+do more than modify the action of forces which do not proceed from his
+will, and have not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> been regulated by his understanding. But the Being
+who is the cause of all cannot dispose of foreign forces which act
+afterwards by themselves, since there exists in His work no principle of
+action other than those which He has Himself placed in it.</p>
+
+<p>Deism results therefore from a confusion between the work of a creature
+placed in a preexisting world, and the work of the Supreme Will which is
+in itself the single and absolute cause of all. It contains an element
+of dualism: its God does not create; but organizes a world the being of
+which does not depend on him. Take what is true in deism&mdash;the existence
+of the only God; remember that the Creator is the absolute Cause of the
+universe; and the distinction between <i>ensemble</i> and detail will vanish,
+and you will understand that God is too great that there should be
+anything small in His eyes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>God measures not our lot by line and square:</div>
+<div class='i1'>The grass-suspended drop of morning dew</div>
+<div>Reflects a firmament as vast and fair</div>
+<div class='i1'>As Ocean from his boundless field of blue.<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>In other words, take what is true in deism, and accept all the
+consequences of it, and you will arrive at the full doctrine of the
+creation.</p>
+
+<p>Pantheism recognizes the omnipresence of God in the universe, or, if you
+like the terms of the school, the immanence of God; this is its portion
+of truth. When I open the Hindoos' songs of adoration, and find therein
+the unlimited enumeration of the manifestations of God in nature, I find
+nothing to complain of. But when, in those same hymns, I see liberty
+denied, the origin of evil attributed to the Holy One, and man cowering
+before Destiny, instead of turning his eyes freely towards the Heavenly
+Father, then I stand only more erect and say: You forget that if your
+God is the Cause of all, He is the Cause of liberty. If liberty exists,
+evil, the revolt of liberty, is not the work of the Creator. Your system
+contradicts itself. You make of God the universal Principle, and you are
+right; make of Him then the Author of free wills, so that He will be no
+longer the source of evil, and we shall be agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Deism and pantheism therefore, pushed to their legitimate consequences,
+are transformed and united in the truth. And you see plainly that I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> am
+not making, for my part, an arbitrary selection in these systems. I am
+walking by one sole light, the light which has been given to us, and
+which serves me everywhere as a guiding clue:&mdash;The Lord is God, and
+there is no other God but He.</p>
+
+<p>Such, Gentlemen, is the fundamental truth on which rests all religion,
+and all philosophy capable of accounting for facts. Such is the grand
+cause which claims all the efforts which we are wasting too often in
+barren conflicts&mdash;the cause of God. But do I say the truth? Is it the
+cause of God which is at stake? When a surgeon, by a successful
+operation, has restored sight to a blind man, we are not wont to say
+that he has rendered a service to the sun. This cause is our own; it is
+that of society at large, it is that of families, that of individuals;
+it is the cause which concerns our dignity, our happiness; it is the
+cause of all, even of those who attack it in words of which they do not
+calculate the import, and who, were they to succeed in banishing God
+from the public conscience, would, with us, recoil in terror at sight of
+the frightful abysses into which we all should fall together.</p>
+
+<p>It is time to sum up these considerations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Inert and unintelligent matter is not the cause of life and
+intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Human consciences would be plunged in irremediable misery, if ever they
+could be persuaded that there is nothing superior to man.</p>
+
+<p>The universe is the work of wisdom and of power; it is the creation of
+the Infinite Mind. What can still be wanting to our hearts? The thought
+that God desires our good,&mdash;that He loves us. If it is so, we shall be
+able to understand that our cause is His, that He is not an impassible
+sun whose rays fall on us with indifference, but a Father who is moved
+at our sorrows, and who would have us find joy and peace in Him. This
+will be the subject of our next and concluding lecture.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> Firmissimum hoc afferri videtur, cur deos esse credamus,
+quod nulla gens tam fera, nemo omnium tam sit immanis, cujus mentem non
+imbuerit deorum opinio. Multi de diis prava sentiunt, id enim vitioso
+more effici solet; omnes tamen esse vim et naturam divinam
+arbitrantur.... Omni autem in re consentio omnium gentium, lex natur&aelig;
+putanda est.&mdash;<i>Tuscul.</i> i. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> <i>In presence of Heaven, we must believe or deny.</i> See
+<a href="#LECTURE_III">Lecture III.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> <i>Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Thou hadst only forgotten one point,</div>
+<div>And that was, to light thy lantern.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> <i>Harmonices mundi libri quinque</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> The authenticity of this reply is disputed; M. Arago
+gives it in different terms; but the question is of small consequence
+here as one of historical criticism, my object being not to establish a
+fact, but to put an idea in a strong light by means of an example.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i6'> .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; .&nbsp; Pour &ecirc;tre approuv&eacute;s</div>
+<div>De semblables projets veulent &ecirc;tre achev&eacute;s.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> Ps. cxlviii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Le monde entier te glorifie,</div>
+<div>L'oiseau te chante sur son nid;</div>
+<div>Et pour une goutte de pluie</div>
+<div>Des milliers d'&ecirc;tres t'ont beni.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> Albert de Haller. <i>Lettres sur les v&eacute;rit&eacute;s les plus
+importantes de la r&eacute;v&eacute;lation</i>. Lettre 2.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Et toute la <i>science</i> est un hymne &agrave; sa gloire.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Dieu ne mesure pas nos sorts &agrave; l'&eacute;tendue.</div>
+<div>La goutte de ros&eacute;e &agrave; l'herbe suspendue</div>
+<div>Y r&eacute;fl&eacute;chit un ciel aussi vaste, aussi pur</div>
+<div>Que l'immense Oc&eacute;an dans ses plaines d'azur.</div>
+<div class='right'><span class="smcap">Lamartine.</span></div></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="LECTURE_VII" id="LECTURE_VII"></a>LECTURE VII.</h2>
+
+<h3><i>THE FATHER.</i></h3>
+
+<p class='center'>(At Geneva, 8th Dec. 1863.&mdash;At Lausanne, 1st Feb. 1864.)</p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'><span class="smcap">Gentlemen</span>,</p>
+
+<p>We have proposed for solution the problem which includes all others
+whatsoever&mdash;the problem of the universe. What are the laws which govern
+the universe? They are those which are the objects of science, taking
+that word in its largest and most general meaning. What is the cause of
+the universe? The eternal power of the Infinite Mind. These are the two
+answers which we have hitherto obtained, but, as we have explained, a
+study is not complete if it confine itself to these two answers. When we
+know the law and the cause of an object submitted to our study, we
+further look for the end designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but
+the direct result of the constitution of our understanding. The universe
+is the creation of God. What is the design of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> creation? I answer:
+the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made
+for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition of their life
+and development; spiritual beings are made for felicity. The moving
+spring of infinite power is goodness: this is my thesis. If I succeed in
+establishing it, it will follow that we shall in imagination see issuing
+from the supreme unity of the Infinite Being three rays: the power which
+creates the being of things; the intelligence which orders them; and the
+love which conducts them to their destination. It will also follow that
+I shall have justified the title under which these Lectures were
+announced: Power and wisdom are attributes of the Creator; the Father
+reveals Himself in goodness.</p>
+
+<p>What shall be our method? Can we enter into the counsels of God? By what
+means? To place our understanding in the midst of the Divine
+consciousness, there to behold the spring of the determinations of the
+Infinite Being, were an attempt so far exceeding our capacity, that it
+is impossible to point out any means whatever by which it could be made.
+This would be to conceive of God in His eternal essence, independently
+of His relation to the universe, to nature, and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> our reason. I do not
+say merely that the attempt would be fruitless; I say that we have no
+means of attempting this metaphysical adventure. But might we not, in
+looking at the work of God, discern in it the evidence of its design?
+This is a process which we often follow in regard to our
+fellow-creatures. Do we wish to know the object which a man has in view
+in his labor? He may himself disclose that object to us directly in
+words, or we may endeavor to discover it. We watch him at work, and by
+observing the way in which he proceeds we sometimes come to know what
+his thoughts are, because we find ourselves in presence of the work of a
+mind, and we ourselves are mind. Can we in the same way, by looking at
+the universe, that grand work, succeed in discovering its end?</p>
+
+<p>The way on which we are entering raises two objections, which proceed
+from the difficulties felt by two classes of men of opposite views; and
+our first business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in proving the goodness
+of God, because evil is in the world. I am not inventing, Gentlemen. A
+letter containing this challenge has been addressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> to me by one of
+you. It is manifest, since we propose to ourselves to recognize in the
+work the intention of the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness
+of the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its forms, sin,
+pain, imperfection, is the main objection which can be addressed to us.
+Evil is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge
+it. Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which
+comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in
+short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a
+culpable, system. The strongest minds have worn themselves out in such
+attempts with no result whatever. The great Leibnitz attempted an
+enterprise of this nature. His system consisted in extenuating evil as
+far as possible, and in pronouncing that amount of evil, of which he
+could not dissemble the existence, to be necessary. He failed. The
+strong intellectual armor of one of the greatest geniuses the world has
+ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft
+of Voltaire.</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,</div>
+<div>Sharpening the pangs ye make pretence to cure,</div>
+<div>Poor comforters! in your attempts I see</div>
+<div>Nought but the pride which feigns unreal glee!</div>
+<div>O mortals, of such bliss how weak the spell!</div>
+<div><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>Ye cry in doleful accents&mdash;"All is well!"&mdash;</div>
+<div>And all things at the great deceit rebel.</div>
+<div>Nay, if your minds to coin the flattery dare,</div>
+<div>Your hearts as often lay the falsehood bare.</div>
+<div>The gloomy truth admits of no disguise&mdash;</div>
+<div>Evil is on the earth!<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our old neighbor of Ferney.
+Yes, evil is on the earth; and it constitutes, in the question which we
+are discussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of
+difficulties. Let us listen to a modern poet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Why then so great, O Sovereign Lord,</div>
+<div class='i1'>Came evil from thy forming hand,</div>
+<div class='i1'>That Reason, yea, and Virtue stand</div>
+<div>Aghast before the sight abhorred?</div></div>
+
+<div class='stanza'><div>And how can deeds so hideous glare</div>
+<div class='i1'>Beneath the beams of holy light,</div>
+<div class='i1'>That on the lips of hapless wight</div>
+<div>Dies at their view the trembling prayer?</div></div>
+
+<div class='stanza'><div>Why do the many parts agree</div>
+<div class='i1'>So scantly in thy work sublime?</div>
+<div class='i1'>And what is pestilence, or crime,</div>
+<div>Or death, O righteous God, to Thee?<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>We have only to put this poetry into common prose to obtain this
+argument, namely,&mdash;The presence of evil in the world is not compatible
+with the idea of the goodness of God. Here is the objection in all its
+force. And what is the answer? Simply this, that God did not create
+evil. It was not He who brought crime into the world. He created
+liberty, which is a good, and evil is the produce of created liberty in
+rebellion against the law of its being. I borrow from Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau the development of this thought. "If man," says he, "is a free
+agent, then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> enters not into
+the ordained system of Providence, and cannot be imputed to it. The
+Creator does not will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty
+which He gives him. He has made him free in order that he may do not
+evil but good by choice. To murmur because God does not hinder him from
+doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of an excellent nature,
+attached to his actions the moral character which ennobles them, and
+gave him a right to virtue. What! in order to prevent man from being
+wicked, must he needs be confined to instinct and made a mere brute? No;
+God of my soul, never will I reproach Thee with having made it in Thine
+image, in order that I might be free, good, and happy, like Thyself.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us unhappy and wicked.
+Our vexations and our cares come to us from ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>Such is Rousseau's answer to the objection drawn from the existence of
+evil. It is a good one. It is so good that it is impossible to find a
+better. If we are determined not to outrage the human conscience by
+denying the reality of evil; if God is the sovereign good, and if there
+is no other principle of things than He; evil cannot be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> accounted for
+otherwise than by the rebellion of the creature. But now, Rousseau's
+answer, excellent in itself and in the abstract, becomes profoundly
+inadequate, as the citizen of Geneva goes on to develop his theory. Evil
+comes from the creature; but each individual is not the exclusive source
+of the evils which he does and suffers. To attribute to each individual,
+not only the responsibility of his acts, but the origin of the evil
+germs which exist in his soul, is the untenable proposition of a
+desperate individualism. There is evidently among men a common property
+in evil; Rousseau sees it clearly enough, but he makes vain efforts to
+find in the organization of society and in the condition of civilization
+the causes of pain and of sin. When one has come to see clearly that the
+source of evil is in the creature, the close mutual connection of
+created wills and their relations with nature present a field for long
+and difficult study; and Rousseau has no sooner discerned the road to
+truth than he wanders away into byroads in which the solution of the
+problem escapes him. This problem, Gentlemen, I have the intention and
+desire of studying some day, if God permit, with those of you who may be
+willing to undertake it with me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> We shall then have to deal with an
+objection, or rather with a difficulty. But this difficulty, which we
+cannot now dispose of, must not hinder us from stating our thesis. In
+every well-conducted study, the propositions to be maintained must be
+laid down and supported before dealing with objections. If it were
+maintained that evil is the principle of things, it would be necessary
+first of all to endeavor to establish the thesis, in which the existence
+of good would be brought forward, and would constitute the objection.
+The objection would have to be answered&mdash;Why has good appeared in the
+world? And I would just say in passing, that our libraries are full of
+treatises upon the origin of evil, and I have never met with one upon
+the origin of good. It appears therefore that reason has always
+admitted, by a sort of instinct, the identity of good, and of the
+principle of being. Our thesis is that the principle of the universe is
+good. We are going to try to demonstrate it. Afterwards the difficulty,
+evil, will present itself, of which it will be necessary to seek the
+explanation. This will be the natural sequel, and the necessary
+complement of the course of lectures which we are concluding to-day.</p>
+
+<p>I pass to another difficulty, another challenge which also has been
+addressed to me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Your object, Christians have said to me, is to establish that the
+principle and ground of all things is goodness. This you will not be
+able to do without departing from your prescribed plan, and entering
+upon the domain of Christian faith properly so called. In your
+examination of the universe will you leave out of view Jesus Christ and
+His work? Do you not know that it is by means of this work that the idea
+of the love of God has been implanted in the world, and that it is
+thence you have taken it? Do you think to climb to the loftiest heights
+of thought, and to make the ascent by some other road than over the
+mountain of Nazareth and the hill of Calvary?</p>
+
+<p>Gentlemen, I declared my whole mind on this subject at first starting.
+The complete idea of God demands, for its maintenance, the grand
+doctrinal foundations of our faith. Christian in its origin, firm faith
+in the love of God the Creator requires for its defence the armor of the
+Gospel. But before defending this belief, we must first establish it; we
+must show that it has natural roots in human nature. Christianity
+purifies and strengthens it, but it does not in an absolute sense create
+it. The mark of truth is that it does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> strike us as something
+absolutely new, but that it finds an echo in the depths of our soul.
+When we meet with it, we seem to re-enter into the possession of our
+patrimony. The Cross of Jesus Christ is without all contradiction the
+most transcendent proof of the mercy of the Creator; but the Cross of
+Jesus Christ rather warrants the Christian in believing in the Divine
+love than gives him the idea of it. We must distinguish in the Gospel
+between the universal religion which it has restored, and the act itself
+of that restoration, which constitutes the Gospel in the special sense
+of the word. Now what I am here maintaining is the fact of the existence
+in modern society of the elements of the universal religion. I am far
+from sharing in the illusions of my fellow-countryman Rousseau, when he
+affirms that even if he had lived in a desert isle, and had never known
+a fellow-man, he would nevertheless have been able to write the
+<i>Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard</i>. I know very well that if I were
+a Brahmin, born at the foot of the Himalayas, or a Chinese mandarin, I
+should not be able to say all that I am saying respecting the goodness
+of God. The light which we have received&mdash;I know whence it radiates;
+but, by the help of that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> light, I seek its kindred rays everywhere, and
+everywhere I find them in humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Let us endeavor, then, according to our plan, to recognize in the
+universe the marks of the Divine goodness. Let us first of all
+interrogate the human soul, which is certainly one of the essential
+elements of the world; and let us interrogate it with regard to the
+great fact of religion.</p>
+
+<p>The universal religion presents to observation two principal forms of
+mental experience: the sense of the necessity for appeasing the Divine
+justice, and the sense of the necessity for obtaining the help of God.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of the necessity for appeasing justice reveals itself in
+sacrifices. There are sacrifices which are merely offerings of
+gratitude, and freewill gifts of love. But when you see the blood of
+animals flowing in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing forth
+upon the altars, you will be unable to escape the conviction that man,
+in presenting himself before the Deity, feels constrained to appease a
+justice which threatens him.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of the need of help shows itself in prayer; and this must be
+the especial object of our study, because it is in the fact of religious
+invocation that we shall encounter the idea, obscure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> perhaps, but real,
+of the goodness of the First Cause of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>Prayer is a fact of the universal religion. Whence is it that we derive
+a large part of what knowledge we have of the ancient civilizations of
+India and Egypt? From ruins: and the chief of these ruins are the ruins
+of temples, that is to say, of houses of prayer. Would we go further
+back than these monuments of stone? I interrogate those pioneers of
+science who are searching for the traces of antiquity in old
+languages,&mdash;in the ruins of speech. I inquire, for example, of my
+learned fellow-countryman, M. Adolphe Pictet: "You who have studied,
+with patient care, the first origins of our race&mdash;what have you
+discovered in the way of religion?" He replies: "When I have gone as far
+back as historical speculations can carry us by the aid of language, it
+appears to me that I no longer see temples built by the hand of man,
+but, beneath the open vault of heaven, I see our earliest ancestors
+sending up together the chant of prayer and the flame of
+sacrifice."<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p>
+
+<p>And now, from this remote antiquity, I come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> down to the paganism, in
+which modern civilization had its beginning. Tertullian teaches us that
+the pagans, seeming to forget their idols, and to offer a spontaneous
+testimony to the truth, were often wont to exclaim&mdash;Great God! Good God!
+What in their mind was the order of these two thoughts, the thought of
+greatness and that of goodness? The pediment of a temple at Rome bore
+this famous inscription, <i>Deo optimo maximo</i>; and Cicero explains to us
+that the God of the Capitol was by the Roman people named "very good" on
+account of the benefits conferred by him, and "very great" on account of
+his power.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> It is the idea of goodness which here appears to be
+first. But let us go more directly to the root of the question: What do
+we gather from the universality of prayer? What is it to pray? To pray
+is to ask. Prayer may be mingled with thanksgivings, and with
+expressions of adoration, but in itself prayer is a petition. This
+petition rises to God: and when does it so rise? In distress, in
+anguish. It is misery, weakness, the heart cast down, the failing will,
+which unite to raise from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> earth to heaven that long cry which resounds
+across all the pages of history: Help!&mdash;I analyze this fact, and inquire
+what it means. A request is made, and for what? For strength, for
+tranquillity, for peace; for happiness under all its forms. And of whom
+is happiness asked? Of goodness. Justice is appeased, power is dreaded,
+but it is goodness which is invoked. It is so in human relations. The
+man who supplicates the fiercest tyrant only does so because he supposes
+that a fibre of goodness may still vibrate in that savage heart. Take
+from him that thought; persuade him that the last gleam of pity is
+extinct in the heart to which he appeals, and you will arrest the prayer
+on the lips of the suppliant. There will remain for him only the silence
+of despair, or the heroism of resignation.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up:&mdash;Religion is a universal fact. "There is no religion without
+prayer," said Voltaire, and he never said better. There is no prayer
+without a confused, perhaps, but real, conviction of the goodness of the
+First Cause of the universe. If you could stifle in man's heart the
+feeling that the Principle of things is good, you would silence over the
+whole globe that voice of prayer which is ever rising to God. Thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+humanity itself testifies to the truth for which I am contending.
+Humanity prays; it believes therefore in the goodness of God. This fact
+is an argument. The heart of man is organized to believe that God is
+good: it is the mark set by the Worker Himself upon His work.</p>
+
+<p>Let us study now another of the elements of the universe. We have heard
+the answer of man's heart; let us ask for the answer of reason. Has
+reason nothing to tell us respecting the intentions of the Creator? Let
+us place it in presence of the idea of God&mdash;of the Infinite Being, and
+see what it will be able to teach us.</p>
+
+<p>To attain my object, I must explain more particularly than as yet I have
+done, a word rendered frivolous by the levity of our heart, a word
+defiled by the disorder of our passions, and too often by the
+unworthiness, and worse, of poets and novelists, but which still, in its
+virgin purity, is ever protesting against the outrages to which it has
+been subjected: that word is <i>love</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This word has two principal meanings. In the Platonic sense of it, it is
+the search after what is beautiful, great, noble, pure,&mdash;after what, as
+being of the very real nature of the soul, attracts, fills, and delights
+it. But there is another sort of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> love, which does not pursue greatness
+and beauty, but which gives itself; a love which seeks the wretched to
+enrich him, the poor to make him happy, the fallen to raise him up.
+These two kinds of love seem to follow different and even contrary laws.
+Here, for instance, is a description of what often occurs in a large
+city.<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> A man leaves his house in the evening in order to be present
+at performances in which I am willing to believe that everything bears
+the stamp of nobleness and grandeur, or at least of a pure and wholesome
+taste. He experiences keen enjoyment, and that of an elevated kind. The
+spectacle over, he returns to his dwelling, and at a still later hour he
+retires at length to his repose. He has not long extinguished his
+luxurious tapers, perhaps, when other men, who have slept while others
+were seeking amusement, rise before daylight, and, lighting their small
+lanterns, go forth to succor the unfortunate, without witnesses and
+without ostentation.</p>
+
+<p>I have taken this example from Xavier de Maistre. Let me give you
+another from scenes more familiar to ourselves. You know those pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+summer mornings, when one may truly say that the Alp smiles and that the
+mountain invites. A young man quits his dwelling at the first dawning of
+the day, in his hand the tourist's staff, and his countenance beaming
+with joy. He starts on a mountain excursion. All day long he quaffs the
+pure air with delight, revels in the freedom of the pasture-grounds, in
+the view of the lofty summits and of the distant horizons. He reposes in
+the shade of the forest, drinks at the spring from the rock, and when he
+has gazed on the Alpine chain resplendent in the radiance of the setting
+sun, he lingers still to see&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Twilight its farewell to the hills delaying.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Noble enjoyments! This young man enjoys because he loves. The spectacle
+of the creation speaks to his heart and elevates his thoughts. He loves
+that enchanting nature, which blends in a marvellous union the
+impressions which in human relations are produced by the strong man's
+majesty and the maiden's sweetest smile.</p>
+
+<p>On this same summer-day, another man has also risen before the sun. He
+is devoted to the assuaging of human miseries, and he has had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> much to
+do. He has mounted gloomy staircases; he has entered dark chambers; he
+has spent time in hospitals, in the midst of the pains of sickness; he
+has come, in prisons, to the relief of pains which are sadder still.
+Day, as it dawned, gilded the summits of the Alps, but he saw not that
+pure light of the morning. Day, as it advanced, penetrated into the
+valleys, but he did not notice its progress. The sun set in his glory,
+but he had no opportunity to admire either the bright reflection of the
+waters, or the rosy tint of the mountains. And yet he too is joyful
+because he loves. He loves the fulfilment of stern duty, he loves
+poverty solaced, and suffering alleviated.</p>
+
+<p>Here are the two kinds of love. The disciple of Plato rises, far from
+the vulgarities of life, into the lofty regions of the ideal, and feeds
+on beauty. Vincent de Paul takes the place of a convict at the galleys
+that he may restore a father to his children. These two kinds of love
+seem to us to be contrary one to the other: the one seeks itself, and
+the other gives itself. Still they are both necessary to life, for in
+order to give we must receive. In the accomplishment of the works of
+goodness, the soul would be impoverished and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> would end by drying up in
+a purely mechanical exercise of beneficence, had it no spring from which
+to draw forth the living waters. Man must himself find joy in order to
+diffuse it amongst his fellows. But mark the incomparable marvel of the
+spiritual order of things! The love which gives itself is able to find
+its worthiest object and its purest satisfaction in the very act of
+kindness. There is joy in self-devotion; there is happiness in
+self-sacrifice: the fountain furnishes its own supplies. Thus are
+harmonized the two contrary tendencies of the heart of man. "It is more
+blessed to give than to receive;" words these, of Jesus Christ, which,
+forgotten by the Evangelists, have been recorded by the Apostle St.
+Paul. And since the thought is a beautiful one, it has adorned the
+strains of the poets: says Lamartine&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Dost thou happiness resign</div>
+<div>To another? It is thine&mdash;</div>
+<div>Larger for the largess&mdash;still!<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And Victor Hugo, personifying Charity, makes her speak as follows:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Dear to every man that lives,</div>
+<div>Joy I bring to him who gives,</div>
+<div>Joy I leave with him who takes.<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And because this thought is profound as well as beautiful, it has been
+taken up by the philosophers. "To love," said Leibnitz, "is to place
+one's happiness in the happiness of another." Here is the connecting
+link between Platonic love and the love which is charity. Hear how a
+Christian orator comments upon these words:&mdash;"This sublime definition
+has no need of explanations: it is either understood at once, or it is
+not understood. The man who has loved understands it; and he who has not
+loved will never understand it. He who has loved knows that a shadow in
+the heart of the beloved one would darken his own: he knows that he
+would reckon no means too costly&mdash;watchings, labors, privations&mdash;by
+which to create a smile on the lips of the sorrowful; he knows that he
+would die to redeem a for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>feited life; he knows that he would be happy
+in another's welfare, happy in his graces, happy in his virtues, happy
+in his glory, happy in his happiness. The man who has loved knows all
+this; he who has not loved knows nothing of it:&mdash;I pity him!"<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the great mistake, which seems peculiar to our nature, is that we
+are ever connecting happiness with the idea of receiving, and are always
+thinking of giving as of a loss to ourselves. We do not understand that
+selfishly to keep is to be impoverished, while freely to relinquish is
+to be enriched. Yet here is the grand discovery of the spiritual life;
+and once this discovery made, in order that the spiritual life may
+attain its object, it only remains to find the strength to put it into
+practice. Selfishness is wrong, no doubt, but it is not only wrong, it
+is ignorant, for it looks for happiness where it is not; and it is
+unhappy, for it wanders from the paths of peace.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now apply these considerations to the Infinite Being, and to the
+problem of the end of the creation. Leaving ourselves to the guidance of
+the laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall be able to
+attribute to the Creator in His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> work? Will creation be the effect of a
+necessity? No, Sirs, for in that case everything in the world would be a
+matter of fate, and liberty would remain inexplicable. If a blind power
+were directing the Almighty Will, we should return to the worship of
+destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out of a design of which
+the motive is interest? But what conceivable interest can influence Him
+who is the plentitude of being? Or will creation be a duty? But whence
+should come the obligation for the Being who is in Himself the absolute
+law? Creation can only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what
+love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness,
+of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some
+eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the
+revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was
+treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by P&egrave;re
+Lacordaire.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> He is entering upon this question: What can have been
+the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the
+Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the
+love which gives itself, which he desig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>nates by the term&mdash;goodness.
+"Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said
+to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard
+as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of
+its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before
+God, which preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give a name
+without betraying the truth?... There remained something, Sirs, be very
+sure, more generous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more
+powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and if you find it hard to
+understand me, if your own endowments are unknown to you, listen to
+Bossuet speaking of you:&mdash;'When God,' says he, 'made the heart of man,
+the first thing He planted there was goodness:' goodness; that is to
+say, that virtue which does not consult self-interest, which does not
+wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to be solicited by the
+attraction of the beautiful, but which stoops towards its object all the
+more, as it is poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy of
+contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man possesses that adorable
+faculty. It is not genius, nor glory, nor love, which measures the
+elevation of his soul,&mdash;it is goodness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> This it is which gives to the
+human countenance its principal and most powerful charm; this it is
+which draws us together; this it is which brings into communication the
+good and the evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth, the
+great mediating principle. See, at the foot of the Alps, yon miserable
+<i>cr&eacute;tin</i>, which, eyeless, smileless, tearless, is not even conscious of
+its own degradation, and which looks like an effort of nature to insult
+itself in the dishonor of the greatest of its own productions: but
+beware how you imagine that that wretched object has not found the road
+to any heart, or that his debasement has deprived him of the love of all
+the world. No: he is beloved; he has a mother, he has brothers and
+sisters; he has a place at the cottage-hearth; he has the best place and
+the most sacred of all, just because of all he may seem to have the
+least claim to any. The bosom which nursed him supports him still, and
+the superstition of love never speaks of him but as of a blessing sent
+of God. Such is man!</p>
+
+<p>"But can I say, Such is man, without saying also, Such is God! From whom
+would man derive goodness, if God were not the primordial Ocean of
+goodness, and if, when He formed our heart, He had not first of all
+poured into it a drop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> from His own? Yes, God is good; yes, goodness is
+the attribute which includes in it all the rest; and it is not without
+reason that antiquity engraved on the pediment of its temples that
+famous inscription, in which goodness preceded greatness."</p>
+
+<p>Now, to say nothing of the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause
+at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all
+things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under
+the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love
+which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as
+any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the
+infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without
+falling into some degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in
+the abstract, if we wish to analyze it in its real substance, our view
+is confused. You understand well that goodness increases in the
+proportion in which its object is diminished. We are by so much more
+good as we stoop to that which is poorer and more miserable. What then
+shall be the infinite goodness? In order to find it, we must infinitely
+diminish its object: and here we encounter mystery. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> diminish an
+object infinitely is an operation impossible to our thought. This
+mystery is encountered even in the mathematical sciences. We take a
+quantity, halve it, and again halve this half, and so on without end,
+but we shall never obtain the infinity of smallness; for the quantity
+indefinitely divided will always remain indefinitely divisible. At
+whatever degree of division we may have arrived, between what remains
+and nothingness there extends always the abyss of the infinite. So I
+seek for the object of infinite goodness: that object must be infinitely
+destitute. I diminish accordingly the existence of the universe: I
+extinguish all the rays of its beauty; I take from it order, life,
+measure, color, light; I reduce it until it is nothing but formless
+matter, a something&mdash;I know not what&mdash;which has no longer a name. Vain
+attempt! This nameless something, so long as it is anything, will not be
+<i>nothing</i>. Between it and nothing there will always be the infinite. If
+the goodness of God is applied to any object which was existing
+independently of Him, however poor and abject that object be conceived
+to have been, then God is no longer the unique, the absolute Creator. If
+imagination will cross the abyss, we shall come of necessity to
+say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>&mdash;what? that the object of infinite love must have been
+non-existence. This is what the orator already quoted has done:&mdash;"All
+perfection supposes an object to which to apply itself. The divine
+goodness therefore requires an object as vast and profound as itself.
+God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being
+without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being
+without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds
+which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a
+measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said to Time: Begin!"</p>
+
+<p>This, Gentlemen, is eloquence. The thought in itself does not bear a
+rigorous analysis; but do not think that the lustrous beauty of the
+language is only a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have
+arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the cloud is lighted
+up by the ray that issues from it. Our goodness, finite creatures as we
+are, is so much the greater as the object on which it is bestowed is
+less. Infinite goodness must create for itself an object. It does not
+love nothingness, but a creature which is nothing in itself, a creature
+simply possible, which, before owing to it the blessings of ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>istence,
+shall owe to it that existence itself. The only being that we can
+represent to ourselves, by a sublime image, as stooping towards
+nothingness, is He whose look gives life. The creature is willed for
+itself, or,&mdash;to quote the words of Professor Secr&eacute;tan, addressed to you
+last year,&mdash;the foundation of nature is grace.<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> We ask: What can
+have been the object of creation? Our reason answers: The Infinite Being
+can only act from goodness, He can have no other object than the
+happiness of His creatures.</p>
+
+<p>And now I recapitulate. We ask what is the object of creation; and
+whereas we cannot transport ourselves into the inaccessible light of the
+Divine consciousness, we question the work of God in order to discern
+the intentions of the Creator. From the fact that humanity prays, we
+gather the reply that man has a spontaneous belief in the goodness of
+the First Cause of the universe. We place reason in presence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>
+idea of the Infinite Being; reason declares to us that He who is the
+plenitude of Being could not have created except from the motive of
+love. We understand that God has made all for His own glory, and that
+His glory consists in the manifestation of His goodness. These thoughts,
+in their full light, belong to the Gospel revelation, but they appear,
+under a veil, in the conceptions which lie at the basis of pagan
+religions. Without entering the temple of idols, we may bow the knee
+before the pediment of the ancient sanctuary, and, beneath the open
+vault of heaven, adore, with the Roman people, that God whose goodness
+takes precedence of His greatness.</p>
+
+<p>The direct consequence of the principles which we have just laid down is
+that happiness is the object of our existence. Created by goodness, we
+can have no other end than blessedness.</p>
+
+<p>But beware of supposing that we can take for our guide our desire of
+happiness, and ourselves calculate its conditions. Happiness is our end;
+it is the will of our Father; but we must let ourselves be conducted
+into it. If, shutting our ears to the voice which lays upon us commands
+and obligations, we would take our destinies into our own hands; if we
+made the search after happiness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> our rule, understanding happiness in
+our own way, we should be taking for light fantastic gleams which would
+lead us into abysses of ruin. The unruly propensities of our heart would
+lead us to make ourselves the centre of the world. To "live for self" is
+the motto of selfishness, and the watchword of unhappiness. To live for
+God is the way to happiness. To live to God, that is to say, over the
+ruins of our shattered selfishness, to enter into order, to take our
+place in the spiritual edifice of charity, and to share in the joy which
+God allots to all His children&mdash;this is the end of our creation. Once
+lifted to the height of this thought, we are able to understand the
+great struggle which rent the conscience of the ancients, because in
+their times the light of truth illumined only at intervals the clouds of
+error which covered the world.</p>
+
+<p>There are in man two voices; the one leading him to happiness, the other
+calling him to holiness. The first impulse of his nature is to start in
+eager pursuit of mere enjoyment; but ere long the second voice is heard,
+the voice of conscience, striving to arrest him in his course. If man do
+not obey her call, conscience becomes his chastiser. Hence arises a
+painful struggle of conflict<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span>ing feelings, and the human mind is the
+subject of a strong temptation to pacify itself by silencing one of the
+two voices. It is the history of antiquity. Socrates, the wise Socrates,
+had indeed cried aloud: Woe! woe to the man who separates the just from
+the useful; and had warned men that happiness may be found apart from
+what is right and good. Cicero put into beautiful Latin the lessons of
+the Grecian sage; but the torn heart of man was not long in tearing the
+mantle of the philosopher. From the thought, full and complete as it is,
+of Socrates issued two celebrated sects, one of which wished to
+establish man's life on the basis of duty without reference to
+happiness; and the other on the basis of happiness without reference to
+duty.</p>
+
+<p>The Stoics attached themselves to duty; but the need of happiness
+asserted itself in spite of them, and sought satisfaction in the gloomy
+pleasure of isolation, and in the savage joy of pride. The sage of these
+philosophers sets himself free, not only from all the cares of earth,
+but from all the bonds of the heart, from all natural affection.
+Finally, by a consequence, at once sad and odd, of the same doctrine,
+the highest point of self-possession is to prove that man is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> master of
+himself, by the emancipation of suicide and in the liberty of death. The
+Stoic philosopher declares himself insensible to the ills of life; he
+denies that pain is an evil; and, on the other hand, he claims the right
+to kill himself in order to escape from the ills of existence! So ended
+this famous school. At the same period, the herd of Epicurus' followers,
+giving themselves over to weak and shameful indulgences, were thus in
+fact laboring with all their might (this is Montesquieu's opinion) to
+prepare that enormous corruption under which were to sink together the
+glory of Rome and the civilization of the ancient world.</p>
+
+<p>This struggle which rent the ancient conscience, and which still rends
+the modern conscience wherever the goodness of God continues
+veiled&mdash;this great conflict is appeased when we have come to understand
+that goodness is the first principle of things, that happiness is our
+end, and that the stern voice of conscience is a friendly voice which
+warns us to shun those paths of error in which we should encounter
+wretchedness. The conscience is the voice of the Master; and the same
+authority which, speaking in the name of duty, bids us&mdash;"Be good,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>
+adds, in the gentle accents of hope&mdash;"and thou shalt be happy."
+Happiness, duty,&mdash;these are the two aspects of the Divine Will. Love is
+the solution of the universal enigma. Therefore, surprising as the
+thought may be, it is our duty to be happy. Our profession of faith,
+when we look above, must be: "I believe in goodness;" and when we enter
+again into ourselves, our profession of faith should be: "I believe in
+happiness." And we do not believe in it. Not to believe in happiness is
+the root of our ills; it is the original misery which includes all our
+miseries. Triflers that we are, we give ourselves up to pleasure because
+we do not believe in joy: frivolous, we run after giddy excitement
+because we do not believe in peace: with hearts corrupt, we abandon
+ourselves to the devouring flame of the passions, because we do not
+believe in the serene light of true felicity. But the more the thought
+of God's love enters our mind, the more will faith in happiness issue
+from our soul as a blessed flower. Happiness is the end of our being; it
+is the will of the Father. To each one of us are these words addressed:
+God loves thee; be happy! If therefore (and I address myself more
+particularly to the younger of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> my hearers), if in the depth of your
+soul you are conscious of a sudden aspiration after true felicity, ah!
+do not suffer the holy flame to be extinguished, do not talk of
+illusions; do not, I pray you, resign yourselves to the prose of life;
+to a dreary and gloomy contentedness with a destiny which has no ideal.
+Your nature does not deceive you; it is you who deceive yourselves, if
+you seek your own welfare in the world of foolish or guilty chimeras.
+Listen to all the voices which speak to you of comfort; be attentive to
+all the words of peace. Seek, labor, pray, till you are able to utter,
+in quiet confidence, those words of the Psalmist:</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>In peace I lay me down to rest;</div>
+<div>No fears of evil haunt my breast:</div>
+<div>In peace I sleep till dawn of day,</div>
+<div>For God, my God, is near alway:</div>
+<div>On Him in faith my cares I roll;</div>
+<div>He never sleeps who guards my soul.<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a></div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>God in the heart&mdash;this it is which adds zest to our enjoyments,
+sanctifies our affections, calms our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> griefs, and which, amidst the
+struggles, the sorrows, and the harrowing afflictions of life, suffers
+to rise from the heart to the countenance that sublime smile which can
+shine brightly even through tears.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Tristes calculateurs des mis&egrave;res humaines,</div>
+<div>Ne me consolez point, vous aigrissez mes peines;</div>
+<div>Et je ne vois en vous que l'effort impuissant</div>
+<div>D'un fier infortun&eacute; qui feint d'&ecirc;tre content.</div>
+<div>Quel bonheur, O mortels, et faible et mis&eacute;rable.</div>
+<div>Vous criez: "Tout est bien" d'une voix lamentable;</div>
+<div>L'univers vous d&eacute;ment, et votre propre c&oelig;ur</div>
+<div>Cent fois de votre esprit a r&eacute;fut&eacute; l'erreur.</div>
+<div>Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre.</div>
+<div class='right'><span class="smcap">Desastre de Lisbonne.</span></div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Pourquoi donc, O Ma&icirc;tre supr&ecirc;me,</div>
+<div>As-tu cr&eacute;&eacute; le mal si grand</div>
+<div>Que la raison, la vertu m&ecirc;me</div>
+<div>S'&eacute;pouvantent en le voyant?</div></div>
+
+<div class='stanza'><div>Comment, sous la sainte lumi&egrave;re,</div>
+<div>Voit-on des actes si hideux,</div>
+<div>Qu'ils font expirer la pri&egrave;re</div>
+<div>Sur les l&egrave;vres du malheureux?</div></div>
+
+<div class='stanza'><div>Pourquoi, dans ton &oelig;uvre c&eacute;leste,</div>
+<div>Tant d'&eacute;l&eacute;ments si peu d'accord?</div>
+<div>A quoi bon le crime et la peste,</div>
+<div>O Dieu juste! pourquoi la mort?</div>
+<div class='i6'><span class="smcap">Alfred de Musset</span>, <i>Espoir en Dieu</i>.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> <i>Les origines indo-europ&eacute;ennes, ou les Aryas
+primitifs.</i>&mdash;The above is a <i>r&eacute;sum&eacute;</i>, not a verbatim quotation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> Quocirca te, Capitoline, quem propter beneficia populus
+Romanus <span class="smcap">OPTIMUM</span>, propter vim <span class="smcap">MAXIMUM</span> nominavit. (<i>Pro domo sua</i>, LVII.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> See the <i>Voyage autour de ma chambre</i> of Xavier de
+Maistre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a><i> Le cr&eacute;puscule aux monts prolonger ses adieux.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Tout le bonheur tu c&egrave;des</div>
+<div>Accro&icirc;t ta f&eacute;licit&eacute;.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Ch&egrave;re &agrave; tout homme quel qu'il soit,</div>
+<div>J'apporte la joie &agrave; qui donne</div>
+<div>Et je la laisse &agrave; qui re&ccedil;oit.</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And Shakspeare&mdash;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div class='i2'>" . &nbsp;. &nbsp;. &nbsp; Mercy . . . is twice bless'd,</div>
+<div>It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes."</div>
+<div class='i10'><i>Merchant of Venice.</i>&mdash;[<span class="smcap">Tr.</span>]</div></div>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> Lacordaire. <i>Conf&eacute;rences de 1848.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> <i>Conf&eacute;rences de 1848</i>, p. 78.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> <i>La raison et le Christianisme</i>: twelve lectures on the
+existence of God, one vol. 12mo. In the <i>Philosophie de la libert&eacute;</i> (2
+vols. 8vo.) M. Secr&eacute;tan has set forth, in a severely scientific form,
+the arguments of which the reader has just seen the oratorical
+expression from the pen of P&egrave;re Lacordaire. This agreement is worth
+notice, the dates showing that no communication was possible.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a></p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>Je me couche sans peur,</div>
+<div>Je m'endors sans frayeur,</div>
+<div>Sans crainte je m'&eacute;veille.</div>
+<div>Dieu qui soutient ma foi</div>
+<div>Est toujours pr&egrave;s de moi,</div>
+<div>Et jamais ne sommeille.</div></div>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<h4>Cambridge: Printed by John Wilson and Son.</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Heavenly Father
+       Lectures on Modern Atheism
+
+Author: Ernest Naville
+
+Translator: Henry Downton
+
+Release Date: April 14, 2006 [EBook #18168]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HEAVENLY FATHER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dave Maddock, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HEAVENLY FATHER.
+
+Lectures on Modern Atheism.
+
+BY
+
+ERNEST NAVILLE,
+
+CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE (ACADEMY OF THE MORAL
+AND POLITICAL SCIENCES), LATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
+OF GENEVA.
+
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
+
+BY HENRY DOWNTON, M.A.,
+
+ENGLISH CHAPLAIN AT GENEVA.
+
+
+     --"To this deplorable error I desire to oppose faith in GOD as it
+     has been given to the world by the Gospel--faith in the HEAVENLY
+     FATHER."
+                _Author's Letter to Professor Faraday_ (v. p. 193).
+
+
+BOSTON:
+
+WILLIAM V. SPENCER
+
+1867.
+
+CAMBRIDGE:
+
+PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+These Lectures, in their original form, were delivered at Geneva, and
+afterwards at Lausanne, before two auditories which together numbered
+about two thousand five hundred men. A Swiss Review published
+considerable portions of them, which had been taken down in short-hand,
+and on reading these portions, several persons, belonging to different
+countries, conceived the idea of translating the work when completed by
+the Author, and corrected for publication. Proof-sheets were accordingly
+sent to the translators as they came from the press: and thus this
+volume will appear pretty nearly at the same time in several of the
+languages of Europe.
+
+The hearty kindness with which my fellow-countrymen received my words
+has been to me both a delight and an encouragement. The expressions of
+sympathy which have reached me from abroad allow me to hope that these
+pages, notwithstanding the deficiencies and imperfections of which I am
+keenly sensible, reflect some few of the rays of the truth which God has
+deposited on the earth, thereby to unite in the same faith and hope men
+of every tongue and every nation.
+
+                                                    ERNEST NAVILLE.
+
+GENEVA, _May, 1865_.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
+
+
+The appearance of this translation so long after that of the original
+work is in contradiction to the foregoing statement of the Author, that
+it would appear at nearly the same time with it. The delay has been due
+to causes beyond the translator's control--in part to the difficulty of
+revising the press at so great a distance from the place of publication,
+the translator being resident at Geneva. This latter circumstance causes
+an exception in another particular as regards this translation, the
+proposal to translate the Lectures having been made to the Author, and
+kindly accepted by him, during the course of their delivery at Geneva.
+
+The mere statement by the Author of the numbers, large as they were, of
+those who formed the auditories, can give but a small idea of the
+enthusiasm with which they were received by the crowds which thronged to
+hear them, and which were composed of all classes of persons, from the
+most distinguished savant to the intelligent artisan.
+
+It is not to be expected that the Lectures when read, even in the
+original, and still less in a translation, can produce the vivid
+impression which they made on those, who, with the translator, had the
+privilege of hearing them delivered,--the Author having few rivals, on
+the Continent or elsewhere, in the graces of polished eloquence; but the
+subjects treated are, it is to be feared, of increasing importance, not
+abroad only, but in England; and in fact one Lecture, the fourth, is in
+a large measure occupied with forms of atheism which owe their chief
+support to English authors. In that Lecture the Author shows that the
+spiritual origin of man cannot "be put out of sight beneath details of
+physiology and researches of natural history," and that these not only
+"cannot settle," but "cannot so much as touch the question."
+
+The same Lecture is occupied in part by a practical refutation of the
+prejudice against religion drawn from the irreligious character of many
+men of science. The Author's subject has led him in the present work to
+confine his illustrations on this head to the question of natural
+religion: but the translator will avow that a main motive with him to
+undertake the labor of this translation has been the wish to prove, in
+the instance of the distinguished Author himself, that men of
+incontestable eminence as metaphysical philosophers may hold and profess
+boldly their faith in doctrines, which many who affect to guide the
+religious opinions of our youth would teach them to despise as the
+heritage of narrow minds, and to cast away as incompatible with the
+highest intellectual cultivation. Such doctrines are those of the fall
+and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine agency in his
+recovery, his need of propitiation by the sacrifice of the
+God-Man--_l'Homme-Dieu_. These truths are explicitly stated by the
+Author in his former course of lectures--_La Vie Eternelle_,[1] in
+which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the
+portion of the righteous, he does not shrink from declaring his belief
+in its awful counterpart, the eternal condemnation of the wicked.
+
+"The offence of the Cross" has not "ceased," and many finding that these
+are the opinions of this Author, will perhaps lay down his book as
+unworthy of their attention: yet the editor, biographer, and expositor
+of the great French thinker, Maine de Biran, will not need introduction
+to the intellectual magnates of our own or of any country. The
+translator will be thankful, if some of those,--the youth more
+especially,--of his own country, who have been dazzled by the glare of
+false science, shall find in this work a help to the reassuring of their
+faith, while they learn in a fresh example that there are men quite
+competent to deal with the profoundest problems which can exercise our
+thoughts, who at the same time have come to a conviction,--compatible as
+they believe with principles of the clearest reason,--of the truth of
+those very doctrines which form the substance of evangelical
+Christianity. In saying this, the translator is far from claiming the
+Author as belonging to the same school of theology with himself: but
+differing with him on some important points, he has yet believed that
+this volume is calculated to be of much use in the present condition of
+religious thought in England, and in this hope and prayer he commends it
+to the blessing of Him, whose being and attributes, as our God and
+Father in Jesus Christ, are therein asserted and defended.
+
+GENEVA, _November, 1865_.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] A translation of this work, by an English lady, has been published
+by Mr. Dalton, 28, Cockspur street.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+                             PAGE
+OUR IDEA OF GOD                 1
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+LIFE WITHOUT GOD               43
+  PART I.--THE INDIVIDUAL      45
+  PART II.--SOCIETY            72
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM        117
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+NATURE                        175
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+HUMANITY                      245
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+THE CREATOR                   297
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE FATHER                    340
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+_OUR IDEA OF GOD._
+
+(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, a German writer published a
+piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with
+the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah
+who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the
+living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth
+century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon the obsequies of the Eternal.
+
+I was young when these strange words met my eyes, and they produced in
+me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven
+them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many
+tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that men
+of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind,
+are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion
+in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath
+the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science,
+beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the
+ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the
+foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy
+words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a
+shudder of fright through society--more than threatening war, more than
+possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the
+dark against the security of persons or of property--is, the number, the
+importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days
+to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.
+
+This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should
+wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this
+term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is,
+either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which
+so many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who say that it
+is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution, who apply themselves to
+this work. They are too generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack
+upon a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by the intensity of
+their exertions, that in their own opinion they have something else to
+do than to give a finishing stroke to the dying.
+
+Present circumstances are serious, not for religion itself, which cannot
+be imperilled, but for minds which run the risk of losing their balance
+and their support. Let it be observed, however, that when it is said
+that we are living in extraordinary times, that we are passing through
+an unequalled crisis, that the like of what we see was never seen
+before, and so on, we must always regard conclusions of this nature with
+distrust. Our personal interest in the circumstances which immediately
+surround us produces on them for us the magnifying effect of a
+microscope: and our principal reason for thinking that our epoch is more
+extraordinary than others, is for the most part that we are living in
+our own epoch, and have not lived in others. A mind attentive to this
+fact, and so placed upon its guard against all tendency to
+exaggeration, will easily perceive that religious thought has in former
+times passed through shocks as profound and as dangerous as those of
+which we are witnesses. Still the crisis is a real one. Taking into
+account its extent in our days, we may say that it is new for the
+generation to which we belong; and it is worthy of close consideration.
+To-day, as an introduction to this grave subject, I should wish first to
+determine as precisely as possible what is our idea of God; to inquire
+next from what sources we derive it; and lastly to point out, as clearly
+as I may, the limits and the nature of the discussion to which I invite
+you.
