cannot be, and is not. That cannot be, for incontestably the world has a
just and good author; that is not, for, in fact, we see order reigning
in the world; and it would be absurd to misconceive the manifest order
that almost everywhere shines forth on account of a few phenomena that
we cannot refer to order. The universe endures, therefore it is well
made. The pessimism of Voltaire is still more opposed to the aggregate
of facts than an absolute optimism. Between these two systematic
extremes which facts deny, the human race places the hope of another
life. It has found it very irrational to reject a necessary law on
account of some infractions; it has, therefore, maintained the law; and
from infractions it has only concluded that they ought to be referred to
the law, that there will be a reparation. Either this conclusion must be
admitted, or the two great principles previously admitted, that God is
just, and that the law of merit and demerit is an absolute law, must be
rejected.
Now, to reject these two principles is to totally overthrow all human
belief.
To maintain them, is implicitly to admit that actual life must be,
elsewhere terminated or continued.
But is this continuation of the person possible? After the dissolution
of the body, can any thing of us remain?
In truth, the moral person, which acts well or ill, which awaits the
reward or punishment of its good or bad actions, is united to a
body,--it lives with the body, makes use of it, and, in a certain
measure, depends on it, but is not it.[253] The body is composed of
parts, may decrease or increase; is divisible, essentially divisible,
and even infinitely divisible. But that something that has consciousness
of itself, that says, _I_, _me_, that feels itself to be free and
responsible, does it not also feel that there is in it no division,
even no possible division, that it is a being one and simple? Is the
_me_ more or less _me_? Is there a half of _me_, a quarter of _me_? I
cannot divide my person. It remains identical to itself under the
diversity of the phenomena that manifest it. This identity, this
indivisibility of the person, is its spirituality. Spirituality is,
therefore, the very essence of the person. Belief in the spirituality of
the soul is involved in the belief of this identity of the _me_, which
no rational being has ever called in question. Accordingly, there is not
the least hypothesis for affirming that the soul does not essentially
differ from the body. Add that when we say the soul, we mean to say, and
do say the person, which is not separated from the consciousness of the
attributes that constitute it, thought and will. The being without
consciousness is not a person. It is the person that is identical, one,
simple. Its attributes, in developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible,
it is indissoluble, and may be immortal. If, then, divine justice, in
order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does
not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the
necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the
direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical
proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most
popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive.
What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in
the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value
for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct.
Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which
refers every event to a cause.[254] Man has, therefore, an end. This end
is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments,
in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he
thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the
infinite.[255] This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific
curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests
only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret
bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their
insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object,
it asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all its
successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew
how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below
satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the
true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like
thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it
shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be
necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is
always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he
feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,--how should his end be
elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that
universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all
traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers;
death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes
it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after
death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower
that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed:
we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its
perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the
clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am
born,--in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and
leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain
their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of
creatures be the most ill-treated? But a being that should remain
incomplete and unfinished, that should not attain the end which all his
instincts proclaim for him, would be a monster in the eternal order,--a
problem much more difficult to solve than the difficulties that have
been raised against the immortality of the soul. In our opinion, this
tendency of all the desires and all the powers of the soul towards the
infinite, elucidated by the principle of final causes, is a serious and
important confirmation of the moral proof and the metaphysical proof of
another life.
When we have collected all the arguments that authorize belief in
another life, and when we have thus arrived at a satisfying
demonstration, there remains an obstacle to be overcome. Imagination
cannot contemplate without fright that unknown which is called death.
The greatest philosopher in the world, says Pascal, on a plank wider
than it is necessary in order to go without danger from one side of an
abyss to the other, cannot think without trembling on the abyss that is
beneath him. It is not reason, it is imagination that frightens him; it
is also imagination that in great part causes that remnant of doubt,
that trouble, that secret anxiety which the firmest faith cannot always
succeed in overcoming in the presence of death. The religious man
experiences this terror, but he knows whence it comes, and he surmounts
it by attaching himself to the solid hopes furnished him by reason and
the heart. Imagination is a child that must be educated, by putting it
under the discipline and government of better faculties; it must be
accustomed to go to intelligence for aid instead of troubling
intelligence with its phantoms. Let us acknowledge that there is a
terrible step to be taken when we meet death. Nature trembles when face
to face with the unknown eternity. It is wise to present ourselves there
with all our forces united,--reason and the heart lending each other
mutual support, the imagination being subdued or charmed. Let us
continually repeat that, in death as in life, the soul is sure to find
God, and that with God all is just, all is good.[256]
We now know what God truly is. We have already seen two of his adorable
attributes,--truth and beauty. The most august attribute is revealed to
us,--holiness. God is the holy of holies, as the author of the moral law
and the good, as the principle of liberty, justice, and charity, as the
dispenser of penalty and reward. Such a God is not an abstract God, but
an intelligent and free person, who has made us in his own image, from
whom we hold the law itself that presides over our destiny, whose
judgments we await. It is his love that inspires us in our acts of
charity; it is his justice that governs our justice, that of our
societies and our laws. If we do not continually remind ourselves that
he is infinite, we degrade his nature; but he would be for us as if he
were not, if his infinite essence had no forms that pertain to us, the
proper forms of our reason and our soul.
