PART II.

_SOCIETY._

We have just studied what life without God would be for the individual.

Let us now direct our attention to those collections of human beings

which form societies. We shall not speak here of the relations of civil

with ecclesiastical authorities,--a complex question, the solution of

which must vary with times, places, and circumstances. Let us only

remark that the distinction between the temporal and spiritual order of

things is one of the foundations of modern civilization. This

distinction is based upon those great words which, eighteen hundred

years ago, separated the domain of God from the domain of Cæsar.

Religion considered as a function of civil life; dogma supported by the

word of a monarch or the vote of a body politic; the formula of that

dogma imposed forcibly by a government on the lips of the

governed--these are _débris_ of paganism which have been struggling for

centuries against the restraints of Christian thought.[26] The

religious convictions of individuals do not belong to the State;

religious sentiments are not amenable to human tribunals; and it would

be hard to say whether it is the spiritual or the temporal order of

things which suffers most from the confusion of these distinct domains.

Religion should have its own proper life, and its special

representatives; civil life ought to be set free from all tyranny

exercised in the name of dogma; but religion is not the less on that

account, by the influence which it exerts over the consciences of men,

the necessary bond and strength of human society.

"You would sooner build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "than cause a

State to subsist without religion." Some have contested in modern times

this opinion of ancient wisdom. The philosophy of the last century, as

we have said already, wished to separate duty from the idea of God. It

pretended to give as the only foundation for society a civil morality,

the rules and sanction of which were to be found upon earth. The men of

blood who for a short time governed France, gave once as the order of

the day--_Terror and all the virtues_: this was a terrible application

of this theory. Virtue rested on a decree of political power, and, for

want of the judgment of God, the guillotine was the sanction of its

precepts. Healthier views begin now to prevail in the schools of

philosophy. One of the members of the _Institut de France_, M. Franck,

has lately published a volume on the history of ancient

civilization,[27] with the express intention of showing that the

conception which a people has of God is the true root of its social

organization. According to the worth of the religious idea is that of

the civil constitution. Before M. Franck, twenty years ago, a man of the

very highest distinction as a public lecturer, indicated this movement

of modern thought. M. Edgard Quinet, in his Lyons course, taught that

the religious idea is the very substance of civilization, and the

generating principle of political constitutions. He announced "a history

of civilization by the monuments of human thought," and added: "Religion

above all is the pillar of fire which goes before the nations in their

march across the ages; it shall serve us as a guide."[28] Benjamin

Constant exhibits in the variation of his opinions the transition from

the stand-point of the last century to that of the present. He had at

first conceived of his work upon religion as a monument raised to

atheism, he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the condition

necessary to the existence of civilized societies.[29] Here is a real

progress; and this progress brings us back to the thought above quoted

from Plutarch. In fact, take away the idea of God, and the first

consequence will be that you will sacrifice all the conquests of modern

civilization; the next, that you will soon have rendered impossible the

existence of any society whatever. I am going to ask your close

attention to these two points successively.

History does not offer to our view an uninterrupted progress, as certain

optimists suppose; still less does it present the spectacle of an

ever-increasing deterioration, as misanthropes affirm; and lastly, it is

not true, as we hear it said sometimes, that all epochs are alike, as

good one as another. There are times better than those which follow

them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them.

Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings and

retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created

liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is

clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while

man is in restless agitation, God is leading him on. The conquests of

modern civilization are great and sacred realities. What are these

conquests? Let us not stay at the surface of things, but go to the

foundation. Societies fallen into a condition of barbarism have for

their motto the famous saying of a Gallic chief: Woe to the vanquished!

In institutions, as in manners, the triumph of force characterizes

barbarous times. The right of the strongest is the twofold negation of

justice and of love; and what characterizes civilization, issuing from

the barbarous condition, the fragments of which it so long trails after

it, is the establishment of that justice which founds States, and, upon

the basis of justice, the development of the benevolence which renders

communities happy. These are the two essential conditions of social

progress. These conditions are necessary even to the progress of

industry and of material welfare.

Modern civilization,--that, namely, which we so designate, while we

relegate, so to speak, into the past the contemporaneous societies of

the vast East,--modern civilization possesses a power unknown to

antiquity. Justice has a foundation in the conscience, benevolence has

natural roots in the heart; but a moment has been when justice and love

appeared in the world with new brightness, like rays disengaged from

clouds. Modern civilization was then deposited on the earth in a

powerful germ, of which nothing was any more to arrest the growth. That

moment was when the idea of God appeared in its fulness: modern

civilization was born of the Gospel. The knowledge of God strengthens

justice, and the thought of the common Father develops benevolence.

These theses are well known; let us confine ourselves to a few rapid

illustrations.

There exists an institution in which has been embodied the negation of

social justice--Slavery. Slavery is at length disappearing before our

eyes from the bosom of Christendom; and its final retreat is doing honor

to Russia, and bathing America in blood. This is perhaps the greatest of

the events which the annals of history will inscribe on the page of the

nineteenth century. Now slavery was, in the past, an almost universal

institution. The finest intellects of Greece devoted a portion of their

labors to its justification. Rome, at the most brilliant period of its

civilization, caused slaves to kill one another, in savage spectacles

intended to delight the populace, or during sumptuous banquets for the

amusement of wealthy debauchees![30] How has slavery disappeared little

by little! How has man been rediscovered beneath that living _thing_ of

which was made, one while an instrument of labor, and another while the

sport of execrable passions? Inquire into this history. You will find

the reason and the heart making their protests heard in antiquity, but

without becoming efficacious. One day all is changed, and the

foundations of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable epoch you will

meet with a written document, the first in which is shown in its germ

the great social fact which was about to have birth. It is not an

emperor's decree, it is not the vote of a body politic, it is a letter a

few lines long written by a prisoner to one of his friends. The

substance of this letter was: "I send thee back thy slave; but in the

name of God I beg of thee to receive him as thy brother; think of the

common Master who is in heaven." This letter was addressed--"To

Philemon;" the name of the writer was Paul. It is the first charter of

slave emancipation. Ponder this fact, Gentlemen: contemplate the ancient

institution of slavery shaken to its foundations, without being the

object of any direct attack, by the breath of a new spirit. You will

then understand how historians can tell us that the relations of states,

belligerent rights, civil laws, political institutions, all these things

of which the Gospel has never spoken, have been, and are being still,

every day transformed by the slow action of the Gospel. God has

appeared; justice is marching in His train.

Justice is the foundation of society; but without the spirit of love,

justice remains crippled, and never reaches its perfection. Justice

maintains the rights of each; love seeks to realize the communication of

advantages among all. Justice overthrows the artificial barriers raised

between men by force and guile; love softens natural inequalities and

causes them to turn to the general good. Need I tell you that the

knowledge of God is a light of which the brightest ray is love to men?