+
+In asking what sense we must give to the word "God," I am not going to
+propose to you a metaphysical definition, or any system of my own: I am
+inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the bosom of modern
+society, in the souls which live by this idea, in the hearts of which it
+constitutes the joy, in the consciences of which it is the support.
+
+When our thoughts rise above nature and humanity to that invisible Being
+whom we speak of as God, what is it which passes in our souls? They
+fear, they hope, they pray, they offer thanksgiving. If a man finds
+himself in one of those desperate positions in which all human help
+fails, he turns towards Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of
+one of those instances of revolting injustice which stir the conscience
+in its profoundest depths, and which could not on earth meet with
+adequate punishment, we think within ourselves,--There is a Judge on
+high! If we are reproved by our own conscience, the voice of that
+conscience, which disturbs and sometimes torments us, reminds us that
+though we may be shut out from all human view, there is no less an Eye
+which sees us, and a just award awaiting us. Thus it is (I am seeking to
+establish facts) that the thought of God operates, so to speak, in the
+souls of those who believe in Him. If you look for the meaning common to
+all these manifestations of man's heart, what do you find? Fear, hope,
+thanksgiving, prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power
+intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to act upon our
+destinies. This is the idea which is found at the basis of all
+religions; not only of the religion of the only God, but of the most
+degraded forms of idolatrous worship. All religion rests upon the
+sentiment of one or more invisible Powers, superior to nature and to
+humanity.
+
+When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it disengages from the general
+sentiment of power the definite idea of the cause which becomes the
+explanation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by virtue of its very
+constitution, finds a need of conceiving of an absolute cause which
+escapes by its eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite character
+the bounds of limited existences; a principle, the necessary being of
+which depends on no other; in a word a unique cause, establishing by its
+unity the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with the idea of the
+sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches itself to it as the only thought
+which accounts to it for the world and for itself.
+
+The Creator is, first of all, He whose glory the heavens declare, while
+the earth makes known the work of His hands. He is the Mighty One and
+the Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who directs at once
+the chorus of stars in the depths of the heavens, and the drop of vital
+moisture in the herb which we tread under foot.
+
+If, after having looked around, we turn our regard in upon ourselves, we
+then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like
+stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man
+to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty.
+Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments
+may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions,
+pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if
+all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues
+from the depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. Our
+aspirations toward these spiritual excellences are unlimited. Our
+thought sets out on its course: have we solved one question? immediately
+new questions arise, which press, no less than the former, for an
+answer. Our conscience speaks: have we come in a certain degree to
+realize what is right and good? immediately conscience demands of us
+still more. Is our feeling for beauty awakened? Well, sirs, when an
+artist is satisfied with the work of his hands, do you not know at once
+what to think of him? Do you not know that that man will never do any
+thing great, who does not see shining in his horizon an ideal which
+stamps as imperfect all that he has been able to realize? The voice
+which urges us on through life from the cradle to the grave, and which,
+without allowing us a moment's pause, is ever crying--Forward! forward!
+this voice is not more imperious than the noble instinct which, in the
+view of beauty, of truth, of good, is also saying to us--Forward!
+forward! and, with the American poet, _Excelsior!_ higher, ever higher!
+Many of you know that instinct familiar to the _climbers of the
+Alps_,[2] as they are called, who, arrived at one summit, have no rest
+so long as there remains a loftier height in view. Such is our destiny;
+but the last peak is veiled in shining clouds which conceal it from our
+sight. Perfection,--this is the point to which our nature aspires; but
+it is the ladder of Jacob: we see the foot which rests upon the earth;
+the summit hides itself from our feeble view amidst the splendors of the
+infinite.
+
+These objects of our highest desires--beauty in its supreme
+manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite truth--are united in one and
+the same thought--God! The attributes of the spiritual are never in us
+but as borrowed attributes; they dwell naturally in Him who is their
+source. God is the truth, not only because He knows all things, but
+because He is the very object of our thoughts; because, when we study
+the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws which He has
+imposed on things; because, to know truth is never any thing else than
+to know the creation or the Creator, the world or its eternal Cause. God
+it is who must be Himself the satisfaction of that craving of the
+conscience which urges us towards holiness. If we had arrived at the
+highest degree of virtue, what should we have done? We should have
+realized the plan which He has proposed to spiritual creatures in their
+freedom, at the same time that He is directing the stars in their
+courses by that other word which they accomplish without having heard
+it. God is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who has shed grace
+upon our valleys, and majesty upon our mountains; and He, again, it is
+(I quote St. Augustine) who acts within the souls of artists, those
+great artists, who, urged unceasingly towards the regions of the ideal,
+feel themselves drawn onwards towards a divine world.
+
+God then above all is He who _is_,--the Absolute, the Infinite, the
+Eternal,--in the ever mysterious depths of His own essence. In His
+relation to the world, He is the cause; in His relation to the lofty
+aspirations of the soul, He is the ideal. He is the ideal, because being
+the absolute cause, He is the unique source, at the same time that He is
+the object, of our aspirations: He is the absolute cause, because being
+He who _is_, in His supreme unity, nothing could have existence except
+by the act of His power. We are able already to recognize here, in
+passing, the source at which are fed the most serious aberrations of
+religious thought. Are truth, holiness, beauty considered separately
+from the real and infinite Spirit in which is found their reason for
+existing? We see thus appear philosophies noble in their commencement,
+but which soon descend a fatal slope. The divine, so-called, is spoken
+of still; but the divine is an abstraction, and apart from God has no
+real existence. If truth, beauty, holiness are not the attributes of an
+eternal mind, but the simple expression of the tendencies of our soul,
+man may render at first a sort of worship to these lofty manifestations
+of his own nature; but logic, inexorable logic, forces him soon to
+dismiss the divine to the region of chimeras. These rays are
+extinguished together with their luminous centre; the soul loses the
+secret of its destinies, and, in the measureless grief which possesses
+it, it proclaims at length that all is vanity. We shall have, in the
+sequel, to be witnesses together of this sorrowful spectacle.
+
+Such is the basis of our idea of God: we must now discover its summit.
+Before the thought of this Sovereign Being, by whose Will are all
+things, and who is without cause and without beginning, our soul is
+overwhelmed. We are so feeble! the thought of absolute power crushes us.
+Creatures of a day, how should we understand the Eternal? Frail as we
+are, and evil, we tremble at the idea of holiness. But milder accents,
+as you know, have been heard upon the earth: This Sovereign God--He
+loves us. In proportion as this idea gains possession of our
+understanding, in the same proportion our soul has glimpses of the paths
+of peace. He loves us, and we take courage. He hears us, and prayer
+rises to Him with the hope of being heard. He governs all, and we
+confide in His Providence. When your gaze is directed towards the depths
+of the sky, does it never happen to you to remain in a manner terrified,
+as you contemplate those worlds which without end are added to other
+worlds? As you fix your thoughts upon the immeasurable abysses of the
+firmament,--as you say to yourselves that how far soever you put back
+the boundary of the skies, if the universe ended there, then the
+universe, with its suns and its groups of stars, would still be but a
+solitary lamp, shining as a point in the midst of the limitless
+darkness,--have you never experienced a sort of mysterious fright and
+giddiness? At such a time turn your eyes upon nearer objects. He who has
+made the heavens with their immensity, is He who makes the corn to
+spring forth for your sustenance, who clothes the fields with the
+flowers which rejoice your sight, who gives you the fresh breath of
+morning, and the calm of a lovely evening: it is He, without whose
+permission nothing occurs, who watches over you and over those you love.
+Possess yourselves thoroughly with this thought of love, then lift once
+more your eyes to the sky, and from every star, and from the worlds
+which are lost in the furthest depths of space, shall fall upon your
+brow, no longer clouded, a ray of love and of peace. Then with a feeling
+of sweet affiance you will adopt as your own those words of an ancient
+prophet: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee
+from Thy Presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make
+my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the
+morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall
+Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me:"[3] then you will
+understand those grand and sweet words of Saint Augustine, some of the
+most beautiful that ever fell from the lips of a man: "Are you afraid of
+God? Run to His arms!"
+
+Thus our idea of God is completed,--the idea of Him whom, in a feeling
+of filial confidence, we name the Father, and whom we call the
+_Heavenly_ Father, while we adore that absolute holiness, of which the
+pure brightness of the firmament is for us the visible and magnificent
+symbol. Goodness is the secret of the universe; goodness it is which has
+directed power, and placed wisdom at its service.
+
+My object is not to teach this idea, but to defend it: it is not, I say,
+to teach it, for we all possess it. There is no one here who has not
+received his portion of the sacred deposit. This sacred idea may be
+veiled by our sorrows, perverted by our errors, obscured by our faults;
+but, however thick be the layer of ashes heaped together in the depth of
+our souls--look closely: the sacred spark is not extinguished, and a
+favorable breath may still rekindle the flame.
+
+We have considered the essential elements of which our idea of God is
+composed. And whence comes this idea? What is its historical origin? I
+do not ask what is the historical origin of religion, for religion does
+not take its rise in history; it is met with everywhere and always in
+humanity. Those who deny this are compelled to "search in the darkness
+for some obscure example known only to themselves, as if all natural
+inclinations were destroyed by the corruption of a people, and as if, as
+soon as there are any monsters, the species were no longer any
+thing."[4] The consciousness of a world superior to the domain of
+experience is one of the attributes characteristic of our nature. "If
+there had ever been, or if there still anywhere existed, a people
+entirely destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an
+exceptional downfall which would be tantamount to a lapse into
+animality."[5] I am not therefore inquiring after the origin of the
+idea and sentiment of the Deity, in a general sense, but after the
+origin of the idea of the only and Almighty Creator as we possess it. In
+fact, if religion is universal, distinct knowledge of the Creator is not
+so.
+
+Our own past strikes its roots into the historic soil which, in the
+matter of creeds, is known by the name of paganism or idolatry. At first
+sight what do we find in the opinions of that ancient world? No trace of
+the divine unity. Adoration is dispersed over a thousand different
+beings. Not only are the heavenly bodies adored and the powers of
+nature, but men, animals, and inanimate objects. The feeling of the
+holiness of God is not less wanting, it would seem, than the idea of His
+unity. Religion serves as a pretext for the unchaining of human
+passions. This is the case unfortunately with religion in general, and
+the true religion is no exception to the rule: but what characterizes
+paganism is that in its case religion, by its own proper nature, favors
+the development of immorality. Celebrated shrines become the dens of a
+prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered to the gods; the
+religious rites of ancient Asia, and those of Greece which fell under
+their influence, are notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false
+deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often also dishonored
+by frightful sacrifices. The ancient civilization of Mexico was elegant
+and even refined in some respects; but the altars were stained, every
+year, with the blood of thousands of human beings; and the votaries of
+this sanguinary worship devoured, in solemn banquets, the quivering
+limbs of the victims. Let us not look for examples too far removed from
+the civilization which has produced our own. In the Greek and Roman
+world, the stories of the gods were not very edifying, as every one
+knows: the worship of Bacchus gave no encouragement to temperance, and
+the festivals of Venus were not a school of chastity. It would be easy,
+by bringing together facts of this sort, to form a picture full of
+sombre coloring, and to conclude that our idea of God, the idea of the
+only and holy God, does not proceed from the impure sources of idolatry.
+The proceeding would be brief and convenient; but such an estimation of
+the facts, false because incomplete, would destroy the value of the
+conclusion. In pagan antiquity, in fact, the abominations of which I
+have just reminded you did not by themselves make up religious
+tradition. Side by side with a current of darkness and impurity, we meet
+with a current of pure ideas and of strong gleams of the day.
+
+Almost all the pagans seem to have had a glimpse of the Divine unity
+over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays of the Divine
+holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a Greek who wrote
+these words: "Nothing is accomplished on the earth without Thee, O God,
+save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in their folly."[6] It was in
+a theatre at Athens that the chorus of a tragedy sang, more than two
+thousand years ago: "May destiny aid me to preserve unsullied the purity
+of my words and of all my actions, according to those sublime laws
+which, brought forth in the celestial heights, have Heaven alone for
+their father, to which the race of mortal men did not give birth, and
+which oblivion shall never entomb. In them is a supreme God, and one who
+waxes not old."[7] It would be easy to multiply quotations of this
+order, and to show you in the documents of Grecian and Roman
+civilization numerous traces of the knowledge of the only and holy God.
+Listen now to a voice which has come forth actually from the recesses of
+the sepulchre: it reaches us from ancient Egypt.
+
+In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in
+popular practice complete. But, under the confused accents of
+superstition, the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar
+the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number
+of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred
+text which is called the _Book of the Dead_. Here is the translation of
+some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God
+who speaks: "I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that replenishes the
+earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of mortals. I am the
+Prince of the infinite ages. I am the great and mighty God, the Most
+High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of the armies
+which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise and who judge
+the evil-doers, and the persecutors of godly men. I discover and
+confound the liars.... I am the all-seeing Judge and Avenger ... the
+guardian of my laws in the land of righteousness."[8]
+
+These words are found mingled, in the text from which I extract them,
+with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be acknowledged that the
+translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is still uncertain enough.
+Still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to the general sense
+and bearing of the recent discoveries of our savants. Myself a simple
+learner from the masters of the science, I can only point out to you the
+result of their studies. Now, this is what the masters tell us as to the
+actual state of mythological studies. Traces are found almost
+everywhere, in the midst of idolatrous superstitions, of a religion
+comparatively pure, and often stamped with a lofty morality. Paganism is
+not a simple fact: it offers to view in the same bed two currents, the
+one pure and the other impure. What is the relation between these two
+currents? A passage in a writer of the Latin Church throws a vivid light
+upon their actual relation in practical life. It is thus that Lactantius
+expresses himself: "When man (the pagan) finds himself in adversity,
+then it is that he has recourse to God (to the only God). If the horrors
+of war threaten him, if there appear a contagious disease, a drought, a
+tempest, then he has recourse to God.... If he is overtaken by a storm
+at sea, and is in danger of perishing, immediately he calls upon God; if
+he finds himself in any urgent peril, he has recourse to God.... Thus
+men bethink themselves of God when they are in trouble; but as soon as
+the danger is past, and they are no longer in any fear, we see them
+return with joy to the temples of the false gods, make to them
+libations, and offer sacrifices to them."[9] This is a striking picture
+of the workings of man's heart in all ages; for, as our author observes,
+"God is never so much forgotten of men as when they are quietly enjoying
+the favors and blessings which He sends them."[10] As regards our
+special object, this page reveals in a very instructive manner the
+religious condition of heathen antiquity. The thought of the sovereign
+God was stifled without being extinguished; it awoke beneath the
+pressure of anguish; but ordinary life, the life of every day, belonged
+to the easy worship of idols.
+
+It may now be asked what is the historical relation between the two
+currents of paganism of which we have just established the actual
+relation in practical life. Did humanity begin with a coarse fetichism,
+and thence rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of
+a comparatively pure monotheism first show themselves in the most recent
+periods of idolatry? Contemporary science inclines more and more to
+answer in the negative. It is in the most ancient historical ground
+(allow me these geological terms) that the laborious investigators of
+the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut to the
+ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few years
+afterwards: in place of the tree cut down you will find coppice-wood;
+the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided amongst a
+multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the opinion
+which tends to prevail amongst our savants on the subject of the
+historical development of religions. The idea of the only God is at the
+root,--it is primitive; polytheism is derivative. A forgotten, and as it
+were slumbering, monotheism exists beneath the worship of idols; it is
+the concealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have absorbed all
+the sap. The ancient God (allow me once more a comparison) is like a
+sovereign confined in the interior of his palace: he is but seldom
+thought of, and only on great occasions; his ministers alone act,
+entertain requests, and receive the real homage.
+
+The proposition of the historical priority of monotheism is very
+important, and is not universally admitted. It will therefore be
+necessary to show you, by a few quotations at least, that I am not
+speaking rashly. One of the most accredited mythologists of our time,
+Professor Grimm, of Berlin, writes as follows: "The monotheistic form
+appears to be the more ancient, and that out of which antiquity in its
+infancy formed polytheism.... All mythologies lead us to this
+conclusion."[11] Among the French savants devoted to the study of
+ancient Egypt, the Vicomte de Ronge stands in the foremost rank. This is
+what he tells us: "In Egypt the supreme God was called the one God,
+living indeed, He who made all that exists, who created other beings. He
+is the Generator existing alone who made the heaven and created the
+earth." The writer informs us that these ideas are often found
+reproduced "in writings the date of which is anterior to Moses, and many
+of which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns;" then he comes
+to this conclusion: "Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of
+doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the
+soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading
+superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious
+history of all antiquity."[12] As regards the civilization which
+flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the
+subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns the religious
+idea, at the following conclusion: "To sum up: primitive monotheism of a
+character more or less vague, passing gradually into a polytheism still
+simple, such appears to have been the religion of the ancient
+Aryas."[13] One of our fellow-countrymen, who cultivates with equal
+modesty and perseverance the study of religious antiquities, has
+procured the greater part of the recent works published on these
+subjects in France, Germany, and England. He has read them, pen in hand,
+and, at my urgent request, he has kindly allowed me to look over his
+notes which have been long accumulating. I find the following sentence
+in the manuscripts which he has shown me: "The general impression of
+all the most distinguished mythologists of the present day is, that
+monotheism is at the foundation of all pagan mythology."
+
+The savants, I repeat, do not unanimously accept these conclusions:
+savants, like other men, are rarely unanimous. It is enough for my
+purpose to have shown that it is not merely the grand tradition
+guaranteed by the Christian faith, but also the most distinctly marked
+current of contemporary science, which tells us that God shone upon the
+cradle of our species. The august Form was veiled, and idolatry with its
+train of shameful rites shows itself in history as the result of a fall
+which calls for a restoration, rather than as the point of departure of
+a continued progress.
+
+The august Form was veiled. Who has lifted the veil? Not the priests of
+the idols. We meet in the history of paganism with movements of
+reformation, or, at the very least, of religious transformation:
+Buddhism is a memorable example of this; but it is not a return towards
+the pure traditions of India or of Egypt which has caused us to know the
+God whom we adore. Has the veil been lifted by reflection, that is to
+say by the labors of philosophers? Philosophy has rendered splendid
+services to the world. It has combated the abominations of idolatry; it
+has recognized in nature the proofs of an intelligent design; it has
+discerned in the reason the deeply felt need of unity; it has indicated
+in the conscience the sense of good, and shown its characteristics; it
+has contemplated the radiant image of the supreme beauty--still it is
+not philosophy which has restored for humanity the idea of God. Its
+lights mingled with darkness remained widely scattered, and without any
+focus powerful enough to give them strength for enlightening the world.
+To seek God, and consequently to know Him already in a certain measure;
+but to remain always before the altar of a God glimpsed only by an
+_elite_ of sages, and continuing for the multitudes the unknown God:
+such was the wisdom of the ancients. It prepared the soil; but it did
+not deposit in it the germ from which the idea of the Creator was to
+spring forth living and strong, to overshadow with its branches all the
+nations of the earth. And when this idea appeared in all its splendor,
+and began the conquest of the universe, the ancient philosophy, which
+had separated itself from heathen forms of worship, and had covered
+them with its contempt, contracted an alliance with its old adversaries.
+It accepted the wildest interpretations of the common superstitions, in
+order to be able to league itself with the crowd in one and the same
+conflict with the new power which had just appeared in the world. And
+this sums up in brief compass the whole history of philosophy in the
+first period of our era.
+
+The monotheism of the moderns does not proceed historically from
+paganism; it was prepared by the ancient philosophy, without being
+produced by it. Whence comes it then? On this head there exists no
+serious difference of opinion. Our knowledge of God is the result of a
+traditional idea, handed down from generation to generation in a
+well-defined current of history. Much obscurity still rests upon man's
+earliest religious history, but the truth which I am pointing out to you
+is solidly and clearly established. Pass, in thought, over the
+terrestrial globe. All the superstitions of which history preserves the
+remembrance are practised at this day, either in Asia or in Africa, or
+in the isles of the Ocean. The most ridiculous and ferocious rites are
+practised still in the light of the same sun which gilds, as he sets,
+the spires and domes of our churches. At this very day, there are
+nations upon the earth which prostrate themselves before animals, or
+which adore sacred trees. At this very day, perhaps at this hour in
+which I am addressing you, human victims are bound by the priests of
+idols; before you have left this room, their blood will have defiled the
+altars of false deities. At this very day, numerous nations, which have
+neither wanted time for self-development, nor any of the resources of
+civilization, nor clever poets, nor profound philosophers, belong to the
+religion of the Brahmins, or are instructed in the legends which serve
+as a mask to the pernicious doctrines of Buddha. Where do we meet with
+the clear idea of the Creator? In a unique tradition which proceeds from
+the Jews, which Christians have diffused, and which Mahomet corrupted.
+God is known, with that solid and general knowledge which founds a
+settled doctrine and a form of worship, under the influence of this
+tradition and nowhere else. We assert this as a simple fact of
+contemporary history; and there is scarcely any fact in history better
+established.
+
+The light comes to us from the Gospel. This light did not appear as a
+sudden and absolutely new illumination. It had cast pale gleams on the
+soul of the heathen in their search after the unknown God; it had shone
+apart upon that strange and glorious people which bears the name of
+Israel. Israel had preserved the primitive light encompassed by
+temporary safe-guards. It was the flame of a lamp, too feeble to live in
+the open air, and which remained shut up in a vase, until the moment
+when it should have become strong enough to shine forth from its
+shattered envelope upon the world. The worship of Jehovah is a local
+worship; but this worship, localized for a time, is addressed to the
+only and sovereign God. To every nation which says to Israel as Athaliah
+to Joash:
+
+
+     I have my God to serve--serve thou thine own,[14]
+
+
+Israel replies with Joash:
+
+
+     Nay, Madam, but my God is God alone;
+     Him must thou fear: thy God is nought--a dream![15]
+
+
+Israel does not affirm merely that the God of Israel is the only true
+God, but affirms moreover that the time will come when all the earth
+will acknowledge Him for the only and universal Lord. A grand thought, a
+grand hope, is in the soul of this people, and assures it that all
+nations shall one day look to Jerusalem. Its prophets threaten, warn,
+denounce chastisements, predict terrible catastrophes; but in the midst
+of their severer utterances breaks forth ever and again the song of
+future triumph:
+
+
+     Uplift, Jerusalem, thy queenly brow:
+     Light of the nations, and their glory, thou![16]
+
+
+Thus is preserved in the ancient world the knowledge of God amongst an
+exceptional people, amidst the darkness of idolatry and the glimmerings
+of an imperfect wisdom. And not only is it preserved, but it shines with
+a brightness more and more vivid and pure. The conception of sovereignty
+which constitutes its foundation, is crowned as it advances by the
+conception of love. At length He appears by whom the universal Father
+was to be known of all.
+
+Have you not remarked the surprising simplicity with which Jesus speaks
+of His work? He speaks of the universe and of the future as a lawful
+proprietor speaks of his property. The field in which the Word shall be
+sown is the world. He introduces that worship in spirit and in truth
+before which all barriers shall fall. He knows that humanity belongs to
+Him; and when He foretells His peaceful conquest, one knows not which
+predominates in His words, simplicity or grandeur. Now this predicted
+work has been done, is being done, and will be done. No one entertains
+any serious doubt of this. The idea of God, as it exists amongst
+Christian peoples, bears on its brow the certain sign of victory.
+
+In many respects, we are passing through the world in times which are
+not extraordinary, and among things little worthy of lasting record.
+Still great events are being accomplished before our eyes. The ancient
+East is shaken to its foundations. The work of foreign missions is taken
+up again with fresh energy. Ships, as they leave the shores of Europe,
+carry with them,--together with those who travel for purposes of
+commerce, or from curiosity, or as soldiers,--those new crusaders who
+exclaim: God wills it! and are ready to march to their death in order
+to proclaim the God of life to nations plunged in darkness. The advances
+of industry, the developments of commerce, the calculations of ambition,
+all conspire to diffuse spiritual light over the globe. These are noble
+spectacles, revealing clearly the traces of a superior design, which the
+mighty of this world are accomplishing, even by the craft and violence
+of their policy: they are the manifest instruments of a Will to which
+oftentimes they are insensible. The knowledge of God is extending; and
+while it is extending, it is enriching itself with its own conquests.
+Just as it absorbed the living sap of the doctrines of the Greeks, so it
+is strengthening itself with the doctrines of the ancient East and of
+old Egypt, which an indefatigable science is bringing again to light.
+Christian thought is growing, not by receiving any foreign impulse from
+without, but like a vigorous tree, whose roots traverse new layers of a
+fertile soil. All truth comes naturally to the centre of truth as to its
+rallying-point; and to the universal prayer must be gathered all the
+pure accents gone astray in the superstitious invocations which rise
+from the banks of the Ganges or from the burning regions of Africa. The
+day will come, when our planet, in its revolutions about the sun, shall
+receive on no point of its surface the rays of the orb of day, without
+sending back, over the ruins of idol-temples for ever overthrown, a song
+of thanksgiving to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, become through
+Jesus Christ the God of all mankind.
+
+We know now whence comes our idea of God: it is Christian in its origin.
+It proceeds from this source, not only for those who call themselves
+Christians, but for all those who, in the bosom of modern society,
+believe sincerely and seriously in God. But little study and reflection
+is required for the acknowledgment that the doctrines of our deists are
+the product of a reason which has been _evangelized_ without their own
+knowledge. They have not invented, but have received the thought, which
+constitutes the support of their life. A mind of ordinary cultivation is
+free henceforward from all danger of falling into the artless error of
+J.J. Rousseau, when he pretended that even though he had been born in a
+desert island and had never known a human being, he would have been able
+to draw up the confession of faith of the _Vicaire Savoyard_. The habit
+of historical research has dispelled these illusions. A French writer,
+distinguished for solid erudition, wrote not long ago: "The civilized
+world has received from Judea the foundations of its faith. It has
+learned of it these two things which pagan antiquity never
+knew--holiness and charity; for all holiness is derived from belief in a
+personal, spiritual God, Creator of the universe; and all charity from
+the doctrine of human brotherhood!"[17] Religion, in its most general
+sense, is found wherever there are men; but distinct knowledge of the
+Heavenly Father is the fruit of that word which comes to us from the
+borders of the Jordan,--a word in which all the true elements of ancient
+wisdom are found to have mutually drawn together, and strengthened each
+other. In the very heart of our civilization, those men of mind who
+succeed in freeing themselves in good earnest from the influence of this
+word come, oftener than not, to throw off all belief in the real and
+true God, if they have strength of mind enough properly to understand
+themselves.
+
+How is it that the full idea of the Creator,--an idea which true
+philosophers have sought after in all periods of history, and of which
+they have had, so to speak, glimpses and presentiments,--how is it that
+this idea is a living one only under the influence of the tradition
+which, proceeding originally from Abraham and Moses, has been continued
+by Jesus Christ? It is not impossible to point out the spiritual causes
+of this great historical phenomenon. Faith in God, in order to maintain
+itself in presence of the difficulties which rise in our minds, and--to
+come at once to the core of the question--the idea of the love of God,
+in order to maintain itself in presence of evil and of the power of evil
+on the earth, has need of resources which the Christian belief alone
+possesses. The knowledge of the Heavenly Father is essentially connected
+with the Gospel: this is the historical fact. This fact is accounted for
+by the existence of an organic bond between all the great Christian
+doctrines: this is my deliberate conviction. I frankly declare here my
+own opinions: to do so is for me a matter almost of honor and good
+faith; but I declare them, without desiring to lay any stress upon them
+in these lectures. My present object is to consider the idea of God by
+itself. I isolate it for my own purposes from Christian truth taken as a
+whole, but without making the separation in my thoughts. The thesis
+which I propose to maintain is common to all Christians, that is quite
+clear; but further; in a perfectly general sense, and in a merely
+abstract point of view, it is a proposition maintained equally by the
+disciples of Mahomet; it is maintained by J.J. Rousseau and the
+spiritualist philosophers who reproduce his thoughts. It is clear in
+fact that just as Jesus Christ is the corner-stone of all Christian
+doctrine, so God is the foundation common to all religions.
+
+Before concluding this lecture I desire to answer a question which may
+have suggested itself to some amongst you. What are we about when we
+take up a Christian idea in order to defend it by reasoning? Are we
+occupied about religion or philosophy? Are we treading upon the ground
+of faith, or on the ground of reason? Are we in the domain of tradition,
+or in that of free inquiry? I have no great love, Gentlemen, for hedges
+and enclosures. I know very well, better, perhaps, than many amongst
+you, because I have longer reflected on the subject, what are the
+differences which separate studies specially religious, from
+philosophical inquiries. But when the question relates to God, to the
+universal cause, we find ourselves at the common root of religion and
+philosophy, and distinctions, which exist elsewhere, disappear. Besides,
+these distinctions are never so absolute as they are thought to be. You
+will understand this if you pay attention to these two considerations:
+there is no such thing as pure thought disengaged from every traditional
+element: there is no such thing as tradition received in a manner purely
+passive, and disengaged from all exercise of the reflective faculties.
+
+You think you are employed about philosophy when you shut yourself up in
+your own individual thoughts. A mistake! The most powerful genius of
+modern times failed in this enterprise. Descartes conceived the project
+of forgetting all that he had known, and of producing a system of
+doctrine which should come forth from his brain as Minerva sprang all
+armed from the brain of Jupiter. Now-a-days a mere schoolboy, if he has
+been well taught, ought to be able to prove that Descartes was mistaken,
+because the current of tradition entered his mind together with the
+words of the language. It is not so easy as we may suppose to break the
+ties by which God has bound us all together in mutual dependence. Man
+speaks, he only thinks by means of speech, and speech is a river which
+takes its rise in the very beginnings of history, and brings down to the
+existing generation the tribute of all the waters of the past. No one
+can isolate himself from the current, and place himself outside the
+intellectual society of his fellows. We have more light than we had on
+this subject, and the attempt of Descartes, which was of old the happy
+audacity of genius, could in our days be nothing but the foolish
+presumption of ignorance.
+
+As for the purely passive reception of tradition, this may be conceived
+when only unimportant legends are in question, or doctrines which occupy
+the mind only as matters of curiosity; but when life is at stake, and
+the interests of our whole existence, the mind labors upon the ideas
+which it receives. Religion is only living in any soul when all the
+faculties have come into exercise; and faith, by its own proper nature,
+seeks to understand. The distinction between traditional data therefore
+and pure philosophy is far from being so real or so extensive as it is
+commonly thought to be. But for lack of time, I might undertake to prove
+to you more at length that the labor of individual thought upon the
+common tradition is the absolute and permanent law of development for
+the human mind.
+
+We have to steer between two extreme and contrary pretensions. What
+shall we say to those theologians who deny all power to man's reason,
+and consider the understanding as a receiver which does nothing but
+receive the liquid which is poured into it? to those theologians who,
+not content with despising Aristotle and Plato, think themselves obliged
+to vilify Socrates and calumniate Regulus? We will tell them that they
+depart from the grand Christian tradition, of which they believe
+themselves _par excellence_ the representatives. We will add that they
+outrage their Master by seeming to believe that in order to exalt Him it
+is necessary to calumniate humanity. Again, what shall we say to those
+philosophers, who do not wish for truth except when they have succeeded
+in educing it by themselves? to those philosophers who draw a little
+circle about their own personal thought, and say: If truth discovers
+itself outside this circle we have no wish to see it; and who boast that
+they only are free, because they have abandoned the common beliefs? We
+will tell them that they are deceiving themselves by taking for their
+own personal thought the _debris_ of the tradition of the human race.
+We will add that their pretended independence is a veritable slavery. A
+strange sort of liberty that, which should forbid those who affect it to
+accept a faith which appeared to them to be true, because they were not
+the inventors of it. Listen to this wise reflection of a contemporary
+writer: "Philosophy allows us to range ourselves on the side of
+Platonism: why should it not also allow us to range ourselves on the
+side of the Christian faith, if there it is that we find wisdom and
+immutable truth? The choice ought to seem as free and as worthy of
+respect on the one side as on the other; and philosophy which claims
+liberty for itself, is least of all warranted in refusing it to
+others."[18] To be free, is to look for truth wherever it may be found,
+and it is to obey truth wherever we meet with it. When the question
+therefore relates to God, or to the soul and its eternal destinies,--to
+the man who asks me, Are you occupied with religion or philosophy? I
+have only one answer to give: I am a man, and I am seeking truth.
+
+A final consideration will perhaps put these thoughts in a more
+striking light. If you think the most important of the discussions of
+our day to be that between natural and revealed religion, between deism
+and the Gospel, you have not well discerned the signs of the times. The
+fundamental discussion is now between men who believe in God, in the
+soul, and in truth, and men, who, denying truth, deny at the same time
+the soul and God. When these high problems are in question, periodicals
+and other publications, which have the widest circulation, and which
+gain admission into every household, bring us too often the works of
+writers without convictions, eager to spread amongst others the doubt
+which has devoured their own beliefs. They have received entire, and
+without losing an obole of it, the heritage of the Greek Sophists. They
+involve in fact in the same proscription Socrates and Jesus Christ, Paul
+of Tarsus and Plato of Athens: they have no more respect for the
+opinions of Descartes and Leibnitz than for those of Pascal and Bossuet.
+The great question of the day is to know whether our desire of truth is
+a chimaera; whether our effort to reach the divine world is a spring into
+the empty void. When the question relates to God, inasmuch as He is the
+basis of reason no less than the object of faith, all the barriers which
+exist elsewhere disappear: to defend faith is to defend reason; to
+defend reason is to defend faith. The unbridled audacity of those who
+deny fundamental truths is bringing ancient adversaries, for a moment at
+least, to fight beneath the same flag. What they would rob us of, is not
+merely this or that article of a definite creed, but all faith whatever
+in Divine Providence, every hope which goes beyond the tomb, every look
+directed towards a world superior to our present destinies. But take
+courage. This flame lighted on the earth, and which is evermore directed
+towards heaven, has passed safely through rougher storms than those
+which now threaten it; it has shone brightly in thicker darkness than
+that in which men are laboring so hard to enshroud it. It is not going
+to be extinguished, be very sure, before the affected indifference of a
+few wits of our day, and the haughty disdain of a few contemporary
+journalists.
+
+In a word, Gentlemen,--to take the idea of God as it has been handed
+down to us, and to study its relation to the reason, the heart, and the
+conscience of man,--this is my proposed method of proceeding. To show
+you that this idea is truth, because it satisfies the conscience, the
+heart, and the reason--this is the object I have in view. Of this object
+I am sure you feel the importance: nevertheless, and that we may be more
+alive to it still, I propose to you to sound with me the abysses of
+sorrow and darkness which are involved in those terrible words--"without
+God in the world."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Aux _grimpeurs des Alpes_.
+
+[3] Psalm cxxxix. 7-10.
+
+[4] J.J. Rousseau.
+
+[5] _Les Origines Indo-Europeennes_, by Adolphe Pictet, ii. 651.
+
+[6] Cleanthes, _Hymn to Jupiter_.
+
+[7] Sophocles, _OEdipus R._
+
+[8] _Handbuch der gesammten aegyptischen Alterthumskunde_, von Dr. Max
+Uhlemann. Leipzig, 1857.
+
+[9] _Institutions divines_, ii. 1.
+
+[10] Id.
+
+[11] _Deutsche Mythol._ Third edition, page lxiv.
+
+[12] _Annales de philosophie chretienne_, t. 59, p. 228._r_.
+
+[13] _Les Origines Indo-Europeennes_, ii. 720.
+
+[14] J'ai mon Dieu que je sers, vous servirez le votre.
+
+[15]
+
+                          Il faut craindre le mien;
+     Lui seul est Dieu, Madame, et le votre n'est rien.
+
+[16]
+
+     Leve, Jerusalem, leve ta tete altiere!
+     Les peuples a l'envi marchent a ta lumiere.
+
+[17] _Etudes Orientales_, par Adolphe Franck, p. 427.
+
+[18] Barthelemy St. Hilaire, in the _Seances et travaux de l'Academie
+des sciences morales et politiques_, LXX., p. 134.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+_LIFE WITHOUT GOD._
+
+(At Geneva, 20th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 13th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+I propose to examine to-day what are the consequences for human life of
+the total suppression of the idea of God. This suppression is the result
+of atheism properly so called: it is also the result of scepticism
+raised into a system. The soul which doubts, but which seeks, regrets,
+hopes, is not wholly separated from God. It gives Him a large share in
+its life, inasmuch as the desire which it feels to meet with Him, and
+the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full
+light, become the principal facts of its existence. But doubt adopted as
+a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so
+called, life without God, the mournful subject of our present study.
+
+Having God, the spiritual life has a firm base and an invincible hope.
+The vapors of earth may indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while
+fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the
+thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye
+of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has
+its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when
+in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice,
+and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the
+eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life
+and of joy in death: _My God!_ Take God away, and life is decapitated.
+Even this comparison is not sufficient; life, rather, becomes like to a
+man who should have lost at once both his head and his heart. The
+immense subject which opens before us falls into an easy and natural
+division: we will fix our attention successively upon the individual and
+upon society.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+_THE INDIVIDUAL._
+
+
+Man thinks, he feels, and he wills: these are the three great functions
+of the spiritual life. Let us inquire what, without God, would become,
+first, of thought, which is the instrument of all knowledge; next; of
+the conscience, which is the law of the will; then of the heart, which
+is the organ of the feelings. We will begin with thought.
+
+Let us go back to the origin of modern philosophy. The labors of
+Descartes will make us acquainted, under the form clearest for us, with
+a current of lofty thoughts which does honor to ancient civilization,
+and which has come down to us through the writings of Plato and St.
+Augustine. We have seen that Descartes deceived himself, when he thought
+to separate himself altogether from tradition, and forgot the while how
+intimately men's minds are bound together in a common possession of
+truth. He was mistaken, because he confounded the idea, natural to the
+human mind, of an infinite reason, with the full idea of the Creator; so
+attributing to the efforts of his own philosophy that gift of truth
+which he had received from the Christian tradition. But, having so far
+recognized his error, listen now to this great man, and judge if he were
+again mistaken in those thoughts of his which I am about to reproduce to
+you.
+
+Descartes strives hard to doubt of all things, persuaded that truth will
+resist his efforts, and come forth triumphant from the trial. He doubts
+of what he has heard in the schools: his masters may have led him into
+error. He doubts of the evidence of his senses: his senses deceive him
+in the visions of the night; what if he were always dreaming, and if his
+waking hours were but another sleep with other dreams! He will doubt
+even of the certainty of reason: what if the reason were a warped and
+broken instrument? Reason is only worth what its cause may be worth. If
+man is the child of chance, his thoughts may be vain. If man is the
+creature of a wicked and cunning being, the light of reason may be only
+an _ignis fatuus_ kindled by a malicious and mocking spirit. Here is a
+soul plunged in the lowest abysses of doubt; but it is a manly soul
+which seeks in doubt a trial for truth, and not a comfortable pillow on
+which slothfully to repose. How does Descartes upraise himself? By a
+thought known to every one, and which was already found in St.
+Augustine: "_Cogito, ergo sum_. I think, therefore I am." Deceive me who
+will; if I am deceived, I exist. Here is a certainty protected from all
+assault: I am. But what a poor certainty is this! What does it avail me
+to have rescued my existence from the abysses of universal doubt, if
+above the deep waters which have swallowed up all belief floats only
+this naked and mortifying truth: I am; but I exist only perhaps to be
+the sport of errors without end. The first step therefore taken by the
+philosopher would be a fruitless one if it were not followed by a
+second. An eye is open, and says: I see; but it must have a warrant that
+the light by which it sees is not a fantastic brightness. No, replies
+Descartes; reason sees a true light; and this is how he proves it: I am,
+I know myself; that is certain. I know myself as a limited and imperfect
+being; that again is certain. I conceive then infinity and perfection;
+that is not less certain; for I should not have the idea of a limit if I
+did not conceive of infinity, and the word _imperfect_ would have no
+meaning for me, if I could not imagine perfection, of which imperfection
+is but the negation. Starting from this point, the philosopher proves by
+a series of reasonings that the conception of perfection by our minds
+demonstrates the real existence of that perfection: God is. He adds,
+that the existence of God is more certain than the most certain of all
+the theorems of geometry. You will observe, Gentlemen, that the man who
+speaks in this way is one of the greatest geometricians that ever lived.
+He has found God, he has found the light. Reason does not deceive, when
+it is faithful to its own laws: the senses do not deceive, when they are
+exercised according to the rules of the understanding. Error is a
+malady; it is not the radical condition of our nature; it is not without
+limits and without remedy, for the final cause of our being is God, that
+is to say truth and goodness.
+
+
+     From everlasting God was true,
+     For ever good and just will be,
+
+
+says one of our old psalms. Faith in the veracity of God--such is the
+ground of the assurance of believers; such is also the foundation on
+which has been raised the greatest of modern philosophies. Without the
+knowledge of God and faith in his goodness, man remains plunged in
+irremediable doubt, possessing only this single, poor, and frightful
+certainty: I am; and I exist perhaps only to be eternally deceived.
+
+But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it--What
+a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that
+God is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good
+because God is. His reason demonstrates God to him, and God demonstrates
+his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once
+see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said
+again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple
+consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely
+that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very
+closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that
+have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a
+fault of logic which any schoolboy can discover? Self-sufficient levity
+of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading
+minds; and it very often happens to us to fail of understanding because
+we have failed in respect.
+
+Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes,
+as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes
+is one of the most illustrious representatives.
+
+To recognize in the reason traces of God, and to show that in faith in
+God consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a
+vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed
+in is not reasoning, but analysis; we are establishing a fact in order
+to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the
+natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals
+to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of
+certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his
+individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is
+evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were
+thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages,
+when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of
+our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would
+contradict our own. We believe in a general reason, everywhere and
+always the same, and in which the reason of each individual
+participates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth
+which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere
+present; in other words, we believe in God considered as the source of
+the universal intelligence. To believe in one's reason, is to believe in
+God, in this sense: the fact of the confidence which we place in our own
+faculty of thought, supposes a concealed faith in eternal truth. This is
+the analysis of which I was speaking. It is a circle if you please, but
+it is a circle of light, outside of which there is, as we shall see by
+and by, nothing but darkness and hard contradictions.
+
+You deny the existence of God. On what ground do you rest this denial?
+On the ground of your reason. You believe then that your reason is good,
+you believe it very good, since you do not hesitate to trust it, while
+you undertake to prove false the fundamental instincts of human nature.
+But you would not venture to say that this reason which you believe in
+with a faith so firm is your own separate reason merely, your personal
+and exclusive property. You believe in the universal reason; you believe
+in God, considered at least as the source of the understanding. The man
+therefore who denies God, affirms Him in a certain sense at the same
+time that he denies Him. He denies Him in his words, in the external
+form of his thought; he affirms Him in reality, as the Supreme
+Intelligence, by the very trust which he places in his own thought. Our
+understanding is only the reflected ray of the Divine verity. Therefore
+it is that Descartes, as soon as he has laid the first foundations of
+his system, interrupts the chain of his reasonings to trace these lines:
+"Here I think it highly meet to pause for a while in contemplation of
+this all-perfect God, to ponder deliberately his marvellous attributes,
+to consider, admire, and adore the incomparable beauty of that immense
+light, at least so far as the strength of my mind, which remains in a
+manner dazzled by it, shall allow me to do so."[19] Thus it is that
+while descending into the depths of the understanding, the philosopher
+who is supposed to be absorbed in pure abstractions, discovers all at
+once a sublime brightness, and exclaims with the ancient patriarch: "The
+LORD is in this place, and I knew it not!"[20] God is everywhere; He is
+in the heights of heaven, He is in the depths of thought. Remember
+those celebrated words of Lord Chancellor Bacon: "A little knowledge
+inclineth the mind to atheism, but a further acquaintance therewith
+bringeth it back to religion."
+
+God is not demonstrated, in the ordinary sense which we attach to the
+word demonstrate;[21] He is pointed out[22] as the source of all light.
+The attempt to demonstrate God as anything else is demonstrated, by
+descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is
+arrived at--this attempt implies a contradiction. God is in fact the
+first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond
+which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human
+mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate God by
+mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of
+departure--this is literally to wish to light up the sun. If the sun of
+intelligences is extinguished, reason sets out on its way vaguely
+enlightened still with the remains of the light which it has reflected;
+but it is not long ere it is stumbling in darkness. Then it is that--be
+not deceived about it!--the doubts which Descartes called up by an act
+of his own will do in good earnest invade the soul. We possess a
+natural certainty, which does not suppose a clear view of God; we reason
+without thinking distinctly of the principles on which we reason, just
+as, when we are in a hurry, we take the shortest cut without thinking of
+the axiom of geometry which prescribes the straight line. But if we pass
+from the natural order of our thoughts into the domain of science, if we
+ask--what is it which guarantees to me the value of my reason? then the
+question is put, and many perish in the passage which separates natural
+faith from the domain of science,--that dangerous passage where doubt
+spreads out its perfidious fogs and its deceitful marshes. The moment
+the question is started of the worth of reason, and all the schools of
+scepticism do start it, our answer must be--_God_; and we must find
+light in this answer, or see thought invaded in its totality by an
+irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie;
+and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of
+Ecclesiastes.[23] There are more souls ill of this malady than are
+supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against God what
+they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which
+has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at
+last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in
+the shroud of a universal scorn.
+
+Without God reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to
+the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the
+style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere
+I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes,
+conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its
+necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the
+august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given us the light
+of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the
+works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He
+would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a
+spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the
+contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism.
+We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no
+one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is
+another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is
+one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be
+the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must
+make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual
+heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience
+reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is
+evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty
+rebels: it subsists evermore, because it is the work of the Almighty.
+Humanity, in its strange destiny, has never ceased to outrage the rule
+which it acknowledges, and to pronounce upon its own acts a ceaseless
+condemnation. The laws which are investigated by the physical sciences
+are the plan of the Creator realized in nature: the law proposed to
+liberty is the plan of the Creator to be realized by the community of
+minds. Such is the explanation of the conscience: God is its solid
+foundation.
+
+Duty and God, morality and religion, are inseparable principles; all the
+efforts of a false philosophy have never succeeded, and never will
+succeed, in disjoining them. Men will never be prevented from believing
+that God is holy, and that His will is binding upon them: they will
+never be prevented from believing that holiness is divine, and that the
+will of God reveals itself in the admonitions of the conscience.
+Therefore the progress of religion and the progress of morality are
+closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea
+which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same
+time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the
+degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the
+man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other
+hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by
+error and the passions, the conscience protests, and by its protest
+purifies the religious conceptions. It has often been said, that in the
+onward march of humanity, morality is separated from faith, and comes at
+last to rest upon its own bases. It is a notion of the eighteenth
+century, which, although its root has been cut, is still throwing out
+shoots in our time. The attempt has been made to support this theory by
+the great name of Socrates. It is affirmed that the sage of Athens,
+breaking the bond which connects the earth with heaven, separated duty
+from its primitive source. Listen: Placed in the alternative of either
+renouncing his mission or dying, it is thus that Socrates addresses his
+judges: "Athenians, I honor you and I love you, but I will obey the
+Deity rather than you. My whole occupation is to persuade you, young and
+old, that before the care of the body and of riches, before every other
+care, is that of the soul and of its improvement. Know that this it is
+which the Deity prescribes to me, and I am persuaded that there can be
+nothing more advantageous to the republic than my zeal to fulfil the
+behest of the Deity."[24] Does the man who speaks in this way appear to
+you to have wished to break the link which connects morality with
+religion? He separates himself from the established religion; he pursues
+with his biting raillery shameful objects of worship; his conscience
+protests. But, while it protests, it attaches itself immediately to a
+higher and holier idea of that God, of whose perfections the sage of
+Athens had succeeded in obtaining a glimpse.
+
+God then is the explanation of the conscience: He is moreover its
+support. It has need in sooth to be supported,--that voice which speaks
+within us; because it is unceasingly contradicted and denied. The
+spectacle which the world presents is not an edifying one; the facts
+which are taking place on the earth are not all of a nature to maintain
+the steadfastness of the moral feeling. Let us imagine an example, a
+striking example, such as it would be easy to find realized on a small
+scale in more commonplace events. A peaceable population, menaced in its
+most sacred rights, has taken up arms in the simplest and most
+legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the
+soldiers who are advancing to oppress it--mere instruments as they are
+in the hands of their leaders--but upon the leaders themselves. One of
+these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to
+which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one
+of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the
+soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter,
+pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have
+grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, when
+this man shall be receiving the praises of his superiors. Men will laud
+the bravery and daring of his exploit; his sovereign will place upon
+his breast a brilliant cross, the august sign of the world's redemption;
+he will return to his country amidst the acclamations of the multitude,
+and drink in with delight the shouts of triumph which greet him as he
+moves on his way. For such things as these, is there to be no penalty
+but troublesome recollections which may sometimes be banished, and a few
+timid protests soon hushed by the loud voice of success? Verily there
+are perpetrated beneath the sun acts which cry aloud for vengeance. Have
+you never felt it--that mighty cry--rising from your own bosom, at the
+sight of some odious crime, or on reading such and such a page of
+history? And it must be so; it must be that the cry for vengeance will
+rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer,
+and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in
+the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never
+be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be
+broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains
+of Philippi:--"Virtue! thou art but a name!"
+
+The conscience is a reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the
+captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil
+tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs
+the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes
+place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon
+the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such
+as these:--"This voice of duty--whence comes it? and what would it have?
+May not conscience be a prejudice, the result of education and of habit?
