I
Man, greedy of justice, tries in a thousand various manners, often
empirical, sometimes wise, whimsical at other times and superstitious,
to conjure up the shade of the great goddess necessary to his existence.
A strange, elusive and yet most living goddess! An immaterial divinity
that cannot stand upright save in our secret heart; one of which we may
say that, the more visible temples that it has, the less real power it
possesses. A day will break, perhaps, when it shall have no other
palaces than our several consciences; and, on that day, it will reign
really in the silence that is the sacred element of its life. In the
meanwhile, we multiply the organs through which we hope that it will
make itself heard. We lend it human and solemn voices; and when it is
silent in others and even in ourselves, we proceed to question it beyond
our own conscience, on the uncertain confines of our being, where we
become a part of chance and where we believe that justice blends with
God and our own destiny.