Benevolence, that feeling natural to our hearts, is strengthened,

extended, transfigured, by becoming charity;--charity, that union of

the soul with the Heavenly Father, which descends again to earth in

loving communion between all His children. The soul separated from God

may be conscious of strong affections: but study well the character of a

virtue which is nourished from purely human sources; you will see that

it may for the most part be expressed in these terms--"To love one's

friends heartily, and to hate one's enemies with a generous hatred; to

esteem the honest and to despise the vicious." But that virtue which

loves the vicious while it hates the vice, that virtue which will avenge

itself only by overcoming evil with good, that virtue which, while it

draws closer the bonds of private affections, makes a friend of every

man, that virtue which we call divine, by a natural impulse of our

heart--what is the source from which it flows? The following fact will

sufficiently answer the question. On the façade of one the hospitals of

the Christian world, are read these Latin words, the brief energy of

which our language cannot render: _Deo in pauperibus_, "This edifice is

consecrated to God in the person of the poor." Here is the secret of

charity: it discerns the Divine image deposited in every human soul.

But do not mistake here: we cannot love, with a love natural and direct,

the rags of squalid poverty, the brands of vice, the languors and sores

of sickness; but let God manifest Himself, and our eyes are opened. The

beauty of souls breaks forth to our view beneath the wasting of the

haggard frame, and from under the filth of vice. We love those immortal

creatures fallen and degraded; a sacred desire possesses us to restore

them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of

rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of

the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the

noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is

the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who

desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that

love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the

hospital, which have at times thrown Christians into extravagances which

our age has no reason to dread. God in the poor man, God in the sick

man, God in the vicious man and the criminal; this, I repeat, is the

grand secret of charity. Charity passes from the heart of men and from

individual practice into social customs and institutions. Charity it is

which, by degrees, takes from law its needless rigors, and from justice

its useless tortures; which substitutes the prison in which it is sought

to reform the guilty for the galley, which completes the corruption of

the criminal; it is charity that opens public asylums for all forms of

suffering; and that will realize, up to the limits of what is possible,

all the hopes of philanthropy. If God ceases to be present to the mind

and conscience of men, justice and love lose their power. Without the

powerful action of justice and of love, society would descend again, by

the ways of corruption, towards the struggles of barbarism. Observe,

study well, all that is going on around us. Does our civilization appear

to you sufficiently solid to give you the idea that it can henceforth

dispense with the foundations on which it has reposed hitherto?

The sentiments of justice and of benevolence which form the double basis

of the progress of society, suppose a more general sentiment which is

their common support--the sentiment of humanity. The idea that man has a

value in himself, that he is, in virtue of his quality as man,

independently of the places which he inhabits and of the position which

he occupies in the world, an object of justice and of love;--this idea

includes in itself all the moral part of civilization. Social progress

is only the recognition, ever more and more explicit, of the value of

one soul, of the rights of one conscience. Now, the idea of humanity has

the closest possible connection with the knowledge of God, considered as

the Father of the human race. Ancient wisdom, superior to the worship of

idols, had gained a glimpse of the fact that the philosopher is a

citizen of the universe; and that famous line of Terence: "I am a man,

and I reckon nothing human foreign to me," excited, it is said, the

applause of the Roman spectators. But these were mere gleams,

extinguished soon by the general current of thought. It was the pale

dawn of the idea of humanity. Whence came the day?

I will limit the question by defining it. The idea of humanity is the

idea of the worth and consequently of the rights of each individual man.

It is the idea of liberty; not of liberty interpreted by passion and

selfishness as the inauguration of the license which violates right, but

of liberty interpreted by reason and conscience as the limit which the

action of each man encounters in the right of his neighbor. We are not

speaking here of the equality of political rights, which is not always

a guarantee of veritable liberty. We are speaking of a social condition

such that man, in the exercise of his faculties, in the manifestation of

his thoughts, in his efforts for the causes which he loves, so long as

he does not violate the rights of others, does not meet with an

arbitrary power to arrest him. Still farther to limit our subject, we

shall speak of the most important manifestation of that liberty--liberty

of conscience, of which religious liberty is the most ordinary and most

complete manifestation. This is only one of the points of the subject,

but it is a point which in reality supposes and includes all the rest.

This liberty--whence does it come?

It does not come from paganism. Paganism, with its national religions,

could only produce fanaticism or doubt. Each people having its own

particular religion, to exterminate the foreigner was to serve the cause

of the gods of the country. A war-cry descended from the Olympus of each

several nation--that Olympus which the gods quitted, in case of need, to

take part in the quarrels of men. Did reason perceive the nothingness of

these national divinities? Then scepticism appeared. The idea of the

supreme God being unsettled with all, and wholly obscured for the

crowd, when men ceased to believe in the gods of the nation, they lost

all belief whatsoever. For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at the

decline of the ancient world. Those pantheons in which all religions

were received, welcomed, protected, are the ever-memorable temples of

scepticism. Now you know what voice made itself heard, when the ancient

civilization was enfeebled by the spirit of doubt: "Henceforth there is

neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free. Ye are all brethren, and for

all there is one God, and one truth:" here behold the root of scepticism

severed. And the same voice added: "This only God is the lawful Owner of

His creatures; and when you presume to do violence to the consciences

which belong to Him, you know not by what spirit you are animated:" here

behold the fountain of fanaticism dried up. God is acknowledged; He is

the Master of souls: faith founds liberty.

The Witness to universal truth appears before Rome as represented by a

deputy of Cæsar. He is a fanatic, says the Roman; then he goes his way,

and leaves Him to be put to death. But ere long, a dull hoarse murmur of

the nations, extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty

empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and is speaking

to the general conscience. Then Rome starts from her sleep; Rome; the

politic tolerant Rome, sheds rivers of blood. Her tolerance allowed men

to believe everything, but on condition that they believed seriously in

nothing. Rome was directed by the sure instinct of despotism. She did

not fear the gods of the Pantheon, because she could always place above

them the statue of the Emperor: whereas what was now in question was,

while leaving to Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's, to place a

Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legislation above the

legislation of the empire. Therefore the Roman city determined to give a

death-blow to Christianity,--to the idea of universal truth, because if

that idea gained entrance into the understanding, the cause of the

liberty of souls was gained. So it was that indifference became

ferocious, and that doubt led back to fanaticism.

I have told you whence liberty does not come; but whence comes it?

Whence comes liberty? Ask any scholar of the Lyceums of France; he will

answer you, without hesitation: Liberty comes from the French

revolution!--No doubt, whispers an older comrade in his ear; but do not

forget the philosophy of the eighteenth century which developed the

principles which the revolution put in practice.--That is all very well,

a Protestant will say; but let us consider the grand fact of the

Reformation: it is from the sixteenth century that liberty has its

date.--Well and good, adds an historian; but do you not know that the

Germans were they who poured a generous and free blood into the

impoverished blood of the men who had been fashioned by the slavery of

the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed

to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic

causes. But this I venture to affirm,--that if any one thinks to fix

definitely the hour when liberty was born in history, he is mistaken:

for it has no other date than that of the human conscience, and I will

say with M. Lamartine:

Give me the freedom which that hour had birth,

With the free soul, when first in conscious worth

The just man braved the stronger![31]

Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his fellow men to acts

which wounded his conscience, a man, relying upon God, felt himself

stronger than the world. That Socrates had not studied, I fancy, in the

school of the Encyclopedists, and was no German either, that I know of,

who said to the judges of Athens, with death in prospect: "It is better

to obey God than men." And when those words were repeated by the

Apostles of the universal truth, the death of Socrates, that noble death

which has justly gained for him the admiration of the universe, was

reproduced in thousands and thousands of instances. Children, women,

young girls, old men, perished in tortures to attest the rights of

conscience; and the blood of martyrs, that seed of Christians, as a

father of the Church called it,[32] was not less a seed of liberty.