+It has little power, it seems, for it is braved with impunity. Many say
+that it is a factitious power from which one comes at last to deliver
+one's self by resisting it. Am I not the dupe of an illusion? I am
+losing joys which others allow themselves. Barriers encompass me on
+every hand, for there are for me prohibited actions, unwholesome
+beauties, culpable feelings. Others are free, and make a larger use of
+life in all directions. What if I too made trial of liberty!" Here lies
+the temptation. When the soul aspires to become larger than conscience
+and more tolerant than duty, it is not far from a fall. The honest woman
+will be tempted to repine at the liberty of the courtesan, and the man
+who is bound by his word will become capable of looking with envy on
+the liberty of the liar. Then come terrible experiences which teach at
+length that the unbinding of the passions is the hardest of slaveries,
+and that, in the struggle between inclination and duty, it is liberty
+which oppresses and law which sets free. Happy then is he who, feeling
+himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that God who is able to
+rescue him from the abyss, and strengthens his shaken conscience by
+replacing it on its solid foundation. "God speaks and reigns. All
+rebellion is transient in its nature; justice will at length be done.
+Justice may be slow in the eyes of the creature of a day, seeing that He
+who shall dispense it has eternity at his disposal." But if God be not a
+refuge for us from men and from the world, if, when we see all that is
+passing around us, we cannot cast a look beyond and above the earth, men
+may lose their faith in duty. And this faith is lost in fact. If there
+are not dead consciences, there are consciences at any rate singularly
+sunk in sleep. There are men for whom goodness, truth, justice, honor,
+seem to be a coinage of which they make use because it is current, but
+without for themselves attaching to it any value. These pieces of money
+have no longer in their eyes any visible impression, because the
+conception of the almighty and just God is the impression which
+determines duty and guarantees its value.
+
+When the necessary alliance of moral order with religious thought is
+denied, the reality of conscience is opposed to what are called
+theological hypotheses always open to discussion. It is seen well enough
+that men may doubt of God, but it is supposed to be impossible to doubt
+of conscience. This is an illusion of generous minds. Those who would
+keep this illusion must not open the pages of the history of philosophy
+where the negation of duty does not occupy less space than the negation
+of God; they must not cast their eyes too much about them; they must
+also take care not to open the most widely circulated books, and the
+most fashionable periodicals: otherwise, as we shall see, they would not
+be long in finding out that this morality which they would fain have
+superior to all attacks, is perhaps what of all things is most attacked
+now-a-days, and that that conscience which it is impossible to deny is
+in fact the object of denials the most audacious on the part of a few of
+the present favorites of fame. The voice of duty is heard no doubt even
+when God does not come distinctly into mind; but when the questions are
+clearly put, if God is denied, conscience grows dim, and comes at last
+to be extinguished. This obscuration does not take place all at once:
+the potter's wheel goes on turning for a while, says an old Hindoo poem,
+after that the foot of the artisan is withdrawn from it. But the
+darkening takes place gradually with time: such at least is the general
+rule. There are exceptional men who seem to escape this law, and to bear
+in their bosom a God veiled from their own consciousness. Such men may
+be found, and even in considerable numbers, in a time like ours, when
+doubt is, in many cases, a prejudice which current opinion deposits on
+the surface of minds without penetrating them deeply. There are men all
+whose convictions have fallen into ruins, while their conscience
+continues standing like an isolated column, sole remaining witness of a
+demolished building. The meeting with these heroes of virtue inspires a
+mingled feeling of astonishment and respect. They are verily miracles of
+that divine goodness of which they are unable to pronounce the name. If
+there is a man on earth who ought to fall on both knees and shed burning
+tears of gratitude, it is the man who believes himself an atheist, and
+who has received from Providence so keen a taste for what is noble and
+pure, so strong an aversion for evil, that his sense of duty remains
+firm even when it has lost all its supports. But the exception does not
+make the rule; and that which is realized in the case of a few is not
+realized long, and for all. You know those crusts of snow which are
+formed over the _crevasses_ of our glaciers. These slight bridges are
+able to bear one person who remains suspended over the abyss, but let
+several attempt to pass together,--the frail support gives way, and the
+rash adventurers fall together into the gulf. Such is the destiny of
+those schools of philosophy in which the notion of God disappears, and
+of those civilizations in which the sense of God is extinguished; they
+fall into dark regions where the light of goodness shines no longer.
+
+After the mind and conscience, it remains for us to speak of the heart.
+Man, an intelligent and free being, has in his reason an instrument of
+knowledge, and in his conscience a rule for his will. But man is not
+sufficient for himself, and cannot live upon his own resources. If you
+inquire what the word heart expresses, in its most general acceptation,
+you will find that it always expresses a tendency of the soul to look,
+out of itself, in things or persons, for the support and nourishment of
+its individual life. Does the question concern the relations of man with
+his fellows? The heart is the organ of communication of one soul with
+another, for receiving, or for giving, or for giving and receiving at
+the same time, in the enjoyment of the blessing of a mutual affection.
+The heart is in each of us what those marks are upon the scattered
+stones of a building in course of construction which indicate that they
+are to be united one to another. The philosopher suffices for himself,
+the stoics used to say; the heart is the negation of this haughty maxim.
+From the heart proceeds love, that son of abundance and of poverty, to
+speak with Plato, that needy one ever on the search for his lost
+heritage. Love has wings, said again the wisdom of the Greeks, wings
+which essay to carry him ever higher. Let us extricate the thought which
+is involved in these graceful figures: Our desires have no limits, and
+indefinite desires can be satisfied only by meeting with an infinite
+Being who can be an inexhaustible source of happiness, an eternal object
+of love. "Our heart is made for love," said Saint Augustine, the great
+Christian disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds
+repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not
+always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness,
+a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand
+instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due
+object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its
+indefinite aspirations attach themselves to objects which cannot satisfy
+them, and thence arise stupendous aberrations. With some, it is the
+pursuit of sensual gratifications; they rush with a kind of fury into
+the passions of their lower nature. With others it is the ardent pursuit
+of riches, power, fame,--feelings which are always crying more: More!
+and never: Enough. And the after-taste from the fruitless search after
+happiness in the paths of ambition and vanity is not less bitter perhaps
+than the after-taste from sensual enjoyments. Listen to the confession
+of a man whose works, full as they are of beauties, are disfigured by so
+many impure allusions, that the author appears to have indulged, more
+than most others, in the giddy follies and culpable pleasures of life:
+
+
+     If, tired of mocking dreams, my restless heart
+       Returns to take its fill of waking joy,
+     Full soon I loathe the pleasures which impart
+       No true delight, but kill me, while they cloy.[25]
+
+
+Here are the accents of a true confession. These are moreover truths of
+daily experience. I have seen--and which of you could not render similar
+testimony?--I have seen the sick man, deprived of all the ordinary
+avocations and amusements of life, and with pain for his constant
+companion, I have seen him find joy in the thought of his God, and
+feeding, without satiety, on this bread of contentment. I have seen the
+face of the blind lighted up by a living faith, and radiant with a light
+of peace, for him sweeter and brighter than the rays of the sun. But
+where God is wanting, and all connection is broken with the source of
+joy, there you shall see the richest of the rich, the most prosperous
+among the ambitious, the man of fame whose renown is most widely
+extended,--you shall see these men carrying the heavy burden of
+discontent. Their brow, unillumined by the celestial ray, is furrowed by
+the lines of sadness. If you meet them in a moment of candor, these
+rich, ambitious, and famous men will tell you with a sigh: "All this
+does not satisfy; we are but pursuing chimeras." Still they continue to
+run after these chimeras. They cry Vanity! Vanity! and they do not cease
+to pursue vanity. They flee from themselves: if they retired within
+themselves, they would find there ennui, inexorable ennui, which is but
+the sense of that place which God should fill left void in the depth of
+the soul. For the deceived heart, life becomes a bitter comedy. Those
+who do not succeed in blinding themselves by the dust of thoughtless
+folly, end oftentimes by wrapping themselves in disdain as with a cloak;
+they seek a sad and solitary satisfaction in the greatness of their
+contempt for life. But neither does this satisfy: disdain is not a
+beverage, and contempt is not food.
+
+Such are the destinies of the heart, to which God is wanting. But I
+hope, Gentlemen, that you have here some remonstrances to offer. I have
+just spoken of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I have
+made no allusion to those affections in which the heart manifests its
+highest qualities. Shall we forget the joys of pure love? the domestic
+hearth? friendship? country? Do not fear that, having given myself up
+to a fit of misanthropy, I am come hither to blaspheme the true
+happinesses of life. But do the affections of earth offer us sufficient
+guarantees? We have need of the infinite to answer to the immensity of
+our desires; in the presence of those we love, have we no need of the
+Eternal that we may lean our hearts on Him? Will not all human love
+become a source of torment, if we have no faith in the love of Him who
+will stamp holy affections with the seal of His own eternity?
+
+A single question will suffice to enlighten us on this head. Do you know
+the feeling of anxiety? We all know it, though in different degrees.
+Epidemical disease may appear. The cholera has started on its course; it
+has left the interior of Asia, and is approaching. The report is current
+that neighboring cities have begun to feel its ravages. Those we
+love--in a month, in a week, where will they be? War is declared. We
+hear of preparations for death; the sovereigns of Europe apply
+themselves to calculations which seem to portend torrents of blood. If
+war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have to take up arms,
+that daughter who will one day perhaps find herself at the mercy of an
+unbridled soldiery----. But let us not look for examples so far away.
+Have you no dear one in a distant land of whom you are expecting
+tidings? And those who are near you! To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps,
+while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is discovering its first
+symptoms----. Have you received the hard lessons of death? If you see
+children playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it happen to
+none of you to think of another child, once the joy of your fireside,
+now lying beneath the sod? Does it never happen to you, by a sinister
+presentiment, to see features you love to gaze on convulsed with agony
+or pale in death? And yet you must either see the death of your beloved
+ones, or they must lay you in the earth; for every life ends with the
+tomb, and we do but walk over graves. When the soul has been thus
+wounded by anxiety, for this poisoned wound there is one remedy, but
+only one: "God reigns!" Nothing happens without the permission of His
+goodness. And of all those who are dear to us, we can say: "Father, to
+Thy hands I commit them." If we are without this trust, we shall only
+escape torment by levity. Without God our mind is sick; our conscience
+and our heart are sick also, and in a way more grievous still.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[19] _Meditation troisieme_, at the end.
+
+[20] Gen. xxviii. 16.
+
+[21] _Demontrer_.
+
+[22] "_On le montre_."
+
+[23] "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.... Let us hear the conclusion
+of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is
+the whole duty of man." (Eccles. i. and xii.)
+
+[24] Apology.
+
+[25]
+
+     Si mon coeur, fatigue du reve qui l'obsede,
+     A la realite revient pour s'assouvir,
+     Au fond des vains plaisirs que j'appelle a mon aide,
+     Je trouve un tel degout que je me sens mourir.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+_SOCIETY._
+
+
+We have just studied what life without God would be for the individual.
+Let us now direct our attention to those collections of human beings
+which form societies. We shall not speak here of the relations of civil
+with ecclesiastical authorities,--a complex question, the solution of
+which must vary with times, places, and circumstances. Let us only
+remark that the distinction between the temporal and spiritual order of
+things is one of the foundations of modern civilization. This
+distinction is based upon those great words which, eighteen hundred
+years ago, separated the domain of God from the domain of Caesar.
+Religion considered as a function of civil life; dogma supported by the
+word of a monarch or the vote of a body politic; the formula of that
+dogma imposed forcibly by a government on the lips of the
+governed--these are _debris_ of paganism which have been struggling for
+centuries against the restraints of Christian thought.[26] The
+religious convictions of individuals do not belong to the State;
+religious sentiments are not amenable to human tribunals; and it would
+be hard to say whether it is the spiritual or the temporal order of
+things which suffers most from the confusion of these distinct domains.
+Religion should have its own proper life, and its special
+representatives; civil life ought to be set free from all tyranny
+exercised in the name of dogma; but religion is not the less on that
+account, by the influence which it exerts over the consciences of men,
+the necessary bond and strength of human society.
+
+"You would sooner build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "than cause a
+State to subsist without religion." Some have contested in modern times
+this opinion of ancient wisdom. The philosophy of the last century, as
+we have said already, wished to separate duty from the idea of God. It
+pretended to give as the only foundation for society a civil morality,
+the rules and sanction of which were to be found upon earth. The men of
+blood who for a short time governed France, gave once as the order of
+the day--_Terror and all the virtues_: this was a terrible application
+of this theory. Virtue rested on a decree of political power, and, for
+want of the judgment of God, the guillotine was the sanction of its
+precepts. Healthier views begin now to prevail in the schools of
+philosophy. One of the members of the _Institut de France_, M. Franck,
+has lately published a volume on the history of ancient
+civilization,[27] with the express intention of showing that the
+conception which a people has of God is the true root of its social
+organization. According to the worth of the religious idea is that of
+the civil constitution. Before M. Franck, twenty years ago, a man of the
+very highest distinction as a public lecturer, indicated this movement
+of modern thought. M. Edgard Quinet, in his Lyons course, taught that
+the religious idea is the very substance of civilization, and the
+generating principle of political constitutions. He announced "a history
+of civilization by the monuments of human thought," and added: "Religion
+above all is the pillar of fire which goes before the nations in their
+march across the ages; it shall serve us as a guide."[28] Benjamin
+Constant exhibits in the variation of his opinions the transition from
+the stand-point of the last century to that of the present. He had at
+first conceived of his work upon religion as a monument raised to
+atheism, he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the condition
+necessary to the existence of civilized societies.[29] Here is a real
+progress; and this progress brings us back to the thought above quoted
+from Plutarch. In fact, take away the idea of God, and the first
+consequence will be that you will sacrifice all the conquests of modern
+civilization; the next, that you will soon have rendered impossible the
+existence of any society whatever. I am going to ask your close
+attention to these two points successively.
+
+History does not offer to our view an uninterrupted progress, as certain
+optimists suppose; still less does it present the spectacle of an
+ever-increasing deterioration, as misanthropes affirm; and lastly, it is
+not true, as we hear it said sometimes, that all epochs are alike, as
+good one as another. There are times better than those which follow
+them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them.
+Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings and
+retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created
+liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is
+clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while
+man is in restless agitation, God is leading him on. The conquests of
+modern civilization are great and sacred realities. What are these
+conquests? Let us not stay at the surface of things, but go to the
+foundation. Societies fallen into a condition of barbarism have for
+their motto the famous saying of a Gallic chief: Woe to the vanquished!
+In institutions, as in manners, the triumph of force characterizes
+barbarous times. The right of the strongest is the twofold negation of
+justice and of love; and what characterizes civilization, issuing from
+the barbarous condition, the fragments of which it so long trails after
+it, is the establishment of that justice which founds States, and, upon
+the basis of justice, the development of the benevolence which renders
+communities happy. These are the two essential conditions of social
+progress. These conditions are necessary even to the progress of
+industry and of material welfare.
+
+Modern civilization,--that, namely, which we so designate, while we
+relegate, so to speak, into the past the contemporaneous societies of
+the vast East,--modern civilization possesses a power unknown to
+antiquity. Justice has a foundation in the conscience, benevolence has
+natural roots in the heart; but a moment has been when justice and love
+appeared in the world with new brightness, like rays disengaged from
+clouds. Modern civilization was then deposited on the earth in a
+powerful germ, of which nothing was any more to arrest the growth. That
+moment was when the idea of God appeared in its fulness: modern
+civilization was born of the Gospel. The knowledge of God strengthens
+justice, and the thought of the common Father develops benevolence.
+These theses are well known; let us confine ourselves to a few rapid
+illustrations.
+
+There exists an institution in which has been embodied the negation of
+social justice--Slavery. Slavery is at length disappearing before our
+eyes from the bosom of Christendom; and its final retreat is doing honor
+to Russia, and bathing America in blood. This is perhaps the greatest of
+the events which the annals of history will inscribe on the page of the
+nineteenth century. Now slavery was, in the past, an almost universal
+institution. The finest intellects of Greece devoted a portion of their
+labors to its justification. Rome, at the most brilliant period of its
+civilization, caused slaves to kill one another, in savage spectacles
+intended to delight the populace, or during sumptuous banquets for the
+amusement of wealthy debauchees![30] How has slavery disappeared little
+by little! How has man been rediscovered beneath that living _thing_ of
+which was made, one while an instrument of labor, and another while the
+sport of execrable passions? Inquire into this history. You will find
+the reason and the heart making their protests heard in antiquity, but
+without becoming efficacious. One day all is changed, and the
+foundations of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable epoch you will
+meet with a written document, the first in which is shown in its germ
+the great social fact which was about to have birth. It is not an
+emperor's decree, it is not the vote of a body politic, it is a letter a
+few lines long written by a prisoner to one of his friends. The
+substance of this letter was: "I send thee back thy slave; but in the
+name of God I beg of thee to receive him as thy brother; think of the
+common Master who is in heaven." This letter was addressed--"To
+Philemon;" the name of the writer was Paul. It is the first charter of
+slave emancipation. Ponder this fact, Gentlemen: contemplate the ancient
+institution of slavery shaken to its foundations, without being the
+object of any direct attack, by the breath of a new spirit. You will
+then understand how historians can tell us that the relations of states,
+belligerent rights, civil laws, political institutions, all these things
+of which the Gospel has never spoken, have been, and are being still,
+every day transformed by the slow action of the Gospel. God has
+appeared; justice is marching in His train.
+
+Justice is the foundation of society; but without the spirit of love,
+justice remains crippled, and never reaches its perfection. Justice
+maintains the rights of each; love seeks to realize the communication of
+advantages among all. Justice overthrows the artificial barriers raised
+between men by force and guile; love softens natural inequalities and
+causes them to turn to the general good. Need I tell you that the
+knowledge of God is a light of which the brightest ray is love to men?
+Benevolence, that feeling natural to our hearts, is strengthened,
+extended, transfigured, by becoming charity;--charity, that union of
+the soul with the Heavenly Father, which descends again to earth in
+loving communion between all His children. The soul separated from God
+may be conscious of strong affections: but study well the character of a
+virtue which is nourished from purely human sources; you will see that
+it may for the most part be expressed in these terms--"To love one's
+friends heartily, and to hate one's enemies with a generous hatred; to
+esteem the honest and to despise the vicious." But that virtue which
+loves the vicious while it hates the vice, that virtue which will avenge
+itself only by overcoming evil with good, that virtue which, while it
+draws closer the bonds of private affections, makes a friend of every
+man, that virtue which we call divine, by a natural impulse of our
+heart--what is the source from which it flows? The following fact will
+sufficiently answer the question. On the facade of one the hospitals of
+the Christian world, are read these Latin words, the brief energy of
+which our language cannot render: _Deo in pauperibus_, "This edifice is
+consecrated to God in the person of the poor." Here is the secret of
+charity: it discerns the Divine image deposited in every human soul.
+But do not mistake here: we cannot love, with a love natural and direct,
+the rags of squalid poverty, the brands of vice, the languors and sores
+of sickness; but let God manifest Himself, and our eyes are opened. The
+beauty of souls breaks forth to our view beneath the wasting of the
+haggard frame, and from under the filth of vice. We love those immortal
+creatures fallen and degraded; a sacred desire possesses us to restore
+them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of
+rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of
+the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the
+noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is
+the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who
+desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that
+love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the
+hospital, which have at times thrown Christians into extravagances which
+our age has no reason to dread. God in the poor man, God in the sick
+man, God in the vicious man and the criminal; this, I repeat, is the
+grand secret of charity. Charity passes from the heart of men and from
+individual practice into social customs and institutions. Charity it is
+which, by degrees, takes from law its needless rigors, and from justice
+its useless tortures; which substitutes the prison in which it is sought
+to reform the guilty for the galley, which completes the corruption of
+the criminal; it is charity that opens public asylums for all forms of
+suffering; and that will realize, up to the limits of what is possible,
+all the hopes of philanthropy. If God ceases to be present to the mind
+and conscience of men, justice and love lose their power. Without the
+powerful action of justice and of love, society would descend again, by
+the ways of corruption, towards the struggles of barbarism. Observe,
+study well, all that is going on around us. Does our civilization appear
+to you sufficiently solid to give you the idea that it can henceforth
+dispense with the foundations on which it has reposed hitherto?
+
+The sentiments of justice and of benevolence which form the double basis
+of the progress of society, suppose a more general sentiment which is
+their common support--the sentiment of humanity. The idea that man has a
+value in himself, that he is, in virtue of his quality as man,
+independently of the places which he inhabits and of the position which
+he occupies in the world, an object of justice and of love;--this idea
+includes in itself all the moral part of civilization. Social progress
+is only the recognition, ever more and more explicit, of the value of
+one soul, of the rights of one conscience. Now, the idea of humanity has
+the closest possible connection with the knowledge of God, considered as
+the Father of the human race. Ancient wisdom, superior to the worship of
+idols, had gained a glimpse of the fact that the philosopher is a
+citizen of the universe; and that famous line of Terence: "I am a man,
+and I reckon nothing human foreign to me," excited, it is said, the
+applause of the Roman spectators. But these were mere gleams,
+extinguished soon by the general current of thought. It was the pale
+dawn of the idea of humanity. Whence came the day?
+
+I will limit the question by defining it. The idea of humanity is the
+idea of the worth and consequently of the rights of each individual man.
+It is the idea of liberty; not of liberty interpreted by passion and
+selfishness as the inauguration of the license which violates right, but
+of liberty interpreted by reason and conscience as the limit which the
+action of each man encounters in the right of his neighbor. We are not
+speaking here of the equality of political rights, which is not always
+a guarantee of veritable liberty. We are speaking of a social condition
+such that man, in the exercise of his faculties, in the manifestation of
+his thoughts, in his efforts for the causes which he loves, so long as
+he does not violate the rights of others, does not meet with an
+arbitrary power to arrest him. Still farther to limit our subject, we
+shall speak of the most important manifestation of that liberty--liberty
+of conscience, of which religious liberty is the most ordinary and most
+complete manifestation. This is only one of the points of the subject,
+but it is a point which in reality supposes and includes all the rest.
+This liberty--whence does it come?
+
+It does not come from paganism. Paganism, with its national religions,
+could only produce fanaticism or doubt. Each people having its own
+particular religion, to exterminate the foreigner was to serve the cause
+of the gods of the country. A war-cry descended from the Olympus of each
+several nation--that Olympus which the gods quitted, in case of need, to
+take part in the quarrels of men. Did reason perceive the nothingness of
+these national divinities? Then scepticism appeared. The idea of the
+supreme God being unsettled with all, and wholly obscured for the
+crowd, when men ceased to believe in the gods of the nation, they lost
+all belief whatsoever. For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at the
+decline of the ancient world. Those pantheons in which all religions
+were received, welcomed, protected, are the ever-memorable temples of
+scepticism. Now you know what voice made itself heard, when the ancient
+civilization was enfeebled by the spirit of doubt: "Henceforth there is
+neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free. Ye are all brethren, and for
+all there is one God, and one truth:" here behold the root of scepticism
+severed. And the same voice added: "This only God is the lawful Owner of
+His creatures; and when you presume to do violence to the consciences
+which belong to Him, you know not by what spirit you are animated:" here
+behold the fountain of fanaticism dried up. God is acknowledged; He is
+the Master of souls: faith founds liberty.
+
+The Witness to universal truth appears before Rome as represented by a
+deputy of Caesar. He is a fanatic, says the Roman; then he goes his way,
+and leaves Him to be put to death. But ere long, a dull hoarse murmur of
+the nations, extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty
+empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and is speaking
+to the general conscience. Then Rome starts from her sleep; Rome; the
+politic tolerant Rome, sheds rivers of blood. Her tolerance allowed men
+to believe everything, but on condition that they believed seriously in
+nothing. Rome was directed by the sure instinct of despotism. She did
+not fear the gods of the Pantheon, because she could always place above
+them the statue of the Emperor: whereas what was now in question was,
+while leaving to Caesar the things which were Caesar's, to place a
+Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legislation above the
+legislation of the empire. Therefore the Roman city determined to give a
+death-blow to Christianity,--to the idea of universal truth, because if
+that idea gained entrance into the understanding, the cause of the
+liberty of souls was gained. So it was that indifference became
+ferocious, and that doubt led back to fanaticism.
+
+I have told you whence liberty does not come; but whence comes it?
+Whence comes liberty? Ask any scholar of the Lyceums of France; he will
+answer you, without hesitation: Liberty comes from the French
+revolution!--No doubt, whispers an older comrade in his ear; but do not
+forget the philosophy of the eighteenth century which developed the
+principles which the revolution put in practice.--That is all very well,
+a Protestant will say; but let us consider the grand fact of the
+Reformation: it is from the sixteenth century that liberty has its
+date.--Well and good, adds an historian; but do you not know that the
+Germans were they who poured a generous and free blood into the
+impoverished blood of the men who had been fashioned by the slavery of
+the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed
+to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic
+causes. But this I venture to affirm,--that if any one thinks to fix
+definitely the hour when liberty was born in history, he is mistaken:
+for it has no other date than that of the human conscience, and I will
+say with M. Lamartine:
+
+
+     Give me the freedom which that hour had birth,
+     With the free soul, when first in conscious worth
+     The just man braved the stronger![31]
+
+
+Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his fellow men to acts
+which wounded his conscience, a man, relying upon God, felt himself
+stronger than the world. That Socrates had not studied, I fancy, in the
+school of the Encyclopedists, and was no German either, that I know of,
+who said to the judges of Athens, with death in prospect: "It is better
+to obey God than men." And when those words were repeated by the
+Apostles of the universal truth, the death of Socrates, that noble death
+which has justly gained for him the admiration of the universe, was
+reproduced in thousands and thousands of instances. Children, women,
+young girls, old men, perished in tortures to attest the rights of
+conscience; and the blood of martyrs, that seed of Christians, as a
+father of the Church called it,[32] was not less a seed of liberty.
+Liberty was not born in history; but if you wish to fix a date to its
+grandest outburst, you have it here; there is no other which can be
+compared with it.
+
+Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying so, that I am
+maintaining a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of
+conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church
+has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood
+rendered visible by the funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing,
+Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three
+remarks which I commend to your attention.
+
+It must not be forgotten that the Gospel first obtained extensive
+success when Roman society was in the lowest state of corruption, and
+that its representatives were but too much affected by the evils which
+it was their mission to combat.
+
+It must not be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians
+who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured
+over the new leaven a coarse paste hard to penetrate.
+
+It must not be forgotten, lastly, that if a cause might legitimately be
+condemned for the faults of its defenders, there are none, no, not a
+single one, which could remain erect before the tribunal which so should
+give judgment. Every cause in this world is more or less compromised by
+its representatives; but there are bad principles, which produce evil by
+their own development, and there are good principles which man abuses,
+but which by their very nature always end by raising a protest against
+the abuse. It is in the light of this indisputable truth that we are
+about to enter upon a discussion of which you will appreciate the full
+importance.
+
+Sceptical writers affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening
+of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they
+recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of
+promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which
+would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in
+the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall have peace.
+Prisons have been built and the stake has been set up in the name of
+God: let us get rid of God, and we shall have toleration. Observe well
+the bearing of this mode of argument. Let us get rid of fire, and we
+shall have no more conflagrations; let us get rid of water, and no more
+people will be drowned. No doubt,--but humanity will perish of drought
+and of cold.
+
+Let us examine this subject seriously: it is well worth our while. If
+toleration proceeds from the enfeebling of religious belief, we ought
+among various nations to meet with toleration in an inverse proportion
+to the degree of their faith. This is a question then of history. Let us
+study facts. Recollecting first of all that ancient Rome did not draw
+forth a germ of liberty from its scepticism, let us throw a glance over
+existing communities.
+
+Sweden is far behind England in regard to liberty of conscience. Is it
+that religious convictions are weaker in England than in Sweden? Has the
+religious liberty which Great Britain practises sprung from
+indifference? Is it not rather that that land produces an energetic
+race, and that it has been so often drenched with the blood of the
+followers of different forms of worship, that that blood cried at length
+to heaven, and that the conscience of the people heard it? There is more
+religious liberty in France than in Spain. Is it the case that the true
+cause of the intolerance of the Spanish people is a more lively and more
+general faith than that of the French? That is not so certain.
+
+Switzerland is one of the countries in which is enjoyed the greatest
+liberty of opinion. Is Switzerland a land of indifference? Was not the
+comparative firmness of its citizens' convictions remarked during the
+conflicts of the last century? Do not the United States bear in large
+characters upon their banner this inscription: LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE?
+America is not distinguished as a country without religion; on the
+contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the
+multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects. Was it a
+sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect
+religious convictions? Assuredly not! William Penn was shut up in the
+Tower of London for the crime of free thought. Set free from prison, he
+crossed the ocean. While intolerance was reigning still on both shores
+of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all
+proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful. In vain I pass from
+old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that
+liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity
+of nations. I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most
+liberty where there is most real faith.
+
+Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the
+condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers
+causes. Let us simplify the question. Is it not, it will be said, the
+literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and
+founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my
+supposed questioner to go on. If he is a Frenchman, he will name
+Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics.
+They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact,
+and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of
+noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that
+every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of
+which it is deprived. But it is one thing to claim for one's-self a
+liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is
+another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all. There was, as I
+am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which
+led Voltaire to consecrate to noble causes a pen so often sold to evil.
+Still it is impossible not to suspect that if that apostle of toleration
+had had a principality under his own sway, the fact of thinking
+differently from the master would very soon have figured among the
+number of delinquencies.
+
+The patriarch of Ferney wrote in favor of toleration; some friends of
+religious indifference have pleaded the cause of liberty of conscience:
+the fact is certain. But other writers, animated by a living faith, have
+also demanded liberty for all: the fact is not less certain. Some years
+ago, at nearly the same epoch, the Pere Lacordaire and our own
+Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the
+attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of
+his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the
+vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays
+not God."[33] Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on
+the borders of our lake, have gained entrance far and near into many
+hearts. I should like to take such and such a Parisian journalist, bring
+him into our midst, and get him to acquaint himself thoroughly with the
+results of our experience; I should like to conduct him to the cemetery
+of Clarens, place him by the tomb of Vinet, and tell him what that man
+was.--If, as he returned to his home, my journalist did not leave behind
+him at the French frontier, as contraband merchandise, all that he would
+have seen and learnt in our country, he would perhaps understand that
+the surest road by which to arrive at respect for the consciences of
+others is not indifference, but firmness of faith, in humility of heart,
+and largeness of thought. All the writers who have devoted their pen to
+the defence of the rights of the human soul have not therefore been
+sceptics. Without continuing this discussion of proper names, let us
+settle what is here the true place of writers. Before there are men who
+demand liberty and digest the theory of it, there must be other men who
+take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated
+with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the
+sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the
+martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary
+writer, "is free men, rather than liberators of humanity."[34]
+
+In fact, liberty comes to us above all from those who have suffered for
+it. Its living springs are in the spirit of faith, and not, as they
+teach us, in the spirit of indifference. It is easy to understand, that
+where no one believes, the liberty to believe would not be claimed by
+any one.
+
+Let us now endeavor to penetrate below facts, in order to bring back the
+discussion to sure principles. Let us ask what, in regard to liberty of
+conscience, are the natural consequences of faith, and the natural
+consequences of scepticism.
+
+Faith does appear, at first sight, a source of intolerance. The man who
+believes, reckons himself in possession of the right in regard to truth,
+and to God; he has nothing to respect in error. Thus it is that belief
+naturally engenders persecution. This reasoning is specious, all the
+more as it is supported by numerous and terrible examples; but let us
+look at things more closely. Place yourselves face to face with any one
+of your convictions, no matter which; I hope there is no one of you so
+unfortunate as not to have any. Suppose that it were desired to impose
+upon you by force even the conviction which you have. Suppose that an
+officer of police came to say to you, pronouncing at the same time the
+words which best expressed your own thoughts: "you are commanded so to
+believe." What would happen? If you had never had a doubt of your faith,
+you would be tempted to doubt it, the moment any human power presumed to
+impose it upon you. The feeling of oppression would produce in your
+conscience a strong inclination to revolt. Let us analyze this feeling.
+You feel that it is words, not convictions, which are imposed by force;
+you feel that declarations extorted by fear from lying lips are an
+outrage to truth. You feel, in a word, that your belief is the right of
+God over you, and not the right of your neighbor. Men respect God's
+right over the souls of their fellow-men, in proportion as they are
+intelligent in their own faith. The fanaticism which would impose words
+by force is not an ardent but a blind faith. In order to bring it back
+into the paths of liberty, it is enough to restore to it its sight.
+
+The establishment of the Christian religion furnishes a great example in
+support of our thesis. The Christians, when persecuted by the empire,
+had never allowed themselves to reply to the violence of power by the
+violence of rebellion. There came, however, and soon enough, a time when
+they were sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, and had withal the
+consciousness of their strength; but they had no will to conquer the
+world, except by the arms of martyrdom, and heroism, and obedience. This
+was not the case during a few years only, it is the history of three
+centuries, an ever-memorable page of human annals, in which all ages
+will be able to learn what are the true weapons of truth. Christendom,
+too often forgetful of its origin, has in later times allowed the fury
+of persecution to cloak itself under a pretended regard for sacred
+interests; but the remedy has proceeded from the very evil. The
+Christian conscience has protested, in the name of the Gospel, against
+the crimes of which the Gospel was the pretext, and the passions of men
+the cause. "We must bewail the misery and error of our time," already
+St. Hilary was exclaiming, in the fourth century. "Men are thinking that
+God has need of the protection of men.... The Church is uttering threats
+of banishment and imprisonment, and desiring to compel belief by
+force,--the Church, which itself acquired strength in exile and in
+prisons!"
+
+True faith, then, possesses a principle by which it protests against
+abuses which it is sought to cloak under its name, and this protest
+comes at last to make itself heard. Faith suppressed, the passions will
+remain, for in order to be a saint, it is not enough to be a sceptic.
+The passions will look for other pretexts. Will not the spirit of doubt
+offer them such pretexts?
+
+It seems at first sight that doubt must promote toleration, since it
+does not allow any importance to be attached to opinions. This is a
+specious conclusion, similar to that which placed in belief the source
+of intolerant passions. Let us once more reflect a little. The first
+effect of doubt is certainly to dispose the mind to leave a free course
+to all opinions; but disdain is not the way to respect, and only respect
+can give solid bases to the spirit of liberty. Believers are in the eyes
+of the sceptic weak-minded persons, whom he treats at first with a
+gentle and patronizing compassion. But these weak minds grow obstinate;
+the sceptic perceives that they do not bend before his superiority, and
+dare perhaps to consider themselves as his equals. Then irritation
+arises, and, beneath the velvet paw, one feels the piercing of the claw.
+The sceptic has in fact a dogma; he has but one, but one he has after
+all--the negation of truth. The faith of others is a protest against
+that single dogma on which he has concentrated all the powers of his
+conviction. He is passionately in earnest for this negation; he feels
+himself the representative of an idea, of which he must secure the
+triumph. Now come such surmisings as these: "Here are men who think
+themselves the depositaries of truth! These pretended believers--may
+they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power;
+let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a
+cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an innocent weakness, takes
+then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the
+temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to
+get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the
+conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we
+should have in the State! If we proclaimed the true modern dogma,
+namely, that there is no dogma; if silencing, in short, fanatics who are
+behind their age, we decreed that every belief is a crime and every
+manifestation of faith a revolt, what quiet in society!" The incline is
+slippery, and what shall hold back the sceptic who is descending it?
+
+Faith carries with it the remedy for fanaticism, but where shall be
+found the remedy for the fanaticism of doubt? In the claims of God? God
+is but a word, or a worthless hypothesis. In respect for the convictions
+of others? All conviction is but weakness and folly. All this, be well
+assured, gives much matter for reflection. When I hear some men who call
+themselves liberal, tracing the ideal of the society which they desire,
+the bare imagination of their triumph frightens me, for I can understand
+that that society would enjoy the liberty of the Roman empire, and the
+toleration of the Caesars.
+
+Such are the consequences of scepticism for the leaders of a people.
+What will those consequences be for the people themselves? The spirit of
+indifference paralyzes the sources of generous sentiments, and ends in
+the same results as the spirit of cowardice. And do you not know the
+part which cowardice has played in history? If I may venture to call up
+here the most mournful recollections of modern times, do you not know
+that during the Reign of Terror, two or three hundred scoundrels
+instituted public massacres in the Capital of France, in the midst of a
+population shuddering with fright, but who let things go? Now the
+characteristic of indifference is the letting things go. If fanaticism
+has something to do with persecution, indifference has a great deal to
+do with it. The crimes which minds paralyzed by doubt allow to be
+perpetrated have besides a sadder character than those which are
+perpetrated by passions, which, wild and erring though they be, have a
+certain nobleness in their origin. If I must be bound to the stake, I
+had rather burn with the blind assent of a fanatical crowd, than in the
+presence of an indifferent populace who came to look on. For just as
+sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they find all spectacles
+equally instructive and curious.[35]
+
+I have felt it necessary to insist on these considerations. Direct
+attacks upon religious truth are perhaps less dangerous than the efforts
+by which modern infidelity endeavors to estrange us from God, by
+persuading us that doubt is the guarantee of liberty, and that belief
+rivets the chains of bondage. Many consciences are disturbed by these
+affirmations. It concerns us therefore to know that God is the great
+Liberator of souls, and that forgetfulness of God is the road to
+slavery. The faith which seeks to propagate itself by force inflicts
+upon itself the harshest of contradictions. The spirit of doubt, in
+order to become the spirit of violence, has only to transform itself
+according to the laws of its proper nature.
+
+And now to sum up. One of the noblest spectacles that earth can show,
+is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which
+each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his
+brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable
+asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by
+sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses
+itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt every firm and noble
+conviction!
+
+To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up its source the stream of the
+veritable progress of modern society; it is to attack the foundations of
+liberty, justice, and love. The material conquests of civilization would
+serve thenceforward only to hasten the decomposition of the social body.
+The pure idea of God is the true cause of the great progress of the
+modern era; religion, in its generality, is, as Plutarch has told us,
+the necessary condition to the very existence of society. This is what
+remains for us to prove.
+
+"How sacred is the society of citizens," said Cicero, "when the immortal
+gods are interposed between them as judges and as witnesses."[36] Let us
+raise still higher this lofty thought, and say: "How sacred is human
+society, when, beneath the eye of the common Father, the inequalities of
+life are accepted with patience and softened by love; when the poor and
+the rich, as they meet together, remember that the Lord is the Maker of
+them both; when a hope of immortality alleviates present evils, and when
+the consciousness of a common dignity reduces to their true value the
+passing differences of life!" Take away from human society God as
+mediator, and the hopes founded in God as a source of consolation, and
+what would you have remaining? The struggle of the poor against the
+rich, the envy of the ignorant directed against the man who has
+knowledge, the dullard's low jealousy of superior intelligence, hatred
+of all superiority, and, by an almost inevitable reaction, the obstinate
+defence of all abuses,--in one word, war--war admitting neither of
+remedy nor truce. Such is the most apparent danger which now threatens
+society.
+
+When I consider these facts with attention, I am astonished every day
+that society subsists at all, that the burning lava of unruly passions
+does not oftener make large fissures in the social soil, and overflow in
+devastating torrents, bearing away at once palace and cottage, field and
+workshop. This standing danger is drawing anxious attention, and we
+hear the old adage repeated: "There must be a religion for the people."
+There are men who wish to give the people a religion which they
+themselves do not possess, acting like a man who, at once poor and
+ostentatious, should give alms with counterfeit money. And what result
+do they attain? We must have a religion for the people, say the
+politicians, that they may secure the ends they have in view, and
+conduct at their own pleasure the herds at their disposal. We must have
+a religion for the people, say the rich, in order to keep peaceably
+their property and their incomes. We must have a religion for the
+people, say the _savants_, in order to remain quiet in their studies, or
+in their academic chairs. What are they doing--these men without God,
+who wish to preserve a faith for the use of the people? These
+_savants_,--they say, and print it, that religion is an error necessary
+for the multitudes who are incapable of rising to philosophy. Where is
+it that they say it, and print it? Is it in drawing-rooms with closed
+doors? Is it within the walls of Universities, or in scientific
+publications which are out of the reach of the masses? No. They say it
+in political journals, in reviews read by all the world; they print it
+at full in books which are sold by thousands of copies. Their words are
+spreading like a deleterious miasma through all classes of society.
+Thoughtless men! (I am unwilling to suppose a cool calculation on their
+part of money or of fame which should oblige me to say--heartless men),
+thoughtless men! they do not see the inevitable consequences of their
+own proceeding. The people hear and understand. The intellectual
+barriers between the different classes of society are gradually becoming
+lower: this is one of the clearest of the ways of Providence in our
+time. Do you believe that the people will long consent to hear it said
+that they only live on errors, but that those errors are necessary for
+them? Do you not see that they are about to rise, and answer, in the
+sentiment of their own dignity, that they will no longer be deceived,
+and that they intend to deliver themselves also from superstition? Then,
+all restraining barriers removed, passions will have free course; and
+believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of
+study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of
+this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to
+destroy religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are
+Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but
+whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation
+of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia,
+in January, 1757, "will render an eternal service to the human race, by
+destroying that infamous superstition, I do not say amongst the rabble,
+which is not worthy to be enlightened, and to which all yokes are
+suitable, but amongst honest people." A religion was necessary for the
+people; but Voltaire and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the
+French marquises, and the ladies who received their homage, could do
+without it.
+
+Voltaire died before eating of the fruit of his works; and Alfred de
+Musset could only address to him his vengeful apostrophe at his tomb:
+
+
+     Sleep'st thou content, and does thy hideous smile
+     Still flit, Voltaire, above thy fleshless bones?[37]
+
+
+Voltaire was dead; but many of his friends and disciples were able to
+meditate, in the prisons of the Terror and as they mounted the steps of
+the scaffold, on the nature of the terrible game which they had
+played--and lost.
+
+So it fares with men of letters who have no God, but who would have a
+religion for the people. Other men there are who would have a religion
+for the people, being themselves the while without restraint, because
+they are without religious convictions. They abandon themselves to the
+ardent pursuit of riches, excitements, worldly pleasures. These are they
+who have made a fortune by disgraceful means, perhaps the public sale of
+their consciences, and who by their luxurious extravagance overwhelm the
+honest and economical working-man. These are the courtesans who parade
+in broad daylight the splendid rewards of their own infamy. Let not such
+deceive themselves! The people see these things; they form their
+judgment of them, and if they give way to the bad instincts which are in
+us all, where God is not in the heart to restrain them, to their hatred
+is added contempt. If they are forcibly kept back from realizing their
+cherished hopes, they adjourn them, but without renouncing them.
+
+Put away all belief in God, and you will see the action and reaction of
+human passions forming, as it were, a mass of opposite electricities,
+and preparing the thunder-peal and the furies of the tempest. Then
+appear those disorganized societies which are terrified at their own
+dissolution, until a strong man comes, and, taking advantage of this
+very terror, takes and chastises these societies, as one chastises an
+unruly child. It is a story at once old and new, because, in proportion
+as God withdraws from human society, in that same proportion the power
+of the sword replaces the empire of the conscience. There must be a
+religion for the people! Yes, Sirs, but for that people, wide as
+humanity, which includes us all.
+
+If the existence of God is denied, man falls into despair, and society
+into dissolution. What then is my inference? That atheism is false. Such
+a mode of arguing produces an outcry. "A matter of sentiment!" men
+exclaim. "You would build up a doctrine according to your own fancy! You
+do not discuss the question calmly, but appeal to interests and
+prejudices: you quit the domain of science, which takes cognizance only
+of facts and reasoning." Such expressions are common enough to make it
+worth while to study their value. Of course, science must not be an
+instrument of our caprice. We are bound to search for truth; and we are
+unfaithful to our obligations if we try to establish doctrines which
+serve our passions, or favor our interests, or flatter our tastes and
+our prejudices. But the conscience, the heart, the conditions of the
+existence of human society, are neither prejudices nor personal
+interests; they are eternal and living realities. We speak of the
+conscience, of the heart, of society, and they answer us: "We do not
+believe that there are true sciences in that domain; we only wish for
+facts." Occasionally we hear naturalists speak in this way. We only wish
+for facts! Then our thoughts, our feelings, our conscience are not
+facts! The man who will give the closest observation to the steps of a
+fly, or to a caterpillar's method of crawling, has not a moment's
+attention to give to the impulses of the heart, to the rules of duty, to
+the struggles of the will; and when addressed on the subject of these
+realities of the soul, the most certain of all realities, he will reply:
+"That is no business of mine, I want nothing but facts." Let us pass
+from this aberration, and listen for a moment to other objectors.
+
+We do not deny, it is often said, the reality of our feelings. Man
+desires happiness, and seeks it in religious belief; but this is an
+order of things which science cannot take account of. Science has only
+truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason.
+If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience,
+no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results.
+"There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning,
+than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may
+do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is
+certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it
+entails dangerous consequences."[38] So wrote the patriarch of modern
+sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; it is
+repeated to us, without end, in the columns of the leading journals of
+France, and in the pages of the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The adversaries
+of spiritual beliefs have changed their tactics. In the last century,
+they replied to minds alarmed for the consequences of their work: "Truth
+can never do harm."--"Truth can never do harm," retorted J.J. Rousseau:
+"I believe it as you do, and this it is that proves to me that your
+doctrines are not truth." The argument is conclusive. So the adversary
+has taken up another position; and he says at this day:--"Our doctrines
+do perhaps pain the heart, and wound the conscience, but this is no
+reason why they should be false: moral goodness, utility, happiness, are
+not signs by which we may know what is true."
+
+Philosophy, Gentlemen, has always assumed to be the universal
+explanation of things, and you will agree that it is on her part a
+humiliating avowal, that she is enclosed, namely, in a circle of pure
+reason, and leaves out of view, as being unable to give any account of
+them, the great realities which are called moral goodness and happiness.
+One might ask what are the bases of that science which disavows, without
+emotion, the most active powers of human nature. One might ask whether
+those who so speak, understand well the meaning of their own words; and
+inquire also what is the method which they employ, and the result at
+which they aim. One might ask whether these philosophers are not like
+astronomers who should say: "Here are our calculations. It matters
+nothing to us whether the stars in their observed course do or do not
+agree with them. Science is sovereign; it is amenable only to its own
+laws, and visible realities cannot be objections in the way of its
+calculations." Let us leave these preliminary remarks, and let us come
+to the core of the controversy.
+
+They set the reason on one side, the conscience and heart upon the
+other, as an anatomist separates the organic portions of a corpse, and
+they say: Truth belongs only to the reason; the conscience and the heart
+have no admission into science. Listen to the following express
+declaration of the weightiest, perhaps, of French contemporary
+philosophers: "The God of the pure reason is the only true God; the God
+of the imagination, the God of the feelings, the God of the conscience,
+are only idols!"[39] It is impossible to accept this arbitrary division
+of the divine attributes. There is but one and the same God, the
+Substance of truth, the inexhaustible Source of beauty, the supreme Law
+of the wills created to accomplish the designs of His mercy. The
+conscience, the heart, the reason rise equally towards Him, following
+the triple ray which descends from His eternity upon our transitory
+existence. We cannot therefore seriously admit that God of the pure
+reason, separated from the God of the conscience and of the heart. Still
+let us endeavor to make this concession, for argument's sake, to our
+philosopher. Let us suppose that the reason has a God to itself, a God
+for the metaphysicians who is not the God of the vulgar. Before we
+immolate upon His altar the conscience and the heart, it is worth our
+while to examine whether the statue of the God of the reason rests upon
+a solid pedestal. Here are the theses which are proposed to us: "It is
+impossible for our feelings to supply any light for science. Truth may
+be gloomy, and despair may gain its cause. Virtue may be wrong, and
+immorality may be the true. Reason alone judges of that which is." I
+answer: Human nature has always eagerly followed after happiness. Human
+nature has always acknowledged, even while violating it, a rule of duty.
+The heart is not an accident, the conscience is not a prejudice: they
+are, and by the same right as the reason, constituent elements of our
+spiritual existence. If there exist an irreconcilable antagonism between
+science and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and universal
+aspirations, is the victim of an illusion, if the conscience in its
+clearest admonitions is only a teacher of error, what is our position?
+In what I am now saying, Gentlemen, I am not appealing to your feelings;
+the business is to follow, with calm attention, a piece of exact
+reasoning. If the heart deceives us, if the voice of duty leads us
+astray, the disorder is at the very core of our being; our nature is ill
+constructed. If our nature is ill constructed, what warrants to us our
+reason? Nothing. What assures us that our axioms are good, and that our
+reasonings have any value? Nothing. The life of the soul cannot be
+arbitrarily cloven in twain; it must be held for good in all its
+constituent elements, or enveloped wholly and entirely in the shades of
+doubt. If the heart and conscience deceive us, then reason may lead us
+astray, and the very idea of truth disappears. God is the light of the
+spiritual world. We prove His existence by showing that without Him all
+returns to darkness. This demonstration is as good as another.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[26] Christian States have given the force of law to institutions, such,
+for instance, as monogamy, which date their origin from the Gospel
+records. Here we have the normal development of civilization: religious
+faith enlightens the general conscience, and reveals to it the true
+conditions of social progress. In this order of things, it is not a
+question of _beliefs_, but of _acts_ imposed in the name of the
+interests of society. The state may take account of the religious
+beliefs of its subjects, and enter into such relations as may seem to it
+convenient with the ecclesiastical authorities: this is the basis of the
+system of concordats, a system which has nothing in it contrary to first
+principles, so long as liberty is maintained. But the establishment of
+_national_ religions, decreed by the temporal power and varying in
+different states, manifestly supposes a foundation of scepticism. For
+the idea of truth, one and universal in itself, is substituted the idea
+of decisions obligatory for those only who are under the jurisdiction of
+a definite political body. If the State, without pretending to decree
+dogma, receives it from the hands of the Church, and imposes it upon its
+subjects, it seems at first that the temporal power has placed itself at
+the service of the Church, but that the idea of truth is preserved. But
+when the question is studied more closely, it is seen that this is not
+the case, and that the state usurps in fact, in this combination, the
+attributes of the spiritual power. In fact, before protecting _the true
+religion_, it is necessary to ascertain which it is; and in order to
+ascertain the true religion, the political power must constitute itself
+judge of religious truth. So we come back, by a _detour_, to the
+conception of national religions. The Emperor of Russia and the Emperor
+of Austria will inquire respectively which is the only true religion, to
+the exclusive maintenance of which they are to consecrate their temporal
+power. To the same question they will give two different replies; and
+each nation will have its own form of worship, just as each nation has
+its own ruler.