By thinking upon such a being, man feels a sentiment that is _par
excellence_ the religious sentiment. All the beings with whom we are in
relation awaken in us different sentiments, according to the qualities
that we perceive in them; and should he who possesses all perfections
excite in us no particular sentiment? When we think upon the infinite
essence of God, when we are penetrated with his omnipotence, when we are
reminded that the moral law expresses his will, that he attaches to the
fulfilment and the violation of this law recompenses and penalties which
he dispenses with an inflexible justice, we cannot guard ourselves
against an emotion of respect and fear at the idea of such a grandeur.
Then, if we come to consider that this all-powerful being has indeed
wished to create us, us of whom he has no need, that in creating us he
has loaded us with benefits, that he has given us this admirable
universe for enjoying its ever-new beauties, society for ennobling our
life in that of our fellow-men, reason for thinking, the heart for
loving, liberty for acting; without disappearing, respect and fear are
tinged with a sweeter sentiment, that of love. Love, when it is applied
to feeble and limited beings, inspires us with a desire to do good to
them; but in itself it proposes to itself no advantage from the person
loved; we love a beautiful or good object, because it is beautiful or
good, without at first regarding whether this love may be useful to its
object and ourselves. For a still stronger reason, love, when it ascends
to God, is a pure homage rendered to his perfections; it is the natural
overflow of the soul towards a being infinitely lovable.
Respect and love compose adoration. True adoration does not exist
without possessing both of these sentiments. If you consider only the
all-powerful God, master of heaven and earth, author and avenger of
justice, you crush man beneath the weight of the grandeur of God and his
own feebleness, you condemn him to a continual trembling in the
uncertainty of God's judgments, you make him hate the world, life, and
himself, for every thing is full of misery. Towards this extreme,
Port-Royal inclines. Read the _Pensees de Pascal_.[257] In his great
humility, Pascal forgets two things,--the dignity of man and the love of
God. On the other hand, if you see only the good God and the indulgent
father, you incline to a chimerical mysticism. By substituting love for
fear, little by little with fear, we run the risk of losing respect. God
is no more a master, he is no more even a father; for the idea of a
father still to a certain point involves that of a respectful fear; he
is no more any thing but a friend, sometimes even a lover. True
adoration does not separate love and respect; it is respect animated by
love.
Adoration is a universal sentiment. It differs in degrees according to
different natures; it takes the most different forms; it is often even
ignorant of itself; sometimes it is revealed by an exclamation springing
from the heart, in the midst of the great scenes of nature and life,
sometimes it silently rises in the mute and penetrated soul; it may err
in its expressions, even in its object; but at bottom it is always the
same. It is a spontaneous, irresistible emotion of the soul; and when
reason is applied to it, it is declared just and legitimate. What, in
fact, is more just than to fear the judgments of him who is holiness
itself, who knows our actions and our intentions, and will judge them
according to the highest justice? What, too, is more just than to love
perfect goodness and the source of all love? Adoration is at first a
natural sentiment; reason makes it a duty.
Adoration confined to the sanctuary of the soul is what is called
internal worship--the necessary principle of all public worships.
Public worship is no more an arbitrary institution than society and
government, language and arts. All these things have their roots in
human nature. Adoration abandoned to itself, would easily degenerate
into dreams and ecstasy, or would be dissipated in the rush of affairs
and the necessities of every day. The more energetic it is, the more it
tends to express itself outwardly in acts that realize it, to take a
sensible, precise, and regular form, which, by a proper reaction on the
sentiment that produced it, awakens it when it slumbers, sustains it
when it languishes, and also protects it against extravagances of every
kind to which it might give birth in so many feeble or unbridled
imaginations. Philosophy, then, lays the natural foundation of public
worship in the internal worship of adoration. Having arrived at that
point, it stops, equally careful not to betray its rights and not to go
beyond them, to run over, in its whole extent and to its farthest limit,
the domain of natural reason, as well as not to usurp a foreign domain.