Liberty was not born in history; but if you wish to fix a date to its

grandest outburst, you have it here; there is no other which can be

compared with it.

Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying so, that I am

maintaining a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of

conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church

has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood

rendered visible by the funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing,

Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three

remarks which I commend to your attention.

It must not be forgotten that the Gospel first obtained extensive

success when Roman society was in the lowest state of corruption, and

that its representatives were but too much affected by the evils which

it was their mission to combat.

It must not be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians

who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured

over the new leaven a coarse paste hard to penetrate.

It must not be forgotten, lastly, that if a cause might legitimately be

condemned for the faults of its defenders, there are none, no, not a

single one, which could remain erect before the tribunal which so should

give judgment. Every cause in this world is more or less compromised by

its representatives; but there are bad principles, which produce evil by

their own development, and there are good principles which man abuses,

but which by their very nature always end by raising a protest against

the abuse. It is in the light of this indisputable truth that we are

about to enter upon a discussion of which you will appreciate the full

importance.

Sceptical writers affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening

of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they

recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of

promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which

would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in

the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall have peace.

Prisons have been built and the stake has been set up in the name of

God: let us get rid of God, and we shall have toleration. Observe well

the bearing of this mode of argument. Let us get rid of fire, and we

shall have no more conflagrations; let us get rid of water, and no more

people will be drowned. No doubt,--but humanity will perish of drought

and of cold.

Let us examine this subject seriously: it is well worth our while. If

toleration proceeds from the enfeebling of religious belief, we ought

among various nations to meet with toleration in an inverse proportion

to the degree of their faith. This is a question then of history. Let us

study facts. Recollecting first of all that ancient Rome did not draw

forth a germ of liberty from its scepticism, let us throw a glance over

existing communities.

Sweden is far behind England in regard to liberty of conscience. Is it

that religious convictions are weaker in England than in Sweden? Has the

religious liberty which Great Britain practises sprung from

indifference? Is it not rather that that land produces an energetic

race, and that it has been so often drenched with the blood of the

followers of different forms of worship, that that blood cried at length

to heaven, and that the conscience of the people heard it? There is more

religious liberty in France than in Spain. Is it the case that the true

cause of the intolerance of the Spanish people is a more lively and more

general faith than that of the French? That is not so certain.

Switzerland is one of the countries in which is enjoyed the greatest

liberty of opinion. Is Switzerland a land of indifference? Was not the

comparative firmness of its citizens' convictions remarked during the

conflicts of the last century? Do not the United States bear in large

characters upon their banner this inscription: LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE?

America is not distinguished as a country without religion; on the

contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the

multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects. Was it a

sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect

religious convictions? Assuredly not! William Penn was shut up in the

Tower of London for the crime of free thought. Set free from prison, he

crossed the ocean. While intolerance was reigning still on both shores

of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all

proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful. In vain I pass from

old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that

liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity

of nations. I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most

liberty where there is most real faith.

Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the

condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers

causes. Let us simplify the question. Is it not, it will be said, the

literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and

founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my

supposed questioner to go on. If he is a Frenchman, he will name

Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics.

They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact,

and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of

noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that

every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of

which it is deprived. But it is one thing to claim for one's-self a

liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is

another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all. There was, as I

am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which

led Voltaire to consecrate to noble causes a pen so often sold to evil.

Still it is impossible not to suspect that if that apostle of toleration

had had a principality under his own sway, the fact of thinking

differently from the master would very soon have figured among the

number of delinquencies.

The patriarch of Ferney wrote in favor of toleration; some friends of

religious indifference have pleaded the cause of liberty of conscience:

the fact is certain. But other writers, animated by a living faith, have

also demanded liberty for all: the fact is not less certain. Some years

ago, at nearly the same epoch, the Père Lacordaire and our own

Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the

attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of

his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the

vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays

not God."[33] Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on

the borders of our lake, have gained entrance far and near into many

hearts. I should like to take such and such a Parisian journalist, bring

him into our midst, and get him to acquaint himself thoroughly with the

results of our experience; I should like to conduct him to the cemetery

of Clarens, place him by the tomb of Vinet, and tell him what that man

was.--If, as he returned to his home, my journalist did not leave behind

him at the French frontier, as contraband merchandise, all that he would

have seen and learnt in our country, he would perhaps understand that

the surest road by which to arrive at respect for the consciences of

others is not indifference, but firmness of faith, in humility of heart,

and largeness of thought. All the writers who have devoted their pen to

the defence of the rights of the human soul have not therefore been

sceptics. Without continuing this discussion of proper names, let us

settle what is here the true place of writers. Before there are men who

demand liberty and digest the theory of it, there must be other men who

take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated

with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the

sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the

martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary

writer, "is free men, rather than liberators of humanity."[34]

In fact, liberty comes to us above all from those who have suffered for

it. Its living springs are in the spirit of faith, and not, as they

teach us, in the spirit of indifference. It is easy to understand, that

where no one believes, the liberty to believe would not be claimed by

any one.

Let us now endeavor to penetrate below facts, in order to bring back the

discussion to sure principles. Let us ask what, in regard to liberty of

conscience, are the natural consequences of faith, and the natural

consequences of scepticism.

Faith does appear, at first sight, a source of intolerance. The man who

believes, reckons himself in possession of the right in regard to truth,

and to God; he has nothing to respect in error. Thus it is that belief

naturally engenders persecution. This reasoning is specious, all the

more as it is supported by numerous and terrible examples; but let us

look at things more closely. Place yourselves face to face with any one

of your convictions, no matter which; I hope there is no one of you so

unfortunate as not to have any. Suppose that it were desired to impose

upon you by force even the conviction which you have. Suppose that an

officer of police came to say to you, pronouncing at the same time the

words which best expressed your own thoughts: "you are commanded so to

believe." What would happen? If you had never had a doubt of your faith,

you would be tempted to doubt it, the moment any human power presumed to

impose it upon you. The feeling of oppression would produce in your

conscience a strong inclination to revolt. Let us analyze this feeling.

You feel that it is words, not convictions, which are imposed by force;

you feel that declarations extorted by fear from lying lips are an

outrage to truth. You feel, in a word, that your belief is the right of

God over you, and not the right of your neighbor. Men respect God's

right over the souls of their fellow-men, in proportion as they are

intelligent in their own faith. The fanaticism which would impose words

by force is not an ardent but a blind faith. In order to bring it back

into the paths of liberty, it is enough to restore to it its sight.