+
+[27] _Etudes orientales_, 1861.
+
+[28] _Unite morale des peuples modernes_,--a lecture delivered at Lyons,
+10 April, 1839. This lecture is inserted after the _Genie des Religions_
+in the complete works of the author.
+
+[29] Franck, _Philosophie du droit ecclesiastique_, pages 117 and 118.
+
+[30] Schmidt, _Essai historique sur la Societe civile dans le monde
+romain_. Bk. 1. ch. 3.
+
+[31]
+
+     La liberte que j'aime est nee avec notre ame
+     Le jour ou le plus juste a brave le plus fort.
+
+[32] Tertullian.
+
+[33] _Le Pere Lacordaire_, by the Comte de Montalembert, p. 25.
+
+[34] _De l'autre rive_, by Iscander (in Russian). Iscander is the
+pseudonyme of M. Herzen.
+
+[35] "The man of thought knows that the world only belongs to him as a
+subject of study, and, even if he could reform it, perhaps he would find
+it so curious as it is that he would not have the courage to do
+so."--Ernest Renan, preface to _Etudes d'histoire religieuse_, 1857. The
+author has manifested better sentiments in 1859, in the preface to his
+_Essais de morale et de critique._
+
+[36] _De Legibus_, ii. 7.
+
+[37]
+
+     Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire
+     Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os decharnes?
+
+[38] Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having access to
+the original, I re-translate the French translation.--TR.]
+
+[39] Vacherot, _La metaphysique et la science_. Preface, p. xxix.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+_THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM._
+
+(At Geneva, 24th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 18th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+The subject of the present Lecture will be--The revival of Atheism. And
+I do not employ the word 'atheism'--a term which has been so greatly
+abused--without mature reflection. When Socrates opposed the idea of the
+holy God to the impure idols of paganism; when he dethroned Jupiter and
+his train in order to celebrate "the supreme God, who made and who
+guides the world, who maintains the works of creation in the flower of
+youth, and in a vigor always new,"[40] they accused Socrates of being an
+atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence
+of God more certain than any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as
+an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to
+worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world,
+the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down
+to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of
+the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of
+persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In
+an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best
+efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God,
+because they would not have been understood had they attempted to
+say--"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing
+them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines,
+apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of
+history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where
+liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names,
+for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In
+affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites
+of fame, are shaking the foundations of all religion, one exposes no
+one to severities which have disappeared from our manners, one only
+exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But
+candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of
+thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and,
+while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.
+
+Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted
+that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny
+God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every
+soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a
+secret hope, or by a secret dread? This is true, as I think; but we are
+speaking here of doctrines and not of men. It is true again that the
+negation of the Creator allows of the existence, in certain
+philosophies, of generous ideas and elevated conceptions. Such men,
+while they put God out of existence, desire to keep the true, the
+beautiful, the good; they hope to preserve the rays, while they
+extinguish the luminous centre from which they proceed. Such systems
+always tend to produce the deadly fruits pointed out in my last lecture;
+but men devoted to the severe labors of the intellect often escape, by
+a noble inconsistency, the natural results of their theories. Therefore,
+in the inquiry on which we are about to enter, the term 'atheism'
+implies, with regard to persons, neither reproach nor contempt. It
+simply indicates a doctrine, the doctrine which denies God. This denial
+takes place in two ways: It is affirmed that nature, that is to say
+matter, force devoid of intelligence and of will, is the sole origin of
+things; or, the reality is acknowledged of those marks which raise mind
+above nature, but it is affirmed that humanity is the highest point of
+the universe, and that above it there is nothing. Such are the two forms
+of atheism.
+
+Perhaps you expect here the explanation of a doctrine which is often
+described as holding a sort of middle place between the negation and the
+affirmation of God, namely, pantheism. Pantheism, in the true sense of
+that word, is a system according to which God is all, and the universe
+nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek,
+Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime
+infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses
+in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is
+manifold and transitory a disdain which passes into negation. In the
+domain of experience, all is limited, temporary, imperfect; and reason
+seeks the perfect, the eternal, the infinite. The doctrine of creation
+alone explains how the universe subsists in presence of its first cause.
+In ignorance of this doctrine, some bold thinkers have cut the knot
+which they could not untie. They have declared that reason alone is
+right, and that experience is wrong: the world does not exist, it is but
+an illusion of the mind. Whence proceeds this illusion? If perfection
+alone exists, how comes that imperfect mind to exist which deceives
+itself in believing in the reality of the world? To this question the
+system has no answer. Such is true pantheism; but it is not to dangers
+so noble that most minds run the risk of succumbing. What is commonly
+understood by pantheism is the deification of the universe. The idea of
+God is not directly denied, but it undergoes a transformation which
+destroys it. God is no longer the eternal and Almighty Spirit, the
+Creator; but the unconscious principle, the substance of things, the
+whole. The universe alone exists; above it there is nothing; but the
+universe is infinite, eternal, divine. The higher wants of the reason,
+mingling with the data derived from experience, form an imposing and
+confused image, which, while it beguiles the imagination, perverts the
+understanding, deceives the heart, and places the conscience in peril.
+In a philosophical point of view, it is a contradiction of thought,
+which seeks the Infinite Being, and, being unable to discover Him, gives
+the character of infinity to realities bounded by experience. In a
+religious point of view, it is an aberration of the heart, which
+preserves the sentiment of adoration, but perverts it by dispersing it
+over the universe. "Pantheism," says M. Jules Simon, "is only the
+learned form of atheism; the universe deified is a universe without
+God."[41] From the moment that the reason endeavors to see distinctly,
+pantheism vanishes like a deceitful glare. Atheism disengages itself
+from the cloak which was concealing its true nature, and the mind
+remains in presence of nature only, or of humanity only. We will proceed
+to take a rapid glance at some few of the countries of Europe, in order
+to discover and point out in them the traces of this melancholy
+doctrine. Let us begin with France.
+
+In the year 1844, just twenty years ago, some French writers,
+representing the philosophy, in some measure official, of the time,
+united to publish a _Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques_. M.
+Franck, the director of this useful and laborious enterprise, said in
+the preface to the work: "Atheism has well nigh completely disappeared
+from philosophy; the progress of a sound psychology will render its
+return for ever impossible." In speaking thus, he expressed the thoughts
+and hopes of the school of which he remains one of the most estimable
+representatives. A generous impulse was animating a group of intelligent
+and learned young men. Their hope was to translate Christianity into a
+purely rational doctrine, to purify religious notions without destroying
+them, and, while endowing humanity with a vigorous scientific culture,
+to leave to it its lofty hopes. The object in view was to establish a
+philosophy founded upon a serious faith in God; and to this philosophy
+was promised the progressive and pacific conquest of the human race.[42]
+Twenty years have passed, and things bear quite another aspect. To
+language expressive of security have succeeded the accents of anxiety
+and words of alarm. The cause which was proclaimed victorious is
+defended at this day like a besieged city. You will remark
+however,--that I may not leave you beyond measure discouraged by the
+facts of which I have to tell you,--you will remark, I say, that it is
+the efforts attempted in the cause of good which have helped to set me
+on the track of evil; it has often been the defence which has fixed my
+attention upon the attack.
+
+The materialism of the last century seems to have maintained a strong
+hold upon one part of the Paris school of medicine. We do find in France
+a good many physicians who, like Boerhave, render homage to religion,
+and a good many physiologists who, like the great Haller, are ready to
+defend beliefs of the spiritual order;[43] but, among men specially
+devoted to the study of matter, many succumb to the temptation of
+refusing to recognize anything as real which does not come under the
+experience of the senses. This however is not one of the points which
+offer themselves most strikingly for our examination. The atheistic
+manifestations of the socialist schools have more novelty, and perhaps
+more importance.
+
+Man is naturally a social being. Good and evil have their primitive seat
+in the heart of individuals, but good and evil are transferred into
+institutions of which the influence is morally beneficial or pernicious.
+If socialism consists in recognizing the importance of social
+institutions, in cherishing ideas of progress and hopes of reform, I
+trust that we are all socialists. Do we desire progress by the ever
+wider diffusion of justice and love? From the moment that, across the
+conscience whereon divine rays are falling, we have descried the eternal
+centre of light, we understand that God is the most implacable enemy of
+abuses. How is it then that atheism sometimes manifests itself in
+attempts at social reform? We may explain it, without so much as
+pointing out the influence, but too real, of the faults committed by the
+representatives of religion. Faith is a principle of action; it is, as
+history testifies, the grand source of the progress of human society;
+but faith is also a principle of patience. The brow of every believer is
+more or less illumined by the rays of His peace who is patient because
+He is eternal. Eager to effect good to the utmost extent of his ability,
+he accomplishes his work with that calm activity to which are reserved
+durable victories. In the impossible (for if the word impossible is not
+French, it is human) the believer recognizes one of the manifestations
+of the supreme Will, and immortal hope enables him to support the evils
+which he does not succeed in destroying. But this is not enough for
+impatient reformers. Ignorant of the profound sources of evil, they
+think that institutions can do everything, and that a change of laws
+would suffice to reform men's hearts; they believe that the organization
+of society alone hinders the realization of good and of happiness. The
+resignation of believers appears to them a stupid lethargy, and in their
+patient expectation of a judgment to come they see only an obstacle to
+the immediate triumph of justice on the earth. What if the nations were
+persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present
+life, so that all that is to be done is to make to ourselves a paradise
+as soon as may be here below! If they were persuaded that all appeal to
+the Judge in heaven is a chimerical hope, with what ardor would they
+throw themselves into schemes of revolution! Thus it is that certain
+political innovators are led to seek in the negation of God one of their
+means of action.
+
+Two views, therefore, essentially diverse, govern the labors of the
+renovators of society. The one class desire to realize, in an ever
+larger measure, justice and love; religious convictions are the
+strongest support of their work. The other class would uproot from men's
+minds every principle of faith, in order the more readily to obtain the
+realization of their theories. These two classes of men seem at times to
+be fighting all together in the _melee_ of opinions. They meet, as, in
+the doubtful glimmer of the dawn, might meet together laborious workmen
+who are anticipating the daylight, and evil-doers who are fleeing from
+the sun.
+
+In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools,
+it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into
+the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained
+and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some
+prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough
+for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of
+Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas. It
+discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a
+materialistic enthusiasm for corporeal indulgences. Disregarding the
+sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn
+our attention elsewhere.
+
+M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and
+elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred
+pages destined to maintain the thesis that God does not exist.[44] Man
+conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection
+realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception
+of a real and perfect being: such is the usual process of metaphysical
+reasoning. For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one
+another; this is one of his fundamental theses. This thesis does but
+interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to
+raise ourselves higher. The world with which we are acquainted is
+imperfect; therefore--say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes--the
+perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to
+the world. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect,
+therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says
+M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the
+absolute rule of truth. To say therefore of God that He is perfect, is
+to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never
+realized. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd
+and violent. If God is perfect, He does not exist. If God exists, He is
+not perfect. The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us
+to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His
+perfection. The author of this theory renders a worship to that ideal
+which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the
+world is gravitating by the law of progress. This worship is of too
+abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular
+by taking another shape, and it does so in this way: We conceive of that
+perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our
+thought. Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards
+perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human
+mind. The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is
+it that we must adore. We are here out of the region of pure
+abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.
+
+The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with
+chimeras, was founded in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte. M.
+Littre is at present one of its principal representatives. This writer,
+says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring "to set
+humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions,
+from deceitful idols and powers."[45] Let us say the same thing in
+simpler terms: M. Littre professes the doctrines of a school which
+ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history. To ascertain
+phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such,
+say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge. As for the
+origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual
+fancy. "Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as
+he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in
+doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future."[46]
+
+"In spite of some appearances to the contrary," says M. Littre, "the
+positive philosophy does not accept atheism."[47] Why? Because atheism
+pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and that after a
+fashion is still theology. Minds "veritably emancipated" profess to know
+nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience. They do
+not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts. The attempt is a
+bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emancipating themselves
+from the laws of reason. The very writer whom I have just quoted is
+himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of
+a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very
+treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the
+"_eternal_ motive powers of a _boundless_ universe."[48] Boundless!
+eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the instincts of the reason
+coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing! Adoration
+is withdrawn from God, and it is given to the universe at large. What is
+it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct
+object of worship? Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in
+a work reviewed by Auguste Comte: "Man," he says, "has always adored
+humanity." Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and
+the brief summary of their history. This humanity-god has been long
+adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its worshippers;
+but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his
+worship and give it its true name.[49]
+
+The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard
+to whatever is not included in the domain of experience. But its foot
+slips, and it falls into the negation of God, from which it rises again
+by means of a humanitarian atheism. All these marks are met with again
+in the works of the critical school.
+
+The critics group themselves about M. Renan. The praises which they
+lavished a while ago on a bad book by that author seem at least to allow
+us to point him out as their chief. They derive their name from studies
+in history and archaeology, with which we here have nothing to do. They
+are regarded as forming a philosophical and religious school, and it is
+in that connection that they claim our attention. Their influence is
+incontestable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is
+nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school
+engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings
+the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and
+to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and
+to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow
+particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and of
+philosophy; but this interest is purely historical. Nothing is more
+curious than the successive forms of human beliefs; but the period of
+beliefs is over. Religious faith no longer subsists except in minds
+which are behind the age; and philosophy, upheld in a final swoon by
+Hegel and Hamilton, has just yielded its last breath in the arms of M.
+Cousin: so M. Renan informs us.[50] To choose a side between the
+defenders of the idea of God and its opponents; to choose between Plato
+and Epicurus, between Origen and Celsus, between Descartes and Hobbes,
+between Leibnitz and Spinoza, would be to make one's self the Don
+Quixote of thought. An honest man may find amusement in reading the
+Amadis of Gaul; the Knight of _la Manche_ went mad through putting
+faith in the adventures of that hero. A like fate befalls those minds
+which are simple enough to believe still, in the midst of the nineteenth
+century, in the brave chimeras of former days. Let us study history, let
+us study nature; beyond that we do not know, and we never shall know,
+anything. Our fashionable men of letters develop their thesis with so
+much assurance; they lavish upon believers so many expressions of
+amiable disdain; they appear so sure of being the interpreters of the
+mind of the age, that they seem ready to repeat to young people dazzled
+by their success, the lesson which Gilbert had expressed in these terms:
+
+
+     Between ourselves--you own a God, I fear!
+     Beware lest in your verse the fact appear:
+     Dread the wits' laughter, friend, and know your betters:
+     Our grandsires might have worn those old-world fetters;
+     But in our days! Come, you must learn respect,--
+     Content _your age to follow_, not direct.[51]
+
+
+To believe in God would be vulgar; to deny the existence of God would be
+a want of taste; the divine world must remain as a subject for poetry.
+So our critics speak. Their direct affirmation is scepticism. But they
+follow the destinies of the positivist school; they do not succeed in
+maintaining their balance between the affirmation and negation of God.
+Alfred de Musset has described this position of the soul, and its
+inevitable issue. Must I hope in God? Must I reject all faith and all
+hope?
+
+
+     Between these paths how difficult the choice!
+       Ah! might I find some smoother, easier way.
+     "None such exists," whispers a secret voice,
+       "God _is_, or _is not_--own, or slight, His sway."
+     In sooth, I think so: troubled souls in turn
+       By each extreme are tossed and harassed sore:
+     They are but atheists, who feel no concern;
+       If once they doubted they would sleep no more.[52]
+
+
+The indifference of the critical philosophers is in fact only a
+transparent veil to atheistical doctrines. Faith in God the Creator is
+in their eyes a superstition; this is their only settled dogma. In other
+respects they indulge in theses the most contradictory. Most generally
+they deify man, declaring that there is no other God than the idea of
+humanity, no other infinite than the indefinite character of the
+aspirations of our own soul. At other times they proclaim an undisguised
+materialism, and look for the explanation of all things in atoms and in
+the law which governs them. They make to themselves a two-faced idol,
+one of these faces being called nature, and the other humanity. What
+strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language
+change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty, of
+religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted
+from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally
+different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their God
+is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a
+law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these
+equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of
+the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and
+captivated by success, is deluged with writings which have the same
+effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of
+the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ever
+allowing it to form either a precise idea or a settled judgment.
+
+Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance
+over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no
+difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are
+multiplying with the object of defending the existence of God,
+Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against
+the rising flood of atheism.[53] And here is a fact still more
+significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are
+recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are passing in review the
+worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of God,
+without having their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention
+directed to contemporary productions.[54]
+
+I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there
+presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing principally
+as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed,
+doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the
+Rhine.
+
+A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of
+speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped
+in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most
+directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been
+pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and
+on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or
+not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the
+following words: "I have only had one disciple who has understood
+me--and he has misunderstood me." A man distinguished in metaphysical
+research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect,
+devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secretan, writes
+with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian
+system: "If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no
+answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one
+has ever understood it."[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here
+undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be
+enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to
+understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor,
+in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.
+
+The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an
+eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to
+any mind. The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an
+inadmissible conception. They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the
+palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the
+act of an intelligence. This idea-God we have already encountered in the
+writings of M. Vacherot. We shall find it again more than once as we go
+on. In Germany, as in France, the theory only becomes popular by
+undergoing a transformation. The eternal idea manifests itself in the
+mind of man, and exists nowhere else. Above this idea there is nothing.
+Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored. And
+thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of
+1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the _Gazette d'Augsbourg_: "I
+begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel
+declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago." The deification of
+man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.
+Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was
+current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its
+popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found
+him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of
+an ecstatic contemplation. "Why, what are you doing there?" inquired the
+visitor. "I am adoring myself," replied the young adept in philosophy.
+
+I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history
+of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it
+occupies a large place and demands the most serious attention; I am
+tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.
+This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of
+atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M.
+Saint-Rene Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of
+the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts
+of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulae, it
+gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious
+authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."[57]
+
+It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be
+brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in
+its commencement, to favor at length _the revolts of matter run mad_.
+And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the
+development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is
+necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of
+destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the
+flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the
+moment that the flesh is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and
+ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism
+into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There
+exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us
+there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us:
+the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an
+idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for
+Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to
+his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic
+sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really
+serviceable to humanity."[58]
+
+Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacrifices; the emancipation
+is incomplete. What is this humanity to which man owes himself? An
+abstraction, an idol still, an idol to be overthrown if he would obtain
+perfect independence. Listen to the German Stirmer, deducing from the
+doctrine its extreme consequences: "Perish the people," he exclaims,
+"perish Germany, perish all the nations of Europe; and let man, rid of
+all bonds, delivered from the last phantoms of religion, recover at
+length his full independence!"[59] All the mists of abstraction have now
+disappeared: here we are on ground which is hideously clear. Humanity is
+no longer in question, but the worship of _self_; it is the complete
+enfranchisement of selfishness.
+
+While the proud idealism of the Germans was thus, by its own weight,
+descending into the level flats of thought, a political movement was
+agitating Germany. Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an
+enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not
+simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the
+irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice.
+In the year 1845, the attention of the Swiss authorities was drawn to
+certain secret societies, composed of Germans, and having for their
+object a revolution in Germany, but which had established their basis of
+operations on the Swiss territory. The inquiries of the police issued in
+the discovery of twenty-seven clubs bound together by secret
+correspondence. Working-men were induced on various pretexts to attend
+meetings, of which the real object was only gradually disclosed to
+them. If they were reckoned worthy, they were initiated into the plan of
+a social reform, the basis of which was atheism.[60] One of the
+principal agents in this work of proselytism, Guillaume Marr, exclaimed:
+"Faith in a personal and living God is the origin and the fundamental
+cause of our miserable social condition." And he deduced as follows the
+practical consequence of his theory: "The idea of God is the key-stone
+of the arch of a tottering civilization; let us destroy it. The true
+road to liberty, to equality, and to happiness, is atheism. No safety on
+earth, so long as man holds on by a thread to heaven.--Let nothing
+henceforward shackle the spontaneity of the human mind. Let us teach man
+that there is no other God than himself, that he is the Alpha and the
+Omega of all things, the superior being, and the most real reality." We
+have still to explain the nature of this spontaneity, free from every
+shackle. One of the editors of the journal conducted by Marr discloses
+it by quoting some verses in which Henri Heine expresses the wish to
+see _great vices, bloody and colossal crimes_, provided he may be
+delivered from a _worthy-citizen virtue_, and an _honest-merchant
+morality_![61] A little later, a journal of German Switzerland asserted,
+that in order to set free man's natural instincts and propensities, it
+is indispensable to destroy the idea of God.[62]
+
+These, I am well aware, are the screams of a savage madness. But after
+all, and be this as it may, Marr was publishing his journal at Lausanne
+in 1845, and in 1848 he was named representative of the people, by a
+considerable majority, in one of the largest cities of Germany. And this
+was by no means an isolated fact. Atheism showed itself in the ephemeral
+parliament of Frankfort as a sort of party, of which M. Vogt, says the
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, was the great orator.[63]
+
+The German revolution was put down by the bayonet, but the doctrines of
+which it had revealed the existence, left vestiges for a long time in
+the country of the terror which they had inspired. Alarm was felt for
+the various interests threatened, and noble souls were stirred with
+compassion by the conviction forced upon them of the spiritual miseries
+of their brethren. A powerful reaction took place, as well in the
+religious as the philosophical world. This reaction has produced
+salutary results; but the object is not fully attained. Open the
+journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these
+days, the principal centre of materialism. It is unhappily so rich in
+this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to
+furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.
+
+Doctor Buechner has published, under the title of _Force and Matter_, a
+small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately
+been translated into French.[64] Materialism is there set forth with
+perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity.
+The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of
+experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the
+researches of philosophy. It would seem therefore that the question of
+the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies.
+Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe
+infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in
+order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what
+journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by
+means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have
+occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that
+experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a
+metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out,
+Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good
+philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own
+without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues
+who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in
+making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of
+their own despotism.
+
+We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth
+with _eclat_ by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and
+projects, and lastly materialism. The elements are the same as in
+France, but exhibit themselves in a different order. This diversity
+suggests some observations worth your attention.
+
+France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose
+to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the
+greater part of its atheistical manifestations. German atheism, having
+as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man
+was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.[65] We may
+inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to
+the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural
+movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.
+
+Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man,
+and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence. We are
+nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without
+leaving any trace of ever having been together. Is not this a thing to
+be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world? Why then are the
+apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and
+uttering shouts of triumph? It is that they feel themselves free,
+emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,
+
+
+                            ... that brood of idle fear
+     Fine nothings worshipped,--_why_, doth not appear;
+     The gods--whom man made, and who made not man.[66]
+
+
+Emancipation! Such is the watchword of materialism. Listen, for example,
+to the conclusion of Baron d'Holbach's _System of Nature_: "Break the
+chains," says he, "which are binding men. Send back those gods who are
+afflicting them to those imaginary regions from whence fear first drew
+them forth. Inspire with courage the intelligent being; give him energy;
+let him dare at length to love himself, to esteem himself, to feel his
+own dignity; let him dare to emancipate himself, let him be happy and
+free." Strange accents these, at the close of a large philosophical
+treatise intended to prove that there is nothing in the universe but
+matter. Whence proceeds the dignity of that fragment of matter which
+calls itself man? Understand well what passes in the mind of these
+philosophers. In proportion as man lowers his own origin, in the same
+proportion,--if he does not wish to make himself a brute, in order to
+live as do the animals,--he exalts himself in an inevitable sentiment of
+pride. In vain does he give out that the material frame is everything;
+he feels that thought is more than the material frame; and he accords to
+himself the first place in the universe. The materialist ignores the
+Eternal Mind in order to emancipate himself; and whatever he may say,
+his real deity is not the atom, but himself. The encyclopedists, sons of
+an age which yielded at once to noble influences and to guilty
+seductions, united the worship of progress to a degrading philosophy.
+Consider with what a feeling of pride they lowered man, and you will
+understand why eternal nature gave place to sacred humanity. When
+France had fallen into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little
+dust in an earthen vase which was offered for public adoration, but they
+led in procession through the streets of Paris a woman who was called
+the goddess Reason.
+
+So it was that materialism ended in the adoration of man. Let us
+endeavor to understand how the adoration of man turns again to
+materialism. The mind endowed with intelligence and will is more
+elevated in the scale of being than inert bodies. This is for us an
+evident truth. Could one demonstrate it by reasoning? I do not know; but
+in contesting it, we should contradict the plainest evidence. Reason is
+superior to matter. If, with the school which extends from Pythagoras to
+Saint Augustine, and from Saint Augustine to Descartes, we connect
+reason with God as its principle, the grand science of metaphysics is
+founded. But if reason does not rise to God, what will happen? This
+reason, which proclaims itself superior to matter, is not, as we have
+said already, the individual thought of Francis, Peter, or John. If an
+individual presented himself as being reason itself, the absolute
+reason, and said, "I am the truth," it would be necessary to take one of
+three courses. If we thought that he spoke truly, and if we received
+his testimony, it would be necessary to worship him, for he would be
+God. If it were feared that he spoke truly, and those who so feared were
+unwilling to acknowledge his rule, it would be necessary for them to
+kill him in order to endeavor to kill the truth. If it were thought that
+he spoke falsely, it would be necessary to watch him, and the moment he
+committed an act dangerous for society, to shut him up, for he would be
+a madman. But the philosophers make no such pretension. The reason of
+which they speak is the reason common to all, a reason which is not that
+of an individual, but that of which all rational individuals partake.
+This common, universal, eternal reason,--where and how does it exist?
+Reason manifests itself by ideas, and ideas are the acts of minds. To
+imagine an idea without a mind of which it is the act, is the same thing
+as to imagine a movement without a body of which it is also the act, in
+a different sense. Take away bodies, and there is no more movement. Take
+away intelligences, and there are no more ideas. The philosopher who
+speaks of an idea which is not the idea of an intelligence, utters words
+which have no meaning. The reason which is not that of any created
+individual remains therefore absolutely inconceivable without the
+eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible
+conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself
+in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of
+ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized
+with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is
+always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on
+shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the _positive_ by a
+violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive
+materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty
+pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene
+Doctor Buechner and his fellows.
+
+The great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as it is often said to
+be, the combat of idealism against materialism. Idealism begins well,
+and we must not refuse to acknowledge the services which it has rendered
+to the cause of truth. But philosophy must follow the road traced out in
+an ancient adage: _Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad
+superiora_.[67] If the mind does not go to the end of this royal road;
+if idealism, having surmounted the fascinations of the senses, remains
+in ideas, without ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of matter
+and the worship of the idea call mutually one to another, and revolve in
+a fatal circle. The struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds
+one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied honor, the
+adversaries breakfast together, and gather strength to combat, in case
+of need, a common enemy. The great combat which forms the main subject
+of the history of ideas is the combat between belief in God and an
+atheistical philosophy. Whether atheism admits for its first principle
+an atom without a Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is a
+fact very important for the history of philosophy, but the importance of
+which is small enough in regard to the interests of humanity.
+
+We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into Germany, let us now cross
+the British Channel, and observe what is going on in England.
+
+England, at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the
+eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion. France gave
+the patent of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in part
+from this foreign source. An active propaganda for the diffusion of
+impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain. A
+strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed
+various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books
+and respectable journals.[68] These efforts were crowned with success.
+England, by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices for the
+diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its respect for the
+Lord's-day,[69] assumed[70] the characteristic marks of a Christian
+nation. Grand measures adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity,
+placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously philanthropic
+civilization; but as Pere Gratry has remarked, "more than in any other
+people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."[71]
+The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of
+this double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in
+which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit
+of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy. A book is
+instanced, of materialistic tendency,[72] published in 1828, of which a
+popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it
+advocated. There was sold of this edition, in a short time, more than
+eighty thousand copies. A thoughtful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a
+statistical statement, according to which English publications, openly
+atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six hundred and forty
+thousand copies.[73]
+
+If we pass from the current literature to scientific publications, we
+shall meet with facts of the same order. The Hegelianism and the
+scepticism of the critical school are creeping into the works of some
+theologians. The theories of positivism, reduced to shape in France,
+have passed the channel, and have obtained in England more attention
+perhaps than in the country of their origin. They have been adopted by
+a distinguished author, Mr. Stuart Mill; and a female writer, Miss
+Martineau, has set them forth, in her mother-tongue, for the use of her
+fellow-countrymen.[74] Positivism is even in vogue, and has become
+"_fashionable_" amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in
+Great Britain.[75]
+
+In less elevated regions of the intellectual world of England, an
+organized sect commends itself to our attention. This sect has given to
+its system of doctrine the name of _Secularism_. It has a social
+object--the destruction of the Established Church and the existing
+political order. It has a philosophy, the purport and bearing of which
+we will inquire of Mr. Holyoake. The following is the answer of the
+chief of the secularists:--"All that concerns the origin and end of
+things, God and the immortal soul, is absolutely impenetrable for the
+human mind. The existence of God, in particular, must be referred to
+the number of abstract questions, with the ticket _not determined_. It
+is probable, however, that the nature which we know, must be the God
+whom we inquire after. What is called atheism is found _in suspension_
+in our theory."[76] The practical consequence of these views is, that
+all day-dreams relating to another world must be put aside, and we must
+manage so as to live to the best advantage possible in the present
+life.[77] Hence the name of the system. _Secularism_ teaches its
+disciples to have nothing to do with religion in any shape, that they
+may confine themselves strictly to the present life. It is an attempt of
+which the express object is to realize life without God.
+
+These doctrines formed the subject of public discussions, in London in
+1853, and at Glasgow in 1854. The meeting at Glasgow numbered, it is
+said, more than three thousand persons.[78] The sect employs as its
+means of action open-air speeches, the publication of books and
+journals,[79] and assemblies for giving information and holding debates
+in lecture-rooms. There are five of these lecture-rooms in London. I
+have seen the programme, for 1864, of the meetings held at No. 12,
+Cleveland Street, under the direction of Messrs. Holyoake and J. Clark.
+There are, every Sunday,--a discourse at eleven o'clock, a discussion at
+three o'clock, a lecture at seven o'clock. The programme invites all
+free-thinkers to attend these meetings. Some of the assemblies are
+public; for others a small entrance fee is demanded. London is the
+principal centre of the association; but it has branches all over the
+country, and it numbers in Great Britain twenty-one lecture-rooms,
+particularly at Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and
+Edinburgh.[80] Secularism naturally seeks to magnify, as much as may be,
+its own importance; and it is not to the declarations of its apostles
+that we must refer in order to estimate the extent and influence of its
+action. At the same time the existence of a society, the avowed object
+of which is the diffusion of practical atheism, cannot be regarded with
+indifference. At the present moment the affairs of the sect would not
+appear to be flourishing. A year ago a secularist orator had delivered a
+vehement speech in favor of virtue. Just as he had resumed his seat, a
+policeman entered the room and took him into custody. A few days
+afterwards the _Times_ informed its readers that the orator of virtue
+had just been condemned for theft to twelve months' hard labor.[81] In
+the _Secular World_ of the 1st January, 1864, Mr. Holyoake complains
+that a great many _mauvais sujets_ seem to seek in secularism a kind of
+cheap religion. He declares that he is going to use energetic efforts to
+purify the sect, and seems to intimate that he shall retire if his
+efforts fail. Let us leave him to wrestle against the invasion of the
+orators of virtue, and let us pass from England into Italy.
+
+While Italy is seeking to deliver itself from the bayonets of Austria,
+it is threatened with subjection to the influence of the most pernicious
+German doctrines. After having bent, like nearly all Europe, in the
+eighteenth century, beneath the blast of sensualism, Italy made a noble
+effort to renew more generous traditions. Two eminent men, Rosmini and
+Gioberti, the second especially, succeeded in exciting in the youth of
+Italy a passionate interest in doctrines in which liberty and vigor of
+thought were united with the confidence of faith. This intellectual
+movement preceded and prepared a national movement, the course of which
+has been precipitated by the intrigues of politics and the intervention
+of the arms of the foreigner. At the present time the influence of
+Rosmini and of Gioberti is on the decline. Hegelianism is being
+installed with a certain _eclat_ in the university of Naples. Nothing
+warrants us in hoping that this system will not produce upon the shores
+of the Mediterranean the same depravation of philosophic thought which
+it has produced in Germany. In the ancient university of Pisa, M.
+Auguste Conti, a brave defender of Christian philosophy, steadfastly
+maintains the union of religion and of speculative inquiry,[82] and the
+centre of Italy is less affected perhaps than the extremities of the
+Peninsula by the spirit of infidelity. But as we go further north, we
+encounter in the writings of Ferrari the utterance of a gloomy
+scepticism, and in those of Ausonio Franchi, formerly a journalist at
+Turin, and now a Professor at Milan, the manifestations of an almost
+undisguised atheism. Ausonio Franchi, or rather the man who assumes that
+pseudonyme, is an ex-priest, who, "while maintaining severely the rule
+of good morals and the dignity of life,"[83] has turned with violent
+animosity against his former faith. He exerts some influence over the
+youth of Italy, and has met with warm admirers in England and Germany.
+Franchi's profession of faith reduces itself to these very simple
+terms:--"The world is what it is, and it is _because it is_; any other
+reason whatever of its essence and of its existence can be nothing but a
+sophism or an illusion."[84] All inquiry into the origin of things is a
+pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves to the experience of
+the present life, and look for nothing beyond it. The author treats with
+sufficient disdain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton, and
+Leibnitz. It has seemed to me that his understanding, a little obscured
+by passion, misconceives the true purport of the reasonings which it
+rejects, and by thus impairing their force, assumes to itself the right
+to despise them.
+
+The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do not stop at Christian
+dogma. He denies all value to those higher aspirations of the human soul
+which constitute _reason_, in the philosophical meaning of the term.
+Now, this radical negation of the reason is what those Italians who do
+not scruple to practise it denominate _Rationalism_. And this very
+unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a
+general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which
+present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth.
+The Frenchmen, who call themselves the _critics_, are men who require
+that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but
+shall renounce the while all discrimination between truth and error. The
+term scepticism, in its primary signification, contains the idea of
+inquiring, of examining; and they give the name of _sceptics_ to the
+philosophers who declare that there is nothing to discover, and
+consequently nothing to examine, or to search for! One is a
+_free-thinker_ only on the express condition of renouncing all such
+free exercise of thought as might lead to the acceptance of beliefs
+generally received. This is verily the carnival of language, and the
+_bal masque_ of words. These corruptions of the meaning of terms are
+highly instructive. Doctrines contrary to the laws of human nature bear
+witness in this way to a secret shame in producing themselves under
+their true colors. Just as hypocrisy is an homage which vice pays to
+virtue, so these barbarisms are an homage which error pays to truth.
+
+To return to Italy: that beautiful and noble country has not escaped the
+revival of atheism. The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political
+struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged, will favor for a
+time, it may be feared, the development of evil doctrines.[85] But the
+lively genius of the Italians will not be long in attaching itself
+again to the grand traditions of its past history; and the inhabitants
+of the land, whose soil was trodden by Pythagoras and Saint Augustine,
+will not link themselves with doctrines which always run those who hold
+them aground sooner or later upon the sad and gloomy shores of a vulgar
+empiricism.
+
+We have not leisure, Gentlemen, to extend our study to all parts of the
+globe, and besides, there are countries with regard to which information
+would fail me. Therefore I say nothing of Holland, where we should have,
+as I know, distressing facts to record. The silence imposed on Spain
+upon the subjects which we are discussing would render the study of that
+country a difficult one. I am wanting in data regarding America. Let us
+conclude our survey by a few words about Russia.
+
+If we are warranted in making general assertions in speaking of that
+immense empire, we may say that the Russian people, taken as a whole, is
+good and pious, badly instructed, and often the victim of ignorance or
+of superstition, but disposed to open its heart to elevated and pure
+influences. The clergy is ignorant, though with honorable and even
+brilliant exceptions. It is too much cut off from general society, and
+consigned to a sort of caste, of which it would be most desirable to
+break down the barriers, in order to allow the influence of the
+representatives of religion to extend itself more freely. The young
+nobles, and the university students in general, are, in too large a
+proportion, imbued with irreligious principles. Various atheistical
+writings, those of Feuerbach amongst others, have been translated into
+Russian, printed abroad, and furtively introduced into the empire. M.
+Herzen, a well-known writer, has published, under the pseudonyme of
+Iscander, a work full of talent, but in which come plainly into view the
+worst tendencies of our time.[86] In his eyes, life is itself its own
+end and cause. Faith in God is the portion of the ignorant crowd, and
+atheism, like all the high truths of science, like the differential
+calculus and the laws of physics, is the exclusive possession of the
+philosophical few. When Robespierre declared atheism aristocratic, he
+was right in this sense, for atheism is above the reach of the vulgar;
+but when he concluded that atheism was false, he made a great mistake.
+This error, which led him to establish the worship of the Supreme Being,
+was one of the causes of his fall. When he began to follow in the wake
+of the _conservatives_, as a necessary consequence he would lose his
+power.[87] The writings of Iscander have exerted a veritable influence
+in Russia. M. Herzen appears to have lost much of his repute, by the
+exaggerated and outrageous course he has taken in politics; but it is to
+be feared that the traces of his action are not altogether effaced.
+
+The Russian Empire has been for a long time, in the eyes of the West,
+only an immense garrison; but now for some years past it has been taking
+rank among the number of intellectual powers, and nowhere in Europe is
+the ascending march of civilization displaying itself by signs so
+striking. The summons to liberty of so many millions of men, which has
+just been accomplished by the generous initiative of the ruling power,
+and with the consent of the nation, testifies that that vast social body
+is animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But in the solemn
+phase through which she is passing, Russia is exposed to a great danger.
+She is running the risk of substituting for a national development,
+drawn from the grand springs of human nature, a factitious civilization,
+in which would figure together the fashions of Paris, the morals of the
+_coulisses_ of the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the
+West. May God preserve her!
+
+We have passed in review some of the symptoms of the revival of atheism,
+and it is impossible not to acknowledge the gravity of the facts which
+we have established. What must especially awaken solicitude is, that the
+irreligious manifestations of thought have assumed such a character of
+generality, that the sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce
+in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews, (I allude especially to
+the French-speaking public), widely-circulated journals which take good
+care not to violate propriety, and which could not with impunity offend
+the interests or prejudices of the social class from which their
+subscribers are recruited, are able to entertain without danger, and
+without exciting energetic protestations, the productions of an open, or
+scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are ample reasons for thoughtfulness;
+but this thoughtfulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to do
+with a challenge the very audacity of which inspires me with confidence,
+rather than with dread. In fact all the productions of irreligious
+philosophy rest on one and the same thought, the common watchword, of
+the secularism of the English, of the rationalism of the Italians, of
+the positivism of the French, and which may even be recognized, with a
+little attention, under the haughty formulas which bear the name of
+Hegel. And the thought is this: The earth is enough for us, away with
+heaven; man suffices for himself, away with God; reality suffices for
+us, away with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting ourselves with the
+world as it is. It is attempted ridiculously enough to place this wisdom
+under the patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are bidden,
+forsooth, to see in the negation of the real and living God, a conflict
+of progress with routine, of science with a blind tradition, of the
+modern mind with superannuated ideas.[88] We know of old this defiance
+hurled against the aspirations of the heart, the conscience, and the
+reason. We know the destined issue of this ancient revolt of the
+intellect against the laws of its own nature. There were atheists in
+Palestine in the days when the Psalmist exclaimed, "The fool hath said
+in his heart, There is no God."[89] There were atheists at Rome when
+Cicero wrote,[90] that the opinion which recognizes gods appeared to him
+to come nearest to the resemblance of truth. A poet of the thirteenth
+century has expressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in vogue
+among a great many of our contemporaries: "He dares nothing great, who
+believes that there are gods."[91] There were atheists in the
+seventeenth century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound them,
+and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits of their time.[92] And
+who, again, does not know that in the eighteenth century atheism
+marched with head aloft, and filled the world with its clamors. The
+attempt to do without God has nothing modern about it, it is met with at
+all epochs. The means employed now-a-days to attain this end have
+nothing new about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with the
+characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of which are transient
+crises. The moment the negation is blazoned openly, humanity protests.
+Why? Because man will never be persuaded to content himself with the
+earth, and with what the earth can give him: his nature absolutely
+forbids it. When we compare the reality with the desires of our souls,
+we can all say with the aged patriarch Jacob: "Few and evil have been
+the days of my pilgrimage;"[93] we can all say with Lamartine:
+
+
+     Though all the good desired of man
+       In one sole heart should overflow,
+     Death, bounding still his mortal span,
+       Would turn the cup of joy to woe.[94]
+
+
+And it is not the heart only which is concerned here; without God man
+remains inexplicable to his own reason. The spiritual creature of the
+Almighty, free by the act of creation, and capable of falling into
+slavery by rebellion,--he understands his nature and his destiny; but it
+is in vain that the apostles of matter and the worshippers of humanity
+harangue him in turn to explain to him his own existence. Man is too
+great to be the child of the dust; man is too miserable to be the divine
+summit of the universe. "If he exalts himself, I abase him; if he abases
+himself, I exalt him; and I contradict him continually, until he
+understands at last that he is an incomprehensible monster."[95]
+
+"The proper study of mankind is man;" and man remains an enigma for man,
+if he do not rise to God. So it is that our very nature is a living
+protest against atheism, and never allows its triumphs to be either
+general, or of long duration. A solid limit is thus set to our
+wanderings; and, to the errors of the understanding, as to the tides of
+the ocean, the Master of things has said, "Ye shall go no further."
+Therefore atheists may become famous, but, destitute of the ray which
+renders truly illustrious, humanity refuses them the aureole with which
+it encircles the brows of its benefactors. This aureole it reserves for
+the sages which lead it to God, for the artists which reveal to it some
+of the rays of the immortal light, for all those who remind it of the
+titles of its dignity, the pledges of its future, the sacred laws of the
+realm of spirits. Humanity desires to live; and to live it must believe;
+for it must believe in order to love and to act. Atheism is a crisis in
+a disease, a passing swoon over which the vital forces of nature
+triumph. Now the vital forces of humanity are neither extinct nor
+stupefied in our time. The world of literature is sick, and grievously
+sick in some of its departments; but even there again are manifesting
+themselves noble and powerful reactions. Then look in other directions.
+Contemplate the religious movement of society at large, the wide efforts
+making in the domain of active beneficence, the progressive conquests of
+civilization, the awakening of conscience on many subjects:--I could
+easily instance numerous facts in proof of what I advance, and say to
+you:
+
+
+     Know, by these speaking signs, a God to-day
+     As yesterday the same--the same for aye:
+     Veiling, revealing, at His sovereign will,
+     His glory,--and His people guarding still.[96]
+
+
+Wrestle then against the invasion of deadly doctrines, wrestle and do
+not fear. If men rise against God in the name of the modern mind, of the
+science of the age, of the progress of civilization, do not suffer
+yourselves to be stunned by these clamors. Let the past be to you the
+pledge of the future! To make of atheism a novelty, is an error. To make
+of it, in a general way, the characteristic of our epoch, is a calumny.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[40] Xenophon, _Memorab. of Socrates_, Bk. iv. 10.
+
+[41] _La Religion naturelle_. Preface.
+
+[42] Emile Saisset, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of March, 1845.
+
+[43] See the _Lettres sur les verites, les plus importantes de la
+revelation_, by Albert de Haller, translated into French by one of his
+grandsons. Lausanne, Bridel, 1846.
+
+[44] _La Metaphysique et la Science_, 2 tom. Oct. 1858.
+
+[45] _Notice sur M. Littre_, page 57.
+
+[46] _Paroles de philosophie positive_, page 33.
+
+[47] _Idem_, page 30.
+
+[48] _Paroles de philosophie positive_, page 34.
+
+[49] _Apercus generaux sur la doctrine positiviste_, par M. de Lombrail,
+ancien eleve de l'ecole polytechnique. The author says in his preface:
+"Auguste Comte examined this work with the conscientious attention which
+he was accustomed to give to the simplest task. He desired by his useful
+counsels to render it worthy of publication."
+
+[50] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of 15th Jan. 1860, page 367.
+
+[51]
+
+     Je soupconne entre nous que vous croyez en Dieu.
+     N'allez pas dans vos vers en consigner l'aveu;
+     Craignez le ridicule, et respectez vos maitres.
+     Croire en Dieu fut un tort permis a nos ancetres.
+     Mais dans notre age! Allons, il faut vous corriger
+     _Et suivre votre siecle_, au lieu de le juger.
+
+[52]
+
+     Entre ces deux chemins j'hesite et je m'arrete.
+     Je voudrais a l'ecart suivre un plus doux sentier.
+     Il n'en existe pas, dit une voix secrete:
+     En presence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.
+     Je le pense, en effet: les ames tourmentees
+     Vers l'un et l'autre exces se portent tour a tour;
+     Mais les indifferents ne sont que des athees;
+     Ils ne dormiraient plus, s'ils doutaient un seul jour.
+
+[53] See, for example, _La Religion naturelle_, by Jules Simon; _Essai
+de philosophie religieuse_, by Emile Saisset; _De la connaissance de
+Dieu_, by A. Gratry; _La raison et la christianisme, douze lectures sur
+l'existence de Dieu_, by Charles Secretan; _Essai sur la Providence_, by
+Ernest Bersot; _De la Providence_, by M. Damiron; _L'Idee de Dieu_, by
+M. Caro; _Theodicee, Etudes sur Dieu, la Creation et la Providence_, par
+Amedee de Magerie.
+
+[54] See, for example, the _Etudes orientales_ of M. Franck, the
+_Bouddha_ of M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire; _L'Histoire de la philosophie
+au XVIIIe siecle_, of M. Damiron.
+
+[55] _Philosophie de la liberte_, vol. i. p. 225.
+
+[56] _Toutes ces revoltes de la matiere en furie._
+
+[57] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, April, 1850.
+
+[58] _Qu'est-ce la religion?_ page 586 of the translation of Ewerbeck.
+
+[59] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15th April, 1850, p. 288.
+
+[60] General Report addressed to the _Conseil d'Etat_ of Neuchatel on
+the secret German propaganda, and on the clubs of Young Germany in
+Switzerland, by Lardy, Doctor of law. Neuchatel, 1845.
+
+[61] _Pourvu qu'on le delivre d'une vertu bourgeoise et d'une morale
+d'honnetes negociants_. Blaetter der Gegenwart fuer sociales Leben.
+
+[62] See the _Chroniqueur Suisse_ of 19 Jan. 1865.
+
+[63] April, 1850, p. 292.
+
+[64] _Force et Matiere_, by Louis Buechner, Doctor in medicine:
+translated into French from the seventh edition of the German work, by
+Gamper, Leipzig, 1863.
+
+[65] My object is to point out the atheistical systems which are being
+produced in various parts of Europe, and not to estimate, in a general
+way, the tendency of contemporary philosophies. The reader, who would
+understand the position occupied by materialism in relation to German
+thought in general, may consult with advantage, _Le Materialisme
+contemporain_, by Paul Janet, Paris, 1864; and the review of this work
+by M. Reichlin-Meldegg (_Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie_,
+Sechsundvierzigster Band). A Swiss writer, M. Boehner, has lately
+published a learned work on the subject entitled: _Le Materialisme au
+point de vue des sciences naturelles et des progres de l'esprit humain_,
+by Nath. Boehner, member of the _Societe helvetique des sciences
+naturelles_, translated from the German, by O. Bourrit, 1 vol. 8vo.
+(_Geneve, imprimerie Fick_), 1861.
+
+[66]
+
+                         ... Ces enfants de l'effroi,
+     Ces beaux riens qu'on adore, et sans savoir pourquoi,
+     Ces dieux que l'homme a faits et qui n'ont pas fait l'homme.
+                                           CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
+
+[67] From outer to inner things, and from inner to higher.
+
+[68] See the Report of Mr. H. Roberts, in the _Comptes rendus du Congres
+international de bienfaisance de Londres_, vol. ii. page 95, and the
+23rd _Bulletin de la Societe genevoise d'utilite publique_, 1863.
+
+[69] Par son respect pour le jour du Dimanche.
+
+[70] revetit.
+
+[71] _La Paix meditations historiques et religieuses_, par A. Gratry,
+pretre de l'Oratoire.--Septieme meditation: l'Angleterre.
+
+[72] _The Constitution of Man_, by G. Combe. The popular edition was
+printed at the expense of Mr. Henderson.
+
+[73] _Infidelity: its aspects, causes, and agencies_, by Thomas Pearson.
+People's edition, 1854, page 263.
+
+[74] _Auguste Comte et la Philosophie positive_, par E. Littre, page
+276.
+
+[75] "Positivism, within the last quarter of a century, has become an
+active, and even fashionable mode of thought, and nowhere more so than
+amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in England." _The
+Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of modern Criticism, Lectures on M.
+Renan's 'Vie de Jesus,'_--by John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of the
+College of St. Mary in the University of St. Andrew. Macmillan and Co.,
+1864.
+
+[76] See Pearson: _Infidelity_, particularly page 316, and _Christianity
+and Secularism, the public discussion_--, particularly page 8.
