I think that we may say that never was that well larger nor more highly
placed. Certainly, the idea which we shape for ourselves of the
organization and government of the infinite powers is less precise than
heretofore; but this is for the good and noble reason that it no longer
admits of falsely-defined conventional limits. It no longer contains
any fixed morality, any consolation, any promise, any certain hope. It
is bare and almost empty, because nothing subsists in it that is not the
very bedrock of some primitive facts. It no longer has a voice, it no
longer has images, except to proclaim and illustrate its immensity.
Outside that, it no longer tells us anything; but this immensity, having
remained its sole imperious and irrefutable attribute, surpasses in
energy, nobility and eloquence all the attributes, all the virtues and
perfections with which we had hitherto peopled our unknown. It lays no
duty upon us, but it maintains us in a state of greatness that will
permit us more easily and more generously to perform all those duties
which await us on the threshold of a coming future. By bringing us
nearer to our true place in the system of the worlds, it adds to our
spiritual and general life all that it takes away from our material and
individual importance. The more it makes us recognize our littleness,
the greater grows that within us which recognizes this littleness. A new
being, more disinterested and probably closer to that which is one day
to proclaim itself the last truth, is gradually taking the place of the
original being which is being dissolved in the conception that
overwhelms it.
X
To this new being, itself and all the men around it now represent only
so inconsiderable a speck in the infinity of the eternal forces that
they are no longer able to fix its attention and its interests. Our
brothers, our immediate descendants, our visible neighbour, all that but
lately marked the limit of our sympathies, are gradually yielding
precedence to a more inordinate and loftier being. We are almost
nothing; but the species to which we belong occupies a place that can
be recognized in the boundless ocean of life. Though we no longer count,
the humanity of which we form a part is acquiring the importance of
which we are being stripped. This feeling, which is only beginning to
make its way in the accustomed atmosphere of our thoughts and of our
unconsciousness, is already fashioning our morality and is doubtless
preparing revolutions as great as those wrought in it by the most
subversive religions. It will gradually displace the centre of most of
our virtues and vices. It will substitute for an illusory and individual
ideal a disinterested, unlimited and yet tangible ideal, of which it is
not yet possible to foresee the consequences and the laws. But, whatever
these may be, we can state even now that they will be even more general
and more decisive than any of those which preceded them in the superior
and, so to speak, astral history of mankind. In any case, it can hardly
be denied that the object of this ideal is more lasting and, above all,
more certain than the best of those which lightened our darkness before
it, since it coalesces on more than one point with the object of the
universe itself.