Ladies and Gentlemen,--I was proud and happy to receive from the
curators of this noble institution an invitation to continue here an
instruction inaugurated by my illustrious confrère and friend, Max
Müller, the usefulness of which will be more and more appreciated. A
broad and sincere thought always bears fruit. It is thirty years since
the venerable Robert Hibbert made a legacy for the purpose of aiding the
progress of enlightened Christianity, inseparable, according to his
idea, from the progress of science and reason. Wisely carried out, this
foundation has become, in the hands of intelligent administrators, the
centre of conferences upon all the great chapters of the history of
religion and humanity: the promoters of this reform have asked, with
reason, why the method which has proved good in all departments of
intellectual culture should not also be good in the domain of religion?
why the pursuit of truth, without regard to consequences, should be
dangerous in theology, when it is approved of in the entire domain of
social and natural science? You believed the truth, gentlemen, and you
were right. There is but one truth; and we are wanting in respect to its
revelation, if we allow that the critic ought to soften his severe
processes when he treats of it. No, gentlemen, the truth is able to
dispense with compliments. I come gladly at your call; for I understand
the duties towards the right exactly as you do. With you, I should
believe that I injured a faith in admitting that it required to be
treated with a certain softness. I believe with you that the worship due
from man to the ideal consists in independent scientific research,
without regard to results, and that the true manner of rendering homage
to the truth is to pursue it without ceasing, with the firm resolution
of sacrificing all to it. You desire that these conferences shall
present a great historic _ensemble_ of the efforts which the human race
has made to resolve the problems which surround it, and affect its
destiny. In the present state of the human mind, no one can hope to
resolve these problems: we suspect all dogmatism simply because it is
dogmatism. We grant willingly that a religious or philosophical system
can, indeed, or that it ought to, enclose a certain portion of truth;
but we deny to it, without examination, the possibility of enclosing the
absolute truth. What we love is history. History well written is always
good; for, even if it should prove that man in seeking to seize the
infinite has pursued a chimera, the history of these attempts, more
generous than successful, will always be useful. It proves, that, in
reality, man goes beyond the circle of his limited life through his
aspirations. It shows what energy he has expended for the sake of his
love of the good and true; it teaches us to estimate him,--this poor
disinherited one, who, in addition to the sufferings which nature
imposes upon him, imposes still further upon himself the torture of the
unknown, the torture of doubt, the severe resistances of virtue, the
abstinences of austerity, the voluntary sufferings of the ascetic. Is
all this a pure loss? Is this unceasing effort to attain the
unattainable as vain as the course of the child who pursues the ever
flying object of his desire? It pains me to believe it; and the faith
which eludes me when I examine in detail each of the systems scattered
throughout the world, I find, in a measure, when I reflect upon all
these systems together. All religions may be defective and incomplete;
religion in humanity is nothing less than divine, and a mark of superior
destiny. No, they have not labored in vain--those grand founders, those
reformers, those prophets of all ages--who have protested against the
false evidences of gross materialism, who have beaten themselves
against the wall of the apparent fatality that encloses us; who have
employed their thought, given their life, for the accomplishment of a
mission which the spirit of their age had imposed upon them. If the fact
of the existence of the martyrs does not prove the exclusive truth of
this or that sect (all sects can show a rich martyrology), this fact in
general proves that religious zeal responds to something mysterious.
All,--as many as we are,--we are sons of martyrs. Those who talk the
most of scepticism are frequently the most satisfied and indifferent.
Those who have founded among you religious and political liberty, those
who have founded in all Europe liberty of thought and research, those
who have labored for the amelioration of the fate of men, those who will
doubtless find means for further amelioration, have suffered, or will
suffer, for their good work; for no one is ever recompensed for what he
does for the good of humanity. Nevertheless they will always have
imitators. There will always be some to carry on the work of the
incorrigibles; some, possessed of the divine spirit, who will sacrifice
their personal interest to truth and justice. Be it so: they have chosen
the better part. I know not what assures me that he who, without knowing
why, through simple nobility of nature, has chosen for himself in this
world the essentially unproductive lot of doing good, is the true sage,
and has discovered the legitimate use of life with more sagacity than
the selfish man.