+
+[77]--_dans le siecle_.
+
+[78] Vapereau's _Dictionnaire des contemporains_--Art. HOLYOAKE.
+
+[79] I have had in view here the first numbers of _The Secular World_,
+and of _The National Reformer, Secular Advocate_, for 1864.
+
+[80] _The National Reformer_ of 2nd Jan. 1864.
+
+[81] MS. information.
+
+[82] Readers unacquainted with the Italian language will find a
+compendious exposition of M. Conti's philosophy, in a small volume
+published, in 1863, under the title of _Le Camposanto de Pise ou le
+Scepticisme_. (Paris, librairies Joel Cherbuliez et Auguste Durand; I
+vol. in-18.)
+
+[83] Such is the testimony rendered to him by M. Aug. Conti in his work,
+_La Philosophie italienne_. (Paris, Joel Cherbuliez et Auguste Durand;
+one small vol. 18mo.)
+
+[84] _Le Rationalisme_ (in French), published with an introduction, by
+M. D. Bancel, Brussels, 1858, page 27.
+
+[85] The learned author appears to intimate that the distractions of the
+Papacy, consequent on its political struggles for temporal power, hinder
+the salutary influence which it might otherwise exercise in the
+suppression of evil doctrines. The Translator feels it due to himself to
+state here, once for all, that he has no sympathy whatever with such a
+view of the influence of the Papacy. On the contrary, he is disposed to
+attribute to the Church of Rome most of the evils which afflict, not
+Italy only, but all the countries over which she has any power. Perhaps,
+having "felt the weight of too much liberty" in his own Church, the
+excellent author, fundamentally sound in his own views of Christian
+doctrine, as is proved abundantly by his writings, has been led by a
+natural reaction to give too much weight to the opposite principle of
+authority. The concluding pages of his former work, _La Vie Eternelle_,
+indicate a mind too painfully and sensitively averse to all controversy
+with a corrupt Church, in consideration of the acknowledged excellences
+of many of her individual members,--her Pascals, Fenelons, Martin Boos,
+Girards, Gratrys, and Lacordaires.--_Translator_.
+
+[86] _De l'autre rive_ (in Russian).
+
+[87] _De l'autre rive_. v. Consolatio.--This chapter is a dialogue
+between a lady and a doctor. I have considered the doctor as expressing
+the thoughts of the writer. The form of dialogue, however, always allows
+an author to express his thoughts, while declining, if need be, the
+responsibility of them.
+
+[88] _Le Rationalisme_, par Ausonio Franchi, page 19.--_Force et
+matiere_, par le docteur Buechner, page 262.--_Paroles de philosophie
+positive_, par Littre, page 36.--_La Metaphysique et la Science_, par
+Vacherot, page xiv. (Premiere edition.)
+
+[89] Ps. xiv. 1.
+
+[90] De Natura Deorum.
+
+[91] Nil audet magnum qui putat esse Deos.
+
+[92] See Bossuet: _Sermon sur la dignite de la religion_.
+
+[93] Gen. xlvii. 9.
+
+[94]
+
+     Quand tous les biens que l'homme envie
+     Deborderaient dans un seul coeur,
+     La mort seule au bout de la vie
+     Fait un supplice du bonheur.
+
+[95] Pascal.
+
+[96]
+
+     Reconnaissez, _Messieurs_, a ces traits eclatants,
+     Un Dieu tel aujourd'hui qu'il fut dans tous les temps.
+     Il sait, quand il lui plait, faire eclater sa gloire,
+     Et son peuple est toujours present a sa memoire.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+_NATURE._
+
+(At Geneva, 27th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 25th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+The thoughts of man are numberless; and still, in their indefinite
+variety, they never relate but to one or another of these three objects:
+nature, or the world of material substances, which are revealed to our
+senses; created spirits, similar or superior to that spirit which is
+ourselves; and finally God, the Infinite Being, the universal Creator.
+Therefore there are two sorts of atheism, and there are only two. The
+mind stops at nature, and endeavors to find in material substances the
+universal principle of existence; or, rising above nature, the mind
+stops at humanity, without ascending to the Infinite Mind, to the
+Creator. We have seen how clearly these two doctrines appear in
+contemporary literature. We have now to enter upon the examination of
+them, and this will afford us matter for two lectures.
+
+The word nature has various meanings; we employ it here to designate
+matter, and the forces which set it in motion, those forces being
+conceived as blind and fatal, in opposition to the conscious and free
+force which constitutes mind. Matter and the laws of motion are the
+object of mechanics, of chemistry, and of physics. Do these sciences
+suffice for resolving the universal enigma? Such is precisely the
+question which offers itself to our examination.
+
+Let us first of all determine what, in presence of the spectacle of the
+universe, is the natural movement of human thought, when human thought
+possesses the idea of God. I open a book trivial enough in its form, but
+occasionally profound in its contents: the _Journey round my room_, of
+Xavier de Maistre. The author is relating how he had undertaken to make
+an artificial dove which was to sustain itself in the air by means of an
+ingenious mechanism. I read:
+
+"I had wrought unceasingly at its construction for more than three
+months. The day was come for the trial. I placed it on the edge of a
+table, after having carefully closed the door, in order to keep the
+discovery secret, and to give my friends a pleasing surprise. A thread
+held the mechanism motionless. Who can conceive the palpitations of my
+heart, and the agonies of my self-love, when I brought the scissors near
+to cut the fatal bond?--Zest!--the spring of the dove starts, and begins
+to unroll itself with a noise. I lift my eyes to see the bird pass; but,
+after making a few turns over and over, it falls, and goes off to hide
+itself under the table. Rosine (my dog), who was sleeping there, moves
+ruefully away. Rosine, who never sees a chicken, or a pigeon, or the
+smallest bird, without attacking and pursuing it, did not deign even to
+look at my dove which was floundering on the floor. This gave the
+finishing stroke to my self-esteem. I went to take an airing on the
+ramparts.
+
+"I was walking up and down, sad and out of spirits as one always is
+after a great hope disappointed, when, raising my eyes, I perceived a
+flight of cranes passing over my head. I stopped to have a good look at
+them. They were advancing in triangular order, like the English column
+at the battle of Fontenoy. I saw them traverse the sky from cloud to
+cloud.--Ah! how well they fly, said I to myself. With what assurance
+they seem to glide along the viewless path which they follow.--Shall I
+confess it? alas! may I be forgiven! the horrible feeling of envy for
+once, once only, entered my heart, and it was for the cranes. I pursued
+them, with jealous gaze, to the boundaries of the horizon. For a long
+while afterwards, motionless in the midst of the crowd which was moving
+about me, I kept observing the rapid movement of the swallows, and I was
+astonished to see them suspended in the air, just as if I had never
+before seen that phenomenon. A feeling of profound admiration, unknown
+to me till then, lighted up my soul. I seemed to myself to be looking
+upon nature for the first time. I heard with surprise the buzzing of the
+flies, the song of the birds, and that mysterious and confused noise of
+the living creation which involuntarily celebrates its Author. Ineffable
+concert, to which man alone has the sublime privilege of adding the
+accents of gratitude! Who is the author of this brilliant mechanism? I
+exclaimed in the transport which animated me. Who is He that, opening
+his creative hand, let fly the first swallow into the air? It is He who
+gave commandment to these trees to come forth from the ground, and to
+lift their branches toward the sky!"
+
+Here is a charming page, and containing, though apparently trivial in
+style, a good and sound philosophy. Let us translate this delightful
+description into the heavier language of science.
+
+The intellect is one of the things with which we are best acquainted;
+logic is the science of thought, and logic is perhaps, among all the
+sciences, the one best settled on its bases. The intellect discovers
+itself to us in the exercise of our activity. We pursue an object, we
+combine the means for attaining it, and it is the intellect which
+operates this combination. What happens if we compare the results of our
+activity with the results of the power manifested in the world? When we
+consider in their vast _ensemble_ the means of which nature disposes,
+when we remark the infinite number of the relations of things, the
+marvellous harmony of which universal life is the produce, we are
+dazzled by the splendor of a wisdom which surpasses our own as much as
+boundless space surpasses the imperceptible spot which we occupy upon
+the earth. Think of this: the science of nature is so vast that the
+least of its departments suffices to absorb one human lifetime. All our
+sciences are only in their very beginning; they are spelling out the
+first lines of an immense book. The elements of the universe are
+numberless; and yet, notwithstanding, all hangs together; all things are
+linked one to another in the closest connection. The _savants_ therefore
+find themselves in a strange embarrassment. They are obliged to
+circumscribe more and more the field of their researches, on pain of
+losing themselves in an endless study; and, on the other hand, in
+proportion as science advances, the mutual relation of all its branches
+becomes so manifest that it is ever more and more clearly seen that, in
+order to know any one thing thoroughly, it would be necessary to know
+all. It needs not that we seek very high or very far away for occasions
+of astonishment: the least of the objects which nature presents to our
+view contains abysses of wisdom.
+
+The acquired results of science appear simple through the effect of
+habit. The sun rises every day; who is still surprised at its rising?
+The solar system has been known a long while; it is taught in the
+humblest schools, and no longer surprises any one. But those who found
+out, after long efforts, what we learn without trouble, the discoverers,
+reckoned their discoveries very surprising. Kepler, one of the founders
+of modern astronomy, in the book to which he consigned his immortal
+discoveries, exclaims:[97] "The wisdom of the Lord is infinite, as are
+also His glory and His power. Ye heavens! sing His praises. Sun, moon,
+and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him,
+celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my
+soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him, and in Him, that all exists.
+What we know not is contained in Him as well as our vain science. To Him
+be praise, honor, and glory for ever and ever!" These words, Gentlemen,
+have not been copied from a book of the Church; they are read in a work
+which, as all allow, is one of the foundations of modern science.
+
+I pass on to another example, and I continue to keep you in good and
+high company. Newton set forth his discoveries in a large volume all
+bristling with figures and calculations.[98] The work of the
+mathematician ended, the author rises, by the consideration of the
+mutual interchange of the light of all the stars, to the idea of the
+unity of the creation; then he adds, and it is the conclusion of his
+entire work: "The Master of the heavens governs all things, not as being
+the soul of the world, but as being the Sovereign of the universe. It is
+on account of His sovereignty that we call Him the Sovereign God. He
+governs all things, those which are, and those which may be. He is the
+one God, and the same God, everywhere and always. We admire Him because
+of His perfections, we reverence and adore Him because of His
+sovereignty. A God without sovereignty, without providence, and without
+object in His works, would be only destiny or nature. Now, from a blind
+metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the same, could arise no
+variety; all that diversity of created things according to places and
+times (which constitutes the order and life of the universe) could only
+have been produced by the thought and will of a Being who is _the
+Being_, existing by Himself, and necessarily."
+
+Here, Sirs, are noble thoughts, expressed in noble style. I recommend
+you to read throughout the pages from which I have quoted a few
+fragments. Let us now analyze the ideas of this great astronomer as thus
+expounded. We may note these three affirmations:
+
+1. The universe displays an admirable order which reveals the wisdom of
+the Power which governs it.
+
+2. The universe lives; it is not fixed, and its variations suppose an
+intelligent Power which directs it.
+
+3. The variable existence of the universe shows that it is not
+necessary; it must have its cause in a Being who is _the_ Being,
+necessarily, by His proper nature.
+
+Such are the views of Newton. Examine this course of thought, and see if
+it is not natural. Observation reveals to us facts. Facts in themselves,
+isolated facts, are nothing for the mind; but in the facts of nature,
+human reason discovers an order, and in that order it recognizes its own
+proper laws. To keep within the domain of astronomy--there is harmony
+between our mind and the course of the stars. If you have any doubt
+about this, I appeal to the almanac. We there find it stated that in
+such a month, on such a day, at such an hour, there will be an eclipse
+of the sun or of the moon. How comes the editor of the almanac to know
+that? He has learnt it from the savants who have succeeded in explaining
+the phenomena of the skies. The savant therefore can in his study meet
+with the intelligence which directs the universe. If he makes no mistake
+in his calculations, the eclipse begins at the precise hour which he has
+indicated. If the eclipse did not take place at the instant foreseen, no
+one would suspect Nature of not following the course prescribed by the
+directing intelligence; the inference would be that there had been a
+fault in observation, or an error of figures on the part of the
+astronomer.
+
+When science, then, does its part well, the mind of man encounters
+another mind which is governing the world and maintaining it in order.
+The special science of nature stops there, as we shall explain further
+on; but this is not all that man requires, when he makes use of all his
+faculties. All is passing and changing in the domain of experience; and
+reason seeks instinctively the cause of changeable facts in an
+unchangeable Being, the cause of transient phenomena in an eternal
+Being. Nature, therefore, does not suffice to account to us for itself.
+It demands a power to direct it, an intelligence to regulate it; an
+absolute eternal Being as its cause. This is what reason imperatively
+requires; and when we possess the idea of God, nature reveals to us His
+power and His wisdom.
+
+This is an old argument, and they call it commonplace. It is
+commonplace, in fact; it has appeared over and over again in the
+discourses of Socrates, in the writings of Galen, of Kepler, of Newton,
+of Linnaeus. Yes, this argument has fallen so low as to be public
+property, if we can say that truth falls when it shines with a splendor
+vivid enough to enlighten the masses. If I desired to bring together
+here the testimony of all the savants who have seen God in nature, the
+song of all the poets who have celebrated the glory of the Eternal as
+manifested by the creation, the enumeration would be long, and I should
+soon tire out your patience. You can understand therefore that if there
+are, as the misanthrope Rousseau says there are, philosophers who hold
+in such contempt vulgar opinions that they prefer error of their own
+discovery to truth found out by other people, then the ancient argument,
+which infers the wisdom of the Creator from the order of the creation,
+must be the object of but small esteem with them. Still I for my part
+take this old argument for a good one, and I mean to defend it.
+
+Nature is verily and indeed a marvel placed before the observation of
+our minds. The growth of a blade of grass, the habits of an ant, contain
+for an attentive observer prodigies of wisdom. A drop of dew reflecting
+the beams of morning, the play of light among the leaves of a tree,
+reveal to the poet and the artist treasures of poetry. But too often,
+blinded by habit, we are unable to see; and when our mind is asleep, it
+seems to us that the universe slumbers. A sudden flash of light can
+sometimes arouse us from this lethargy. If science all at once delivers
+up to us some one of those grand laws which reveal in thousands of
+phenomena the traces of one and the same mind, the astonishment of our
+intellect excites in our soul an emotion of adoration. When the first
+rays of morning light up with a pure brightness the lofty summits of our
+Alps; when the sun at his setting stretches a path of fire along the
+waters of our lake, who does not feel impelled to render glory to the
+supreme Artist? When dark cold fogs rest upon our valleys at the decline
+of autumn, it only needs sometimes to climb the mountain-side, in order
+to issue all at once from the gloomy region, and see the chain of high
+peaks, resplendent with light, mark themselves out upon a sky of
+incomparable blue. Often have I given myself the delight of this grand
+spectacle, and always at such a time my heart has uttered spontaneously
+from its depths that hymn of adoration:
+
+
+     Tout l'univers est plein de sa magnificence.
+     Qu'on l'adore, ce Dieu, qu'on l'invoque a jamais![99]
+
+
+Such is, in the presence of nature, the spontaneous movement of the
+heart and of the reason. But a false wisdom obscures these clear
+verities by clouds of sophisms. When your heart feels impelled to render
+glory to God, there is danger lest importunate thoughts rise in your
+mind and counteract the impulse of your adoration. Perhaps you have
+heard it said, perhaps you have read, that the accents of spiritual
+song, those echoes, growing ever weaker, of by-gone ages, are no longer
+heard by a mind enlightened by modern science. I should wish to deliver
+you from this painful doubt. I should wish to protect you from the
+fascinations of a false science. I should wish that in the view of
+nature, even those who have as yet no wish to adore, with St. Paul, Him
+whose invisible perfections are clearly seen when we contemplate His
+works, may at least feel themselves free to admire, with Socrates, "the
+supreme God who maintains the works of creation in the flower of youth
+and in a vigor ever new." Let us examine a few of the prejudices which
+it is sought to disseminate, in order to deprive of their force the
+reasonings of Newton, and to turn us from the opinions of Kepler.
+
+It is said that science leads away from God, and that faith continues to
+be the lot only of the ignorant. Listen on this head first of all to the
+Italian Franchi. "The class of society in which infidels and sceptics
+especially abound is that of savants and men of letters,--men, in short,
+who have gone through studies, in the course of which they have
+certainly become acquainted with the famous demonstrations of the
+existence of God. But no sooner have they examined them with their own
+eyes, and submitted them to the criterion of their own judgment, than
+these demonstrations no longer demonstrate anything; these reasonings
+turn out to be only paralogisms."[100] Here we have the thesis in its
+general form: to become an infidel or a sceptic, it is enough to be a
+well educated man. The German Buechner will now show us the application
+of this notion to the special study of nature. "At this day, our hardest
+laborers in the sciences, our most indefatigable students of nature,
+profess materialistic sentiments."[101] The same tendencies are often
+manifested among French writers. The author of a recent astronomical
+treatise, for example, draws a veil of deceitful words over the profound
+faith of Kepler, and takes evident pleasure in throwing into relief the
+tokens of sympathy bestowed unfortunately by the learned Laplace upon
+atheism.[102] Here then we have open attempts to found a prejudice
+against religion on the authority of science; and these attempts disturb
+the minds of not a few. I ask two questions on this head. Is it true, in
+fact, that modern naturalists are generally irreligious? Is it possible
+that the science of nature, rightly considered, should lead to
+atheism?[103]
+
+Let us begin with the question of fact; and first of all let us settle
+clearly the bearing and object of this discussion. I wish to destroy a
+prejudice, and not to create one. I am not proposing to you to take the
+votes of savants, in order to know whether God exists. No. Though all
+the universities in Europe should unite to vote it dark at mid-day, I
+should not cease on that account to believe in the sun, and that,
+Gentlemen, in common with you all, and with the mass of my fellow-men. I
+have instituted a sort of inquiry in order to ascertain whether modern
+naturalists have in general been led to atheistical sentiments, as some
+would have us believe. In appealing to the recollections of my own
+earlier studies and subsequent reading, I have marked the names of the
+men best known in the various sciences, and I have inquired what
+religious opinions they may have publicly manifested. I will now give
+you briefly the result of my labor.
+
+I have left astronomy out of the question, considering that,
+notwithstanding the great notoriety of Laplace, we have in Kepler and
+Newton a weight of authority sufficient to counterbalance that which it
+is desired to connect with his name. Descending to the earth, we
+encounter first of all the general science of our globe, or geography.
+In this order of studies a German, Ritter, enjoys an incontestable
+preeminence. He is called, even in France, the "creator of scientific
+geography." Scientific geography rests for support on nearly all the
+sciences: it proceeds from the general results of chemistry, physics,
+and geology. Had then the vast knowledge of Ritter turned him away from
+God? I had read somewhere[104] that he was one of those savants who have
+best realized the union of science and faith. One of my friends who was
+personally acquainted with him has described him to me, not only as a
+man who adored the Creator in the view of the creation, but as an
+amiable and zealous Christian, who exerted himself to communicate to
+others his own convictions.
+
+From the general study of the globe, let us pass to that of the
+organized beings which people its surface. Does botany teach the human
+mind to dispense with God? Let us listen to Linnaeus. I open the _System
+of Nature_,[105] and on the reverse of the title-page I read: "O Lord,
+how manifold are Thy works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth
+is full of Thy riches."[106] I turn over a few leaves, and I meet with a
+table which comprises, under the title, _Empire of Nature_, the general
+classification of beings. The commencement is as follows: "Eternal God,
+all-wise and almighty! I have seen Him as it were pass before me, and I
+remained confounded. I have discovered some traces of His footsteps in
+the works of the creation; and in those works, even in the least, even
+in those which seem most insignificant, what might! what wisdom! what
+inexplicable perfection!--If thou call Him _Destiny_, thou art not
+mistaken, it is He upon whom all depends. If thou call Him _Nature_,
+thou art not mistaken, it is He from whom all takes its origin. If thou
+call Him _Providence_, thou speakest truly; it is by His counsel that
+the universe subsists." Another great naturalist, George Cuvier, takes
+care to point out that "Linnaeus used to seize with marked pleasure the
+numerous occasions which natural history offered him of making known the
+wisdom of Providence."[107] Thus modern botany was founded in a spirit
+of piety. Has it, at a later period, made any discoveries calculated to
+efface from the life of vegetables the marks of Divine intelligence?
+Allow me to introduce here a personal _souvenir_. I received lessons in
+my youth from an old man, who, having once been the teacher of De
+Candolle, remained his friend.[108] By a rather strange academical
+arrangement, M. Vaucher found himself set to teach us--not botany, for
+which he possessed both taste and genius,[109] but a science of which he
+knew but little, and which he liked still less. So it came to pass that
+a good part of the hour of lecture was often filled up with familiar
+conversations. These conversations took us far away from church history,
+which we were supposed to be learning. The misplaced botanist reverted,
+by a natural impulse, to his much-loved science; and I have seen him
+shed tears of tender emotion, in his Professor's chair, as he spoke to
+us of the God who made the primrose of the spring, and concealed the
+violet under the hedge by the wayside. Therefore is the recollection of
+that old man not only living in my memory, but also dear to my heart.
+Still he was a savant, an enthusiastic naturalist; and, in the broad
+light of the nineteenth century, he felt and spoke like Linnaeus.
+
+Let us pass to the study of animals. I had the wish, some years ago, to
+procure the best of modern treatises upon physiology. I was directed to
+the work of Professor Mueller, of Berlin. This book has not lost its
+value,--for, this very morning, a student of our faculty of sciences
+came to me to borrow it, by the advice of his masters. Mueller was a
+great physiologist, and he made an open profession of the Christian
+religion. Have we not the right to conclude that he believed in God? In
+France, I could cite more than one name in support of my thesis; I
+confine myself to a single fact. The attention of the scientific world
+has very recently been occupied with the discoveries of M. Pasteur. M.
+Pasteur has ascertained that the decomposition of organized bodies,
+after death, is effected by the action of small animals almost
+imperceptible, the germs of which the larger animals carry in
+themselves, as living preparatives for their interment. The design of
+Providence reveals itself to his understanding, and he writes: "The
+immediate elements of living bodies would be in a manner indestructible,
+if from the beings which God has created were taken away the smallest,
+and, in appearance, the most useless. Life would thus become impossible,
+because the return to the atmosphere and to the mineral kingdom of all
+that has ceased to live would be all at once suspended."[110] In other
+words: I have studied facts hitherto incompletely observed, and my study
+has revealed to me a new manifestation of that Divine wisdom of which
+the universe bears the impression.
+
+England possesses a naturalist of the first order, whom his
+fellow-countrymen take a pleasure in comparing to George
+Cuvier--Professor Owen. This savant lectured, a few months ago, before a
+numerous auditory, on the relations of religion and natural
+science.[111] He is fully possessed of all the information which the
+times afford,--is not ignorant of modern discoveries,--is, in fact, one
+of the princes of contemporary science. Well, Gentlemen, Mr. Owen
+repeats, with reference to animals, what Newton was led to say by his
+contemplation of the heavens, and Linnaeus by his study of the plants. He
+is not afraid to admire with Galen the marvellous wisdom which presided
+over the organization of living bodies. His discourse is entitled, _The
+Power of God in His Animal Creation_. The more we understand, he says,
+the more we admire, the more we adore. He pauses in view of the
+marvellous productions of nature, beside which the most delicate works
+of human industry appear, beneath the microscope, but coarse, rough
+hewings; he compares our most highly finished machines to the living
+machines made by the hand of God, and infers that, not to discern
+intelligence in the relation of means to ends, necessarily implies in
+the mind a defect similar to that of eyes which are unable to
+distinguish colors. Mr. Owen declares that such a state of mind and
+feeling in a naturalist may provoke blame from some and pity from
+others, and remains for him, so far as he is concerned, absolutely
+incomprehensible.
+
+Again, do the most learned chemists find in the study of the elements of
+matter a revelation of atheism? M. Liebig, I have been told, is one of
+the first chemists of our epoch. He believed he had discovered an
+application of chemistry to agriculture, the effect of which would be to
+furnish a remedy to the exhaustion of the soil. His discovery turned out
+false, and a more attentive study of his subject led him to ascertain
+that the object which he was pursuing was actually realized by Divine
+Providence in a way of which he had had no suspicion. The following is
+his own account of this, published in 1862: "After having submitted all
+the facts to a new and very searching examination, I discovered the
+cause of my error. I had sinned against the wisdom of the Creator, and I
+had received my just punishment. I was wishing to perfect His work, and,
+in my blindness, I thought that in the admirable chain of laws which
+preside over life at the surface of the earth, and maintain it ever in
+freshness, there was wanting a link which I, feeble and impotent worm,
+was to supply. Provision had been made for this beforehand, but in a way
+so wonderful, that the possibility of such a law had not so much as
+dawned upon the human understanding."[112] Here is a confession very
+noble in its humility; and to this chemist, who thus renders glory to
+God, no one of his colleagues could say: "If you had as much science as
+we, you would say no more about the wisdom of the Creator."
+
+Let us pass on to natural philosophers. I have taken a special interest
+in this part of my inquiry, because I had read in the productions of a
+literary man of Paris, that modern physics have placed those at fault
+who defend the doctrine of the living and true God. I inquired
+accordingly of a man, very well able to give me the information, whether
+there exists in Europe a natural philosopher holding a position of quite
+exceptional distinction. I received for reply: "You may say boldly that,
+by the unanimous consent of men of science, Mr. Faraday, in regard both
+to the greatness and range of his discoveries, is the first natural
+philosopher living." After having thus made myself sure, therefore, on
+this point, I took the liberty of writing to Mr. Faraday the following
+letter:
+
+
+                                       "GENEVA, 30th October, 1863.
+
+     "SIR,
+
+     "I have the intention of commencing shortly, at Geneva, and for an
+     auditory of men, a course of lectures designed to combat the
+     manifestations of contemporary atheism. To this deplorable error I
+     desire to oppose faith in God, as it has been given to the world by
+     the Gospel, faith in the Heavenly Father.
+
+     "One of my lectures will be specially devoted to the removal of
+     prejudices against religion which have their origin in natural
+     science. It is said very often, and very boldly, that modern
+     physics and modern chemistry demonstrate the unfounded character of
+     religious beliefs. These theses are maintained at Geneva as
+     elsewhere. I should wish to reply that natural science does not of
+     itself turn men from God, and that without being able to give
+     faith, it confirms the faith of those who believe: this I should
+     wish to establish by citing names invested, in science, with an
+     incontestable and solid renown. Will you, Sir, authorize me to make
+     use of your name?"
+
+
+Mr. Faraday, in reply, sent me the following letter, dated 6th Nov.
+1863.
+
+
+     "SIR,
+
+     ...."You have a full right to make use of my name: for although I
+     generally avoid mixing up things sacred and things profane, I have,
+     on one occasion, written and published a passage which accords to
+     you this right, and which I maintain. I send you a copy of it. I
+     hope you will find nothing in any other part of my researches, to
+     contradict or weaken in any way whatever the sense of this passage.
+
+     "I beg you to transmit my best remembrances to my friend M. de la
+     Rive...."
+
+
+The passage thus indicated establishes a line of demarcation, very
+strongly (perhaps too strongly) drawn between researches of the reason
+and the domain of religious truth, and contains a profession of positive
+faith in Revelation. The author affirms that he has never recognized any
+incompatibility between science and faith, and makes the following
+declaration: "Even in earthly matters I reckon that 'the invisible
+things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
+understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and
+Godhead.'"
+
+A literary man of Paris declares to us that natural science leads away
+from God: one of the first savants of our time informs us that the
+scientific contemplation of nature renders the wisdom of God manifest.
+The question is one of fact. To whom shall we give our confidence? For
+my part, since it is natural philosophy which is in question, I rank
+myself on the side of the Natural Philosopher.
+
+We will here terminate this review. It is time, however, which fails us,
+not subject-matter, for continuing it. You may have noticed that the
+name of no one of the savants of Switzerland figures in this inquiry.
+Nevertheless our country would have furnished a rich mine for my
+purpose. It contains (and it is one of its best privileges) a goodly
+number of savants, whom the observation of the facts of matter have not
+caused to forget the claims of mind, and who know how to raise their
+souls to the Author of the marvels which they study. You will understand
+therefore that it has not been from anxiety for my cause, but from a
+motive of discretion, that I have forborne to bring into this discussion
+the names of men in whom we have a near interest, and many of whom
+perhaps are present in this assembly. I will take advantage of Mr.
+Faraday's letter to make a single exception, by naming M. de la Rive.
+More than once, and in public, we have heard him distinctly point out
+the place occupied by the sciences of mind in relation to the natural
+sciences, and render glory to the Creator. And I do not think that any
+one, in Switzerland or elsewhere, can claim to speak with disdain, in
+the name of the physical sciences, of the religious convictions boldly
+professed by our learned fellow-countryman.[113]
+
+Recollect, Gentlemen, that I have not undertaken to prove the existence
+of God, by making appeal to the authority of men of science. All I have
+sought to do has been to destroy a prejudice. They tell us, and scream
+it at us, that the best naturalists become atheists. This is not true,
+as I think I have shown. There do exist atheists who cultivate the
+natural sciences,--no doubt of the fact. But even though half the whole
+number of naturalists were atheists, inasmuch as other naturalists, and
+those some of the greatest, find in their studies new motives to
+adoration, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true cause why
+these savants repudiate religion has nothing to do with their science.
+We shall come to be more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass
+now from the question of fact to considerations of sound reason.
+
+The weakness of the human mind leads it to forget the facts with which
+it is not occupied. All special culture of the intellect risks
+consequently the paralyzing a part of our faculties. Hegel, lost in
+abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by
+pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race. A
+geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and
+demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic
+masterpiece, "And what does that prove?" A physiologist absorbed in the
+study of sensible phenomena says: "Where is that soul they talk of? I
+have never seen it." These are phenomena of the same order. This
+infirmity of the mind, which leads certain savants to think that the
+ordinary subject of their studies is everything, must not be imputed to
+science. A man accustomed to the exclusive observation of material
+phenomena, may become a materialist by the effect of his mental habits,
+and this really happens, in fact, in too many instances; but the study
+in itself is not responsible for this result. Let us endeavor to prove
+this, by clearly defining the object of the natural sciences.
+
+When the matter of a phenomenon is given to us, the understanding
+proposes to itself three questions:
+
+1. How does the fact manifest itself? what is the mode of its existence?
+The answer gives us the law of the phenomenon. Bodies fall to the ground
+at a determined rate of speed: the determination of this rate is the law
+of their fall.
+
+2. What is the real effective power which produces the phenomenon? This
+is the inquiry after the cause.
+
+3. What is the intention which presided at the production of the
+phenomenon? This is the search after the object, which philosophers call
+the final cause.
+
+What we call understanding or explaining a fact, is answering these
+three questions; it is finding the law, the cause, the end. This
+analysis was made by Aristotle, and seems to have been well made. The
+science of nature, as it is conceived by the moderns, does not undertake
+to satisfy entirely the desires of the human mind. It confines itself
+to the first question; it classes phenomena; it then seeks their law;
+arrived at this, it stops. The cause and design of things remain out of
+the sphere of its investigations; the question of God therefore
+continues foreign to it.
+
+A story is told that when Buonaparte expressed his astonishment that the
+Marquis de la Place could have written a large book on the system of the
+universe, without making any mention of the Creator, the learned
+astronomer replied to his sovereign: "Sire, I had no need of that
+hypothesis." The answer is admissible if we regard only the science of
+nature. An astronomer has no need of God in order to follow out the
+series of his calculations, and compare their results with the course of
+the stars; a chemist has no need of God in order to ascertain the simple
+elements combined in composite bodies; a natural philosopher has no need
+of God in order to determine the laws of waves of sound or of electric
+currents. The science of nature does not demonstrate the existence of
+God; still less can it deny His existence. To deny God, it would be
+necessary for science to demonstrate that there is no order, and
+consequently no cause of the order to discover; for when we point out
+the harmony of the universe, we manifestly prepare a basis for the
+argument which, from the intelligence recognized in the phenomena, will
+infer the intelligence of the Power which governs them. To prove that
+there is no order would be to prove that there is no science. For any
+one who well understands the value of terms, the words _atheistical
+science_ contain a contradiction; they signify science which proves that
+there is no science.
+
+Such, Gentlemen, is the real state of the question. Our savants, when
+they remain faithful to their method, seek to determine the laws of
+phenomena, and do not occupy themselves either with the First Cause of
+nature, or with its general object; they leave the question of God on
+one side. Whence come then the negations of naturalists? They arise in
+this way: those savants who succeed in strictly confining themselves
+within the limits of their science are rare exceptions. Almost always
+the _man_ introduces his thoughts into the work of the savant, and the
+results of his study appear to him religious or irreligious, according
+to his views of religion. Newton ends his book with a hymn to the
+Creator; but it is not the _mathematical principles_ of nature which
+have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He perceives the rays of His
+glory because he believes in Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks
+that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled
+from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural
+science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very
+common in this matter, and in both directions. The religious mind does
+not understand how it is possible to contemplate the universe, and not
+see inscribed upon it distinctly the name of its Author; and the
+intrusion of atheism into the sciences of observation is veiled beneath
+confusions of ideas which it is of importance for us to dissipate.
+
+Modern science, as we have said, stops at laws, without troubling itself
+with causes. The laws which determine the series of facts as they offer
+themselves to observation express the mode of the action of the causes.
+There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and
+the manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks that his science
+is everything, he must conclude that we can know nothing beyond the
+laws, and that an insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power of
+which they express the action. But he rarely succeeds in keeping this
+position, and deceives his reason by confounding the laws which he
+discovers with the causes with which his mind is not able to dispense.
+He says first of all with Franchi, "the universe is what it is"; this is
+the general formula of all the truths of experience; then he adds with
+the same author, "it is because it is." This _because_ means nothing, or
+means that laws are their own causes. If it is asked, What is the cause
+of the motion of the stars? they will give for answer the astronomical
+formulae which express this motion, and will think that they have
+explained the phenomena by stating in what way they present themselves
+to observation. This is a curious example of that confusion of ideas
+which opens the door to atheism.
+
+An English naturalist, Mr. Darwin, has shown that in the successive life
+of animal generations, the favorable variations which are produced in
+the organization of a being are transmitted to its descendants and
+insure the perpetuity of its race, while the unpropitious variations
+disappear because they entail the destruction of the races in which they
+are produced. He tells us: "This preservation of favorable variations
+and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural
+Selection."[114] What does the author understand by law? He answers:
+"the series of facts as it is known to us."[115] Here we have the true
+definition of law: it is the simple expression of the series of the
+facts; the cause remains to be sought for. I open the book in another
+part. The author is speaking of the eye; and his doctrine is that the
+eye of the eagle was formed by the slow transformations of an extremely
+simple visual apparatus. There will have been then, in the development
+of animal existence, first of all a rudimentary eye, then an eye
+moderately well formed, and then the eye of the eagle, because the
+favorable modifications of the organ of sight will have been preserved
+and increased in the course of ages. Such is the series of facts, such
+is the law; suppose we grant it. What is the cause? The optician makes
+our spectacles; who made the eye of the eagle, by directing the slow
+transformations which at length produced it? Let us listen to the
+author: "There exists an intelligent power, and that intelligent power
+is natural selection, constantly on the watch for every alteration
+accidentally produced in the transparent layers, in order carefully to
+choose such of those alterations as may tend to produce a more distinct
+image.... Natural selection will choose with infallible skill each new
+improvement effected."[116] Natural selection is a law; a law is the
+series of facts; it seems that we must seek for the power which directs
+this series of facts; but, lo, the series of facts itself is transformed
+into a power--into an intelligent power--into a power which chooses with
+infallible skill! The confusion of ideas is complete. The mind is on a
+wrong scent; it concludes that the law explains everything, and has
+itself no need of explanation. The idea of the cause disappears, and, as
+Auguste Comte expresses it, "science conducts God with honor to its
+frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services."[117] This is not
+perhaps the idea of Mr. Darwin, but it is at any rate the idea of some
+of his disciples, as we shall see by-and-by.
+
+Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight. Let us now see the fate
+to which are consigned those other requirements of the reason--the
+eternal and the infinite. I take up Dr. Buechner's book, and I read: "We
+are incapable of forming an idea, even approximately, of the _eternal_
+and the _infinite_, because our mind, shut up within the limits of the
+senses, in what regards space and time, is quite unable to pass these
+bounds so as to rise to the height of these ideas." I follow the text,
+and thirteen lines further on, in the same page, I read, "Therefore
+matter and space must be eternal."[118] Observe well the use which this
+writer makes of the great ideas of the reason. Is it desired to employ
+them to prove the existence of God? He will have nothing to do with
+them. Is the object in question to deny God's existence? He makes use of
+them; and all in the same page. This is coarse work, no doubt, and Dr.
+Buechner damages his cause; but, under forms, often more subtle and more
+intelligent, the same sophism turns up in all systems of
+materialism.[119] It is affirmed that we have no real idea of the
+infinite, and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need which
+reason feels of this idea by applying it to matter.
+
+Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the natural sciences, in
+the interest of metaphysics. I am not attacking but defending them. I am
+endeavoring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them from the outrages
+which are offered to them by materialism, while it seeks to cover with
+their noble mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on the one
+hand, and theologians and philosophers on the other, are too often at
+war. They are men, and as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not
+unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or with jealous
+rivalries, or with the miserable struggles of envy: with these things
+the passions are chargeable. But never render the sciences responsible
+for the errors of their representatives. Take away human frailties, and
+you shall see harmony established; the study of matter will thus agree
+with the study of mind, and the idea of nature with the idea of God. You
+will see all the sciences rise together in a majestic harmony. I say
+rise, and I say it advisedly; for the sciences also form a part of that
+golden chain which should unite the earth to heaven.
+
+The assertion that the science of nature leads away from God, expresses
+nothing but a prejudice. It is not true in fact, and on principles of
+right reason it is impossible: the demonstration is complete. Atheism is
+a philosophy for which the natural sciences are in no degree
+responsible. We shall not undertake here the general discussion of this
+philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to the examination of the pretence
+which it puts forward to find a new support in the results of modern
+science.
+
+The nineteenth century bestows particular attention upon history, and it
+is not only to the annals of the human race that it directs its
+investigations. Geology and palaeontology dive into the bowels of the
+earth in order to ask of the ground which carries us testimony as to
+what it carried of old. Astronomy goes yet further. It endeavors to
+conjecture what was the condition of our planet before the appearance of
+the first living being. It remarks that the sun is not fixed in the
+heavens, and that our earth does not twice travel over the same line in
+its annual revolutions. It appears that stars are seen in course of
+formation; it is suspected that some have wholly disappeared. Nature is
+not fixed, but is undergoing modifications--lives, in fact. The actual
+state of the universe is but a momentary phase in a development which
+supposes thousands of ages in the past, and seems to presage thousands
+more in the future. These conceptions are the result of solid and
+incontestable discoveries. They have disturbed men's minds, but what is
+their legitimate import? Why, Newton's argument receives new force from
+them. From a blind metaphysical necessity, everywhere and always the
+same, said this great man, no variation could spring. The more it is
+demonstrated that the universe is in course of development and
+modification, the more clearly comes into view the necessity of the
+supreme Power which is the cause of its modifications, and of the
+Infinite intelligence which is directing them to their end. This appears
+to be solid reasoning, and nevertheless atheism has endeavored to strike
+its roots in the ground of modern discoveries. It does this in the
+following way.
+
+If the universe as it is, with the infinite variety of beings which
+people it and the marvellous relations which connect these beings
+mutually together, could be shown to have sprung all at once from
+nothing, or to have emerged from chaos at a given instant, in its full
+harmony, the boldest mind would not venture to regard this miracle of
+intelligence as the product of chance. But modern science, it is said,
+no longer admits of this simple explanation of things: "God created the
+heavens and the earth." This phrase is henceforward admissible only in
+the catechism. We know that all has been produced by slow degrees,
+starting from weak and shapeless rudiments. This grand marvel of the
+universe was not made all of one piece. Man is of recent date;
+quadrupeds at a certain epoch did not exist; animals had a beginning,
+and plants also. The earth was once bare. Formerly, it was perhaps only
+a gaseous mass revolving in space. In course of time, matter was
+condensed; in time it was organized in living cellules; in time these
+cellules became shapeless animals; in time these animals were perfected.
+Time appears therefore to be the "universal factor"; and for the ancient
+formula, "the universe is the creation of God," we are able to
+substitute this other formula, the result, most assuredly, of modern
+science, "the universe is the work of time."
+
+In all this, Gentlemen, I have invented nothing. All I have done has
+been to put into form the theory, the elements of which I have met with
+in various contemporary productions.[120] They bewilder us by heaping
+ages upon ages, and in order to explain nature they substitute the idea
+of time for the ideas of power and intelligence. They seem to suppose
+that what is produced little by little is sufficiently explained by the
+slowness of its formation.
+
+These aberrations of thought have recently been manifested in a striking
+manner on the occasion of the publication of Mr. Darwin's book. This
+naturalist has given his attention to the transformation of organized
+types. He has discovered that types vary more than is generally
+supposed; and that we probably take simple varieties for distinct
+species. His discoveries will, I suppose, leave traces strongly marked
+enough in the history of science. But Mr. Darwin is not merely an
+observer; he is a theorist, dominated evidently by a disposition to
+systematize. Now minds of this character, which render, no doubt, signal
+services to the sciences of observation, are all like Pyrrhus, who,
+gazing on Andromache as he walked by her side,
+
+
+     Still quaffed bewildering pleasure from the view.[121]
+
+
+Their theory is their lady-love; they love it passionately, and
+passionate love always strongly excites the imagination. Mr. Darwin then
+has put forth the hypothesis, that not only all animals, but all
+vegetables too, might have come from one and the same primitive type,
+from one and the same living cellule. This supposes that there was at
+the beginning but one single species, an elementary and very slightly
+defined organization, from which all that lives descended in the way of
+regular generation. The oak and the wild boar which eats its acorn, the
+cat and the flea which lodges in its fur, have common ancestors. The
+family, originally one, has been divided under the influence of soil,
+climate, food, moisture, mode of life, and by virtue of the natural
+selection which has preserved and accumulated the favorable
+modifications which have occurred in the organism. Mr. Darwin, I repeat,
+appears to me a man strongly disposed to systematize, but I do not on
+this account conclude that he is mistaken. The question is, what opinion
+we must form of his doctrine on principles of experimental science?
+Professor Owen[122] does not appear to allow it any value; M. Agassiz
+does not admit it at all;[123] and, without crossing the ocean, we
+might consult M. Pictet,[124] who would reply, that judging by the
+experimental data which we have at present, this doctrine is an
+hypothesis not confirmed by the observation of facts. We will leave this
+controversy to naturalists. What will remain eventually in their science
+of the system under discussion? The answer belongs to the future
+enlightened by experience and by the employment of a sage induction.
+What is the relation existing between these systematic views and the
+question of the Creator? This is the sole object of our study.
+
+The opinions of the English naturalist are very dubious as to the vital
+questions of religious philosophy. I have pointed out to you the
+confusion of his ideas in the use which he makes of natural selection.
+In the text of his book, he admits, in the special case of life, the
+intervention of the Creator for the production of the first living
+being, and he does not speak of man, except in an incidental sentence,
+which only attentive readers will take any notice of. If we do not take
+the liberty to look a little below the surface, we must say that Mr.
+Darwin remains on the ground of natural history. Therefore I spoke to
+you of the aberrations of philosophic thought which have been produced
+_on the occasion_ of his book. These aberrations are the following:
+
+First of all, natural selection has been taken for a cause, or rather as
+dispensing with the necessity for a cause, by means of a confusion of
+ideas for which the author is responsible. The system has therefore been
+understood as implying, that organized beings were formed without plan,
+without design, by the mere action of material causes, and as the result
+of modifications casual at first, and slowly accumulated. Divine
+intelligence and creative power thus seemed to be disappearing from the
+organization of the universe, and to disappear especially before the
+lapse of time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes. But
+while the system was taking wing, and soaring aloft, lo! the Creator at
+the commencement of things, and man conceived as a distinct being at the
+highest point of nature, have risen up as two idols and paralyzed its
+flight. To Mr. Darwin, however, have speedily succeeded disciples
+compromising their master's authority, and addressing him in some such
+language as this: "You, our master, do not fully follow out your own
+opinions; you strain off gnats,[125] and swallow camels. It is not more
+difficult to see in the living cellule a transformation of matter, and
+in man a transformation of the monkey, than to point out in a sponge the
+ancestor of the horse. Cast down your idols, and confess that matter
+developed in course of time, under favorable circumstances, is the
+origin of all that is." Matter, time, circumstances--these things have
+taken the place of God.
+
+This, Gentlemen, is a philosophy, properly so called, which vainly
+pretends to find a support in the observation of facts. Geoffroy
+Saint-Hilaire, the rival of Cuvier, set forth views analogous to those
+which Mr. Darwin has lately reproduced. But in his replies to the
+attacks which were made upon his system, he affirmed that his theory
+offered "one of the most glorious manifestations of creative power, and
+an additional motive for admiration, gratitude, and love."[126] Two
+different interpretations may therefore be given to the system. I wish
+to show you that these interpretations proceed in all cases from
+considerations external to the system. The system in itself, as a theory
+of natural history, could not in any way affect injuriously the great
+interests of spiritual truth.
+
+In order solidly to establish this assertion, I will suppose the
+hypotheses of the most advanced disciples of Mr. Darwin to have been
+verified by experimental science. I take for granted that it has been
+proved that all plants and all animals have descended, by way of regular
+generation, from living cellules originally similar; and that the
+material particles of the globe, at a given moment, drew together to
+form these cellules. And now where do we stand? Will God henceforward be
+a superfluous hypothesis? Do the atheistical consequences which it is
+desired to draw from this doctrine proceed logically from it? Most
+certainly not!
+
+I observe first of all that there exists a great question relative to
+the beginning of things. Matter is perfected and organized in process of
+time--but whence comes matter itself? Is it also formed little by little
+in process of time? Does non-existence become existence little by
+little? So it is said in the preface to the French translation of Mr.
+Darwin's book. But this appertains to high metaphysics; and I pass on.
+
+If time is the factor of all progress by a necessary law, this necessity
+must be everywhere the same. Have the elements of matter all the same
+age? If so, why have some followed the law of progress, and others not?
+Why has this mud and this coal remained mud and coal, age after age,
+while these other molecules have risen, in the hierarchy of the
+universe, to the dignity of life? Why have these mollusks remained
+mollusks throughout the succession of their generations, while others,
+happily transformed, have gradually mounted the steps of the ladder up
+to man? Whence comes this aristocracy of nature? Are the beings which we
+call inferior only the cadets of the universe, and are they too in their
+turn to mount all the steps of the ladder? Must we admit that there is
+going on the continual production, not only of living cellules which are
+beginning new series of generations, but also of new matter, which,
+setting out from the most rudimentary condition, is beginning the
+evolution which is to raise it into life? They do not venture to put
+forth theses of this nature, and, in order to account for the diversity
+of things, recourse is had to circumstances. The diversity of
+circumstances explains the diversity of developments. But whence can
+come the variety of circumstances in a world where all is produced in
+the way of fatal necessity, and without the intervention of a will and
+an intelligence? This is the remark of Newton. Study carefully the
+systems of materialism: their authors declare that to have recourse to
+God in order to account for the universe is a puerile conception
+unworthy of science, because all explanation must be referred to fixed
+and immutable laws; and then you will be for ever surprising them in the
+very act of the adoration of _circumstances_. Convenient deities these,
+which they summon to their aid in cases which they find embarrassing.
+
+But we will not insist on these preliminary considerations. We have
+allowed, for argument's sake, that all organized beings have proceeded
+by means of generation from cellules presenting to sensible observation
+similar appearances. Natural history cannot prove, nor even attempt to
+prove, more. Let us transport ourselves, in thought, to the moment at
+which the highest points of the continents were for the first time
+emerging from the primitive ocean. We see, on the parts of the soil
+which are half-dried, and in certain conditions of heat and electricity,
+particles of matter draw together and form those rudiments of organism
+which are called living cellules. These cellules have the marvellous
+faculty of self-propagation, and the faculty, not less marvellous, of
+transmitting to their posterity the favorable modifications which they
+have undergone. Generations succeed one another; gradually they form
+separate branches. New characteristics show themselves; the organisms
+become complicated, and becoming complicated they separate. The
+vegetable is distinguished from the animal; the plant which will become
+the palm-tree is distinguished from the oak which is in course of
+formation, and the ancestor of the future bird is already different from
+that of the fish. We follow up this great spectacle. The ages pass, they
+pass by thousands and by millions, they pass by tens of millions. We
+need not be stinting in our allowance of time; our imagination will be
+tired of conceiving of it sooner than thought of supplying it. And at
+what shall we have arrived at last? At the universe as it has been for
+some few thousands of years past; at the world with its vegetables of a
+thousand forms, grouped by classes and series, with the families of
+animals, with the relations of animals to plants, with the unnumbered
+harmonies of nature. Let us choose out one particular, on which to fix
+our attention. Shall it be a she-goat--
+
+
+     Upstretched on fragrant cytisus to browse?