The establishment of the Christian religion furnishes a great example in

support of our thesis. The Christians, when persecuted by the empire,

had never allowed themselves to reply to the violence of power by the

violence of rebellion. There came, however, and soon enough, a time when

they were sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, and had withal the

consciousness of their strength; but they had no will to conquer the

world, except by the arms of martyrdom, and heroism, and obedience. This

was not the case during a few years only, it is the history of three

centuries, an ever-memorable page of human annals, in which all ages

will be able to learn what are the true weapons of truth. Christendom,

too often forgetful of its origin, has in later times allowed the fury

of persecution to cloak itself under a pretended regard for sacred

interests; but the remedy has proceeded from the very evil. The

Christian conscience has protested, in the name of the Gospel, against

the crimes of which the Gospel was the pretext, and the passions of men

the cause. "We must bewail the misery and error of our time," already

St. Hilary was exclaiming, in the fourth century. "Men are thinking that

God has need of the protection of men.... The Church is uttering threats

of banishment and imprisonment, and desiring to compel belief by

force,--the Church, which itself acquired strength in exile and in

prisons!"

True faith, then, possesses a principle by which it protests against

abuses which it is sought to cloak under its name, and this protest

comes at last to make itself heard. Faith suppressed, the passions will

remain, for in order to be a saint, it is not enough to be a sceptic.

The passions will look for other pretexts. Will not the spirit of doubt

offer them such pretexts?

It seems at first sight that doubt must promote toleration, since it

does not allow any importance to be attached to opinions. This is a

specious conclusion, similar to that which placed in belief the source

of intolerant passions. Let us once more reflect a little. The first

effect of doubt is certainly to dispose the mind to leave a free course

to all opinions; but disdain is not the way to respect, and only respect

can give solid bases to the spirit of liberty. Believers are in the eyes

of the sceptic weak-minded persons, whom he treats at first with a

gentle and patronizing compassion. But these weak minds grow obstinate;

the sceptic perceives that they do not bend before his superiority, and

dare perhaps to consider themselves as his equals. Then irritation

arises, and, beneath the velvet paw, one feels the piercing of the claw.

The sceptic has in fact a dogma; he has but one, but one he has after

all--the negation of truth. The faith of others is a protest against

that single dogma on which he has concentrated all the powers of his

conviction. He is passionately in earnest for this negation; he feels

himself the representative of an idea, of which he must secure the

triumph. Now come such surmisings as these: "Here are men who think

themselves the depositaries of truth! These pretended believers--may

they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power;

let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a

cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an innocent weakness, takes

then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the

temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to

get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the

conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we

should have in the State! If we proclaimed the true modern dogma,

namely, that there is no dogma; if silencing, in short, fanatics who are

behind their age, we decreed that every belief is a crime and every

manifestation of faith a revolt, what quiet in society!" The incline is

slippery, and what shall hold back the sceptic who is descending it?

Faith carries with it the remedy for fanaticism, but where shall be

found the remedy for the fanaticism of doubt? In the claims of God? God

is but a word, or a worthless hypothesis. In respect for the convictions

of others? All conviction is but weakness and folly. All this, be well

assured, gives much matter for reflection. When I hear some men who call

themselves liberal, tracing the ideal of the society which they desire,

the bare imagination of their triumph frightens me, for I can understand

that that society would enjoy the liberty of the Roman empire, and the

toleration of the Cæsars.

Such are the consequences of scepticism for the leaders of a people.

What will those consequences be for the people themselves? The spirit of

indifference paralyzes the sources of generous sentiments, and ends in

the same results as the spirit of cowardice. And do you not know the

part which cowardice has played in history? If I may venture to call up

here the most mournful recollections of modern times, do you not know

that during the Reign of Terror, two or three hundred scoundrels

instituted public massacres in the Capital of France, in the midst of a

population shuddering with fright, but who let things go? Now the

characteristic of indifference is the letting things go. If fanaticism

has something to do with persecution, indifference has a great deal to

do with it. The crimes which minds paralyzed by doubt allow to be

perpetrated have besides a sadder character than those which are

perpetrated by passions, which, wild and erring though they be, have a

certain nobleness in their origin. If I must be bound to the stake, I

had rather burn with the blind assent of a fanatical crowd, than in the

presence of an indifferent populace who came to look on. For just as

sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they find all spectacles

equally instructive and curious.[35]

I have felt it necessary to insist on these considerations. Direct

attacks upon religious truth are perhaps less dangerous than the efforts

by which modern infidelity endeavors to estrange us from God, by

persuading us that doubt is the guarantee of liberty, and that belief

rivets the chains of bondage. Many consciences are disturbed by these

affirmations. It concerns us therefore to know that God is the great

Liberator of souls, and that forgetfulness of God is the road to

slavery. The faith which seeks to propagate itself by force inflicts

upon itself the harshest of contradictions. The spirit of doubt, in

order to become the spirit of violence, has only to transform itself

according to the laws of its proper nature.

And now to sum up. One of the noblest spectacles that earth can show,

is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which

each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his

brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable

asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by

sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses

itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt every firm and noble

conviction!

To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up its source the stream of the

veritable progress of modern society; it is to attack the foundations of

liberty, justice, and love. The material conquests of civilization would

serve thenceforward only to hasten the decomposition of the social body.

The pure idea of God is the true cause of the great progress of the

modern era; religion, in its generality, is, as Plutarch has told us,

the necessary condition to the very existence of society. This is what

remains for us to prove.

"How sacred is the society of citizens," said Cicero, "when the immortal

gods are interposed between them as judges and as witnesses."[36] Let us

raise still higher this lofty thought, and say: "How sacred is human

society, when, beneath the eye of the common Father, the inequalities of

life are accepted with patience and softened by love; when the poor and

the rich, as they meet together, remember that the Lord is the Maker of

them both; when a hope of immortality alleviates present evils, and when

the consciousness of a common dignity reduces to their true value the

passing differences of life!" Take away from human society God as

mediator, and the hopes founded in God as a source of consolation, and

what would you have remaining? The struggle of the poor against the

rich, the envy of the ignorant directed against the man who has

knowledge, the dullard's low jealousy of superior intelligence, hatred

of all superiority, and, by an almost inevitable reaction, the obstinate

defence of all abuses,--in one word, war--war admitting neither of

remedy nor truce. Such is the most apparent danger which now threatens

society.

When I consider these facts with attention, I am astonished every day

that society subsists at all, that the burning lava of unruly passions

does not oftener make large fissures in the social soil, and overflow in

devastating torrents, bearing away at once palace and cottage, field and

workshop. This standing danger is drawing anxious attention, and we

hear the old adage repeated: "There must be a religion for the people."