But philosophy does not think of trespassing on the ground of theology;
it wishes to remain faithful to itself, and also to follow its true
mission, which is to love and favor every thing that tends to elevate
man, since it heartily applauds the awakening of religious and Christian
sentiment in all noble souls, after the ravages that have been made on
every hand, for more than a century, by a false and sad philosophy.
What, in fact, would not have been the joy of a Socrates and a Plato if
they had found the human race in the arms of Christianity! How happy
would Plato--who was so evidently embarrassed between his beautiful
doctrines and the religion of his times, who managed so carefully with
that religion even when he avoided it, who was forced to take from it
the best possible part, in order to aid a favorable interpretation of
his doctrine--have been, if he had had to do with a religion which
presents to man, as at once its author and its model, the sublime and
mild Crucified, of whom he had an extraordinary presentiment, whom he
almost described in the person of a just man dying on the cross;[258] a
religion which came to announce, or at least to consecrate and expand
the idea of the unity of God and that of the unity of the human race;
which proclaims the equality of all souls before the divine law, which
thereby has prepared and maintains civil equality; which prescribes
charity still more than justice, which teaches man that he does not live
by bread alone, that he is not wholly contained in his senses and his
body, that he has a soul, a free soul, whose value is infinite, above
the value of all worlds, that life is a trial, that its true object is
not pleasure, fortune, rank, none of those things that do not pertain to
our real destiny, and are often more dangerous than useful, but is that
alone which is always in our power, in all situations and all
conditions, from end to end of the earth, to wit, the improvement of the
soul by itself, in the holy hope of becoming from day to day less
unworthy of the regard of the Father of men, of the examples given by
him, and of his promises. If the greatest moralist that ever lived could
have seen these admirable teachings, which in germ were already at the
foundation of his spirit, of which more than one trait can be found in
his works, if he had seen them consecrated, maintained, continually
recalled to the heart and imagination of man by sublime and touching
institutions, what would have been his tender and grateful sympathy for
such a religion! If he had come in our own times, in that age given up
to revolutions, in which the best souls were early infected by the
breath of skepticism, in default of the faith of an Augustine, of an
Anselm, of a Thomas, of a Bossuet, he would have had, we doubt not, the
sentiments at least of a Montesquieu,[259] of a Turgot,[260] of a
Franklin,[261] and very far from putting the Christian religion and a
good philosophy at war with each other, he would have been forced to
unite them, to elucidate and fortify them by each other. That great mind
and that great heart, which dictated to him the _Phedon_, the _Gorgias_,
the _Republic_, would also have taught him that such books are made for
a few sages, that there is needed for the human race a philosophy at
once similar and different, that this philosophy is a religion, and that
this desirable and necessary religion is the Gospel. We do not hesitate
to say that, without religion, philosophy, reduced to what it can
laboriously draw from perfected natural reason, addresses itself to a
very small number, and runs the risk of remaining without much influence
on manners and life; and that, without philosophy, the purest religion
is no security against many superstitions, which little by little bring
all the rest, and for that reason it may see the best minds escaping its
influence, as was the case in the eighteenth century. The alliance
between true religion and true philosophy is, then, at once natural and
necessary; natural by the common basis of the truths which they
acknowledge; necessary for the better service of humanity. Philosophy
and religion differ only in the forms that distinguish, without
separating them. Another auditory, other forms, and another language.
When St. Augustine speaks to all the faithful in the church of Hippone,
do not seek in him the subtile and profound metaphysician who combated
the Academicians with their own arms, who supports himself on the
Platonic theory of ideas, in order to explain the creation. Bossuet, in
the treatise _De la Connaissance de Dieu et Soi-meme_, is no longer,
and at the same time he is always, the author of the _Sermons_, of the
_Elevations_, and the incomparable _Catechisme de Meaux_. To separate
religion and philosophy has always been, on one side or the other, the
pretension of small, exclusive, and fanatical minds; the duty, more
imperative now than ever, of whomsoever has for either a serious and
enlightened love, is to bring together and unite, instead of dividing
and wasting the powers of the mind and the soul, in the interest of the
common cause and the great object which the Christian religion and
philosophy pursue, each in its own way,--I mean the moral grandeur of
humanity.[262]
FOOTNOTES:
[245] Lectures 4 and 7.