+
+
+This will suit our purpose, although the cytisus, unless I am mistaken,
+has no perfume except in M. de Lamartine's verses. Let us fix our
+attention on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down, and the
+goat bending its pliant branches as it browses on the foliage. Here is a
+very small detail in the ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to
+help our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a naturalist who will
+answer for us the questions suggested by this simple spectacle. And what
+have we now before us? The various relations of the animal's
+organization to the vegetables on which it feeds. In the organization
+and functions of these two living beings, in the equilibrium and
+movements of their frames, in the circulation of sap and of blood, we
+have the application of the most secret laws of mechanism, of physics,
+and of chemistry. Then again, in the relations which the animal and the
+plant sustain with the ground which bears them, with the air they
+breathe, with the sun which enlightens them, with heat and light, with
+the moisture of the air and its electricity--in all this we see the
+universal relations which connect all the various parts of the wide
+universe with each one of its minutest details. In this simple spectacle
+we have, in fact, reciprocal relations, the balance of things, the
+harmony which maintains the universal life--intelligence, in short, in
+the organization of beings, in the characteristics which divide them, in
+the classes which unite them, in the relations of these classes amongst
+themselves;--wonders of intelligent design, of which the sciences we are
+so proud of are spelling out, letter by letter, line after line, the
+inexhaustible abysses: this is what we find everywhere. Let us now come
+back to our primitive cellules.
+
+All the living beings which people the surface of the globe are composed
+materially of some of the elements of the earth's substance. The birth
+therefore of the first living beings could only offer to the view the
+bringing together of some of the elements of the soil; this is not the
+matter in question. The primitive cellules were to all appearance
+alike. Weighed in scales, opened by the scalpel, placed beneath the
+microscope, they would have offered no appreciable difference; I grant
+it: it is the supposition we have agreed to make. Therefore they were
+identical, say you. I deny it, and here is my proof: If the cellules had
+been identical, they would not have given, in the successive development
+of their generations, the diverse beings which people the world, and the
+relations which unite them. Alike to your eyes, the cellules differed
+therefore by a concealed property which their development brought to
+light. You have told me as a matter of history how the organization of
+the world was manifested by slow degrees; you have given me no account
+of the cause of that organization.
+
+It is said in reply: "We do know the origin of those developments which
+you refer to a supposed intelligence. The living beings are transformed
+by the action of food, climate, soil, mode of life. They experience
+slight variations in the first instance; but these variations are
+established, and increase; and where you see a plan, types, and species,
+there is really only the result of modifications slowly accumulated.
+Nature disposes of periods which have no limit, and everything has come
+at its proper time, in the course of ages." They are always proposing to
+us to accept of time as the substitute for intelligence. I am tempted to
+say with Alcestis:
+
+
+     Time in this matter, Sirs, has nought to do.[127]
+
+
+You know what intelligence is; you know it by knowing yourself. Is
+there, or is there not, intelligence in the universe? Allow me to
+reproduce some old questions: If a machine implies intelligence, does
+the universe imply none? If a telescope implies intelligence in the
+optician, does the eye imply none in its author? The production of a
+variety of the camelia, or of a new breed of swine, demands of the
+gardener and the breeder the patient and prolonged employment of the
+understanding; and are our entire flora and fauna to be explained
+without any intervention of mind? And if there is intelligence in the
+universe, is this intelligence a chemical result of the combination of
+molecules? is it a physical result of caloric or of electricity? It is
+in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited time; what has
+time to do here? Whether the world as it now exists arose out of
+nothing, or whether it was slowly formed during thousands of ages, the
+question remains the same. With matter and time, you will not succeed in
+creating intelligence; this were an operation of transcendent alchemy
+utterly beyond our power. In the theory of _slow causes_, the adjective
+ends by devouring the substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming
+slow the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason upsets, like a
+house of cards, the structures of this erring and misnamed science. Time
+has a relative meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or short,
+by taking human life as our measure. But they tell of insects which are
+born in the morning, arrive at mature age at mid-day, and only reach the
+evening if they are patriarchs of their race. Is it not easy to conceive
+of beings organized for an existence such that our centuries would be
+moments with them, and centuries heaped together one of our hours?
+Suppose one of these beings to be contemplating our geological periods,
+and slow causes will to him appear rapid causes, and the question of
+intelligence will be the same for him as for us.
+
+It is manifest that the attempt is being made to restore the worship of
+the old _Chronos_, to whom the ancients had erected temples. Let us
+look the idol in the face. Time appears at first to our imagination as
+the great destroyer. He is armed with a scythe, and passes gaunt and
+bald over the ruins of all that has lived. When he lifts up his great
+voice and cries--
+
+
+     Mighty nations famed in story
+       Into darkness I have hurled,--
+     Gone their myriads and their glory
+       (Lo! ye follow) from the world:
+     My dark shade for ever covers
+       Stars I quenched as on they rolled:--
+
+
+the beautiful, and frightened girl in the song is not singular as she
+exclaims in her terror:
+
+
+     Ah! we're young, and we are lovers,
+       Spare us, Reaper gaunt and old![128]
+
+
+Such is the first impression which time makes upon us. But birth
+succeeds to death. From an inexhaustible spring, nature sends gushing
+forth new products and new developments. Youth full of hope trips
+lightly over the ground, without a thought that the ground it treads on
+is the vast cemetery of all past generations. If we fix our thoughts on
+the permanence of life and the manifestations of progress, time appears
+to us as the great producer. Destroyer of all that is, producer of all
+that is to be, time has thus a double form. It is a mysterious tide,
+ever rising and ever receding; it is the power of death, and it is the
+power of life. All this, Gentlemen, is for the imagination. In the view
+of a calm reason, time is the simply negative condition of all
+development, as space is the negative condition of all motion. Just as
+without bodies and forces infinite space could not produce any motion;
+so, without the action of causes, ages heaped on ages could neither
+produce nor destroy a single atom of matter, or a single element of
+intelligence. Time is the scene of life and of death; it neither causes
+to be born, nor to die.
+
+The struggle which we are now maintaining against the philosophers of
+matter is as ancient as science, and was going on, nearly in the same
+terms, more than two thousand three hundred years ago. About five
+hundred years before the Christian era was born at Clazomenae, a city of
+Ionia, the son of Eubulus, who was to become famous by the name of
+Anaxagoras. He fixed his abode at Athens, and the Athenian people gave
+him a glorious surname,--they called him _Intelligence_. On what
+account? There were taught at that time doctrines which explained the
+world by the transformations of matter rising progressively to life and
+thought, without the intervention of a mind. The philosopher Anaximander
+gave out that the first animals had their origin in the watery element,
+and became modified by living in drier regions, so that man was only a
+fish slowly transformed. "I am quite willing to grant it," replied
+Anaxagoras; "but for your transformations there must be a transforming
+principle. Matter is the material of the world, no doubt; but it could
+not produce universal order except as ruled by intelligence." The
+Athenians admired this discovery. For us, Gentlemen, the discovery has
+been made a long while. Let us not then be talking in this discussion
+about modern science and the lights of the age. Our natural history is
+much advanced as compared with that of the Greeks; but the vital
+question has not varied. Does nature manifest the intervention of a
+directing mind, or do we see in it only a fortuitous aggregation of
+atoms?
+
+Intelligence radiates from the face of nature, and it is in vain that
+men endeavor to veil its splendor. Nevertheless I consent to forget all
+that has just been said, in order to intrench myself in an argument,
+which of itself is sufficient for the object we have in view to-day. Our
+object is to prove that material science does not contain the
+explanation of all the realities of the universe. Even though they had
+succeeded in persuading us that there is no intelligence in nature, it
+would still be necessary to explain the origin of that intelligence
+which is in us, and the existence of which cannot be disputed. Whence
+proceeds the mind which is in ourselves?
+
+Let us first of all give our attention to a strange contradiction. Those
+savants who make of the human soul a simple manifestation of matter, are
+the same who wish to explain nature without the intervention of the
+Divine intelligence. In order to keep out of view the design which is
+displayed in the organization of the world, they take a pleasure in
+finding nature at fault, and in pointing out its imperfections. Still,
+they do not pretend to be able to do better than nature; they would not
+undertake the responsibility of correcting the laws of life, and
+regulating the course of the seasons. They do not say, "We could make a
+better world," but "We can imagine a world more perfect than our own."
+Now what is our answer? Simply this: "You are right." Nature is not the
+supreme perfection, and therefore we will not worship it. How admirable
+soever be the visible universe, we have the faculty of conceiving more
+and better. We understand that the atmosphere might be purified, so that
+the tempest should not engulf the ships, nor the thunderbolt produce the
+conflagration. We dream of mountain-heights more majestic than the
+loftiest summits of our Alps, of waters more transparent than the pure
+crystal of our lakes, of valleys fresher and more peaceful than the
+loveliest which hide among our hills. The spectacle of nature awakens in
+us the powers of thought, and the sentiment of beauty draws us on to the
+pursuit of an ideal which surpasses all realities. Nature is not
+perfect: let us be forward to acknowledge it, and let us draw from the
+fact its legitimate consequence. The stream cannot rise higher than its
+source. If man conceives an ideal superior to nature, he is not himself
+the mere product of nature. By what strange contradiction is it affirmed
+at once that our spirit overpasses the bounds of all the realities
+which encompass it, and that it has not a source more elevated than
+those realities? Listen to a thought of that weighty writer
+Montesquieu:[129] "Those who have said that a blind fatality has
+produced all the effects which we see in the world, have said a great
+absurdity; for what greater absurdity than a blind fatality which should
+have produced intelligent beings?" Without restricting ourselves to this
+simple and solid argument, let us see how they will explain man by
+nature. For this end, we must examine the theory of the perfected
+monkey, which, introduced to us by the lectures of Professor Vogt and
+the spirited rejoinders of M. de Rougemont, made a great noise as it
+descended a short time ago from the mountains of Neuchatel.[130] A
+celebrated orator said one day to an assembly of Frenchmen: "I am long,
+Gentlemen; but it is your own fault: it is your glory that I am
+recounting." Have not I the right to say to you: "I am long, Gentlemen,
+but it is worth while to be so; it is our own dignity which is in
+question."
+
+Man is a perfected monkey! I have three preliminary observations to make
+before I proceed to the direct examination of this theory.
+
+In the first place, this definition transgresses the first and most
+essential rules of logic. We must always define what is unknown by what
+is known. This is an elementary principle. What a man is, I know. To
+think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear, are functions of the mental
+life. These words answer to clear ideas, because those ideas result
+directly from our personal consciousness. But what is the soul of a
+monkey? The nature of animals is a mystery, one which is perhaps
+incapable of solution, and which, in all cases is wrapped in profound
+darkness, because the animal appears to us an intermediate link between
+the mechanism of nature and the functions of the spiritual life, which
+are the only two conceptions we have that are really clear and distinct.
+In taking the monkey therefore as our point of departure for the
+definition of man, we are defining what is clear by what is obscure.
+
+My second remark is this: If it is affirmed that there is but one
+species, including all the animals and man, so that man is only a monkey
+modified, and the monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal modified;
+when once we have established the reality of man we arrive at this
+result: all animals whatsoever are only inferior developments of
+humanity, living foetuses which, without having come to their full
+term, have nevertheless the faculty of living and reproducing
+themselves. The animal then is an incomplete man; a theory which raises
+great difficulties, but which is more serious and more easy to
+understand than the doctrine which would have man to be a consummation
+of the monkey.
+
+In fact,--and this is my third observation,--when the theory which I am
+examining is adopted, it must be carried out to its consequences, and
+the bearing of it clearly seen. Man, it is said, is the consummation of
+the monkey. The monkey is an improvement upon some quadruped or other,
+and this quadruped is an improvement upon another, and so on. We must
+descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most elementary
+manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter. If it is not
+admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must be
+admitted that man is a _melange_ of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote,
+phosphorus--a _melange_ which has been brought little by little to
+perfection. Such is the final inference from the doctrine which we are
+examining; and there are theorists who deduce it clearly. Now what is it
+that goes on in the minds of these savants? When the object is to banish
+God from nature, the creative Intelligence is resolved into thousands of
+ages. When it is desired to get rid in man of the reality of mind, they
+seek to resolve the human intelligence into a long series of
+modifications which have caused life to spring from matter, superior
+animals from simpler organisms, and man from the animal. Do not allow
+yourselves to be caught in this trap. Maintain firmly, that, whatever
+the degree of intelligence, of will, of spiritual essence, which may
+exist in animals, if that element is really found in them, it demands a
+cause, and cannot, without an enormous confusion of ideas, be regarded
+as a mere perfecting of matter. In fact, a thing in perfecting itself,
+realizes continually more fully its own proper idea, and does not become
+another thing. A perfect monkey would be of all monkeys the one which is
+most a monkey, and would not be a man. But let us leave the animals in
+the darkness in which they abide for our minds, and let us speak of what
+for us is less obscure.
+
+Our spiritual existence is a fact; it is of all facts the one which is
+best known to us; it is the fact without which no other fact would exist
+for us. And whence proceeds our spirit? To this question, natural
+history has no answer. It is easy to see this, though we grant once
+again to natural history, when made the most of by our adversaries, all
+that it can pretend to claim. Suppose it proved, that in the historical
+development of nature, man has a monkey for his mother. I will grant it,
+and grant it quite seriously in order to ascertain what will be the
+influence of this hypothesis upon the problem on which we are engaged.
+
+If all monkeys were fossils, and if we had a natural history, also
+fossil, setting forth to us the customs and habits of these animals; if
+the savages that are said to be the nearest neighbors to monkeys were
+all fossils; we should find ourselves in presence of a progressive and
+continued development of beings, and, for an inattentive mind, all would
+be easily explained by the slow and continued action of time. But this
+is not the case. All the elements of nature are before our eyes, from
+inorganic matter up to man. We do not see that time suffices for savages
+to become civilized, and still less for monkeys to become men. I was,
+in the spring of this year, in the _Jardin des plantes_ at Paris, musing
+on the question which we are discussing, and I took a good look at the
+monkeys. Come now, I said to myself, canst thou recognize them as thine
+ancestors? The question was badly put. The monkeys are not our
+ancestors, inasmuch as they are living at the same time with us; they
+can only be our cousins, and it would seem that they are the eldest
+branch, as they have best preserved the primitive type. But let us speak
+more seriously. The races of monkeys have lived as long or longer than
+we: it is neither time nor climate which has made men of them.
+Recollect, I pray you, that the words 'time' and 'progress' explain
+nothing. There must have occurred favorable circumstances to transform
+the earth's substance into living cellules, and the living cellules into
+plants clearly marked, and into animals properly so called; and in the
+same way there must have been a propitious circumstance to transform the
+monkey into man. I think so, in fact; and this propitious circumstance
+well deserves to be studied with attention.
+
+Man presents characteristics which distinguish him profoundly from the
+animal races: no one disputes it. He possesses speech; he is capable of
+religion; he exhibits the varied phenomena of civilization, while the
+animals succeed one another generations after generations in the
+unrecorded obscurity of a life for ever the same. Suppose we admit that
+human phenomena presented themselves at first in a very elementary form;
+in rudiments of language and rudiments of religion,--although the
+historical sciences do not quite give this result:--still suppose the
+case that at a given moment a branch of the monkey species presented the
+germ, as little developed as you please, but real, of new phenomena. One
+variety of the monkey species has been endowed with speech, has become
+religious, capable of civilization, and the other varieties of the
+species have not offered the same characteristics, although they have
+had the same number of ages in which to develop themselves. Observe well
+now my process of reasoning. Remark attentively whether I oppose
+theories to facts, whether I substitute oratorical declamations for
+arguments. I grant the hypotheses best calculated, as commonly thought,
+to contradict my theses. I assume that natural history demonstrates by
+solid proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of a monkey;
+and I ask: What is the circumstance which set apart in the animal
+species a branch which presented new phenomena? What is the cause? That
+monkey-author of our race which one day began to speak in the midst of
+his brother-monkeys, amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that
+monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity; that, looking up
+to heaven, said, My God! and that, retiring into himself, said: I!--that
+monkey which, while the female monkeys continued to give birth to their
+young, had sons by the partner of his life and pressed them to his
+heart; that monkey--what shall we say of it? What climate, what soil,
+what regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what drought, what
+light, what combination of phosphorus, what disengagement of
+electricity, separated from the animal races, not only man, but human
+society? humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again, its
+sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles; humanity with its arts,
+its sciences, its religion, its history in short, its history and its
+hopes of immortality? That monkey, what shall we say of it? Do you not
+see that the breath of the Spirit passed over it, and that God said unto
+it: Behold, thou art made in mine image: remember now thy Father who is
+in heaven? Do you not see that though we grant everything to the extreme
+pretensions of naturalists, the question comes up again whole and
+entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine
+that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature,
+that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an
+impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies
+the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first
+man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series
+of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth,
+by making it pass through the long series of animality--the question is
+a grave one, but it is of secondary importance. The first question is to
+know whether we are merely the ephemeral product of the encounter of
+atoms, or whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul, a reality
+in short, with which may connect itself another future than the
+dissolution of the sepulchre; whether there remains another hope than
+annihilation as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants
+after fame, only that evanescent memory which time bears away with
+everything beside.
+
+This is the question. Do not allow it to be put out of sight beneath
+details of physiology and researches of natural history, which can
+neither settle, nor so much as touch the problem. If therefore you fall
+in with any one of these philosophers of matter, bid him take this for
+all your answer: "There is one fact which stands out against your theory
+and suffices to overthrow it: that fact is--myself!" And since, to have
+the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is
+one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance
+of the conscience,--add boldly with Corneille's Medea:
+
+
+     I,--I say,--and it is enough.
+
+
+In fact, nature does not explain man, and to this conclusion has tended
+all that I have said to you to-day.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[97] _Harmonices mundi, libri quinque._
+
+[98] _Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica._
+
+[99]
+
+     The whole universe is full of His magnificence.
+     May this God be adored and invoked for ever!
+
+[100] _Le Rationalisme_, page 19.
+
+[101] _Force et Matiere_, page 262.
+
+[102] _Les Mondes Causeries astronomiques_ by Guillemin; see p. 122 (3rd
+edition), where Kepler is described as an intelligence "penetrated by a
+profound faith in nature and exalted by a noble pride." See also pages
+327 and 336.
+
+[103] The question discussed in these pages must not be confounded with
+that of the relations between the science of nature and the documents of
+revelation. Whether nature can be explained without God is one question.
+Whether geology is in accordance with the language of the book of
+Genesis is another question, as regards both its nature and its
+importance. This latter subject does not come within the scope of these
+lectures. I will merely call attention to the fact, that if nature and
+the sacred text are fixed elements, this is not the case with the
+interpretations of theologians, and the results of geology. It is
+difficult to pronounce upon the exact relation of two quantities more or
+less indeterminate.
+
+[104] In the writings of M. de Rougemont, if I am not mistaken.
+
+[105] _Systema naturae._
+
+[106] Ps. civ. 24.
+
+[107] _Biographie universelle._
+
+[108] _A. P. de Candolle_, by A. de la Rive, pp. 12 and 13.
+
+[109] M. Vaucher's principal title to scientific distinction is his
+_Histoire des conferves d'eau douce_, Geneve, an XI (1803), 4 deg..
+
+[110] _Comptes rendus de l'Academie des Sciences_ of 20 April, 1863,
+page 738.
+
+[111] Exeter Hall Lectures--_The Power of God in His Animal Creation_,
+pamphlet in 12mo. This remarkable lecture contains a twofold
+protest--against the blindness of those savants who fail to recognize
+the presence of God in nature; and against the pretensions of those
+theologians who attack the certain results of the study of nature,
+relying upon texts more or less accurately interpreted.
+
+[112] _Chemistry applied to Agriculture and to Physiology_ (in German).
+Seventh edition. Introd. page 69.
+
+[113] Since these words were spoken, M. de la Rive has been named an
+associated member of the Institute of France (Academy of Sciences), and
+thus elevated to the first of scientific dignities. It might be shown, I
+believe, that the greater number of the eight associates of the Academy
+of Sciences to be found in the world, make profession of their faith in
+God the Creator, the Almighty and Holy One. The silence which others may
+have preserved on the subject would, moreover, be no authority for
+concluding that they do not share in beliefs and sentiments which they
+have not had the occasion perhaps of publicly expressing.
+
+[114] _On the Origin of Species_, page 81. Fifth edition.
+
+[115] _On the Origin of Species_. The text is--"the _necessary_ series
+of facts;" but it would be to do the writer wrong to impute to him the
+idea that observation reveals to us what is _necessary_, in the
+philosophical import of the word.
+
+[116] _On the Origin of Species._
+
+[117] Caro, _L'Idee de Dieu_, page 47.
+
+[118] _Force et Matiere_, page 181.
+
+[119] The Buechner proceeding is found again pretty exactly in _Les
+Mondes_ of M. Amedee Guillemin. This writer affirms (page 60 of the
+third edition) that science does not approach metaphysical questions;
+and asserts in the same page, ten lines further on, that astronomical
+experience leads our reason to the idea of _the eternity of the
+universe_. After that, he may laugh, if he will, at _lovers of the
+absolute_.
+
+[120] See in particular the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, passim.
+
+[121] S'enivrait en marchant du plaisir de la voir.
+
+[122] See the lecture above mentioned.
+
+[123] _Lettres sur les Etats-Unis d'Amerique_, by Lieutenant-Colonel
+Ferri Pisani, page 400.--Letter of 25 Sept. 1861.
+
+[124] On the origin of species, in the _Archives des sciences de la
+Bibliotheque universelle_, March, 1860.
+
+[125] Vous coulez des moucherons.
+
+[126] In his _Principes de philosophie zoologique_, a collection of
+answers made by Geoffroy, in the discussions of the _Academie des
+Sciences_, in 1830.
+
+[127] Voyons, Messieurs, le temps ne fait rien a l'affaire.
+
+[128]
+
+     Sur cent premiers peuples celebres,
+       J'ai plonge cent peuples fameux,
+     Dans un abime de tenebres
+       Ou vous disparaitrez comme eux.
+     J'ai couvert d'une ombre eternelle
+       Des astres eteints dans leur cours.
+     --Ah! par pitie, lui dit ma belle,
+       Vieillard, epargnez nos amours!
+
+[129] _Esprit des Lois_, Bk. I. chap. 1.
+
+[130] _Lecons sur l'homme_, by Carl Vogt (lectures delivered during the
+winter of 1862-1863, at Neuchatel and at Chaux-de-Fonds), 1 vol. 8vo.
+Paris, 1865.--_L'Homme et le Singe_, by Frederic de Rougemont, pamphlet,
+12mo. Neuchatel, 1863.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+_HUMANITY._
+
+(At Geneva, 1st. Dec., 1863.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+Man has need of God. If he be not fallen into the most abject
+degradation, he does not succeed in extinguishing the instinct which
+leads him to inquire after his Creator. A false wisdom labors to still
+the cravings which the truth alone can satisfy; but false wisdom remains
+powerless, and betrays itself continually by some outrageous
+contradiction. Here is a curious example of this:
+
+In a book which was famous in the last century, and which was called the
+gospel of atheism,[131] the Baron d'Holbach explains as follows the
+existence of the universe: "The universe, that vast assemblage of all
+that exists, everywhere presents to our view only matter and
+motion.--Nature is the grand whole which results from the assemblage of
+different material substances, from their different combinations, and
+from the different motions which we see in the universe."[132] Here is a
+clear doctrine: all that exists, the soul included, is nothing but
+matter in motion. I pass from the beginning to the end of the work, and
+I arrive at this conclusion: "O nature! sovereign of all beings! and ye,
+her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, truth! be ye for ever our sole
+divinities; to you it is that the incense and the homage of the earth
+are due."[133] If we try to translate this sort of hymn in accordance
+with the express definitions of the author, we shall obtain the
+following result: "O matter in motion! sovereign of all material
+substances in motion! and ye, virtue, reason, truth, who are various
+names of matter which moves, be ye the only divinities of that moving
+matter which is ourselves." Yet this author was no blockhead. What then
+passed in his mind? He laid down the thesis of materialism: bodies in
+motion are the only reality. But he is all the while a man. The need
+for adoration is not destroyed in his soul, and he deceives himself. He
+defines nature as consisting wholly of matter, and when he sets himself
+to worship it, he entirely forgets his definition. This is not on his
+part a piece of philosophical jugglery, but the manifestation of the
+real condition of our nature, which is always giving the lie, in one
+direction or another, to erroneous systems. The power of wholly
+maintaining himself in error has not been granted to man. He who denies
+God is always deifying something; and all worship which is not that of
+the Eternal and Infinite Mind is stultified by glaring contradictions.
+Here is a recent example of this: We were not a little surprised a short
+time since to see M. Ernest Renan deny clearly enough the immortality of
+our persons, and, in the opening of the very book in which this negation
+appears, to find him invoking the soul of his sister at rest with
+God.[134] Elsewhere, the same writer says that the Infinite Being does
+not exist, that absolute reason and absolute justice exist only in
+humanity, and he concludes his exposition of these views by an
+invocation of the Heavenly Father.[135] The Baron d'Holbach had put
+eight hundred and thirty-nine pages between his materialistic definition
+of the universe and his invocation of nature. Now-a-days everything goes
+faster; and M. Renan places but a few pages of the _Revue des Deux
+Mondes_ between his denial of God and his prayer to the Heavenly Father.
+With this difference, which is to the advantage of the writer of the
+eighteenth century, the process is absolutely the same. The philosopher
+declares God to be an imaginary being, and the future life an illusion;
+but the man protests, and, by a touching illusion of the heart, the man
+who in his system of doctrine has neither God nor hope, finds that he
+has a sister in the realms eternal, and a Father in the heavens. It is
+impossible not to see, especially in literary works destined to a
+success of fashion, the seductive influence of art, the precautions of
+prudence, the concessions made to public opinion; but we cannot wholly
+explain the incredible contradictions of the Holbachs and Renans,
+without allowing full weight to that need for God which shows itself
+even in the farthest wanderings of human thought by sudden and abrupt
+returns.
+
+The illusion which deifies matter in motion is gross enough. It belongs
+only to minds which Cicero called, in the aristocratic pride of a Roman
+gentleman, the plebeians of philosophy.[136] It requires, in fact, no
+great reflection to understand that truth, beauty, and goodness are
+neither atoms nor a certain movement of atoms. The attempt, which is to
+form the subject of our study to-day, that of deifying man, is a far
+more subtle one. Let us first of all inquire into the origin of the
+strange worship which humanity accords to itself.
+
+Nature, considered separately from the beings which receive sensible
+impressions from it, has neither heat nor light. In a world peopled by
+the blind, light would have no name. If all men were entirely paralyzed
+as to their sensations, the idea of heat would not exist. Light and
+heat, regarded as existing in matter itself, without reference to
+sensitive organizations, are, in the opinion of our natural
+philosophers, only determinate movements. In the same way, if nature
+were without any spectator whatever, beauty would not exist; if there
+were nowhere any intelligence, truth would no longer be. In the same way
+again, if there were no wills, goodness, which is nothing else than the
+law of the will, would be a word deprived of all meaning. Beauty
+expresses the object of the perceptions of the soul. Truth denotes the
+quality of the judgments of intelligences. Goodness (I speak of moral
+goodness) expresses a certain direction of the free will. There exists
+no means of causing to proceed from nature, or from matter, the
+attributes of the spiritual being. This is only done by imaginary
+transformations, by a course of arrant juggling. The flame does not feel
+its own heat, light does not see itself, the planets know nothing of the
+laws of Kepler. Materialism is the result of a modesty wholly misplaced
+which leads man to forget himself, in order to attribute gratuitously to
+nature realities which exist only in spiritual beings connected with
+nature by a marvellous harmony. In order therefore to account for the
+universe, we must raise ourselves above the atom in motion, and
+penetrate into a higher world where truth, beauty, goodness become the
+objects of thought. Truth, beauty, goodness conduct the mind to God,
+their eternal source. But there is a philosophy which endeavors to stop
+midway in the ascent of the Divine ladder, and thinks to satisfy itself
+in the contemplation of the true, the beautiful, the good, without
+connecting them with their cause. This philosophy considers the true,
+the beautiful, the good, as ideas which exist by themselves, without a
+supreme Spirit of which they are the manifestation. It has received, in
+consequence, the name of idealism.
+
+To conceive of ideas without a mind, ideas having an existence by
+themselves, is a thing impossible; such a conception is expressed by
+words which give back a hollow sound, because they contain nothing. We
+have already stated this thesis; let us now confirm it by an example. A
+literary Frenchman, M. Taine, would make us understand in what manner
+the universe may be explained without reference to God, and by means of
+a pure idea. Listen well, not to understand, but to make sure that you
+do not understand: "The universe forms a unique being, indivisible, of
+which all the beings are members. At the supreme summit of things, at
+the highest point of the luminous and inaccessible ether, pronounces
+itself the eternal axiom; and the prolonged resounding of this creative
+formula composes, by its inexhaustible undulations, the immensity of the
+universe. Every form, every change, every movement, every idea is one of
+its acts."[137]
+
+M. Taine is a man of humor, and the burlesque has a place in his
+philosophical writings; but in the words which I have just read to you
+he seems to have intended seriously to expound the system which replaces
+God by an idea. Try now to form a definite conception of this universe
+composed of the undulations of an axiom. Do you understand how an axiom
+undulates, and how the heavens and the earth are only the undulations of
+an axiom? Making all allowance for rhetoric and figures, do you
+understand what can be the acts of an axiom, and how an axiom
+_pronounces itself_ without being pronounced? You do not understand it,
+as neither do I. Such doctrines, then, as we have said, can only be the
+portion of a small number of thinkers who have lost, by dint of
+abstraction, the sentiment of reality. The ideas--truth, beauty,
+good--will only exist for the common order of men, under such a system,
+in the human mind, where we have cognizance of them; and thenceforward,
+the ideal, or God, is nothing else than the image of humanity which
+contemplates itself in a sort of mirage. Thus it is that the adoration
+of man by man is disengaged from the high theories of idealism. Let us
+proceed to the examination of this worship, which is cried up
+now-a-days in divers parts of the intellectual globe.
+
+I open the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of the 15th February, 1861. As the
+author of the article I refer to[138] appears to admit "that one
+assertion is not more true than another opposed to it,"[139] we will not
+be so simple as to ask whether he adopts the opinions which he
+propounds. He presents to us, in a rapid sketch, the principal
+tendencies of the modern mind. The modern mind is here characterized by
+one of its declared partisans; you will not take therefore for a wicked
+caricature the picture which he puts before us. Here then are the
+thoughts of the modern mind: "There is only one infinite, that of our
+desires and our aspirations, that of our needs and our efforts.[140] The
+true, the beautiful, the just are perpetually occurring; they are for
+ever in course of self-formation, because they are nothing else than the
+human mind, which, in unfolding itself, finds and knows itself
+again."[141] This is only the French translation of a saying celebrated
+in Germany: "God is not: He becomes." What we call God is the human
+mind. What was there at the beginning of things? The human mind, which
+did not know itself. What will there be in the end? The human mind,
+which, in unfolding itself, will have come to know itself, and will
+adore itself as the supreme God. If this be indeed the final object of
+the universe, it appears that, in the opinion of these philosophers, the
+consummation of all things must be near. Once that humanity, faithful to
+their doctrine, shall have pronounced the lofty utterance, "I am God,
+and there is none else," the world will no longer have any reason for
+existing.
+
+Such is the system of which we have to follow out the consequences. Let
+us take as our point of comparison the old ideas which we are urged to
+abandon.
+
+We usually explain human destinies by the concurrence of two causes,
+infinitely distinct, since the one is creative and the other created,
+but both of which we hold for real: man, and God. Humanity has received
+from its Author the free power which we call will, and the law of that
+will which we name conscience. The law proceeds from God, the liberty
+proceeds from God; but the acts of the created will, when it violates
+its law and revolts against its Author, are the creation of the
+creature. God is the eternal source of good, and liberty is a good; but
+God is not the source of evil, which is distinctly a revolt against Him,
+the abuse of the first of His gifts. Together with will, man has
+received understanding, and gives himself to the search after truth.
+Truth is the object of the understanding, its Divine law. Error is a
+deviation from the law of the understanding, as evil is a deviation from
+the law of the will. Lastly, with will and understanding, man has
+received the faculty of feeling. This faculty applies itself to the
+world of bodies, from which we receive pain or pleasure. But our faculty
+of feeling does not stop there. Above the animal life, the mind has
+enjoyments which are proper to it, and the object of which is beauty.
+Beauty is not only in nature and in works of art, it is everywhere, in
+whatever attracts our love. The sciences are beautiful, and the harmony
+of the truths which are discovered in their order and mutual dependence
+causes us to experience a feeling similar to that produced by the most
+delightful music. Virtue is beautiful; it shines in the view of the
+conscience with the purest brightness, and, as was said by one of the
+ancients, if it could reveal itself to our eyes in a sensible form, it
+would excite in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is ugly
+when once stripped of the delusive fascination of the passions; the
+vicious excesses of the lower nature are ugly and repulsive as soon as
+the intoxication is over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful
+errors but those which contain a larger portion of truth than the
+prosaic verities, which are nothing else than falsehoods put in a
+specious way. Beauty therefore is the law of our feelings, as truth is
+the law of our thought, and good the law of our will. We will not
+inquire now what secret relations shall one day bring together in an
+indissoluble unity of light, the good, the true, and the beautiful, and
+in a unity of darkness, evil, deformity, and falsehood. Let it suffice
+to have pointed out how a threefold aspiration leads man to God, under
+the guidance of the conscience, the understanding, and the feelings; and
+that a threefold rebellion estranges him from God, by sinking him into
+the dark regions of deformity, error, and evil. Humanity has therefore a
+law; it has been endowed with liberty, but that a liberty of which the
+legitimate end is determined. It advances towards this end, or it
+swerves from it. There is a rule above its acts. The thing as it is may
+not be the thing as it ought to be; rebellion is not obedience, and
+good is not evil.
+
+All these consequences are included in the idea of creation. The
+struggle between two opposite principles, a struggle which sums up human
+destiny, is a fact of which each one of us can easily assure himself in
+his own person. What will happen when man, sensible of the law of his
+nature, and conscious of this struggle, proceeds to encounter humanity?
+Each one of us carries humanity in his own bosom. But humanity, the
+character of man which is common to us, and which makes the spiritual
+unity of our species, is found to be altered by the influence of places,
+times, and circumstances. Our reason is encumbered by prejudices of
+birth and education, and by such as we have ourselves created in our
+minds in the exercise of our will. Our sense of beauty is vitiated and
+narrowed by local influences and habits. Our conscience is likewise
+subjected to influences which impair its free manifestation. Every one
+needs to enlarge his horizon. By seeking occasions of intercourse with
+our fellows, we shall learn to discriminate true and eternal beauty in
+the diversity of its manifestations; we shall distinguish the truth from
+the individual prepossessions of our own minds; good and evil,
+disengaged from the narrownesses of habit, will appear to us in their
+real and enduring nature. Our taste will be formed, our conscience
+purified, our mind enlarged; we shall more and more become men, in the
+high and full acceptation of the term. In order that the meeting
+together of the individual and of humanity may produce such fruits, God
+must dwell continually in the sanctuary of the conscience. The inner
+light is kindled in the intercourse of the soul with its Creator; it is
+afterwards brightened and nurtured by the soul's intercourse with the
+traces of God which humanity reveals. But this light makes manifest
+within us, and without us, great darkness. We have no right to abandon
+ourselves to every spectacle which strikes our view. If, in presence of
+what is passing in the world, we are tempted to regard the prosperity of
+the wicked with cowardly envy; if we would fill up, for the satisfaction
+of our evil desires, the abyss which separates the holy from the impure,
+the inner voice lifts itself up and cries to us: "Woe! woe to them who
+call evil good, and good evil."[142] God is our Master, even as He is
+our good and our hope. The fact of the revolts of humanity can have no
+effect against His sovereign will. Soldiers in the service of the
+Almighty, life is for us a conflict, and duty imposes on us a combat.
+
+Such, Sirs, is the explanation of our destinies, an old, and, if you
+like, a vulgar one. Let us now give our attention to the doctrine which
+deifies humanity, and follow out its consequences. Humanity carries
+within its bosom the idea of truth, the love of beauty, the sense of
+good. What does it need more? These noble aspirations mark for it the
+end of its efforts. What will be wanting to a life regulated by duty,
+enlightened by truth, ennobled by art? What will be wanting to such a
+life? Nothing, or everything. Nothing, if the search after good, truth,
+and beauty leads to God. Everything, if it be sought to carry it on
+without any reference to God, because from the moment that man desires
+to be the source of light to himself, the light will be changed into
+darkness, as we said at the beginning of this lecture. Put God out of
+view, and good, beauty, and truth will disappear; while you will see
+produced the decline of art, the dissolution of thought in scepticism,
+the absolute negation of morality. Let us consider with the attention
+it deserves, and in contemporary examples, this sad and curious
+spectacle.
+
+I open a treatise by M. Taine. The English historian Macaulay speaks of
+literary men who "have taken pains to strip vice of its odiousness, to
+render virtue ridiculous, to rank adultery among the elegant fashions
+and obligatory achievements of a man of taste." The honest Englishman
+takes the liberty to judge and to condemn men who have made so
+pernicious a use of their talents. This pretension to make the
+conscience speak is in the eyes of the French man of letters a gothic
+prejudice. Listen how he expresses himself on the subject: "Criticism in
+France has freer methods.--When we try to give an account of the life,
+or to describe the character, of a man, we are quite willing to consider
+him simply as an object of painting or of science.... We do not judge
+him, we only wish to represent him to the eyes and to set him
+intelligibly before the reason. We are curious inquirers and nothing
+more. That Peter or Paul was a knave matters little to us, that was the
+business of his contemporaries, who suffered from his vices--At this day
+we are out of his reach, and hatred has disappeared with the danger--I
+experience neither aversion nor disgust; I have left these feelings at
+the gate of history, and I taste the very deep and very pure pleasure of
+seeing a soul act according to a definite law--."[143] You understand,
+Gentlemen: the distinction between good and evil, as that between error
+and truth; these are old sandals which must be put off before entering
+into the temple of history; and the man of the nineteenth century, if he
+has taste and information, is merely an historian, and nothing more. The
+sacred emotion which generous actions produce in us, the indignation
+stirred in us by baseness and cruelty, are childish emotions which are
+to disappear in order that we may be free to contemplate vice and virtue
+with a pleasure always equal, very deep, and very pure. We have not here
+the aberration of a young and ill-regulated mind, but the doctrine of a
+school. I open again the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and there I encounter
+the theory of which M. Taine has made the application: "We no longer
+know anything of morals, but of manners; of principles, but of facts. We
+explain everything, and, as has been said, the mind ends _by approving
+of all that it explains_. Modern virtue is summed up in
+toleration.[144]--Immense novelty! That which is, has for us the right
+to be.[145]--In the eyes of the modern savant, all is true, all is right
+in its own place. The place of each thing constitutes its truth."[146]
+
+I cut short the enumeration of these enormities. All rule has
+disappeared, all morality is destroyed; there is no longer any
+difference between right and fact, between what is and what ought to be.
+And what is the real account to give of all this? It is as follows:
+Humanity is the highest point of the universe; above it there is
+nothing; humanity is God, if we consent to take that sacred name in a
+new sense. How then is it to be judged? In the name of what rule? since
+there is no rule: in the name of what law? since there is no law. All
+judgment is a personal prejudice, the act of a narrow mind. We do not
+judge God, we simply recount His dealings; we accept all His acts, and
+record them with equal veneration. All science is only a history, and
+the first requisite in a historian is to reduce to silence his
+conscience and his reason, as sorry and deceitful exhibitions of his
+petty personality, in order to accept all the acts of the
+humanity-deity, and establish their mutual connection. The deification
+of the human mind is the justification of all its acts, and, by a direct
+consequence, the annihilation of all morality. Let us look more in
+detail at the origin and development of these notions.
+
+The individual placing himself before humanity is to accept everything:
+this is the disposition recommended to us, in the name of the modern
+mind. Good and evil are narrow measures which minds behind the age
+persist, ridiculously enough, in wishing to apply to things. "We no
+longer transform the world to our image by bringing it to our standard;
+_on the contrary, we allow ourselves to be modified and fashioned by
+it_."[147] The individual goes therefore to meet humanity without any
+inner rule: he gives himself up, he abandons himself to the spectacle of
+facts. But the world is large, and history is long. Even those who spend
+their whole life in nothing else than in satisfying their curiosity,
+cannot see and know everything. To what then shall be directed that
+vague look, equally attracted to all points for want of any fixed rule?
+At what shall it stop? It will rest on that which shines most
+brilliantly, like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines more
+brightly than success; nothing more solicits the attention. The
+glorification of success is the first and most infallible consequence of
+moral indifference. In leaving ourselves to be fashioned by the world
+instead of bringing it to our standard, we shall begin by according our
+esteem to victory. This philosophy is come to us from Germany. It was
+set forth on one occasion, in France, with great _eclat_, by the
+brilliant eloquence of a man who has rendered signal services to
+philosophy, and whose entire works must not be judged of by the single
+particular which I am about to mention. In the year 1829, M. Cousin was
+developing at the Sorbonne the meaning of these verses of La Fontaine,
+which introduce the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb:
+
+
+     La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure:
+         Je vais le montrer tout a l'heure.
+
+
+He had written as the programme of one of his lectures: _Morality of
+Victory_. Now see how he justified this surprising title: "I have
+absolved victory as necessary and useful; I now undertake to absolve it
+as just in the strictest sense of the word. Men do not usually see in
+success anything else than the triumph of strength, and an honorable
+sympathy draws us to the side of the vanquished; I hope I have shown
+that since there must always be a vanquished side, and since the
+vanquished side is always that which ought to be so, to accuse the
+conqueror is to take part against humanity, and to complain of the
+progress of civilization. We must go farther; we must prove that the
+vanquished deserved to be so, that the conqueror not only serves the
+interests of civilization, but that he is better, more moral than the
+vanquished, and that it is on that account he is the conqueror.... It is
+time that the philosophy of history should place at its feet the
+declamations of philanthropy."[148]
+
+These words are worth considering. When Brennus the Gaul was having the
+gold weighed which he exacted from the vanquished Romans, he threw his
+heavy sword into the balance, exclaiming, _Vae Victis!_ Woe to the
+conquered! He simply meant to say that he was the stronger, and did not
+foresee that a Gaul of the nineteenth century, availing himself of the
+labors of learned Germany, would demonstrate that being the stronger he
+was on that very account the more just. But we must not wander too far
+from our subject.
+
+When the spectacle of the world is freely indulged in without any
+application to it of the measure of the conscience, what first strikes
+the view is success. It is necessary therefore to begin with rendering
+glory to success by declaring victory good. Now, mark well here the
+conflict of the old notions with the so-called modern mind. From the old
+point of view, victory in the issue belongs to good, because while man
+is tossed in strife and tumult, God is leading him on; but the success
+of good is realized by conflict, and the victory is often reached only
+after a long series of defeats. There are bad triumphs and impious
+successes. What is proposed to us is, to put aside the rule of our own
+judgments, and to declare that victory is good in itself. The old point
+of view, that of the conscience, does not surrender without an energetic
+resistance; and that resistance shows itself in the very words of M.
+Cousin. His thesis is, that all victory is just. His intention is
+therefore to _approve_ victory. Why does he say _absolve_? it is the
+term which he employs. Since the matter in question is to absolve
+victory, it is placed on trial. It is accused of being, like fortune
+and fame, at one time on the side of good and justice, at another on the
+side of injustice and evil. Which then is the party accused? Victory.
+Who is the advocate? An eloquent professor. Who finally is the accuser?
+Do you not see? It is the human conscience; the conscience which
+protests in the soul of the orator against the theory of which he is
+enamoured, and which forces him to say _absolve_ when he should say
+_glorify_. And in fact the choice must be made: either to glorify
+victory, by treading under foot that narrow conscience which sometimes
+ranks itself with Cato on the side of the vanquished; or to glorify
+conscience by impeaching the victories which outrage it.
+
+It is not sufficient, however, to sacrifice the conscience in order to
+rescue from embarrassment the philosophy of success. It strikes on other
+rocks also. The same causes are by turns victorious and vanquished, and
+it is hard to make men understand that, in conflicts in which their
+dearest affections are engaged, they must beforehand, and in all cases,
+take part with the strongest. It will be in vain for the philosopher to
+say that the Swiss of Morgarten were right, for that they beat the
+Austrians; but that the heroes of Rotenthurm were greatly in the wrong,
+because, crushed without being vanquished, they were obliged to yield to
+numbers, and leave at last their country's soil to be trodden by the
+stranger;--the children of old Switzerland will find it hard to admit
+this doctrine. Even in France, in that nation so accustomed to encircle
+its soldiers' brows with laurel, this difficulty has risen up in the way
+of M. Cousin. Beranger, when asked for a souvenir of Waterloo,
+
+
+     Replied, with drooping eyelid, tear-bedewed:
+     Never that name shall sadden verse of mine.[149]
+
+
+But philosophy would be worth little if it had not at its disposal more
+extensive resources than those of a song-writer. M. Cousin therefore
+looked the difficulty in the face. Victory is always good. But how shall
+young Frenchmen be made to hear this with regard to that signal defeat
+of the armies of France? Listen: "It is not populations which appear on
+battle-fields, but ideas and causes. So at Leipzig and at Waterloo two
+causes came to the encounter, the cause of paternal monarchy and that of
+military democracy. Which of them carried the day, Gentlemen? Neither
+the one nor the other. Who was the conqueror and who the conquered at
+Waterloo? Gentlemen, there were none conquered. (_Applause._) No, I
+protest that there were none: the only conquerors were European
+civilization and the map. (_Unanimous and prolonged applause._)"[150]
+
+To make the youth of Paris applaud at the remembrance of Waterloo is
+perhaps one of the most brilliant triumphs of eloquence which the annals
+of history record. But this rhetorical success is not a triumph of
+truth. There were those who were conquered at Waterloo; and, to judge by
+what has been going on for some time past in Europe, it would seem that
+those who were conquered are bent on taking their revenge. We may infer
+from these facts that all triumphs are not good, since truth may be for
+a moment overcome by a false philosophy tricked out in the deceitful
+adornments of eloquence.
+
+But let us admit, whatever our opinion on the subject, that the Waterloo
+rock has been passed successfully; we have not yet pointed out the main
+difficulty which rises up in the way of this system. If victory is
+good, it seems at first sight that defeat is bad. But defeat is the
+necessary condition of victory; and being the condition of good, it
+seems therefore that it also is good; and the mind comes logically to
+this conclusion: "Victory is good;--defeat is good, since it is the
+condition of victory;--all is good." We set out with the glorification
+of victory, and, lo! we are arrived at the glorification of fact. All
+that is, has the right to be; in the eyes of the modern savant whatever
+is, is right. M. Cousin laid down the principle; he laid it down in a
+general manner in his philosophical eclecticism, of which it was easy to
+make use, as has in fact been done, in a sense contrary to his real
+intentions. Our young critics, wasting an inheritance of which they do
+not appear always to recognize the origin, are doing nothing else, very
+often, than catching as they die away the last vibrations of that
+surpassing eloquence.
+
+In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right and good: such is
+the axiom for which the labors of more than one modern historian had
+prepared us. We are to seek for the relation of facts one to another,
+that is to explain; and all that we explain, we must approve. Let us
+follow out this thought in a few examples.
+
+It was necessary that Louis XVI should be beheaded and the guillotine
+permanently set up, in order to manifest the result of the disorders of
+Louis XIV, of the shameful excesses of Louis XV, and of the licentious
+immorality of French society. It was necessary for Louis XIV to be an
+adulterer, Louis XV a debauchee, the clergy corrupt, and the nobility
+depraved, to bring about the shocks of the revolution. The facts
+mutually correspond; I explain, and I approve. In the eyes of the modern
+savant everything is right.
+
+It was necessary that Buonaparte should throw the _Corps legislatif_ out
+of the window, that he should let loose his armies upon Europe, and
+leave thousands of dead bodies in the snows of Russia, in order to end
+the revolution, and extinguish the restless ardor of the French. It
+needed the massacres of September, the gloomy days of the Terror, the
+anarchy of the period of the Directory, to throw dismayed France into
+the arms of the crowned soldier who was to carry to so high a pitch her
+glory and her influence. The facts correspond; I explain, and I approve.
+In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right.
+
+I consider the character of Nero. I take him at the commencement of his
+reign, when, being forced to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, he
+exclaimed--"Would I were unable to write!" And then again I regard him
+after he has perpetrated acts such that to apply his name in future ages
+to the cruellest of tyrants shall appear to them a cruel injury. What
+has taken place in the interval? The development of his natural
+character, Agrippina, Narcissus ... I understand the play of all the
+springs which have made a monster. As I am out of his clutches, my
+detestation vanishes with the danger. "I taste the very deep and very
+pure pleasure of seeing a mind act according to a definite law." I
+understand, I explain, I approve. In the eyes of the modern savant,
+everything is right.
+
+It would be impossible, Gentlemen, to pursue this reasoning to its
+extreme limits without offending against the commonest decency. We
+should have to descend into blood and mire, continuing to declare the
+while that everything is right. I pause therefore, and leave the rest to
+your imaginations. Open the most dismal pages of history. Choose out the
+acts which inspire the most vivid horror and disgust, the blackest
+examples of ingratitude, the meanest instances of cowardice, the cases
+of most refined cruelty, and the most hideous debaucheries: thence let
+your thoughts pass to facts which bedew the eyelid with the tear of
+tenderest emotion, to the cases of most heroic self-devotion, to
+sacrifices the most humble in their greatness; and then try to apply the
+rule of the modern savant, and to say that all this is equally right and
+good, and that whatever is has the right to be. Open the book of your
+own heart. Think of one of those base temptations which assault the best
+of us, one of those thoughts which raise a blush in solitude; then think
+of the best, the purest, the most disinterested of the feelings which
+have ever been given to your soul; and try again to apply the rule of
+the modern savant, and to affirm that all this is equally good, and that
+all that is has the right to be. I know very well that in general these
+doctrines are applied to things looked at in the mass, and to the
+far-off past of history; but this is a poor subterfuge for the defenders
+of these monstrous theses. Things viewed in the mass are only the
+assemblage of things viewed in detail. If the distinction of good and
+evil do not exist for general facts, how should it exist for particular
+facts? And how can we apply to the past a rule which we refuse to apply
+to the present, seeing that the present is nothing else than the past
+of the future, and that the facts of our own time are matter for history
+to our posterity? These, I repeat, are but vain subterfuges. If humanity
+is always adorable, it is so in the faults of the meanest of men as in
+the splendid sins of the magnates of the earth; it is so to-day as it
+was thirty centuries ago; the god in growing old does not cease to be
+the same.