There are men who wish to give the people a religion which they

themselves do not possess, acting like a man who, at once poor and

ostentatious, should give alms with counterfeit money. And what result

do they attain? We must have a religion for the people, say the

politicians, that they may secure the ends they have in view, and

conduct at their own pleasure the herds at their disposal. We must have

a religion for the people, say the rich, in order to keep peaceably

their property and their incomes. We must have a religion for the

people, say the _savants_, in order to remain quiet in their studies, or

in their academic chairs. What are they doing--these men without God,

who wish to preserve a faith for the use of the people? These

_savants_,--they say, and print it, that religion is an error necessary

for the multitudes who are incapable of rising to philosophy. Where is

it that they say it, and print it? Is it in drawing-rooms with closed

doors? Is it within the walls of Universities, or in scientific

publications which are out of the reach of the masses? No. They say it

in political journals, in reviews read by all the world; they print it

at full in books which are sold by thousands of copies. Their words are

spreading like a deleterious miasma through all classes of society.

Thoughtless men! (I am unwilling to suppose a cool calculation on their

part of money or of fame which should oblige me to say--heartless men),

thoughtless men! they do not see the inevitable consequences of their

own proceeding. The people hear and understand. The intellectual

barriers between the different classes of society are gradually becoming

lower: this is one of the clearest of the ways of Providence in our

time. Do you believe that the people will long consent to hear it said

that they only live on errors, but that those errors are necessary for

them? Do you not see that they are about to rise, and answer, in the

sentiment of their own dignity, that they will no longer be deceived,

and that they intend to deliver themselves also from superstition? Then,

all restraining barriers removed, passions will have free course; and

believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of

study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of

this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to

destroy religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are

Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but

whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation

of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia,

in January, 1757, "will render an eternal service to the human race, by

destroying that infamous superstition, I do not say amongst the rabble,

which is not worthy to be enlightened, and to which all yokes are

suitable, but amongst honest people." A religion was necessary for the

people; but Voltaire and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the

French marquises, and the ladies who received their homage, could do

without it.

Voltaire died before eating of the fruit of his works; and Alfred de

Musset could only address to him his vengeful apostrophe at his tomb:

Sleep'st thou content, and does thy hideous smile

Still flit, Voltaire, above thy fleshless bones?[37]

Voltaire was dead; but many of his friends and disciples were able to

meditate, in the prisons of the Terror and as they mounted the steps of

the scaffold, on the nature of the terrible game which they had

played--and lost.

So it fares with men of letters who have no God, but who would have a

religion for the people. Other men there are who would have a religion

for the people, being themselves the while without restraint, because

they are without religious convictions. They abandon themselves to the

ardent pursuit of riches, excitements, worldly pleasures. These are they

who have made a fortune by disgraceful means, perhaps the public sale of

their consciences, and who by their luxurious extravagance overwhelm the

honest and economical working-man. These are the courtesans who parade

in broad daylight the splendid rewards of their own infamy. Let not such

deceive themselves! The people see these things; they form their

judgment of them, and if they give way to the bad instincts which are in

us all, where God is not in the heart to restrain them, to their hatred

is added contempt. If they are forcibly kept back from realizing their

cherished hopes, they adjourn them, but without renouncing them.

Put away all belief in God, and you will see the action and reaction of

human passions forming, as it were, a mass of opposite electricities,

and preparing the thunder-peal and the furies of the tempest. Then

appear those disorganized societies which are terrified at their own

dissolution, until a strong man comes, and, taking advantage of this

very terror, takes and chastises these societies, as one chastises an

unruly child. It is a story at once old and new, because, in proportion

as God withdraws from human society, in that same proportion the power

of the sword replaces the empire of the conscience. There must be a

religion for the people! Yes, Sirs, but for that people, wide as

humanity, which includes us all.

If the existence of God is denied, man falls into despair, and society

into dissolution. What then is my inference? That atheism is false. Such

a mode of arguing produces an outcry. "A matter of sentiment!" men

exclaim. "You would build up a doctrine according to your own fancy! You

do not discuss the question calmly, but appeal to interests and

prejudices: you quit the domain of science, which takes cognizance only

of facts and reasoning." Such expressions are common enough to make it

worth while to study their value. Of course, science must not be an

instrument of our caprice. We are bound to search for truth; and we are

unfaithful to our obligations if we try to establish doctrines which

serve our passions, or favor our interests, or flatter our tastes and

our prejudices. But the conscience, the heart, the conditions of the

existence of human society, are neither prejudices nor personal

interests; they are eternal and living realities. We speak of the

conscience, of the heart, of society, and they answer us: "We do not

believe that there are true sciences in that domain; we only wish for

facts." Occasionally we hear naturalists speak in this way. We only wish

for facts! Then our thoughts, our feelings, our conscience are not

facts! The man who will give the closest observation to the steps of a

fly, or to a caterpillar's method of crawling, has not a moment's

attention to give to the impulses of the heart, to the rules of duty, to

the struggles of the will; and when addressed on the subject of these

realities of the soul, the most certain of all realities, he will reply:

"That is no business of mine, I want nothing but facts." Let us pass

from this aberration, and listen for a moment to other objectors.

We do not deny, it is often said, the reality of our feelings. Man

desires happiness, and seeks it in religious belief; but this is an

order of things which science cannot take account of. Science has only

truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason.

If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience,

no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results.

"There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning,

than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may

do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is

certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it

entails dangerous consequences."[38] So wrote the patriarch of modern

sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; it is

repeated to us, without end, in the columns of the leading journals of

France, and in the pages of the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The adversaries

of spiritual beliefs have changed their tactics. In the last century,

they replied to minds alarmed for the consequences of their work: "Truth

can never do harm."--"Truth can never do harm," retorted J.J. Rousseau:

"I believe it as you do, and this it is that proves to me that your

doctrines are not truth." The argument is conclusive. So the adversary

has taken up another position; and he says at this day:--"Our doctrines

do perhaps pain the heart, and wound the conscience, but this is no

reason why they should be false: moral goodness, utility, happiness, are

not signs by which we may know what is true."

Philosophy, Gentlemen, has always assumed to be the universal

explanation of things, and you will agree that it is on her part a

humiliating avowal, that she is enclosed, namely, in a circle of pure

reason, and leaves out of view, as being unable to give any account of

them, the great realities which are called moral goodness and happiness.

One might ask what are the bases of that science which disavows, without

emotion, the most active powers of human nature. One might ask whether

those who so speak, understand well the meaning of their own words; and

inquire also what is the method which they employ, and the result at

which they aim. One might ask whether these philosophers are not like

astronomers who should say: "Here are our calculations. It matters

nothing to us whether the stars in their observed course do or do not

agree with them. Science is sovereign; it is amenable only to its own

laws, and visible realities cannot be objections in the way of its

calculations." Let us leave these preliminary remarks, and let us come

to the core of the controversy.

