Vacherot, "he lives, he develops himself in the immensity of
space and in the eternity of time; he appears to us under the
infinite variety of forms which are his manifestations--he is
_Cosmos_. ... The world _thought of_ is something else
than the world _imagined_. Imagination represents to us the
world as an immense mass of dispersed matter, as an infinite
collection of forces disseminated in the vast fields of space.
The idea does not occur to men of vulgar minds, nor even to our
men of learning, that this image of universal life cannot for an
instant support the glance of reason; they do not perceive that
_void_ is synonymous with _nothing_, that the atom is
an unintelligible hypothesis; that _being_ is always and
everywhere, without any possible solution of continuity, either
in time or in space; that the universal life is one in its
apparent dispersion; and finally, that the world is a
_being_, and not merely a _whole_." [Footnote 84]
[Footnote 84: La Métaphysique et la science, vol. iii, p.
247; vol. i, p. lii.]
What is this if it be not Pantheism?
{388}
And these incoherences, these contradictions, these relapses of
M. Vacherot into systems that he disavows, and that he has just
combated, what are they but striking evidences of the vanity of
his efforts, like those of so many others, to explain, unaided by
God, God and the universe?
Of another nature is the perplexity of M. Edmond Scherer; his is
the disquietude of the critic, not the embarrassment of the
metaphysician. M. Edmond Scherer was a believing Christian, a
believer zealous in his faith, and active in its cause. The
examination of systems and of facts, historical criticism and
philosophical criticism, impelled him to skepticism; not to that
skepticism which is indifferent and strange to all personal
conviction. M. Scherer believes in truth and in the rights of
truth; but where that truth? He seeks it, he finds it not; he
wanders among systems and facts as in a labyrinth, discovering at
each step that his path is the wrong one, and from it
nevertheless finding no issue. He is still aware that humanity
cannot live in a labyrinth, that it requires--nay, absolutely
requires--to issue forth, to behold, or at least to catch
glimpses of, the light of day.
{389}
He has a sentiment of the moral requirements of human nature, of
man's life; and he sees well that the negations and the doubts of
the different systems of philosophy can never satisfy those
requirements. I have already cited, in the course of these
_Meditations_, some of the passages in which this perplexity
strikingly manifests itself; a perplexity full at once of pride
and sadness, which, although it does not shake M. Scherer in his
convictions, makes him nevertheless see their vanity. [Footnote
85] He knows that its own thought suffices not for the human
soul; perhaps it is his own soul suggests to him that knowledge.
[Footnote 85: See particularly the passage cited in the Third
Meditation (Rationalism) of this volume, p. 256, etc., and in
the "Meditation on the Essence of the Christian Religion,"
(Third Meditation, the Supernatural,) p. 119.]
{390}
Why is it that Christianity, in spite of all the attacks which it
has had to undergo, and all the ordeals through which it has been
made to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied infinitely
better the spontaneous instincts and invincible cravings of
humanity? Is it not because it is pure from the errors which
vitiate the different systems of philosophy just passed in
review? because it fills up the void that those systems either
create or leave in the human soul? because, in short, it conducts
man higher to the fountain of light? Question paramount, to which
these _Meditations_ are intended as the prelude, and which I
shall essay to solve, by confronting, as I before said, [Footnote
86] Christianity with its opponents, and by showing that, if it
succeeds where they fail, the reason is, that, sprung from a
higher source than man, it alone has the right to succeed, for it
alone knows man rightly as he is--as one entire being; it alone
satisfies man by furnishing him with a rule for his guidance
through life.
[Footnote 86: First Meditation, p. 200.]
The End.