+
+When the mind is engaged in these pernicious ways, the spring of the
+moral life is broken, and the practical consequence is not long in
+appearing. The philosophers of success, having become the philosophers
+of the _fait accompli_, accept all and endure all; but in another sense
+than that in which charity accepts all, that it may transform all by the
+power of love. It is the morality of Philinte:
+
+
+     I take men quietly, and as they are:
+     And what they do I train my soul to bear.[151]
+
+
+These instructions are not very necessary. There will always be people
+enough found ready to applaud victory, and to fall in with the _fait
+accompli_. But is it not sad to see men of mind, men of heart too,
+perhaps, making themselves the theorists of baseness, and the
+philosophers of cowardice?
+
+There is still more to be said. From the glorification of success the
+mind passes necessarily, as we have just seen, to the glorification
+alike of all that is. It would appear at first sight that the adept in
+the doctrine must find himself in a condition of indifference with
+regard to what prejudiced men continue to call good and evil. This
+indifference however is only apparent. When it is granted that nothing
+is evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There had been formed
+in ancient Rome, under pretence of religion, a secret society, which had
+as its fundamental dogma the aphorism that _nothing is evil_.[152] The
+members of the society did not practise good and evil, it appears, with
+equal indifference, for the magistrates of the republic took alarm, and
+smothered, by a free employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of
+murders, violations, false witness, and forged signatures. This fact
+reveals, with ominous clearness, a movement of thought on the nature of
+which it is easy to speculate.
+
+When man casts a vague glance over the world, extinguishing the while
+the inner light of conscience; when he resigns himself to the things he
+contemplates without applying to them any standard, what first strikes
+his attention, as we have said before, is success. And what next?
+Scandal. Nothing comes more into view than scandal. In a vast city,
+thousands of young men gain their livelihood laboriously, and devote
+themselves to the good of their families: no one speaks of them. A
+libertine loses other men's money at play, and blows out his brains: all
+the city knows it. Honest women live in retirement; the king's
+mistresses form the subject of general conversation. Crime and baseness
+hide themselves; but up to the limits of what the world calls infamy,
+evil delights in putting itself forward, because _eclat_ and noise
+supply the means of deadening the conscience; while, as regards the
+grand instincts of charity, it has been well said that--"the obscure
+acts of devotedness are the most magnificent." The poor and wretched
+shed tears in obscurity over benefits done secretly, while folly loves
+to display its glittering spangles, and shakes its bells in the public
+squares. There is in each one of us more evil than we think; but there
+is in the world more good than is commonly known. There are concealed
+virtues which only show themselves to the eye of the faith which looks
+for them, and of the attention which discovers them. Bethink you,
+especially, how the laws of morality set at defiance appear again
+triumphant in the sorrows of repentance; those laws have their hour, and
+that hour is usually a silent one. Let a poet of genius defile his works
+by the impure traces of a life spent in dissipation, and his brow shall
+shine in the sight of all with the twofold splendor of success and of
+scandal. But if, stretched on a bed of pain, he renders a tardy but
+sincere homage to the law which he has violated, to the truth which he
+has ignored, his voice will often be confined to the sick chamber; his
+companions in debauchery and infidelity will mount guard perhaps around
+his dwelling, in order to prevent the public from learning that their
+friend is a _defaulter_. The ball and the theatre make a noise and
+attract observation; but men turn their eyes from hospitals, those
+abodes in which, in the silence of sickness, or amidst the dull cries of
+pain, there germinate so many seeds of immortality. Yes, Sirs, evil is
+more apparent than good. The violations of the divine law have more
+_eclat_ than penitence. And what is the consequence? The man who
+abandons himself to the spectacle of the world, and who takes that
+spectacle for the rule of his thoughts, will see the world under a false
+aspect, and, in his estimation, evil will have more advantage over good
+than it has in reality. It will appear to him altogether dominant, and
+will thenceforward become his rule. From the glorification of success,
+we passed to the glorification of fact; from the glorification of fact,
+we arrive at last at the glorification of evil. We have seen how is
+illustrated the morality of victory. In the same current of ideas, a
+book famous now-a-days, and quite full of outrages to the conscience,
+supplies us with illustrations of the morality of falsehood. M. Ernest
+Renan, in his explanation of Christianity, has applied, point after
+point, the theory which I have just set forth to you. In order to
+estimate the grand movements of the human mind, he frees himself from
+the vulgar prejudices which make up the ordinary morals, and abandons
+himself to the impression of the spectacle which he contemplates. Jesus
+had a success without parallel. This success was based on charlatanism;
+and it is habitually so. To lead the nations by deceiving them is the
+lesson of history, and the good rule to follow. We find falsehood
+fortunate as matter of fact, we explain it, we approve it.
+
+Whither then are we bound, under the guidance of modern science? An
+irresistible current is drawing us on, and causing us to leave the
+morals of Philinthe in our rear. We are coming to those which Racine has
+engraven in immortal traits in the person of Mathan. When once
+conscience is put aside, all means are good in order to succeed; and the
+experience of the world teaches us that, to succeed, the worst means are
+often the best.
+
+It is not only at the theatre that such lessons are received; they come
+out but too commonly from the ordinary dealings of life. Set a young man
+face to face with the world as it exhibits itself, and tell him to give
+himself up to what he sees, to let himself be fashioned by life. He will
+soon come to know that strict probity is a virtue of the olden times,
+chastity a fantastic excellence, and conscientious scruples an honorable
+simplicity. Evil will become in his eyes the ordinary rule of life. When
+the socialist Proudhon wrote that celebrated sentence, "Property is
+robbery," there arose an immense outcry. Ought there not to arise a
+louder outcry around a theory which arrives by a fatal necessity at this
+consequence: "Evil is good"?
+
+But do these doctrines exercise any influence for the perversion of
+public morals? Much; their influence is disastrous. And do the men who
+profess them believe them, taking the word 'believe' in its real and
+deep meaning? No; they often do mischief which they do not mean to do,
+and do not see that they do. They are intoxicated with a bad philosophy,
+and intoxication renders blind. It is easy to prove that these
+optimists, who in theory find that everything is right, are perpetually
+contradicting themselves in practice. Address yourselves to one of them,
+and say to him: "Your doctrine is big with immorality. You do not
+yourself believe it; and when you pretend to believe it, you lie." This
+man who tolerates everything will not tolerate your freedom of speech.
+He will get angry, and, according to the old doctrines, he will have the
+right to be so, for insult is an evil. Then say to him: "Here you are,
+it seems to me, in contradiction with your system. Everything is right;
+the vivacity of my speech therefore is good. All that is has the right
+to be; my indignation is therefore a legitimate fact, and it appears to
+me that yours cannot be so unless you allow (an admission which would be
+contrary to your system) that mine is not so." If you have to do with a
+sensible man, he will begin to laugh. If you have met with a blockhead,
+he will be more angry than ever. This contradiction comes out in every
+page, and in a more serious manner, in the writings of our optimists.
+One cannot read them with attention, without meeting incessantly with
+the protest of their moral nature against the despotism of a false mode
+of reasoning. The man is at every moment making himself heard, the man
+who has a heart, a conscience, a reason, and who contradicts the
+philosopher without being aware of it. Contradictions these, honorable
+to the writer, but dangerous for the reader, because they serve to
+invest with brilliant colors doctrines which in themselves are hideous.
+
+No, Gentlemen, it is impossible to succeed in adoring humanity,
+preserving the while the least consistency of reasoning. In vain men
+wish to accept everything, to tolerate everything; in vain they wish to
+impose silence on the inner voice: that voice rebels against the
+outrage, and its revolt declares itself in the most manifest
+contradictions. The Humanity-God is divided, and the affirmation--
+"Everything is right"--will continue false as long as there shall be
+upon the earth a single conscience unsilenced, as long as there shall be
+in a single heart
+
+
+               . . . . . that mighty hate
+     Which in pure souls vice ever must create;[153]
+
+
+that hatred which is nothing else than the indirect manifestation of the
+sacred love of goodness.
+
+The doctrine that all is equally good, equally divine, in the
+development of humanity, explains nothing, because humanity, torn by a
+profound struggle, condemns its own acts, and protests against its
+degradations. It cries aloud to itself that there are principles above
+facts, a moral law superior to the acts of the will; and all the petty
+clamors of a deceitful and deceived philosophy cannot stifle that clear
+voice. Not only do these doctrines explain nothing, they do not even
+succeed in expressing themselves; language fails them. "Everything is
+right and good." What will these words mean, from the time there is no
+longer any rule of right? How is it possible to approve, when we have
+no power to blame? The idea of good implies the idea of evil; the
+opposition of good and evil supposes a standard applied to things, a law
+superior to fact. He who approves of everything may just as well despise
+everything. But contempt itself has no longer any meaning, if esteem is
+a word void of signification. We must say simply that all is as it is,
+and abandon those terms of speech which conscience has stamped with its
+own superscription. We must purify the dictionary, and consign to the
+history of obsolete expressions such terms as good, evil, esteem,
+contempt, vice, virtue, honor, infamy, and the like. The doctrine which,
+to be consistent with itself, ought to reduce us to a kind of stupid
+indifference, does such violence to human nature that its advocates are
+incapable of enunciating it without contradicting themselves by the very
+words they make use of.
+
+All these extravagances are the inevitable consequence of the adoration
+of humanity. The Humanity-God has no rule superior to itself. Whatever
+it does must be put on record merely, and not judged: it is the
+immolation of the conscience. But on what altar shall we stretch this
+great victim? Shall we sacrifice it to pure reason, to reason
+disengaged from all prejudice? Allow me to claim your attention yet a
+few minutes longer.
+
+The Humanity-God in all its acts escapes the judgment of the conscience.
+What measure shall we be able to apply to its thoughts? None. The God
+which cannot do evil, cannot be mistaken either. For the modern savant
+all is true, for exactly the same reason that all is right. The human
+mind unfolds itself in all directions; all these unfoldings are
+legitimate; all are to be accepted equally by a mind truly emancipated.
+Furnished with this rule, I make progress in the history of philosophy.
+The Greek Democritus affirms that the universe is only an infinite
+number of atoms moving as chance directs in the immensity of space: I
+record with veneration this unfolding of the human mind. The Greek Plato
+affirms that truth, beauty, good, like three eternal rays, penetrate the
+universe and constitute the only veritable realities: I record with
+equal veneration this other unfolding of the human mind. I pass to
+modern times. Descartes tells me that thought is the essence of man, and
+that reason alone is the organ of truth. Helvetius tells me that man is
+a mass of organized matter which receives its ideas only from the
+senses. These two theses are equally legitimate, and I admit them both.
+I quit now philosophers by profession to address myself to those
+literary journalists who deal out philosophy in crumbs for the use of
+_feuilletons_ and reviews. There I find all possible notions in the most
+astounding of jumbles. "The villain has his apologist; the good man his
+calumniator.... Marriage is honorable, so is adultery. Order is preached
+up, so is riot, so is assassination, provided it be politic."[154] I
+contemplate with a calm satisfaction, with a very deep and very pure
+pleasure, these various unfoldings of the human mind; I place them all,
+with the same feelings of devotion, in the pantheon of the intelligence.
+I cannot do otherwise, inasmuch as there is no rule of truth superior to
+the thoughts of men, and because the human mind is the supreme,
+universal, and infallible intelligence.
+
+But will our mind be able to entertain together two directly opposite
+assertions? Will contradiction no longer be the sign of error? We must
+come to this; we must acknowledge that the modern mind, breaking with
+superannuated traditions, has proclaimed the principle "that one
+assertion is not more true than an opposite assertion." We must proclaim
+that the thinker has not to disquiet himself "about the _real_
+contradictions into which he may fall; and that a true philosopher has
+absolutely nothing to do with consistency."[155] The fear of
+self-contradiction may be excused in Aristotle and Plato, in St. Anselm
+and St. Thomas, in Descartes and Leibnitz. These writers were still
+wrapped in the swaddling clothes of old errors; the light of the
+nineteenth century had not shone upon their cradles; but the epoch of
+enfranchisement is come. These things, Gentlemen, are printed
+now-a-days; they are printed at Paris, one of the metropolises of
+thought!
+
+Mark well whereabouts we are. We must admit--what? that all is true.
+But, if all is true, there is nothing true, just as if all is good,
+there is nothing good. There are thoughts in men's heads; to make
+history of them is an agreeable pastime; but there is no truth. We must
+not say that two contradictory propositions are equally true; that
+would be to make use of the old notion of truth; we must say that they
+are, and that is all about it. The night is approaching, the sun of
+intelligence is sinking towards the horizon, and thick vapors are
+obscuring its setting. But wait!
+
+If the Humanity-God is always right, it must be that two contradictory
+propositions can be true at the same time, since contradictions abound
+in the history of human thoughts. If two contradictory propositions can
+be true, there is no more truth. What then is our reason, of which truth
+is the object? We are seized with giddiness. Might not everything in the
+world be illusion? and myself--? Listen to a voice which reaches us,
+across the ages, from the countries crowned by the Himalayas. "Nothing
+exists.... By the study of first principles, one acquires this
+knowledge, absolute, incontestable, comprehensible to the intelligence
+alone: I neither am, nor does anything which is mine, nor do I myself,
+exist."[156] What is there beneath these strange lines? The feeling of
+giddiness, which seeks to steady itself by language. Here is now the
+modern echo of these ancient words. One of those writers who accept all,
+in the hope of understanding all, describes himself as having come at
+last to be aware that he is "only one of the most fugitive illusions in
+the bosom of the infinite illusion." One of his colleagues expresses
+himself on this subject as follows: "Is this the last word of all?--And
+why not?--The illusion which knows itself--is it in fact an illusion?
+Does it not in some sort triumph over itself? Does it not attain to _the
+sovereign reality_, that of the thought which thinks itself, that of the
+dream which knows itself a dream, that _of nothingness which ceases to
+be so_, in order to recognize itself and to assert itself?"[157] We are
+gone back to ancient India. You will remark here three stages of
+thought. The fugitive illusion is man. The infinite illusion is the
+universe. The universal principle of the appearances which compose the
+universe is nothingness. Here is the explanation of the universe!
+Nothingness takes life; nothingness takes life only to know itself to be
+nothingness; and the nothingness which says to itself, "I am
+nothingness," is the reason of existence of all that is. I said just now
+that the sun was declining to the horizon. Now the last glimmer of
+twilight has disappeared; night has closed in--a dark and starless
+night. Yes, Sirs, but there is never on the earth a night so dark as to
+warrant us in despairing of the return of the dawn. If the modern mind
+is such as it is described to us, it has lost all the rays of light; but
+the sun is not dead.
+
+The doctrine of non-existence and of illusion is entirely
+incomprehensible, in the sense in which to comprehend signifies to have
+a clear idea, and one capable of being directly apprehended. But, if one
+follows the chain of ideas as logically unrolled, in the way that a
+mathematician follows the transformations of an algebraical formula,
+without considering its real contents, it is easy to account for the
+origin of this theory. If the human mind has no rule superior to itself,
+if it is the absolute mind, God, all its thoughts are equally true,
+since we cannot point out error without having recourse to a rule of
+truth. If all doctrines are equally true, propositions directly and
+absolutely contradictory are equally true. If all is true, there is no
+truth; for truth is not conceived except in opposition to at least
+possible error. If there is no truth, the human reason, which seeks
+truth by a natural impulse belonging to its very essence, as the
+magnetized needle seeks the pole,--reason, I say, is a chimera. The
+truth which reason seeks is an exact relation of human thought to the
+reality of the world. If the search for this relation is chimerical, the
+two terms, mind, and the world, may be illusions. A fugitive illusion in
+presence of an infinite illusion: there is all. You see that these
+thoughts hang together with rigorous precision. The darkness is becoming
+visible to us, or, in other words, we are acquiring a perfect
+understanding of the origin and developments of the absurdity. Put God
+aside, the law of our will, the warrant of our thought; deify human
+nature; and a fatal current will run you aground twice over--on the
+shores of moral absurdity, and on those of intellectual absurdity. These
+sad shipwrecks are set before our eyes in striking examples; it has been
+easy to indicate their cause.
+
+The consideration of the beautiful would give occasion to analogous
+observations. The human mind becoming the object of our adoration, we
+must give up judging it in every particular, and suppress the rules of
+the ideal in art, as those of morals in the conduct, and truth in the
+intellect. We must form a system of aesthetics which accepts all, and
+finds equally legitimate whatever affords recreation to the
+Humanity-God, in the great variety of its tastes. Then high aspirations
+are extinguished, the beautiful gives place to the agreeable; and since
+the ugly and misshapen please a vicious taste, room must be made for the
+ugly in the Pantheon of beauty. Art despoiled of its crown becomes the
+sad, and often the ignoble slave of the tastes and caprices of the
+public. I do not insist further. The pretension of the worshippers of
+humanity is to make their conscience wide enough to accept all, and to
+have their intellect broad enough to understand all. They explain all,
+except these three small particulars--the conscience, the heart, and the
+reason. Goodness and truth avenge themselves in the end for the long
+contempt cast upon them; and the first punishment those suffer who
+accept all, in the hope of understanding all, is no longer to understand
+what constitutes the life of humanity.
+
+Let us not, Sirs, be setting up altars to the human mind; for an
+adulterous incense stupefies it, and ends by destroying it. Man is
+great, he is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart, and the divine
+aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness, let us
+leave him in his proper place. Let us leave to him the struggles which
+make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him
+honor, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable
+testimony to his dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict,
+and hope; but let us not deify him; for, no sooner shall he have said,
+"I am God," than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall
+find himself naked and spoiled.
+
+Before they deified man, the pagans at least transfigured him by placing
+him in Olympus. At this day, it is humanity as it is upon earth that is
+proposed to our adoration, humanity with its profound miseries and its
+fearful defilements. They seek to throw a veil over the mad audacity of
+this attempt, by telling us of the progress which is to bring about, by
+little and little, the realization of our divinity. But, alas! our
+history is long already, and no reasonable induction justifies the vague
+hopes of heated imaginations. Great progress is being effected, but none
+which gives any promise that the profound needs of our nature can ever
+be satisfied in this life. Charity has appeared on the earth; but there
+are still poor amongst us, and it seems that there always will be. A
+breath of justice and humanity has penetrated social institutions; still
+politics have not become the domain of perfect truth and of absolute
+justice, and there seems small likelihood that they ever will. Industry
+has given birth to marvels; we devour space in these days, but we shall
+never go so fast that suffering and death will not succeed in overtaking
+us. The great sources of grief are not dried up; the song of our poets
+causes still the chords of sorrow to vibrate as in the days of yore.
+Progress is being accomplished, sure witness of a beneficent Hand which
+is guiding humanity in its destinies; but everything tells us that the
+soil of our planet will be always steeped in tears, that the atmosphere
+which envelops us will always resound with the vibrations of sorrow. Far
+as our view can stretch itself, we foresee a suffering humanity, which
+will not be able to find peace, joy, and hope, except in the expectation
+of new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
+
+If there be no God above humanity, no eternity above time, no divine
+world higher than our present place of sojourn; if our profoundest
+desires are to be for ever deceived; if the cries we raise to heaven are
+never to be heard; if all our hope is a future in which we shall be no
+more; if humanity as we know it is the perfection of the universe; if
+all this is so, then indeed the answer to the universal enigma is
+illusion and falsehood. Then, before the monster of destiny which brings
+us into being only to destroy us, which creates in our breast the desire
+of happiness only to deride our miseries; in view of that starry vault
+which speaks to us of the infinite, while yet there is no infinite; in
+presence of that lying nature which adorns itself with a thousand
+symbols of immortality, while yet there is no immortality; in presence
+of all these deceptions, man may be allowed to curse the day of his
+birth, or to abandon himself to the intoxication of thoughtless
+pleasure. But, a secret instinct tells us that wretchedness is a
+disorder, and thoughtless pleasure a degradation. Let us have confidence
+in this deep utterance of our nature. Good, truth, beauty descend as
+rays of streaming light into the shadows of our existence; let us follow
+them with the eye of faith to the divine focus from whence they
+proceed. All is fleeting, all is disappearing incessantly beneath our
+steps; but our soul is not staggered at this swift lapse of all things,
+only because she carries in herself the pledges of a changeless
+eternity. "The ephemeral spectator of an eternal spectacle, man raises
+for a moment his eyes to heaven, and closes them again for ever; but
+during the fleeting instant which is granted to him, from all points of
+the sky and from the bounds of the universe, sets forth from every world
+a consoling ray and strikes his upward gaze, announcing to him that
+between that measureless space and himself there exists a close
+relation, and that he is allied to eternity."[158]
+
+And are these sublime _pressentiments_ only dreams after all? Dreams!
+Know you not that our dreams create nothing, and that they are never
+anything else than confused reminiscences and fantastic combinations of
+the realities of our waking consciousness? What then is that mysterious
+waking during which we have seen the eternal, the infinite, the
+perfection of goodness, the fulness of joy, all those sublime images
+which come to haunt our spirit during the dream of life? Recollections
+of our origin! foreshadowings of our destinies! While then all below is
+transitory, and is escaping from us in a ceaseless flight, let us
+abandon ourselves without fear to these instincts of the soul--
+
+
+     As a bird, if it light on a sprig too slight
+         The feathery freight to bear,
+     Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings,
+         Then drops--on the buoyant air.[159]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[131] _Systeme de la Nature_, published under the pseudonyme of
+Mirabaud.
+
+[132] _Systeme de la Nature_, Part I. chap. 1.
+
+[133] _Ibid._ Part II. chap. 14.
+
+[134] _Vie de Jesus._ Dedication.
+
+[135] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15 January, 1860.
+
+[136] Plebeii philosophi qui a Platone et Socrate et ab ea familia
+dissident.
+
+[137] _Les philosophes francais du XIXe siecle_, chap. XIV.
+
+[138] _Hegel et l'Hegelianisme_ par M. Ed. Scherer.
+
+[139] Page 854.
+
+[140] Page 852.
+
+[141] Page 856.
+
+[142] Isa. xx. 20.
+
+[143] _Essais de critique et d'histoire_, pp. 8 and 9.
+
+[144] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 15 Feb. 1861, page 855.
+
+[145] Page 853.
+
+[146] Page 854.
+
+[147] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of the 15th Feb. 1861, page 854.
+
+[148] _Introduction a l'histoire de la philosophie_. Neuvieme lecon.
+
+[149]
+
+     Il repondit, baissant un oeil humide:
+     Jamais ce nom n'attristera mes vers.
+
+[150] _Introduction a l'histoire de la philosophie._ Treizieme lecon.
+
+[151]
+
+     Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont,
+     J'accoutume mon ame a souffrir ce qu'ils font.
+
+[152] _Nihil nefas ducere, hanc summam inter eos religionem esse._ (Tit.
+Liv. lib. xxxix. c. 13.)
+
+[153]
+
+             . . . . . . Ces haines vigoureuses
+     Que doit donner le vice aux ames vertueuses.
+
+[154] _Melanges de Toepffer._ De la mauvaise presse consideree comme
+excellente.
+
+[155] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15 Feb. 1861, page 854.--_Etudes
+critiques sur la litterature contemporaine_, par Edmond Scherer, page x.
+et xi.
+
+[156] Sa'nkya--ka'rika', 61 and 64. The text 61 in which occur the words
+"Nothing exists" is hard to understand, but there appears to be no doubt
+of the meaning of No. 64. _Non sum, non est meum, nec sum ego._
+
+[157] _Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine_, par Edmond
+Scherer.--M. Sainte-Beuve, p. 354.
+
+[158] Xavier de Maistre.
+
+[159]
+
+     Soyons comme l'oiseau pose pour un instant
+         Sur des rameaux trop freles,
+     Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,
+         Sachant qu'il a des ailes.--VICTOR HUGO.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+_THE CREATOR._
+
+(At Geneva, 4th Dec. 1863.--At Lausanne, 27th Jan. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+Man is not a simple product of nature; in vain does he labor to degrade
+himself by desiring to find the explanation of his spiritual being in
+matter brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the summit and
+principle of the universe; in vain does he labor to deify himself. He is
+great only by reason of the divine rays which inform his heart, his
+conscience, and his reason. From the moment that he believes himself to
+be the source of light, he passes into night. When thought has risen
+from nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its impetus be not
+strong enough to carry it on to God. These assertions do but translate
+the great facts of man's intellectual history. "There is no nation so
+barbarous," said Cicero,[160] "there are no men so savage as not to
+have some tincture of religion. Many there are who form false notions of
+the gods; ... but all admit the existence of a divine power and
+nature.... Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all nations is to
+be reckoned a law of nature." No discovery has diminished the value of
+these words of the Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of human
+society, there remains always some vestige of the religious sentiment.
+The knowledge of the Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition;
+but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world is found wherever
+there are men.
+
+Cicero brings forward this universal consent as a very strong proof of
+the existence of the gods. The supporters of atheism dispute the value
+of this argument. They say: "General opinion proves nothing. How many
+fabulous legends have been set up by the common belief into historic
+verities! All mankind believed for a long time that the sun revolved
+about the earth. Truth makes way in the world only by contradicting
+opinions generally received. The faith of the greater number is rather a
+mark of error than a sign of truth." This objection rests upon a
+confusion of ideas. Humanity has no testimony to render upon scientific
+questions, the solution of which is reserved for patient study; but
+humanity bears witness to its own nature. The universality of religion
+proves that the search after the divine is, as said the Roman orator, a
+law of nature. When therefore we rise from matter to man, and from man
+to God, we are not going in an arbitrary road, but are advancing
+according to the law of nature ascertained by the testimony of humanity.
+It needs a mind at once very daring and very frivolous not to feel the
+importance of this consideration.
+
+In our days atheism is being revived. In going over in your memory the
+symptoms of this revival, as we have pointed them out to you, you will
+perceive that the direct and primitive negation of God is comparatively
+rare; but that what is frequently attempted is, if I may venture so to
+speak, to effect the subtraction of God. Any religious theory whatever
+is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such remarks as these: "How
+is it that real sciences are formed? By observation on the one hand, and
+by reasoning on the other. By observation, and reasoning applied to
+observation, we obtain the science of nature and the science of
+humanity. But do we wish to rise above nature and humanity? We fail of
+all basis of observation; and reason works in a vacuum. There is
+therefore no possible way of reaching to God. Is God an object of
+experience? No. Can God be demonstrated _a priori_ by syllogisms? No.
+The idea of God therefore cannot be established, as answering to a
+reality, either by the way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it
+is a mere hypothesis. We do not, however, it is added, in our view of
+the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid!) to exclude the sentiment of the
+Divine from the soul, nor the word _God_ from fine poetry. We accept
+religious thoughts as dreams full of charm. But is it a question of
+reality? then God is an hypothesis, and hypothesis has no admission into
+the science of realities."
+
+These ideas place those who accept them in a position which is not
+without its advantages. When a man of practical mind says with a smile,
+"Do you happen to believe in God?" one may reply to him, smiling in
+turn, "Have I said that God is a real Being?" And if a religious man
+asks, "Are you falling then into atheism?" one may assume an indignant
+tone, and say: "We have never denied God: whoever says we have is a
+slanderer!" So God remains, for the necessities of poetry and art. But
+as we cannot know either what He is, or whether He is, real life goes on
+in complete and entire independence of Him. The taking up of this
+position with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a literary
+artifice. In other cases it is seriously done. There are certain natures
+of extreme delicacy, which, touched by the breath of modern scepticism,
+have lost all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an
+instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in the absence of all
+belief, and they do not deny that which they believe no longer. Such a
+mind is in an exceptional position. Is it yours? and would you preserve
+it? Keep a solitary path, and do not seek to communicate your ideas to
+others. Contact with the public, and such an unfolding even of your own
+thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work of proselytism,
+would place you under the empire of those laws which govern the human
+mind in these matters. Now what are these laws? A poet has already
+answered for us this question:
+
+
+     En presence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.[161]
+
+
+A famous writer expands the same thought as follows: "Doubt about things
+which it highly concerns us to know," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a
+condition which does too great violence to the human mind; nor does it
+long bear up against it, but in spite of itself comes to a decision one
+way or another, and likes better to be mistaken than to believe
+nothing."[162] Such is the law. We have met with the pretension to
+maintain the mind independent of God, without either denying or
+asserting His existence, and we have seen how completely this pretension
+fails in the presence of facts. The sceptic makes vain efforts to
+continue in a state of doubt, but the ground fails him, and he slips
+into negation: he affirms that humanity has been mistaken, and that God
+is not. But neither does this negation succeed any the more in keeping
+its ground; it strikes too violently against all the instincts of our
+nature. The human mind is under an imperious necessity to worship
+something; if God fails it, it sets itself to adore nature or humanity;
+atheism is transformed into idolatry. Recollect the destinies of the
+critical school and of the positive philosophy! Let us now examine, with
+serious attention, that attempt to _eliminate_ God which is the
+starting-point in this course along which the mind is hurried so
+fatally.
+
+God is not, I grant, an object of experience. I grant it at least in
+this sense, that God is not an object of sensible experience. The
+experience of God (if I may be allowed the expression), the feeling of
+His action upon the soul, is not a phenomenon open to the observation of
+all, and apart from determined spiritual conditions. In order to be
+sensible of the action of God, we must draw near to Him. In order to
+draw near to Him, we must, if not believe with firm faith in His
+existence, at least not deny Him. The captives of Plato's cavern can
+have no experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery on
+those who speak to them of the sun. I grant again that God cannot
+possibly be the object of a demonstration such as the science of
+geometry requires; I grant it fully, I have already said so. Every man
+who reasons, affirms God in one sense; and the foundation of all
+reasoning cannot be the conclusion of a demonstration. God therefore, in
+the view of science formed according to our ordinary methods, is, I
+grant, an hypothesis. And here, Gentlemen, allow me a passing word of
+explanation.
+
+When I say that God is an hypothesis, I run the risk of exciting, in
+many of you, feelings of astonishment not unmixed with pain. But I must
+beg you to remember the nature of these lectures. We are here far from
+the calm retirement of the sanctuary, and from such words of solemn
+exhortation as flow from the lips of the religious teacher. I have
+introduced you to the ardent conflicts of contemporary thought, and into
+the midst of the clamors of the schools. The soul which is seeking to
+hold communion with God, and so from their fountain-head to be filled
+with strength and joy, has something better to do than to be listening
+to such discourses as these. Solitude, prayer, a calm activity pursued
+under the guidance of the conscience,--these are the best paths for such
+a soul, and the discussions in which we are now engaged are not perhaps
+altogether free from danger for one who has remained hitherto
+undisturbed in the first simplicity of his faith. But we are not masters
+of our own ways, and the circumstances of the present times impose upon
+us special duties. The barriers which separate the school and the world
+are everywhere thrown down. Everywhere shreds of philosophy, and very
+often of bad philosophy,--scattered fragments of theological science,
+and very often of a deplorable theological science,--are insinuating
+themselves into the current literature. There is not a literary review,
+there is scarcely a political journal, which does not speak on occasion,
+or without occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests.
+The most sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public
+opinion. At such a juncture, can men who preserve faith in their own
+soul remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow
+limits of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common
+ground, and fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For
+this purpose it is necessary to make use of terms which may alarm some
+consciences, and to state questions which run the risk of startling
+sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to
+combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only
+that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of
+negations is but a passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in
+their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of
+their passage upon the Rock of Ages.
+
+I now therefore resume my course of argument. God is neither an object
+of experience, nor yet of demonstration properly so called. In the view
+of science, as it is commonly understood, of science which follows out
+the chain of its deductions, without giving attention to the very
+foundations of all the work of the reason,--God, that chief of all
+realities for a believing heart, that experience of every hour, that
+evidence superior to all proof, God is an hypothesis. I grant it. Hence
+it is inferred that God has no place in science, for that hypothesis has
+no place in a science worthy of the name. But this I deny; and in
+support of this denial I proceed to show that the hypothesis which it is
+pretended to get quit of, is the generating principle of all human
+knowledge.
+
+Whence does science proceed? Does it result from mere experience? No.
+What does experience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience,
+separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own
+sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to
+demonstration,--a demonstration which constitutes his glory. It is easy,
+without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well
+that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the
+faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought
+does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not
+possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its
+tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no
+thoughts, and will know nothing.
+
+Is science formed by pure reason? No. No one can say what pure reason
+is, for the exercise of our thought is connected indissolubly with
+experience. But, without pausing at this consideration, let us ask what
+pure reason can do, if deprived of all objects of experience? One thing
+only, namely, take cognizance of itself. Now the reason, in taking
+cognizance of itself, only creates logic, that is to say, the theory of
+the laws of knowledge. Some philosophers, to be sure, have undertaken to
+prove that reason, by dint of self-contemplation, might arrive at the
+knowledge of all things. They have maintained that all the secrets of
+the universe are contained in our thought, and that by just reasoning
+one may form the science of astronomy without looking at the stars, and
+write the history of the human race without taking the trouble to search
+laboriously into the annals of the past. But these attempts to
+_construct_ facts, instead of observing them, have succeeded too ill to
+merit very serious attention.
+
+Science does not proceed therefore either from pure experience or from
+pure reason; whence does it really come? From the encounter of
+experience and of reason. Man observes, and he ascertains that facts are
+governed according to intelligent design. He creates mathematics, and
+discovers that the phenomena of the heavens and the earth are ruled
+according to the laws of the calculus. His thought meets in the facts
+with traces of a thought similar to his own. If any one of you doubts
+this, I once more appeal to the almanac. Science, then, has birth only
+from a meeting of experience with reason; how is this meeting effected?
+The whole question of the origin of science is here. This encounter is
+not necessary; it does not result simply from perseverance in
+observation. The encounter of mind and of facts constitutes a discovery.
+The thought which has governed nature may remain long veiled from our
+mind. All at once perhaps the veil is lifted, and the thought of man
+meets and recognizes itself in the phenomena which it is contemplating.
+We encounter in this case the exercise of a special faculty, which is
+neither the faculty of observing nor the faculty of reasoning, but the
+faculty of discovering. When a man possesses it to a certain degree, we
+call him a man of genius. Genius, or the faculty of discovering, is the
+generating principle of science. Still, strange to say, this principle
+is scarcely pointed out by a great number of logicians. They develop at
+length the rules of observation and the rules of reasoning; and it seems
+that, in their idea, the conjunction of reason and experience is
+effected all alone and of necessity. I taught logic myself in this way
+for twenty years, until one day, thinking better upon the subject, I was
+obliged to say to myself (forgive me this rather trivial quotation):
+
+
+     Tu n'avais oublie qu'un point:
+     C'etait d'eclairer ta lanterne.[163]
+
+
+The meeting together of the understanding and of facts is a discovery;
+and discovery depends upon a faculty sung by poets, admired by mankind,
+and too little noticed by logicians--genius. Genius has for its
+characteristic a sudden illumination of the mind, a gratuitous gift and
+one which cannot be purchased. But let us hasten to supply a necessary
+explanation. Genius is a primitive fact, a gift; but the work of genius
+has conditions, or rather a condition--labor. Labor does not replace
+genius, but genius does not dispense with labor; nature only delivers up
+her secrets to those who observe her with long patience. Newton was
+asked one day how he had found out the system of the universe. He
+replied with a sublime _naivete_: "By thinking continually about it." He
+so pointed out the condition of every great discovery; but he forgot the
+cause--the peculiar nature of his own intellect. It was necessary to be
+always pondering the motions of the stars; but it was necessary moreover
+to be Isaac Newton. So many had thought on the subject, as long perhaps
+as he, and had not made the discovery.
+
+Labor, the condition of discoveries, should have as its effect to
+recognize the methods really appropriate to the nature of the inquiries,
+and to keep the mind well informed in existing science. In fact, every
+scientific discovery supposes a series of previous discoveries which
+have brought the mind to the point at which it is possible to see
+something new. For this reason it is that a discovery often presents
+itself to two or three minds at once, when there are found, at the same
+epoch, two or three minds endowed with the same power. They see all
+together because the onward progress of science has brought them to the
+same summit: this is the condition; and because they have the same power
+of vision: this is the cause. There is therefore a method for putting
+ourselves on the road to discovery, but no method for making the
+discovery itself. The man of genius sees where others do not see; and
+when he has seen, everybody sees after him. If, furnished with Gyges'
+ring, you could gain access to the studies of savants at the moment when
+a great discovery has just been made, you would see more than one of
+them striking his forehead and exclaiming: "Fool that I was! how could I
+help seeing it? it was so simple." Truth appears simple when it has been
+discovered.
+
+Discovery therefore, which has labor for its condition, is the principle
+of the progress of science. Under what form does a discovery present
+itself to the mind of its author? As a supposition, or, which is the
+same thing, as an hypothesis. Hypothesis is the sole process by which
+progress in science is effected. If we supposed nothing, we should know
+nothing. In vain should we look at the sky and the earth to all
+eternity, our eye would never read the laws of astronomy in the stars of
+heaven, nor the laws of life upon the bark of trees or in the entrails
+of animals. This is true even of mathematics. The contemplation,
+prolonged indefinitely, of the series of numbers, or of the forms of
+space, would produce neither arithmetic nor geometry, if the human mind
+did not suppose relations between the numbers and the lines, which it
+can only demonstrate after it has supposed them. The conditions are very
+clearly seen which have prepared and made possible a fruitful
+supposition, but the hypothesis does not itself follow of any necessity.
+It appears like a flash of light passing suddenly through the mind.
+
+The carpenter's saw opens a plank from end to end on the sole conditions
+of labor and time; but the discovery of truth preserves always a sudden
+and unforeseen character. Archimedes leaps from a bath and rushes
+through the streets of Syracuse, crying out, "I have found it!" Why? The
+flash of genius has visited him unexpectedly. Pythagoras discovers a
+geometrical theorem; and he offers, it is said, a sacrifice to the gods,
+in testimony of his gratitude. He thought therefore, according to the
+fine remark of Malebranche, that labor and attention are a silent prayer
+which we address to the Master of truth: the labor is a prayer, and the
+discovery is an answer granted to it.
+
+When this wholly spontaneous character of discovery is not recognized,
+and when it is thought that the observation of facts naturally produces
+their explanation, it must needs be granted that a discovery is
+confirmed by the very fact that it is made. But this is by no means the
+case. Hypothesis does not carry on its brow, at the moment of its birth,
+the certain sign of its truth. A flash of light crosses the mind of the
+savant; but he must enter on a course, often a long course, of study, in
+order to know whether it is a true light, or a momentary glare. Every
+supposition suggested by observation must be confirmed by its agreement
+with the data of experience. Let us listen to a great discoverer--
+Kepler. He is giving an account of the discovery of one of the laws
+which have immortalized his name.
+
+"After I had found the real dimensions of the orbits, thanks to the
+observations of Brahe and the sustained effort of a long course of
+labor, I at length discovered the proportion of the periodic times to
+the extent of these orbits. And if you would like to know the precise
+date of the discovery,--it was on the eighth day of March in this year
+1618 that,--first of all conceived in my mind, then awkwardly essayed by
+calculations, rejected in consequence as false, then reproduced on the
+fifteenth of May with fresh energy,--it rose at last above the darkness
+of my understanding, so fully confirmed by my labor of seventeen years
+upon Brahe's observations, and by my own meditations perfectly agreeing
+with them, that I thought at first I was dreaming, and making some
+_petitio principii_; but there is no more doubt about it: it is a very
+certain and very exact proposition."[164]
+
+All the logic of discoveries is laid down in these lines; and these
+lines are a testimony rendered by one of the most competent of
+witnesses. You see in them the conditions of a good hypothesis: Kepler
+has long studied the phenomena of which he wishes to find the law; he
+has studied them by himself, and by means of the discoveries of his
+predecessor Brahe. The law has presented itself to his mind at a given
+moment, on the eighth of March, 1618. But he does not yet know whether
+it is a true light, or a deceptive gleam. He seeks the confirmation of
+his hypothesis; he does not find it, because he makes a mistake, and he
+rejects his idea as useless. The idea returns; a new course of labor
+confirms it; and so the hypothesis becomes a law, a certain proposition.
+
+Such is the regular march of thought. An hypothesis has no right to be
+brought forward until it has passed into the condition of a law, by
+being duly confirmed. There are minds, however, endowed with a sort of
+divination, which feel as by instinct the truth of a discovery, even
+before it has been confirmed. It is told of Copernicus, that having
+discovered, or re-discovered, the true system of planetary motion, he
+encountered an opponent who said to him: "If your system were true,
+Venus would have phases like the moon; now she has none, and therefore
+your system is false. What have you to reply?"--"I have no reply to
+make," said Copernicus, (the objection was a serious one in fact); "but
+God will grant that the answer shall be found."[165] Galileo appeared,
+and by means of the telescope it was ascertained that Venus has phases
+like the moon;--the confidence of Copernicus was justified. The
+scientific career of M. Ampere, the illustrious natural philosopher,
+supplies an analogous fact. Trusting, like Copernicus, to a kind of
+intuition of truth, he read one day to the Academy of sciences the
+complete description of an experiment which he had never made. He made
+it subsequently, and the result answered completely to his
+anticipations. Genius is here raised to the second power, since it
+possesses at once the gift of discovery and the just presentiment of its
+confirmation; but these are exceptional cases, and in general we must
+say, with Mithridates, that--
+
+
+                         .... To be approved as true
+     Such projects must be proved, and carried through.[166]
+
+
+We would encourage no one to attempt adventures so perilous, but would
+call to mind in a great example what is the regular march of science.
+Newton, after he had discovered the law which regulates the motions of
+the heavens, sought the confirmation of it in an immense series of
+calculations. A true ascetic of science, he imposed on himself a regimen
+as severe as that of a Trappist monk, in order that his life might be
+wholly concentrated upon the operations of the understanding; and it was
+not until after fifteen months of persistent labor that he exclaimed: "I
+have discovered it! My calculations have really encountered the march of
+the stars. Glory to God! who has permitted us to catch a glimpse of the
+skirts of His ways!" And astronomy, placed upon a wider and firmer
+basis, went forward with new energy.
+
+It is thus that the human mind acquires knowledge. How then does
+hypothesis come to be made light of? How can it be seriously said that
+we have excluded hypothesis from the sphere of science, whereas the
+moment the faculty of supposing should cease to be in exercise, the
+march of science would be arrested; since, except a small number of
+principles the evidence of which is immediate, all the truths we
+possess are only suppositions confirmed by experiment? The reason is
+here: Our mind forms a thousand different suppositions at its own will
+and fancy; and it shrinks from that studious toil which alone puts it in
+a position to make fruitful suppositions. We are for ever tempted to be
+guessing, instead of setting ourselves, by patient observations, on the
+road to real discoveries. It is therefore with good reason that theories
+hastily built up have been condemned, and Lord Chancellor Bacon was
+right in thinking that the human mind requires lead to be attached to
+it, and not wings. Hence the inference has been drawn that the simplest
+plan would be to cut the wings of thought, without reflecting that
+thenceforward it would continue motionless. Because some had abused
+hypothesis, others must conclude that we could do without it altogether.
+
+Trivial and premature suppositions have therefore discredited
+hypothesis, by encumbering science with a crowd of vain imaginations;
+but this encumbrance would have been of small importance but for the
+obstinacy with which false theories have too often been maintained
+against the evidence of facts. If Ampere had found his experiment fail,
+and had still continued to maintain his statements, he would not have
+given proof of a happy audacity, but of a ridiculous obstinacy. Genius
+itself makes mistakes, and experience alone distinguishes real laws from
+mere freaks of our thought. We have maintained the rights of reason in
+the spontaneous exercise of the faculty of discovery; but let us beware
+how we ignore the rights of experience. It alone prepares discoveries;
+it alone can confirm them. A system, however well put together, is
+convicted of error by the least fact which really contradicts it. A
+Greek philosopher was demonstrating by specious arguments that motion is
+impossible. Diogenes was one of his auditory, and he got up and began to
+walk: the answer was conclusive. You remember, if you have read Walter
+Scott, the learned demonstration of the antiquary who is settling the
+date of a Roman or Celtic ruin, I forget which; and the intervention of
+the beggar, who has no archaeological system, but who has seen the
+edifice in question both built and fall to decay. Reason as much as you
+like; if your reasonings do not accord with facts, you will have woven
+spider's webs, of admirable fineness perhaps, but wanting in solidity.
+
+It is time to sum up these lengthened considerations. Science does not
+originate solely from experiment, nor does it proceed solely from
+reason; it results from the meeting together of experience and reason.
+Experience prepares the discovery, genius makes it, experience confirms
+it. What distinguishes the sciences is not the process of invention,
+which is everywhere the same; but the process of control over supposed
+truths. A mathematical discovery is confirmed by pure reasoning. A
+physical discovery is confirmed by sensible observation joined with
+calculation. A discovery in the order of morals is confirmed by
+observation of the facts of consciousness. Therefore it is that between
+the physical and moral sciences there exists a broad line of
+demarcation. Moral facts have not less certainty than physical
+phenomena; but moral facts falling under the influence of liberty, all
+men cannot perceive them equally under all conditions. An optical
+experiment presents itself to the eyes, and all the spectators see it
+alike, if at least they have one and the same visual organization; but a
+case of moral experience has a personal character, and is only
+communicated to another person on condition that he puts faith in the
+testimony of his fellow. In this order of things a man can observe
+directly only what he concurs in producing. With this reservation, we
+may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that
+of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be
+held as true when it accounts for facts.
+
+And so, Gentlemen, we conclude that every scientific truth is, in its
+origin, a supposition of the mind, the result of which is to produce the
+meeting together of experience and reason, and so to permit the rational
+reconstruction of the facts.
+
+Every system is shown to be at fault by facts, if facts contradict it.
+
+When a system explains the facts, we hold it as proved just to the
+extent to which it explains them. This accordance of our thought with
+the nature of things is the mark of what we call truth.
+
+If you grant me these premises, my demonstration is completed, and it
+only remains for me to draw my conclusions.
+
+It is said that the idea of God can have no place in a serious science,
+because this idea comes neither from experience nor from reason; that it
+is only an hypothesis, and that hypothesis has no place in science. I
+reply, grounding my answer on the preceding reasonings: No science is
+formed otherwise than by means of hypothesis. For the solution of the
+universal problem there exists in the world an hypothesis, proposed to
+all by tradition, and which bears in particular the names of Moses and
+of Jesus Christ. This hypothesis has the right to be examined. If it
+explains the facts, it must be held for true. The idea of God comes
+therefore within the regular compass of science; the attempt to exclude
+it is sophistical.
+
+Let us separate the idea of God from the whole body of Christian
+doctrine of which it forms part, in order that we may give it particular
+consideration. What is this hypothesis which bears the names of Moses
+and Jesus Christ? It is that the principle of the universe is the
+Eternal and Infinite Being. His power is the cause of all that exists;
+the consciousness of His infinite power constitutes His infinite
+intelligence. In Himself, He is _He who is_; in His relation with the
+world, He is the absolute cause, the Creator. This explanation of the
+universe is not the privilege of a few savants; it is taught and
+proposed to all; and this is no reason why we should despise it. If we
+further observe that this thought has renovated the world, that it
+upholds all our civilization, that thousands of our fellow-creatures
+raise their voice to tell us that it is only from this source they have
+drawn peace, light, and happiness, we shall understand perhaps that
+contempt would be foolish, and that everything on the contrary invites
+us to examine with the most serious attention an hypothesis which offers
+itself to us under conditions so exceptional.
+
+The hypothesis is stated. We must now submit it to the test of facts.
+Where shall we find the elements of its confirmation? Everywhere, since
+it is the first cause of all things which is in question: we shall find
+them in nature and in humanity; in the motions of the stars as they
+sweep through the depths of space, and in the rising of the sap which
+nourishes a blade of grass; in the revolutions of empires, and in the
+simplest elements of the life of one individual. There is no science of
+God; but every science, every study must terminate at that sacred Name.
+I shall not undertake, therefore, to enumerate all the confirmations of
+the thought which makes of the Creator the principle of the universe: to
+recount all the proofs of the infinite Being would require an eternal
+discourse. We have stammered forth a few of the words of this endless
+discourse, by showing that, without God, the understanding, the
+conscience, and the heart lose their support and fall: this formed the
+subject of our second lecture. We saw further that reason makes
+fruitless attempts to find the universal principle in the objects of our
+experience--nature and humanity. Let us follow up, although we shall not
+be able to complete it, the study of this inexhaustible subject, by
+showing that the idea of the Creator alone answers to the demands of the
+philosophic reason.
+
+Philosophy, in the highest acceptation of the term, is the search after
+a solution for the universal problem the terms of which may be stated as
+follows: Experience reveals to us that the world is composed of manifold
+and diverse beings; and, to come at once to the great division, there
+are in the world bodies which we are forced to suppose inert, and minds
+which we feel to be intelligent and free. The universe is made up of
+manifold existences; this is quite evident, and a matter of experience.
+Reason on the other hand forces us to seek for unity. To comprehend, is
+to reduce phenomena to their laws, to connect effects with their
+causes, consequences with their principles; it is to be always
+introducing unity into the diversity. All development of science would
+be at once arrested, if the mind could content itself with merely taking
+account of facts in the state of dispersion in which they are presented
+by experience. Each particular science gathers up a multitude of facts
+into a small number of formulae; and, above and beyond particular
+sciences, reason searches for the connection of all things with one
+single cause. To determine the relation of all particular existences
+with one existence which is their common cause; such is the universal
+problem. This problem has been very well expressed by Pythagoras in a
+celebrated formula, that of the _Uni-multiple_. In order to understand
+the universe, we must rise to a unity which may account for the
+multiplicity of things and for their harmony, which is unity itself
+maintained in diversity.