They set the reason on one side, the conscience and heart upon the

other, as an anatomist separates the organic portions of a corpse, and

they say: Truth belongs only to the reason; the conscience and the heart

have no admission into science. Listen to the following express

declaration of the weightiest, perhaps, of French contemporary

philosophers: "The God of the pure reason is the only true God; the God

of the imagination, the God of the feelings, the God of the conscience,

are only idols!"[39] It is impossible to accept this arbitrary division

of the divine attributes. There is but one and the same God, the

Substance of truth, the inexhaustible Source of beauty, the supreme Law

of the wills created to accomplish the designs of His mercy. The

conscience, the heart, the reason rise equally towards Him, following

the triple ray which descends from His eternity upon our transitory

existence. We cannot therefore seriously admit that God of the pure

reason, separated from the God of the conscience and of the heart. Still

let us endeavor to make this concession, for argument's sake, to our

philosopher. Let us suppose that the reason has a God to itself, a God

for the metaphysicians who is not the God of the vulgar. Before we

immolate upon His altar the conscience and the heart, it is worth our

while to examine whether the statue of the God of the reason rests upon

a solid pedestal. Here are the theses which are proposed to us: "It is

impossible for our feelings to supply any light for science. Truth may

be gloomy, and despair may gain its cause. Virtue may be wrong, and

immorality may be the true. Reason alone judges of that which is." I

answer: Human nature has always eagerly followed after happiness. Human

nature has always acknowledged, even while violating it, a rule of duty.

The heart is not an accident, the conscience is not a prejudice: they

are, and by the same right as the reason, constituent elements of our

spiritual existence. If there exist an irreconcilable antagonism between

science and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and universal

aspirations, is the victim of an illusion, if the conscience in its

clearest admonitions is only a teacher of error, what is our position?

In what I am now saying, Gentlemen, I am not appealing to your feelings;

the business is to follow, with calm attention, a piece of exact

reasoning. If the heart deceives us, if the voice of duty leads us

astray, the disorder is at the very core of our being; our nature is ill

constructed. If our nature is ill constructed, what warrants to us our

reason? Nothing. What assures us that our axioms are good, and that our

reasonings have any value? Nothing. The life of the soul cannot be

arbitrarily cloven in twain; it must be held for good in all its

constituent elements, or enveloped wholly and entirely in the shades of

doubt. If the heart and conscience deceive us, then reason may lead us

astray, and the very idea of truth disappears. God is the light of the

spiritual world. We prove His existence by showing that without Him all

returns to darkness. This demonstration is as good as another.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Christian States have given the force of law to institutions, such,

for instance, as monogamy, which date their origin from the Gospel

records. Here we have the normal development of civilization: religious

faith enlightens the general conscience, and reveals to it the true

conditions of social progress. In this order of things, it is not a

question of _beliefs_, but of _acts_ imposed in the name of the

interests of society. The state may take account of the religious

beliefs of its subjects, and enter into such relations as may seem to it

convenient with the ecclesiastical authorities: this is the basis of the

system of concordats, a system which has nothing in it contrary to first

principles, so long as liberty is maintained. But the establishment of

_national_ religions, decreed by the temporal power and varying in

different states, manifestly supposes a foundation of scepticism. For

the idea of truth, one and universal in itself, is substituted the idea

of decisions obligatory for those only who are under the jurisdiction of

a definite political body. If the State, without pretending to decree

dogma, receives it from the hands of the Church, and imposes it upon its

subjects, it seems at first that the temporal power has placed itself at

the service of the Church, but that the idea of truth is preserved. But

when the question is studied more closely, it is seen that this is not

the case, and that the state usurps in fact, in this combination, the

attributes of the spiritual power. In fact, before protecting _the true

religion_, it is necessary to ascertain which it is; and in order to

ascertain the true religion, the political power must constitute itself

judge of religious truth. So we come back, by a _détour_, to the

conception of national religions. The Emperor of Russia and the Emperor

of Austria will inquire respectively which is the only true religion, to

the exclusive maintenance of which they are to consecrate their temporal

power. To the same question they will give two different replies; and

each nation will have its own form of worship, just as each nation has

its own ruler.

[27] _Etudes orientales_, 1861.

[28] _Unité morale des peuples modernes_,--a lecture delivered at Lyons,

10 April, 1839. This lecture is inserted after the _Génie des Religions_

in the complete works of the author.

[29] Franck, _Philosophie du droit ecclésiastique_, pages 117 and 118.

[30] Schmidt, _Essai historique sur la Société civile dans le monde

romain_. Bk. 1. ch. 3.

[31]

La liberté que j'aime est née avec notre âme

Le jour où le plus juste a bravé le plus fort.

[32] Tertullian.

[33] _Le Père Lacordaire_, by the Comte de Montalembert, p. 25.

[34] _De l'autre rive_, by Iscander (in Russian). Iscander is the

pseudonyme of M. Herzen.

[35] "The man of thought knows that the world only belongs to him as a

subject of study, and, even if he could reform it, perhaps he would find

it so curious as it is that he would not have the courage to do

so."--Ernest Renan, preface to _Etudes d'histoire religieuse_, 1857. The

author has manifested better sentiments in 1859, in the preface to his

_Essais de morale et de critique._

[36] _De Legibus_, ii. 7.

[37]

Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire

Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os décharnés?

[38] Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having access to

the original, I re-translate the French translation.--TR.]

[39] Vacherot, _La metaphysique et la science_. Preface, p. xxix.

LECTURE III.

_THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM._

(At Geneva, 24th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 18th Jan. 1864.)

GENTLEMEN,

The subject of the present Lecture will be--The revival of Atheism. And

I do not employ the word 'atheism'--a term which has been so greatly

abused--without mature reflection. When Socrates opposed the idea of the

holy God to the impure idols of paganism; when he dethroned Jupiter and

his train in order to celebrate "the supreme God, who made and who

guides the world, who maintains the works of creation in the flower of

youth, and in a vigor always new,"[40] they accused Socrates of being an

atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence

of God more certain than any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as

an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to

worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world,

the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down

to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of

the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of

persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In

an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best

efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God,

because they would not have been understood had they attempted to

say--"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing

them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines,

apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of

history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where

liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names,

for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In

affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites

of fame, are shaking the foundations of all religion, one exposes no

one to severities which have disappeared from our manners, one only

exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But

candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of

thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and,

while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.

Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted

that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny

God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every

soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a

secret hope, or by a secret dread? This is true, as I think; but we are

speaking here of doctrines and not of men. It is true again that the

negation of the Creator allows of the existence, in certain

philosophies, of generous ideas and elevated conceptions. Such men,

while they put God out of existence, desire to keep the true, the

beautiful, the good; they hope to preserve the rays, while they

extinguish the luminous centre from which they proceed. Such systems

always tend to produce the deadly fruits pointed out in my last lecture;

but men devoted to the severe labors of the intellect often escape, by

a noble inconsistency, the natural results of their theories. Therefore,

in the inquiry on which we are about to enter, the term 'atheism'

implies, with regard to persons, neither reproach nor contempt. It

simply indicates a doctrine, the doctrine which denies God. This denial

takes place in two ways: It is affirmed that nature, that is to say

matter, force devoid of intelligence and of will, is the sole origin of

things; or, the reality is acknowledged of those marks which raise mind

above nature, but it is affirmed that humanity is the highest point of

the universe, and that above it there is nothing. Such are the two forms

of atheism.

