Title: The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism
Author: Naville, Ernest
Language: English
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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 chimæra; 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]

     Lève, Jérusalem, lève ta tête altière!
     Les peuples à l'envi marchent à ta lumière.

[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 troisième_, 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 rêve qui l'obsède,
     A la réalité revient pour s'assouvir,
     Au fond des vains plaisirs que j'appelle à mon aide,
     Je trouve un tel dégoût 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 Cæsar.
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 Cæsar. 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 Cæsar the things which were Cæsar'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 Père 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 Cæsars.

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 où le plus juste a bravé le plus fort.

[32] Tertullian.

[33] _Le Père 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 _mêlée_ 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 archæology, 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 formulæ, 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 Père 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 élève 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 à nos ancêtres.
     Mais dans notre âge! Allons, il faut vous corriger
     _Et suivre votre siècle_, au lieu de le juger.

[52]

     Entre ces deux chemins j'hésite et je m'arrête.
     Je voudrais à l'écart suivre un plus doux sentier.
     Il n'en existe pas, dit une voix secrète:
     En présence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.
     Je le pense, en effet: les âmes tourmentées
     Vers l'un et l'autre excès se portent tour à 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 matière 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'honnêtes négociants_. Blätter der Gegenwart für sociales Leben.

[62] See the _Chroniqueur Suisse_ of 19 Jan. 1865.

[63] April, 1850, p. 292.

[64] _Force et Matière_, 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 progrès 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.
(_Genève, 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 Congrès
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] revêtit.

[71] _La Paix méditations historiques et religieuses_, par A. Gratry,
prêtre de l'Oratoire.--Septième 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 siècle_.

[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
matière_, par le docteur Büchner, page 262.--_Paroles de philosophie
positive_, par Littré, page 36.--_La Métaphysique et la Science_, par
Vacherot, page xiv. (Première 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_, à 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 à 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 Linnæus. 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 à 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 Linnæus. 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 "Linnæus 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 Linnæus.

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 Linnæus 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
formulæ 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 palæontology 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 Clazomenæ, 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] _Philosophiæ 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 Matière_, 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 naturæ._

[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_, Genève, 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 Matière_, 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
Bibliothèque 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 à l'affaire.

[128]

     Sur cent premiers peuples célèbres,
       J'ai plongé cent peuples fameux,
     Dans un abîme de ténèbres
       Où 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 à 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, _Væ 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 æsthetics 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] _Système de la Nature_, published under the pseudonyme of
Mirabaud.

[132] _Système 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 siècle_, 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 à l'histoire de la philosophie_. Neuvième leçon.

[149]

     Il répondit, baissant un oeil humide:
     Jamais ce nom n'attristera mes vers.

[150] _Introduction à l'histoire de la philosophie._ Treizième leçon.

[151]

     Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont,
     J'accoutume mon âme à 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 frêles,
     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 _à 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 _naïveté_: "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. Ampère, 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 Ampère 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 archæological 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 formulæ; 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 naturæ
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 être approuvés
     De semblables projets veulent être 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'êtres 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 à sa gloire.

[171]

     Dieu ne mesure pas nos sorts à l'étendue.
     La goutte de rosée à 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 Père
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 misères 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'être 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 suprême,
     As-tu créé le mal si grand
     Que la raison, la vertu même
     S'épouvantent en le voyant?

     Comment, sous la sainte lumière,
     Voit-on des actes si hideux,
     Qu'ils font expirer la prière
     Sur les lèvres 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 cèdes
     Accroît ta félicité.

[179]

     Chère à tout homme quel qu'il soit,
     J'apporte la joie à qui donne
     Et je la laisse à 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 Père 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 près de moi,
     Et jamais ne sommeille.


THE END.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cambridge: Printed by John Wilson and Son.





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