[246] Such is the common vice of nearly all theodiceas, without
excepting the best--that of Leibnitz, that of Clarke; even the most
popular of all, the _Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard_. See our
small work entitled _Philosophie Populaire_, 3d edition, p. 82.
[247] On the Cartesian argument, see above, part 1st, lecture 4; see
also 1st Series, vol. iv., lecture 12, and especially vol. v., lecture
6.
[248] _Fragments de Philosophie Cartesienne_, p. 24: "The infinite
being, inasmuch as infinite, is not a mover, a cause; neither is he,
inasmuch as infinite, an intelligence; neither is he a will; neither is
he a principle of justice, nor much less a principle of love. We have no
right to impute to him all these attributes in virtue of the single
argument that every contingent being supposes a being that is not so,
that every finite supposes an infinite. The God given by this argument
is the God of Spinoza, is rigorously so; but he is almost as though he
were not, at least for us who with difficulty perceive him in the
inaccessible heights of an eternity and existence that are absolute,
void of thought, of liberty, of love, similar to nonentity itself, and a
thousand times inferior, in his infinity and eternity, to an hour of our
finite and perishable existence, if during this fleeting hour we know
what we are, if we think, if we love something else than ourselves, if
we feel capable of freely sacrificing to an idea the few minutes that
have been accorded to us."
[249] This theodicea is here _in resume_, and in the 4th and 5th
lectures of part first, as well as in the lecture that follows. The most
important of our different writings, on this point, will be found
collected and elucidated by each other, in the Appendix to the 5th
lecture of the first volume of the 1st Series.--See our translation of
this entire Series of M. Cousin's works, under the title of the History
of Modern Philosophy.
[250] 3d Series, vol. iv., advertisement to the 3d edition: "Without
vain subtilty, there is a real distinction between free will and
spontaneous liberty. Arbitrary freedom is volition with the appearance
of deliberation between different objects, and under this supreme
condition, that when, as a consequence of deliberation, we resolve to do
this or that, we have the immediate consciousness of having been able,
and of being able still, to will the contrary. It is in volition, and in
the retinue of phenomena which surround it, that liberty more
energetically appears, but it is not thereby exhausted. It is at rare
and sublime moments in which liberty is as much greater as it appears
less to the eyes of a superficial observation. I have often cited the
example of d'Assas. D'Assas did not deliberate; and for all that, was
d'Assas less free, did he not act with entire liberty? Has the saint
who, after a long and painful exercise of virtue, has come to practise,
as it were by nature, the acts of self-renunciation which are repugnant
to human weakness; has the saint, in order to have gone out from the
contradictions and the anguish of this form of liberty which we called
volition, fallen below it instead of being elevated above it; and is he
nothing more than a blind and passive instrument of grace, as Luther and
Calvin have inappropriately wished to call it, by an excessive
interpretation of the Augustinian doctrine? No, freedom still remains;
and far from being annihilated, its liberty, in being purified, is
elevated and ennobled; from the human form of volition it has passed to
the almost divine form of spontaneity. Spontaneity is essentially free,
although it may be accompanied with no deliberation, and although often,
in the rapid motion of its inspired action, it escapes its own
observation, and leaves scarcely a trace in the depths of consciousness.
Let us transfer this exact psychology to theodicea, and we may recognize
without hypothesis, that spontaneity is also especially the form of
God's liberty. Yes, certainly, God is free; for, among other proofs, it
would be absurd that there should be less freedom in the first cause
than in one of its effects, humanity; God is free, but not with that
liberty which is related to our double nature, and made to contend
against passion and error, and painfully to engender virtue and our
imperfect knowledge; he is free, with a liberty that is related to his
own divine nature, that is a liberty unlimited, infinite, recognizing no
obstacle. Between justice and injustice, between good and evil, between
reason and its contrary, God cannot deliberate, and, consequently,
cannot will after our manner. Can one conceive, in fact, that he could
take what we call the bad part? This very supposition is impious. It is
necessary to admit that when he has taken the contrary part, he has
acted freely without doubt, but not arbitrarily, and with the
consciousness of having been able to choose the other part. His nature,
all-powerful, all-just, all-wise, is developed with that spontaneity
which contains entire liberty, and excludes at once the efforts and the
miseries of volition, and the mechanical operation of necessity. Such is
the principle and the true character of the divine action."
[251] _Timaeus_, p. 119, vol. xii. of our translation.
[252] _De l'Art de prolonger sa Vie_, etc.