Perhaps you expect here the explanation of a doctrine which is often

described as holding a sort of middle place between the negation and the

affirmation of God, namely, pantheism. Pantheism, in the true sense of

that word, is a system according to which God is all, and the universe

nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek,

Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime

infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses

in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is

manifold and transitory a disdain which passes into negation. In the

domain of experience, all is limited, temporary, imperfect; and reason

seeks the perfect, the eternal, the infinite. The doctrine of creation

alone explains how the universe subsists in presence of its first cause.

In ignorance of this doctrine, some bold thinkers have cut the knot

which they could not untie. They have declared that reason alone is

right, and that experience is wrong: the world does not exist, it is but

an illusion of the mind. Whence proceeds this illusion? If perfection

alone exists, how comes that imperfect mind to exist which deceives

itself in believing in the reality of the world? To this question the

system has no answer. Such is true pantheism; but it is not to dangers

so noble that most minds run the risk of succumbing. What is commonly

understood by pantheism is the deification of the universe. The idea of

God is not directly denied, but it undergoes a transformation which

destroys it. God is no longer the eternal and Almighty Spirit, the

Creator; but the unconscious principle, the substance of things, the

whole. The universe alone exists; above it there is nothing; but the

universe is infinite, eternal, divine. The higher wants of the reason,

mingling with the data derived from experience, form an imposing and

confused image, which, while it beguiles the imagination, perverts the

understanding, deceives the heart, and places the conscience in peril.

In a philosophical point of view, it is a contradiction of thought,

which seeks the Infinite Being, and, being unable to discover Him, gives

the character of infinity to realities bounded by experience. In a

religious point of view, it is an aberration of the heart, which

preserves the sentiment of adoration, but perverts it by dispersing it

over the universe. "Pantheism," says M. Jules Simon, "is only the

learned form of atheism; the universe deified is a universe without

God."[41] From the moment that the reason endeavors to see distinctly,

pantheism vanishes like a deceitful glare. Atheism disengages itself

from the cloak which was concealing its true nature, and the mind

remains in presence of nature only, or of humanity only. We will proceed

to take a rapid glance at some few of the countries of Europe, in order

to discover and point out in them the traces of this melancholy

doctrine. Let us begin with France.

In the year 1844, just twenty years ago, some French writers,

representing the philosophy, in some measure official, of the time,

united to publish a _Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques_. M.

Franck, the director of this useful and laborious enterprise, said in

the preface to the work: "Atheism has well nigh completely disappeared

from philosophy; the progress of a sound psychology will render its

return for ever impossible." In speaking thus, he expressed the thoughts

and hopes of the school of which he remains one of the most estimable

representatives. A generous impulse was animating a group of intelligent

and learned young men. Their hope was to translate Christianity into a

purely rational doctrine, to purify religious notions without destroying

them, and, while endowing humanity with a vigorous scientific culture,

to leave to it its lofty hopes. The object in view was to establish a

philosophy founded upon a serious faith in God; and to this philosophy

was promised the progressive and pacific conquest of the human race.[42]

Twenty years have passed, and things bear quite another aspect. To

language expressive of security have succeeded the accents of anxiety

and words of alarm. The cause which was proclaimed victorious is

defended at this day like a besieged city. You will remark

however,--that I may not leave you beyond measure discouraged by the

facts of which I have to tell you,--you will remark, I say, that it is

the efforts attempted in the cause of good which have helped to set me

on the track of evil; it has often been the defence which has fixed my

attention upon the attack.

The materialism of the last century seems to have maintained a strong

hold upon one part of the Paris school of medicine. We do find in France

a good many physicians who, like Boerhave, render homage to religion,

and a good many physiologists who, like the great Haller, are ready to

defend beliefs of the spiritual order;[43] but, among men specially

devoted to the study of matter, many succumb to the temptation of

refusing to recognize anything as real which does not come under the

experience of the senses. This however is not one of the points which

offer themselves most strikingly for our examination. The atheistic

manifestations of the socialist schools have more novelty, and perhaps

more importance.

Man is naturally a social being. Good and evil have their primitive seat

in the heart of individuals, but good and evil are transferred into

institutions of which the influence is morally beneficial or pernicious.

If socialism consists in recognizing the importance of social

institutions, in cherishing ideas of progress and hopes of reform, I

trust that we are all socialists. Do we desire progress by the ever

wider diffusion of justice and love? From the moment that, across the

conscience whereon divine rays are falling, we have descried the eternal

centre of light, we understand that God is the most implacable enemy of

abuses. How is it then that atheism sometimes manifests itself in

attempts at social reform? We may explain it, without so much as

pointing out the influence, but too real, of the faults committed by the

representatives of religion. Faith is a principle of action; it is, as

history testifies, the grand source of the progress of human society;

but faith is also a principle of patience. The brow of every believer is

more or less illumined by the rays of His peace who is patient because

He is eternal. Eager to effect good to the utmost extent of his ability,

he accomplishes his work with that calm activity to which are reserved

durable victories. In the impossible (for if the word impossible is not

French, it is human) the believer recognizes one of the manifestations

of the supreme Will, and immortal hope enables him to support the evils

which he does not succeed in destroying. But this is not enough for

impatient reformers. Ignorant of the profound sources of evil, they

think that institutions can do everything, and that a change of laws

would suffice to reform men's hearts; they believe that the organization

of society alone hinders the realization of good and of happiness. The

resignation of believers appears to them a stupid lethargy, and in their

patient expectation of a judgment to come they see only an obstacle to

the immediate triumph of justice on the earth. What if the nations were

persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present

life, so that all that is to be done is to make to ourselves a paradise

as soon as may be here below! If they were persuaded that all appeal to

the Judge in heaven is a chimerical hope, with what ardor would they

throw themselves into schemes of revolution! Thus it is that certain

political innovators are led to seek in the negation of God one of their

means of action.

Two views, therefore, essentially diverse, govern the labors of the

renovators of society. The one class desire to realize, in an ever

larger measure, justice and love; religious convictions are the

strongest support of their work. The other class would uproot from men's

minds every principle of faith, in order the more readily to obtain the

realization of their theories. These two classes of men seem at times to

be fighting all together in the _mêlée_ of opinions. They meet, as, in

the doubtful glimmer of the dawn, might meet together laborious workmen

who are anticipating the daylight, and evil-doers who are fleeing from

the sun.

In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools,

it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into

the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained

and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some

prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough

for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of

Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas. It

discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a

materialistic enthusiasm for corporeal indulgences. Disregarding the

sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn

our attention elsewhere.

M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and

elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred

pages destined to maintain the thesis that God does not exist.[44] Man

conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection

realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception

of a real and perfect being: such is the usual process of metaphysical

reasoning. For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one

another; this is one of his fundamental theses. This thesis does but

interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to

raise ourselves higher. The world with which we are acquainted is

imperfect; therefore--say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes--the

perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to

the world. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect,

therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says

M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the

absolute rule of truth. To say therefore of God that He is perfect, is

to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never

realized. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd

and violent. If God is perfect, He does not exist. If God exists, He is

not perfect. The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us

to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His

perfection. The author of this theory renders a worship to that ideal

which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the

world is gravitating by the law of progress. This worship is of too

abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular

by taking another shape, and it does so in this way: We conceive of that

perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our

thought. Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards

perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human

mind. The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is

it that we must adore. We are here out of the region of pure

abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.