+
+If you well understand this thought, you will easily comprehend the
+source of the great errors which flow from too strong a disposition to
+systematize. Men of this mind attach themselves to inadequate
+conceptions, and look for unity where it does not exist. The barrier
+which we must oppose to this spirit of system is the careful
+enumeration of the facts which it forgets to notice. Materialism looks
+for unity in inert and unintelligent bodies; it suffices to oppose to it
+one fact--the reality of mind. Fatalism seeks unity in necessity. Point
+out to it that its destiny-god does not account for the fact of
+repentance, for example, which implies liberty, and it is enough. The
+worship of humanity forces you to exclaim with Pascal--A queer God,
+that! There is in the bitterness of this smile a sufficient condemnation
+of the doctrine. To seek for unity, is the foundation of all philosophy.
+To seek for unity too hastily and too low, is the source of the errors
+of absolute minds. Absolute minds, however great they may be in other
+respects, are weak minds, in that they do not succeed in preserving a
+clear view of the diversity of the facts to be explained. Take the
+problem of Pythagoras; keep hold of the two extremities of the chain;
+never allow yourselves to deny the diversity of things, for that
+diversity is plainly evidenced by human experience; beware of denying
+their unity, because it is the foundation of reason; then search and
+look through the histories of philosophy: you will find one hypothesis,
+and one only, which answers the requirements of the problem. It goes
+back, as I believe, to the origin of the world; it was glimpsed by
+Socrates, by Aristotle, and Plato; but, in its full light, it belongs
+only to men who have received the God of Moses, and who have studied in
+the school of Jesus Christ. If this hypothesis explains the facts, it is
+sound, for the property of truth is to explain, as the property of light
+is to enlighten.
+
+The doctrine of the Creator can alone account to us for the universe, by
+bringing us back to its first cause. The first cause of unity cannot be
+matter which could never produce mind; the first cause of unity cannot
+be the human mind, which, from the moment that it desires to take itself
+for the absolute being, is dissolved and annihilated. The unity which
+alone can have in itself the source of multiplicity, is neither matter
+nor idea, but power; power the essential characteristic of mind, and
+infinite, that is to say, creative power. The Creator alone could
+produce divers beings, because He is Almighty, and maintain harmony
+between those beings, because He is One. Thus is manifested an essential
+agreement between the requirements of philosophy and the religious
+sentiment; for religion, as we said at the beginning of these lectures,
+rests upon the idea of Divine power. Reason and faith meet together
+upon the lofty heights of truth. But let us not enter too far into the
+difficulties of philosophy. Let us confine ourselves to considerations
+of a less abstruse order.
+
+The Creator is the God of nature. All the visible universe is but the
+work of His power, the manifestation of His wisdom. The poet of the
+Hebrews invites to offer praise to the Most High, not only men of every
+age and of all nations, but the beasts of the field, the birds of the
+air, and the cedars of the forest, the rain and the wind, the hail and
+the tempest.[167] In the language of a modern poet:
+
+
+     Thee, Lord, the wide world glorifies;
+     The bird upon its nest replies;
+     And for one little drop of rain
+     Beings Thine eye doth not disdain
+     Ten thousand more repeat the strain.[168]
+
+
+And such thoughts are not vain freaks of the imagination. Man, the
+conscious representative of nature, the high-priest of the universe,
+feels himself urged by an impulse of his heart to translate the
+confused murmur of the creation into a hymn of praise to the Infinite
+Being, the absolute Source of life,--to Him who _is_, One, Eternal,--the
+first and absolute Cause of all existence.
+
+The Creator is the God of spirits. He is not only the God of humankind;
+"the immense city of God contains, no doubt, nobler citizens than man,
+in reasoning power so weak, and in affections so poor."[169] But let us
+speak of what is known to us: He is the God of humankind. All nations
+shall one day render glory to Him. Mighty words have resounded through
+the world: "Henceforth there is no longer either Greek or barbarian or
+Jew; but one and the same God for all." The idols have begun to fall;
+the gods of the nations have been hurled from their pedestals; they have
+fallen, they are falling, they will fall, until the knowledge of the
+only and sovereign Creator shall cover the earth as the waters cover the
+sea.
+
+The Creator shall one day be known of all His creatures; and in each of
+His creatures He will be the centre and the object of the whole soul;
+all the functions of the spiritual life lead on to Him. What is truth,
+beauty, good? We have already replied to the question, but we will
+repeat our answer.
+
+To possess truth is to know God; it is to know Him in the work of His
+hands, and it is to know Him in His absolute power, as the eternal
+source of all that is, of all that can ever be, of all actual or
+possible truth in the mind of His creatures. Truth binds us to Him, "and
+all _science_ is a hymn to His glory."[170]
+
+He is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who gives to the bird its
+song, and to the brook its murmur. He it is who has established between
+nature and man those mysterious relations which give rise to noble joys.
+He it is who opens, above and beyond nature, the prolific sources of
+art; the ideal is a distant reflection of His splendor.
+
+And goodness, again, is none other than He; it is His plan; it is His
+will in regard of spirits; it is the word addressed to the free
+creature, which says to it: Behold thy place in the universal harmony.
+
+Thus a triple ray descends from the uncreated light, and before that
+insufferable brightness I am dazzled and bewildered. There is no longer
+any distinction for me between profane and sacred; I no longer
+understand the difference of these terms. Wheresoever I meet with good,
+truth, beauty, be the man who brings them to me who he may, and come he
+whence he may, I feel that to despise in him that gleam, would be not
+only to be wanting to humanity, it would be to be wanting to my faith.
+If my prejudices or habits tend to shut up my heart or to narrow my
+mind, I hear a voice exclaiming to me: "Enlarge thy tent; lengthen thy
+cords; enlarge thy tent without measure. Be ye lift up, eternal gates,
+gates of the conscience and the heart! Let in the King of glory!" All
+truth, all beauty, all good is He. Where my God is, nothing is profane
+for me. To ignore any one of those rays would be to steal somewhat from
+His glory.
+
+Oh! the happy liberty of the heart, when it rests on the Author of all
+good and of all truth. But if the heart is at liberty, how well is it
+guarded too! What is the most beautiful jewel (if we may venture to use
+such language) in the immortal crown of this King of glory? Powerful, He
+created power; free, He created liberty. And to the free creature, in
+the hour of its creation, He said: "Behold! thou art made in mine own
+image! my will is written in thy conscience; become a worker together
+with me, and realize the plans of my love." And that voice--I hear it
+within myself. Ah! I know that voice well, I know the secret attraction
+which, in spite of all my miseries, draws me towards that which is
+beautiful, pure, holy, and says to me: This is the will of thy Father.
+But I know other voices also which speak within me only too loudly: the
+voice of rebellion and of cowardice, the voice of baseness and ignominy.
+There is war in my soul. Enlightened by this inner spectacle, I cast my
+eyes once more over that world in which I have seen shining everywhere
+some divine rays; and I see that by a triple gate, lofty and wide, evil
+has entered thither, accompanied by error and deformity. Then I
+understand that all may become profane; I understand that there is an
+erring science, a corrupting art, a moral system full of immorality. But
+these words take for me a new meaning. There is no sacred evil, there is
+no profane good; there are no sacred errors and profane truths. Where
+God is, all is holy; where there is rebellion against God, all is evil.
+And so the God who is my light is my fortress also; my heart is
+strengthened while it is set at liberty, and I can join the ancient song
+of Israel:
+
+
+     Jehovah is our strength and tower.
+
+
+Yes, Sirs, God is in all, because He is the universal principle of
+being; but He is not in all after the same manner. God is in the pure
+heart by the joy which He gives to it; He is in the frivolous heart by
+the void and the vexation which urge it to seek a better destiny; He is
+in the corrupt heart by that merciful remorse which does not permit it
+to wander, without warning, from the springs of life. God makes use of
+all for the good of His creatures. He is everywhere by the direct
+manifestation of His will, except in the acts of rebellious liberty, and
+in the shadow of pain which follows that evil light which leads astray
+from Him.
+
+Having said that the idea of God the Creator alone satisfies the reason,
+and raises up, upon the basis of reason, man's conscience and heart, I
+should wish to show you, in conclusion, that this idea renders an
+account of the great systems of error which divide the human mind
+between them. Truth bears this lofty mark, that it never overthrows a
+doctrine without causing any portion of truth which it may have
+contained to pass into its own bosom.
+
+What then,--apart from declared atheism, from the dualism which has
+almost disappeared, and from faith in God the Creator,--are the great
+systems which share the human mind between them? There are two: deism
+and pantheism.
+
+What is deism? It is a doctrine which acknowledges that there is one
+God, the cause of the universe; but a God who is in a manner withdrawn
+from His own work, and who leaves it to go on alone. God has regulated
+things in the mass, but not in detail, or, to employ an expression of
+Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who came at a later period to entertain better
+opinions), "God is like a king who governs his kingdom, but who does not
+trouble himself to ascertain whether all the taverns in it are good
+ones." The idea of a general government of God which does not descend to
+details--such is the essence of deism.
+
+What is pantheism, in the ordinary meaning of the word? We have already
+said: it is a doctrine which absorbs God in the universe, which
+confounds Him with nature, and makes of Him only the inert substance,
+the unconscious principle of the universe. These are the two great
+conceptions which wrestle, in the history of human thought, against the
+idea of the Creator. These two systems triumph easily one over the
+other, because each of them contains a portion of truth which is wanting
+to its antagonist. They cannot support themselves because each of them
+has in it a portion of error. This is what we must well understand.
+
+Deism contains a portion of truth; for it maintains a Creator
+essentially distinct from the Creation, or, according to an expression
+which I translate from an ancient Indian poem: "One single act of His
+created the Universe, and He remained Himself whole and entire." This
+thought is true. What is the error of deism? It is that it makes a God
+like to a man who works upon matter existing previously to his action,
+and who puts in operation forces independent of himself, and which he
+does nothing but employ. In this way a watchmaker makes a watch which
+goes afterwards without him, because the watchmaker only sets to work
+forces which have an independent existence, and which continue to act
+when he has ceased his labor. We work upon matter foreign to us. The
+workman did not make matter, but only disposes of it, and he can never
+do more than modify the action of forces which do not proceed from his
+will, and have not been regulated by his understanding. But the Being
+who is the cause of all cannot dispose of foreign forces which act
+afterwards by themselves, since there exists in His work no principle of
+action other than those which He has Himself placed in it.
+
+Deism results therefore from a confusion between the work of a creature
+placed in a preexisting world, and the work of the Supreme Will which is
+in itself the single and absolute cause of all. It contains an element
+of dualism: its God does not create; but organizes a world the being of
+which does not depend on him. Take what is true in deism--the existence
+of the only God; remember that the Creator is the absolute Cause of the
+universe; and the distinction between _ensemble_ and detail will vanish,
+and you will understand that God is too great that there should be
+anything small in His eyes:
+
+
+     God measures not our lot by line and square:
+       The grass-suspended drop of morning dew
+     Reflects a firmament as vast and fair
+       As Ocean from his boundless field of blue.[171]
+
+
+In other words, take what is true in deism, and accept all the
+consequences of it, and you will arrive at the full doctrine of the
+creation.
+
+Pantheism recognizes the omnipresence of God in the universe, or, if you
+like the terms of the school, the immanence of God; this is its portion
+of truth. When I open the Hindoos' songs of adoration, and find therein
+the unlimited enumeration of the manifestations of God in nature, I find
+nothing to complain of. But when, in those same hymns, I see liberty
+denied, the origin of evil attributed to the Holy One, and man cowering
+before Destiny, instead of turning his eyes freely towards the Heavenly
+Father, then I stand only more erect and say: You forget that if your
+God is the Cause of all, He is the Cause of liberty. If liberty exists,
+evil, the revolt of liberty, is not the work of the Creator. Your system
+contradicts itself. You make of God the universal Principle, and you are
+right; make of Him then the Author of free wills, so that He will be no
+longer the source of evil, and we shall be agreed.
+
+Deism and pantheism therefore, pushed to their legitimate consequences,
+are transformed and united in the truth. And you see plainly that I am
+not making, for my part, an arbitrary selection in these systems. I am
+walking by one sole light, the light which has been given to us, and
+which serves me everywhere as a guiding clue:--The Lord is God, and
+there is no other God but He.
+
+Such, Gentlemen, is the fundamental truth on which rests all religion,
+and all philosophy capable of accounting for facts. Such is the grand
+cause which claims all the efforts which we are wasting too often in
+barren conflicts--the cause of God. But do I say the truth? Is it the
+cause of God which is at stake? When a surgeon, by a successful
+operation, has restored sight to a blind man, we are not wont to say
+that he has rendered a service to the sun. This cause is our own; it is
+that of society at large, it is that of families, that of individuals;
+it is the cause which concerns our dignity, our happiness; it is the
+cause of all, even of those who attack it in words of which they do not
+calculate the import, and who, were they to succeed in banishing God
+from the public conscience, would, with us, recoil in terror at sight of
+the frightful abysses into which we all should fall together.
+
+It is time to sum up these considerations.
+
+Inert and unintelligent matter is not the cause of life and
+intelligence.
+
+Human consciences would be plunged in irremediable misery, if ever they
+could be persuaded that there is nothing superior to man.
+
+The universe is the work of wisdom and of power; it is the creation of
+the Infinite Mind. What can still be wanting to our hearts? The thought
+that God desires our good,--that He loves us. If it is so, we shall be
+able to understand that our cause is His, that He is not an impassible
+sun whose rays fall on us with indifference, but a Father who is moved
+at our sorrows, and who would have us find joy and peace in Him. This
+will be the subject of our next and concluding lecture.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[160] Firmissimum hoc afferri videtur, cur deos esse credamus, quod
+nulla gens tam fera, nemo omnium tam sit immanis, cujus mentem non
+imbuerit deorum opinio. Multi de diis prava sentiunt, id enim vitioso
+more effici solet; omnes tamen esse vim et naturam divinam
+arbitrantur.... Omni autem in re consentio omnium gentium, lex naturae
+putanda est.--_Tuscul._ i. 13.
+
+[161] _In presence of Heaven, we must believe or deny._ See Lecture III.
+
+[162] _Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard._
+
+[163]
+
+     Thou hadst only forgotten one point,
+     And that was, to light thy lantern.
+
+[164] _Harmonices mundi libri quinque_.
+
+[165] The authenticity of this reply is disputed; M. Arago gives it in
+different terms; but the question is of small consequence here as one of
+historical criticism, my object being not to establish a fact, but to
+put an idea in a strong light by means of an example.
+
+[166]
+
+                     .... Pour etre approuves
+     De semblables projets veulent etre acheves.
+
+[167] Ps. cxlviii.
+
+[168]
+
+     Le monde entier te glorifie,
+     L'oiseau te chante sur son nid;
+     Et pour une goutte de pluie
+     Des milliers d'etres t'ont beni.
+
+[169] Albert de Haller. _Lettres sur les verites les plus importantes de
+la revelation_. Lettre 2.
+
+[170] Et toute la _science_ est un hymne a sa gloire.
+
+[171]
+
+     Dieu ne mesure pas nos sorts a l'etendue.
+     La goutte de rosee a l'herbe suspendue
+     Y reflechit un ciel aussi vaste, aussi pur
+     Que l'immense Ocean dans ses plaines d'azur.
+                                          LAMARTINE.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+_THE FATHER._
+
+(At Geneva, 8th Dec. 1863.--At Lausanne, 1st Feb. 1864.)
+
+
+GENTLEMEN,
+
+We have proposed for solution the problem which includes all others
+whatsoever--the problem of the universe. What are the laws which govern
+the universe? They are those which are the objects of science, taking
+that word in its largest and most general meaning. What is the cause of
+the universe? The eternal power of the Infinite Mind. These are the two
+answers which we have hitherto obtained, but, as we have explained, a
+study is not complete if it confine itself to these two answers. When we
+know the law and the cause of an object submitted to our study, we
+further look for the end designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but
+the direct result of the constitution of our understanding. The universe
+is the creation of God. What is the design of the creation? I answer:
+the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made
+for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition of their life
+and development; spiritual beings are made for felicity. The moving
+spring of infinite power is goodness: this is my thesis. If I succeed in
+establishing it, it will follow that we shall in imagination see issuing
+from the supreme unity of the Infinite Being three rays: the power which
+creates the being of things; the intelligence which orders them; and the
+love which conducts them to their destination. It will also follow that
+I shall have justified the title under which these Lectures were
+announced: Power and wisdom are attributes of the Creator; the Father
+reveals Himself in goodness.
+
+What shall be our method? Can we enter into the counsels of God? By what
+means? To place our understanding in the midst of the Divine
+consciousness, there to behold the spring of the determinations of the
+Infinite Being, were an attempt so far exceeding our capacity, that it
+is impossible to point out any means whatever by which it could be made.
+This would be to conceive of God in His eternal essence, independently
+of His relation to the universe, to nature, and to our reason. I do not
+say merely that the attempt would be fruitless; I say that we have no
+means of attempting this metaphysical adventure. But might we not, in
+looking at the work of God, discern in it the evidence of its design?
+This is a process which we often follow in regard to our
+fellow-creatures. Do we wish to know the object which a man has in view
+in his labor? He may himself disclose that object to us directly in
+words, or we may endeavor to discover it. We watch him at work, and by
+observing the way in which he proceeds we sometimes come to know what
+his thoughts are, because we find ourselves in presence of the work of a
+mind, and we ourselves are mind. Can we in the same way, by looking at
+the universe, that grand work, succeed in discovering its end?
+
+The way on which we are entering raises two objections, which proceed
+from the difficulties felt by two classes of men of opposite views; and
+our first business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary
+difficulties.
+
+You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in proving the goodness
+of God, because evil is in the world. I am not inventing, Gentlemen. A
+letter containing this challenge has been addressed to me by one of
+you. It is manifest, since we propose to ourselves to recognize in the
+work the intention of the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness
+of the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its forms, sin,
+pain, imperfection, is the main objection which can be addressed to us.
+Evil is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge
+it. Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which
+comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in
+short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a
+culpable, system. The strongest minds have worn themselves out in such
+attempts with no result whatever. The great Leibnitz attempted an
+enterprise of this nature. His system consisted in extenuating evil as
+far as possible, and in pronouncing that amount of evil, of which he
+could not dissemble the existence, to be necessary. He failed. The
+strong intellectual armor of one of the greatest geniuses the world has
+ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft
+of Voltaire.
+
+
+     Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,
+     Sharpening the pangs ye make pretence to cure,
+     Poor comforters! in your attempts I see
+     Nought but the pride which feigns unreal glee!
+     O mortals, of such bliss how weak the spell!
+     Ye cry in doleful accents--"All is well!"--
+     And all things at the great deceit rebel.
+     Nay, if your minds to coin the flattery dare,
+     Your hearts as often lay the falsehood bare.
+     The gloomy truth admits of no disguise--
+     Evil is on the earth![172]
+
+
+For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our old neighbor of Ferney.
+Yes, evil is on the earth; and it constitutes, in the question which we
+are discussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of
+difficulties. Let us listen to a modern poet:
+
+
+     Why then so great, O Sovereign Lord,
+       Came evil from thy forming hand,
+       That Reason, yea, and Virtue stand
+     Aghast before the sight abhorred?
+
+     And how can deeds so hideous glare
+       Beneath the beams of holy light,
+       That on the lips of hapless wight
+     Dies at their view the trembling prayer?
+
+     Why do the many parts agree
+       So scantly in thy work sublime?
+       And what is pestilence, or crime,
+     Or death, O righteous God, to Thee?[173]
+
+
+We have only to put this poetry into common prose to obtain this
+argument, namely,--The presence of evil in the world is not compatible
+with the idea of the goodness of God. Here is the objection in all its
+force. And what is the answer? Simply this, that God did not create
+evil. It was not He who brought crime into the world. He created
+liberty, which is a good, and evil is the produce of created liberty in
+rebellion against the law of its being. I borrow from Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau the development of this thought. "If man," says he, "is a free
+agent, then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely enters not into
+the ordained system of Providence, and cannot be imputed to it. The
+Creator does not will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty
+which He gives him. He has made him free in order that he may do not
+evil but good by choice. To murmur because God does not hinder him from
+doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of an excellent nature,
+attached to his actions the moral character which ennobles them, and
+gave him a right to virtue. What! in order to prevent man from being
+wicked, must he needs be confined to instinct and made a mere brute? No;
+God of my soul, never will I reproach Thee with having made it in Thine
+image, in order that I might be free, good, and happy, like Thyself.
+
+"It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us unhappy and wicked.
+Our vexations and our cares come to us from ourselves."
+
+Such is Rousseau's answer to the objection drawn from the existence of
+evil. It is a good one. It is so good that it is impossible to find a
+better. If we are determined not to outrage the human conscience by
+denying the reality of evil; if God is the sovereign good, and if there
+is no other principle of things than He; evil cannot be accounted for
+otherwise than by the rebellion of the creature. But now, Rousseau's
+answer, excellent in itself and in the abstract, becomes profoundly
+inadequate, as the citizen of Geneva goes on to develop his theory. Evil
+comes from the creature; but each individual is not the exclusive source
+of the evils which he does and suffers. To attribute to each individual,
+not only the responsibility of his acts, but the origin of the evil
+germs which exist in his soul, is the untenable proposition of a
+desperate individualism. There is evidently among men a common property
+in evil; Rousseau sees it clearly enough, but he makes vain efforts to
+find in the organization of society and in the condition of civilization
+the causes of pain and of sin. When one has come to see clearly that the
+source of evil is in the creature, the close mutual connection of
+created wills and their relations with nature present a field for long
+and difficult study; and Rousseau has no sooner discerned the road to
+truth than he wanders away into byroads in which the solution of the
+problem escapes him. This problem, Gentlemen, I have the intention and
+desire of studying some day, if God permit, with those of you who may be
+willing to undertake it with me. We shall then have to deal with an
+objection, or rather with a difficulty. But this difficulty, which we
+cannot now dispose of, must not hinder us from stating our thesis. In
+every well-conducted study, the propositions to be maintained must be
+laid down and supported before dealing with objections. If it were
+maintained that evil is the principle of things, it would be necessary
+first of all to endeavor to establish the thesis, in which the existence
+of good would be brought forward, and would constitute the objection.
+The objection would have to be answered--Why has good appeared in the
+world? And I would just say in passing, that our libraries are full of
+treatises upon the origin of evil, and I have never met with one upon
+the origin of good. It appears therefore that reason has always
+admitted, by a sort of instinct, the identity of good, and of the
+principle of being. Our thesis is that the principle of the universe is
+good. We are going to try to demonstrate it. Afterwards the difficulty,
+evil, will present itself, of which it will be necessary to seek the
+explanation. This will be the natural sequel, and the necessary
+complement of the course of lectures which we are concluding to-day.
+
+I pass to another difficulty, another challenge which also has been
+addressed to me.
+
+Your object, Christians have said to me, is to establish that the
+principle and ground of all things is goodness. This you will not be
+able to do without departing from your prescribed plan, and entering
+upon the domain of Christian faith properly so called. In your
+examination of the universe will you leave out of view Jesus Christ and
+His work? Do you not know that it is by means of this work that the idea
+of the love of God has been implanted in the world, and that it is
+thence you have taken it? Do you think to climb to the loftiest heights
+of thought, and to make the ascent by some other road than over the
+mountain of Nazareth and the hill of Calvary?
+
+Gentlemen, I declared my whole mind on this subject at first starting.
+The complete idea of God demands, for its maintenance, the grand
+doctrinal foundations of our faith. Christian in its origin, firm faith
+in the love of God the Creator requires for its defence the armor of the
+Gospel. But before defending this belief, we must first establish it; we
+must show that it has natural roots in human nature. Christianity
+purifies and strengthens it, but it does not in an absolute sense create
+it. The mark of truth is that it does not strike us as something
+absolutely new, but that it finds an echo in the depths of our soul.
+When we meet with it, we seem to re-enter into the possession of our
+patrimony. The Cross of Jesus Christ is without all contradiction the
+most transcendent proof of the mercy of the Creator; but the Cross of
+Jesus Christ rather warrants the Christian in believing in the Divine
+love than gives him the idea of it. We must distinguish in the Gospel
+between the universal religion which it has restored, and the act itself
+of that restoration, which constitutes the Gospel in the special sense
+of the word. Now what I am here maintaining is the fact of the existence
+in modern society of the elements of the universal religion. I am far
+from sharing in the illusions of my fellow-countryman Rousseau, when he
+affirms that even if he had lived in a desert isle, and had never known
+a fellow-man, he would nevertheless have been able to write the
+_Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard_. I know very well that if I were
+a Brahmin, born at the foot of the Himalayas, or a Chinese mandarin, I
+should not be able to say all that I am saying respecting the goodness
+of God. The light which we have received--I know whence it radiates;
+but, by the help of that light, I seek its kindred rays everywhere, and
+everywhere I find them in humanity.
+
+Let us endeavor, then, according to our plan, to recognize in the
+universe the marks of the Divine goodness. Let us first of all
+interrogate the human soul, which is certainly one of the essential
+elements of the world; and let us interrogate it with regard to the
+great fact of religion.
+
+The universal religion presents to observation two principal forms of
+mental experience: the sense of the necessity for appeasing the Divine
+justice, and the sense of the necessity for obtaining the help of God.
+
+The sense of the necessity for appeasing justice reveals itself in
+sacrifices. There are sacrifices which are merely offerings of
+gratitude, and freewill gifts of love. But when you see the blood of
+animals flowing in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing forth
+upon the altars, you will be unable to escape the conviction that man,
+in presenting himself before the Deity, feels constrained to appease a
+justice which threatens him.
+
+The sense of the need of help shows itself in prayer; and this must be
+the especial object of our study, because it is in the fact of religious
+invocation that we shall encounter the idea, obscure perhaps, but real,
+of the goodness of the First Cause of the universe.
+
+Prayer is a fact of the universal religion. Whence is it that we derive
+a large part of what knowledge we have of the ancient civilizations of
+India and Egypt? From ruins: and the chief of these ruins are the ruins
+of temples, that is to say, of houses of prayer. Would we go further
+back than these monuments of stone? I interrogate those pioneers of
+science who are searching for the traces of antiquity in old
+languages,--in the ruins of speech. I inquire, for example, of my
+learned fellow-countryman, M. Adolphe Pictet: "You who have studied,
+with patient care, the first origins of our race--what have you
+discovered in the way of religion?" He replies: "When I have gone as far
+back as historical speculations can carry us by the aid of language, it
+appears to me that I no longer see temples built by the hand of man,
+but, beneath the open vault of heaven, I see our earliest ancestors
+sending up together the chant of prayer and the flame of
+sacrifice."[174]
+
+And now, from this remote antiquity, I come down to the paganism, in
+which modern civilization had its beginning. Tertullian teaches us that
+the pagans, seeming to forget their idols, and to offer a spontaneous
+testimony to the truth, were often wont to exclaim--Great God! Good God!
+What in their mind was the order of these two thoughts, the thought of
+greatness and that of goodness? The pediment of a temple at Rome bore
+this famous inscription, _Deo optimo maximo_; and Cicero explains to us
+that the God of the Capitol was by the Roman people named "very good" on
+account of the benefits conferred by him, and "very great" on account of
+his power.[175] It is the idea of goodness which here appears to be
+first. But let us go more directly to the root of the question: What do
+we gather from the universality of prayer? What is it to pray? To pray
+is to ask. Prayer may be mingled with thanksgivings, and with
+expressions of adoration, but in itself prayer is a petition. This
+petition rises to God: and when does it so rise? In distress, in
+anguish. It is misery, weakness, the heart cast down, the failing will,
+which unite to raise from earth to heaven that long cry which resounds
+across all the pages of history: Help!--I analyze this fact, and inquire
+what it means. A request is made, and for what? For strength, for
+tranquillity, for peace; for happiness under all its forms. And of whom
+is happiness asked? Of goodness. Justice is appeased, power is dreaded,
+but it is goodness which is invoked. It is so in human relations. The
+man who supplicates the fiercest tyrant only does so because he supposes
+that a fibre of goodness may still vibrate in that savage heart. Take
+from him that thought; persuade him that the last gleam of pity is
+extinct in the heart to which he appeals, and you will arrest the prayer
+on the lips of the suppliant. There will remain for him only the silence
+of despair, or the heroism of resignation.
+
+To sum up:--Religion is a universal fact. "There is no religion without
+prayer," said Voltaire, and he never said better. There is no prayer
+without a confused, perhaps, but real, conviction of the goodness of the
+First Cause of the universe. If you could stifle in man's heart the
+feeling that the Principle of things is good, you would silence over the
+whole globe that voice of prayer which is ever rising to God. Thus
+humanity itself testifies to the truth for which I am contending.
+Humanity prays; it believes therefore in the goodness of God. This fact
+is an argument. The heart of man is organized to believe that God is
+good: it is the mark set by the Worker Himself upon His work.
+
+Let us study now another of the elements of the universe. We have heard
+the answer of man's heart; let us ask for the answer of reason. Has
+reason nothing to tell us respecting the intentions of the Creator? Let
+us place it in presence of the idea of God--of the Infinite Being, and
+see what it will be able to teach us.
+
+To attain my object, I must explain more particularly than as yet I have
+done, a word rendered frivolous by the levity of our heart, a word
+defiled by the disorder of our passions, and too often by the
+unworthiness, and worse, of poets and novelists, but which still, in its
+virgin purity, is ever protesting against the outrages to which it has
+been subjected: that word is _love_.
+
+This word has two principal meanings. In the Platonic sense of it, it is
+the search after what is beautiful, great, noble, pure,--after what, as
+being of the very real nature of the soul, attracts, fills, and delights
+it. But there is another sort of love, which does not pursue greatness
+and beauty, but which gives itself; a love which seeks the wretched to
+enrich him, the poor to make him happy, the fallen to raise him up.
+These two kinds of love seem to follow different and even contrary laws.
+Here, for instance, is a description of what often occurs in a large
+city.[176] A man leaves his house in the evening in order to be present
+at performances in which I am willing to believe that everything bears
+the stamp of nobleness and grandeur, or at least of a pure and wholesome
+taste. He experiences keen enjoyment, and that of an elevated kind. The
+spectacle over, he returns to his dwelling, and at a still later hour he
+retires at length to his repose. He has not long extinguished his
+luxurious tapers, perhaps, when other men, who have slept while others
+were seeking amusement, rise before daylight, and, lighting their small
+lanterns, go forth to succor the unfortunate, without witnesses and
+without ostentation.
+
+I have taken this example from Xavier de Maistre. Let me give you
+another from scenes more familiar to ourselves. You know those pure
+summer mornings, when one may truly say that the Alp smiles and that the
+mountain invites. A young man quits his dwelling at the first dawning of
+the day, in his hand the tourist's staff, and his countenance beaming
+with joy. He starts on a mountain excursion. All day long he quaffs the
+pure air with delight, revels in the freedom of the pasture-grounds, in
+the view of the lofty summits and of the distant horizons. He reposes in
+the shade of the forest, drinks at the spring from the rock, and when he
+has gazed on the Alpine chain resplendent in the radiance of the setting
+sun, he lingers still to see--
+
+
+     Twilight its farewell to the hills delaying.[177]
+
+
+Noble enjoyments! This young man enjoys because he loves. The spectacle
+of the creation speaks to his heart and elevates his thoughts. He loves
+that enchanting nature, which blends in a marvellous union the
+impressions which in human relations are produced by the strong man's
+majesty and the maiden's sweetest smile.
+
+On this same summer-day, another man has also risen before the sun. He
+is devoted to the assuaging of human miseries, and he has had much to
+do. He has mounted gloomy staircases; he has entered dark chambers; he
+has spent time in hospitals, in the midst of the pains of sickness; he
+has come, in prisons, to the relief of pains which are sadder still.
+Day, as it dawned, gilded the summits of the Alps, but he saw not that
+pure light of the morning. Day, as it advanced, penetrated into the
+valleys, but he did not notice its progress. The sun set in his glory,
+but he had no opportunity to admire either the bright reflection of the
+waters, or the rosy tint of the mountains. And yet he too is joyful
+because he loves. He loves the fulfilment of stern duty, he loves
+poverty solaced, and suffering alleviated.
+
+Here are the two kinds of love. The disciple of Plato rises, far from
+the vulgarities of life, into the lofty regions of the ideal, and feeds
+on beauty. Vincent de Paul takes the place of a convict at the galleys
+that he may restore a father to his children. These two kinds of love
+seem to us to be contrary one to the other: the one seeks itself, and
+the other gives itself. Still they are both necessary to life, for in
+order to give we must receive. In the accomplishment of the works of
+goodness, the soul would be impoverished and would end by drying up in
+a purely mechanical exercise of beneficence, had it no spring from which
+to draw forth the living waters. Man must himself find joy in order to
+diffuse it amongst his fellows. But mark the incomparable marvel of the
+spiritual order of things! The love which gives itself is able to find
+its worthiest object and its purest satisfaction in the very act of
+kindness. There is joy in self-devotion; there is happiness in
+self-sacrifice: the fountain furnishes its own supplies. Thus are
+harmonized the two contrary tendencies of the heart of man. "It is more
+blessed to give than to receive;" words these, of Jesus Christ, which,
+forgotten by the Evangelists, have been recorded by the Apostle St.
+Paul. And since the thought is a beautiful one, it has adorned the
+strains of the poets: says Lamartine--
+
+
+     Dost thou happiness resign
+     To another? It is thine--
+     Larger for the largess--still![178]
+
+
+And Victor Hugo, personifying Charity, makes her speak as follows:
+
+
+     Dear to every man that lives,
+     Joy I bring to him who gives,
+     Joy I leave with him who takes.[179]
+
+
+And because this thought is profound as well as beautiful, it has been
+taken up by the philosophers. "To love," said Leibnitz, "is to place
+one's happiness in the happiness of another." Here is the connecting
+link between Platonic love and the love which is charity. Hear how a
+Christian orator comments upon these words:--"This sublime definition
+has no need of explanations: it is either understood at once, or it is
+not understood. The man who has loved understands it; and he who has not
+loved will never understand it. He who has loved knows that a shadow in
+the heart of the beloved one would darken his own: he knows that he
+would reckon no means too costly--watchings, labors, privations--by
+which to create a smile on the lips of the sorrowful; he knows that he
+would die to redeem a forfeited life; he knows that he would be happy
+in another's welfare, happy in his graces, happy in his virtues, happy
+in his glory, happy in his happiness. The man who has loved knows all
+this; he who has not loved knows nothing of it:--I pity him!"[180]
+
+But the great mistake, which seems peculiar to our nature, is that we
+are ever connecting happiness with the idea of receiving, and are always
+thinking of giving as of a loss to ourselves. We do not understand that
+selfishly to keep is to be impoverished, while freely to relinquish is
+to be enriched. Yet here is the grand discovery of the spiritual life;
+and once this discovery made, in order that the spiritual life may
+attain its object, it only remains to find the strength to put it into
+practice. Selfishness is wrong, no doubt, but it is not only wrong, it
+is ignorant, for it looks for happiness where it is not; and it is
+unhappy, for it wanders from the paths of peace.
+
+Let us now apply these considerations to the Infinite Being, and to the
+problem of the end of the creation. Leaving ourselves to the guidance of
+the laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall be able to
+attribute to the Creator in His work? Will creation be the effect of a
+necessity? No, Sirs, for in that case everything in the world would be a
+matter of fate, and liberty would remain inexplicable. If a blind power
+were directing the Almighty Will, we should return to the worship of
+destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out of a design of which
+the motive is interest? But what conceivable interest can influence Him
+who is the plentitude of being? Or will creation be a duty? But whence
+should come the obligation for the Being who is in Himself the absolute
+law? Creation can only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what
+love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness,
+of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some
+eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the
+revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was
+treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by Pere
+Lacordaire.[181] He is entering upon this question: What can have been
+the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the
+Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the
+love which gives itself, which he designates by the term--goodness.
+"Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said
+to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard
+as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of
+its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before
+God, which preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give a name
+without betraying the truth?... There remained something, Sirs, be very
+sure, more generous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more
+powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and if you find it hard to
+understand me, if your own endowments are unknown to you, listen to
+Bossuet speaking of you:--'When God,' says he, 'made the heart of man,
+the first thing He planted there was goodness:' goodness; that is to
+say, that virtue which does not consult self-interest, which does not
+wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to be solicited by the
+attraction of the beautiful, but which stoops towards its object all the
+more, as it is poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy of
+contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man possesses that adorable
+faculty. It is not genius, nor glory, nor love, which measures the
+elevation of his soul,--it is goodness. This it is which gives to the
+human countenance its principal and most powerful charm; this it is
+which draws us together; this it is which brings into communication the
+good and the evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth, the
+great mediating principle. See, at the foot of the Alps, yon miserable
+_cretin_, which, eyeless, smileless, tearless, is not even conscious of
+its own degradation, and which looks like an effort of nature to insult
+itself in the dishonor of the greatest of its own productions: but
+beware how you imagine that that wretched object has not found the road
+to any heart, or that his debasement has deprived him of the love of all
+the world. No: he is beloved; he has a mother, he has brothers and
+sisters; he has a place at the cottage-hearth; he has the best place and
+the most sacred of all, just because of all he may seem to have the
+least claim to any. The bosom which nursed him supports him still, and
+the superstition of love never speaks of him but as of a blessing sent
+of God. Such is man!
+
+"But can I say, Such is man, without saying also, Such is God! From whom
+would man derive goodness, if God were not the primordial Ocean of
+goodness, and if, when He formed our heart, He had not first of all
+poured into it a drop from His own? Yes, God is good; yes, goodness is
+the attribute which includes in it all the rest; and it is not without
+reason that antiquity engraved on the pediment of its temples that
+famous inscription, in which goodness preceded greatness."
+
+Now, to say nothing of the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause
+at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all
+things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under
+the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love
+which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as
+any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the
+infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without
+falling into some degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in
+the abstract, if we wish to analyze it in its real substance, our view
+is confused. You understand well that goodness increases in the
+proportion in which its object is diminished. We are by so much more
+good as we stoop to that which is poorer and more miserable. What then
+shall be the infinite goodness? In order to find it, we must infinitely
+diminish its object: and here we encounter mystery. To diminish an
+object infinitely is an operation impossible to our thought. This
+mystery is encountered even in the mathematical sciences. We take a
+quantity, halve it, and again halve this half, and so on without end,
+but we shall never obtain the infinity of smallness; for the quantity
+indefinitely divided will always remain indefinitely divisible. At
+whatever degree of division we may have arrived, between what remains
+and nothingness there extends always the abyss of the infinite. So I
+seek for the object of infinite goodness: that object must be infinitely
+destitute. I diminish accordingly the existence of the universe: I
+extinguish all the rays of its beauty; I take from it order, life,
+measure, color, light; I reduce it until it is nothing but formless
+matter, a something--I know not what--which has no longer a name. Vain
+attempt! This nameless something, so long as it is anything, will not be
+_nothing_. Between it and nothing there will always be the infinite. If
+the goodness of God is applied to any object which was existing
+independently of Him, however poor and abject that object be conceived
+to have been, then God is no longer the unique, the absolute Creator. If
+imagination will cross the abyss, we shall come of necessity to
+say--what? that the object of infinite love must have been
+non-existence. This is what the orator already quoted has done:--"All
+perfection supposes an object to which to apply itself. The divine
+goodness therefore requires an object as vast and profound as itself.
+God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being
+without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being
+without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds
+which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a
+measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said to Time: Begin!"
+
+This, Gentlemen, is eloquence. The thought in itself does not bear a
+rigorous analysis; but do not think that the lustrous beauty of the
+language is only a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have
+arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the cloud is lighted
+up by the ray that issues from it. Our goodness, finite creatures as we
+are, is so much the greater as the object on which it is bestowed is
+less. Infinite goodness must create for itself an object. It does not
+love nothingness, but a creature which is nothing in itself, a creature
+simply possible, which, before owing to it the blessings of existence,
+shall owe to it that existence itself. The only being that we can
+represent to ourselves, by a sublime image, as stooping towards
+nothingness, is He whose look gives life. The creature is willed for
+itself, or,--to quote the words of Professor Secretan, addressed to you
+last year,--the foundation of nature is grace.[182] We ask: What can
+have been the object of creation? Our reason answers: The Infinite Being
+can only act from goodness, He can have no other object than the
+happiness of His creatures.
+
+And now I recapitulate. We ask what is the object of creation; and
+whereas we cannot transport ourselves into the inaccessible light of the
+Divine consciousness, we question the work of God in order to discern
+the intentions of the Creator. From the fact that humanity prays, we
+gather the reply that man has a spontaneous belief in the goodness of
+the First Cause of the universe. We place reason in presence of the
+idea of the Infinite Being; reason declares to us that He who is the
+plenitude of Being could not have created except from the motive of
+love. We understand that God has made all for His own glory, and that
+His glory consists in the manifestation of His goodness. These thoughts,
+in their full light, belong to the Gospel revelation, but they appear,
+under a veil, in the conceptions which lie at the basis of pagan
+religions. Without entering the temple of idols, we may bow the knee
+before the pediment of the ancient sanctuary, and, beneath the open
+vault of heaven, adore, with the Roman people, that God whose goodness
+takes precedence of His greatness.
+
+The direct consequence of the principles which we have just laid down is
+that happiness is the object of our existence. Created by goodness, we
+can have no other end than blessedness.
+
+But beware of supposing that we can take for our guide our desire of
+happiness, and ourselves calculate its conditions. Happiness is our end;
+it is the will of our Father; but we must let ourselves be conducted
+into it. If, shutting our ears to the voice which lays upon us commands
+and obligations, we would take our destinies into our own hands; if we
+made the search after happiness our rule, understanding happiness in
+our own way, we should be taking for light fantastic gleams which would
+lead us into abysses of ruin. The unruly propensities of our heart would
+lead us to make ourselves the centre of the world. To "live for self" is
+the motto of selfishness, and the watchword of unhappiness. To live for
+God is the way to happiness. To live to God, that is to say, over the
+ruins of our shattered selfishness, to enter into order, to take our
+place in the spiritual edifice of charity, and to share in the joy which
+God allots to all His children--this is the end of our creation. Once
+lifted to the height of this thought, we are able to understand the
+great struggle which rent the conscience of the ancients, because in
+their times the light of truth illumined only at intervals the clouds of
+error which covered the world.
+
+There are in man two voices; the one leading him to happiness, the other
+calling him to holiness. The first impulse of his nature is to start in
+eager pursuit of mere enjoyment; but ere long the second voice is heard,
+the voice of conscience, striving to arrest him in his course. If man do
+not obey her call, conscience becomes his chastiser. Hence arises a
+painful struggle of conflicting feelings, and the human mind is the
+subject of a strong temptation to pacify itself by silencing one of the
+two voices. It is the history of antiquity. Socrates, the wise Socrates,
+had indeed cried aloud: Woe! woe to the man who separates the just from
+the useful; and had warned men that happiness may be found apart from
+what is right and good. Cicero put into beautiful Latin the lessons of
+the Grecian sage; but the torn heart of man was not long in tearing the
+mantle of the philosopher. From the thought, full and complete as it is,
+of Socrates issued two celebrated sects, one of which wished to
+establish man's life on the basis of duty without reference to
+happiness; and the other on the basis of happiness without reference to
+duty.
+
+The Stoics attached themselves to duty; but the need of happiness
+asserted itself in spite of them, and sought satisfaction in the gloomy
+pleasure of isolation, and in the savage joy of pride. The sage of these
+philosophers sets himself free, not only from all the cares of earth,
+but from all the bonds of the heart, from all natural affection.
+Finally, by a consequence, at once sad and odd, of the same doctrine,
+the highest point of self-possession is to prove that man is master of
+himself, by the emancipation of suicide and in the liberty of death. The
+Stoic philosopher declares himself insensible to the ills of life; he
+denies that pain is an evil; and, on the other hand, he claims the right
+to kill himself in order to escape from the ills of existence! So ended
+this famous school. At the same period, the herd of Epicurus' followers,
+giving themselves over to weak and shameful indulgences, were thus in
+fact laboring with all their might (this is Montesquieu's opinion) to
+prepare that enormous corruption under which were to sink together the
+glory of Rome and the civilization of the ancient world.
+
+This struggle which rent the ancient conscience, and which still rends
+the modern conscience wherever the goodness of God continues
+veiled--this great conflict is appeased when we have come to understand
+that goodness is the first principle of things, that happiness is our
+end, and that the stern voice of conscience is a friendly voice which
+warns us to shun those paths of error in which we should encounter
+wretchedness. The conscience is the voice of the Master; and the same
+authority which, speaking in the name of duty, bids us--"Be good,"
+adds, in the gentle accents of hope--"and thou shalt be happy."
+Happiness, duty,--these are the two aspects of the Divine Will. Love is
+the solution of the universal enigma. Therefore, surprising as the
+thought may be, it is our duty to be happy. Our profession of faith,
+when we look above, must be: "I believe in goodness;" and when we enter
+again into ourselves, our profession of faith should be: "I believe in
+happiness." And we do not believe in it. Not to believe in happiness is
+the root of our ills; it is the original misery which includes all our
+miseries. Triflers that we are, we give ourselves up to pleasure because
+we do not believe in joy: frivolous, we run after giddy excitement
+because we do not believe in peace: with hearts corrupt, we abandon
+ourselves to the devouring flame of the passions, because we do not
+believe in the serene light of true felicity. But the more the thought
+of God's love enters our mind, the more will faith in happiness issue
+from our soul as a blessed flower. Happiness is the end of our being; it
+is the will of the Father. To each one of us are these words addressed:
+God loves thee; be happy! If therefore (and I address myself more
+particularly to the younger of my hearers), if in the depth of your
+soul you are conscious of a sudden aspiration after true felicity, ah!
+do not suffer the holy flame to be extinguished, do not talk of
+illusions; do not, I pray you, resign yourselves to the prose of life;
+to a dreary and gloomy contentedness with a destiny which has no ideal.
+Your nature does not deceive you; it is you who deceive yourselves, if
+you seek your own welfare in the world of foolish or guilty chimeras.
+Listen to all the voices which speak to you of comfort; be attentive to
+all the words of peace. Seek, labor, pray, till you are able to utter,
+in quiet confidence, those words of the Psalmist:
+
+
+     In peace I lay me down to rest;
+     No fears of evil haunt my breast:
+     In peace I sleep till dawn of day,
+     For God, my God, is near alway:
+     On Him in faith my cares I roll;
+     He never sleeps who guards my soul.[183]
+
+
+God in the heart--this it is which adds zest to our enjoyments,
+sanctifies our affections, calms our griefs, and which, amidst the
+struggles, the sorrows, and the harrowing afflictions of life, suffers
+to rise from the heart to the countenance that sublime smile which can
+shine brightly even through tears.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[172]
+
+     Tristes calculateurs des miseres humaines,
+     Ne me consolez point, vous aigrissez mes peines;
+     Et je ne vois en vous que l'effort impuissant
+     D'un fier infortune qui feint d'etre content.
+     Quel bonheur, O mortels, et faible et miserable.
+     Vous criez: "Tout est bien" d'une voix lamentable;
+     L'univers vous dement, et votre propre coeur
+     Cent fois de votre esprit a refute l'erreur.
+     Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre.
+                                    DESASTRE DE LISBONNE.
+
+[173]
+
+     Pourquoi donc, O Maitre supreme,
+     As-tu cree le mal si grand
+     Que la raison, la vertu meme
+     S'epouvantent en le voyant?
+
+     Comment, sous la sainte lumiere,
+     Voit-on des actes si hideux,
+     Qu'ils font expirer la priere
+     Sur les levres du malheureux?
+
+     Pourquoi, dans ton oeuvre celeste,
+     Tant d'elements si peu d'accord?
+     A quoi bon le crime et la peste,
+     O Dieu juste! pourquoi la mort?
+            ALFRED DE MUSSET, _Espoir en Dieu_.
+
+[174] _Les origines indo-europeennes, ou les Aryas primitifs._--The
+above is a _resume_, not a verbatim quotation.
+
+[175] Quocirca te, Capitoline, quem propter beneficia populus Romanus
+OPTIMUM, propter vim MAXIMUM nominavit. (_Pro domo sua_, LVII.)
+
+[176] See the _Voyage autour de ma chambre_ of Xavier de Maistre.
+
+[177] _Le crepuscule aux monts prolonger ses adieux._
+
+[178]
+
+     Tout le bonheur tu cedes
+     Accroit ta felicite.
+
+[179]
+
+     Chere a tout homme quel qu'il soit,
+     J'apporte la joie a qui donne
+     Et je la laisse a qui recoit.
+
+And Shakspeare--
+
+        ".... Mercy ... is twice bless'd,
+     It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes."
+                         _Merchant of Venice._--[TR.]
+
+[180] Lacordaire. _Conferences de 1848._
+
+[181] _Conferences de 1848_, p. 78.
+
+[182] _La raison et le Christianisme_: twelve lectures on the existence
+of God, one vol. 12mo. In the _Philosophie de la liberte_ (2 vols. 8vo.)
+M. Secretan has set forth, in a severely scientific form, the arguments
+of which the reader has just seen the oratorical expression from the pen
+of Pere Lacordaire. This agreement is worth notice, the dates showing
+that no communication was possible.
+
+[183]
+
+     Je me couche sans peur,
+     Je m'endors sans frayeur,
+     Sans crainte je m'eveille.
+     Dieu qui soutient ma foi
+     Est toujours pres de moi,
+     Et jamais ne sommeille.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cambridge: Printed by John Wilson and Son.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Heavenly Father, by Ernest Naville
+
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