The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with

chimeras, was founded in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte. M.

Littré is at present one of its principal representatives. This writer,

says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring "to set

humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions,

from deceitful idols and powers."[45] Let us say the same thing in

simpler terms: M. Littré professes the doctrines of a school which

ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history. To ascertain

phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such,

say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge. As for the

origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual

fancy. "Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as

he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in

doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future."[46]

"In spite of some appearances to the contrary," says M. Littré, "the

positive philosophy does not accept atheism."[47] Why? Because atheism

pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and that after a

fashion is still theology. Minds "veritably emancipated" profess to know

nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience. They do

not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts. The attempt is a

bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emancipating themselves

from the laws of reason. The very writer whom I have just quoted is

himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of

a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very

treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the

"_eternal_ motive powers of a _boundless_ universe."[48] Boundless!

eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the instincts of the reason

coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing! Adoration

is withdrawn from God, and it is given to the universe at large. What is

it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct

object of worship? Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in

a work reviewed by Auguste Comte: "Man," he says, "has always adored

humanity." Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and

the brief summary of their history. This humanity-god has been long

adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its worshippers;

but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his

worship and give it its true name.[49]

The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard

to whatever is not included in the domain of experience. But its foot

slips, and it falls into the negation of God, from which it rises again

by means of a humanitarian atheism. All these marks are met with again

in the works of the critical school.

The critics group themselves about M. Renan. The praises which they

lavished a while ago on a bad book by that author seem at least to allow

us to point him out as their chief. They derive their name from studies

in history and archæology, with which we here have nothing to do. They

are regarded as forming a philosophical and religious school, and it is

in that connection that they claim our attention. Their influence is

incontestable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is

nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school

engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings

the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and

to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and

to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow

particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and of

philosophy; but this interest is purely historical. Nothing is more

curious than the successive forms of human beliefs; but the period of

beliefs is over. Religious faith no longer subsists except in minds

which are behind the age; and philosophy, upheld in a final swoon by

Hegel and Hamilton, has just yielded its last breath in the arms of M.

Cousin: so M. Renan informs us.[50] To choose a side between the

defenders of the idea of God and its opponents; to choose between Plato

and Epicurus, between Origen and Celsus, between Descartes and Hobbes,

between Leibnitz and Spinoza, would be to make one's self the Don

Quixote of thought. An honest man may find amusement in reading the

Amadis of Gaul; the Knight of _la Manche_ went mad through putting

faith in the adventures of that hero. A like fate befalls those minds

which are simple enough to believe still, in the midst of the nineteenth

century, in the brave chimeras of former days. Let us study history, let

us study nature; beyond that we do not know, and we never shall know,

anything. Our fashionable men of letters develop their thesis with so

much assurance; they lavish upon believers so many expressions of

amiable disdain; they appear so sure of being the interpreters of the

mind of the age, that they seem ready to repeat to young people dazzled

by their success, the lesson which Gilbert had expressed in these terms:

Between ourselves--you own a God, I fear!

Beware lest in your verse the fact appear:

Dread the wits' laughter, friend, and know your betters:

Our grandsires might have worn those old-world fetters;

But in our days! Come, you must learn respect,--

Content _your age to follow_, not direct.[51]

To believe in God would be vulgar; to deny the existence of God would be

a want of taste; the divine world must remain as a subject for poetry.

So our critics speak. Their direct affirmation is scepticism. But they

follow the destinies of the positivist school; they do not succeed in

maintaining their balance between the affirmation and negation of God.

Alfred de Musset has described this position of the soul, and its

inevitable issue. Must I hope in God? Must I reject all faith and all

hope?

Between these paths how difficult the choice!

Ah! might I find some smoother, easier way.

"None such exists," whispers a secret voice,

"God _is_, or _is not_--own, or slight, His sway."

In sooth, I think so: troubled souls in turn

By each extreme are tossed and harassed sore:

They are but atheists, who feel no concern;

If once they doubted they would sleep no more.[52]

The indifference of the critical philosophers is in fact only a

transparent veil to atheistical doctrines. Faith in God the Creator is

in their eyes a superstition; this is their only settled dogma. In other

respects they indulge in theses the most contradictory. Most generally

they deify man, declaring that there is no other God than the idea of

humanity, no other infinite than the indefinite character of the

aspirations of our own soul. At other times they proclaim an undisguised

materialism, and look for the explanation of all things in atoms and in

the law which governs them. They make to themselves a two-faced idol,

one of these faces being called nature, and the other humanity. What

strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language

change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty, of

religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted

from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally

different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their God

is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a

law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these

equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of

the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and

captivated by success, is deluged with writings which have the same

effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of

the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ever

allowing it to form either a precise idea or a settled judgment.

Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance

over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no

difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are

multiplying with the object of defending the existence of God,

Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against

the rising flood of atheism.[53] And here is a fact still more

significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are

recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are passing in review the

worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of God,

without having their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention

directed to contemporary productions.[54]

I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there

presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing principally

as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed,

doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the

Rhine.

A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of

speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped

in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most

directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been

pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and

on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or

not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the

following words: "I have only had one disciple who has understood

me--and he has misunderstood me." A man distinguished in metaphysical

research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect,

devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secrétan, writes

with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian

system: "If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no

answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one

has ever understood it."[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here

undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be

enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to

understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor,

in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.

The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an

eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to

any mind. The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an

inadmissible conception. They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the

palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the

act of an intelligence. This idea-God we have already encountered in the

writings of M. Vacherot. We shall find it again more than once as we go

on. In Germany, as in France, the theory only becomes popular by

undergoing a transformation. The eternal idea manifests itself in the

mind of man, and exists nowhere else. Above this idea there is nothing.

Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored. And

thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of

1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the _Gazette d'Augsbourg_: "I

begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel

declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago." The deification of

man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.

Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was

current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its

popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found

him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of

an ecstatic contemplation. "Why, what are you doing there?" inquired the

visitor. "I am adoring myself," replied the young adept in philosophy.

I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history

of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it

occupies a large place and demands the most serious attention; I am

tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.

This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of

atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M.

Saint-Réné Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of

the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts

of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulæ, it

gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious

authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."[57]

It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be

brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in

its commencement, to favor at length _the revolts of matter run mad_.

And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the

development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is

necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of

destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the

flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the

moment that the flesh is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and

ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism

into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There

exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us

there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us:

the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an

idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for

Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to

his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic

sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really

serviceable to humanity."[58]

Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacrifices; the emancipation

is incomplete. What is this humanity to which man owes himself? An

abstraction, an idol still, an idol to be overthrown if he would obtain

perfect independence. Listen to the German Stirmer, deducing from the

doctrine its extreme consequences: "Perish the people," he exclaims,

"perish Germany, perish all the nations of Europe; and let man, rid of

all bonds, delivered from the last phantoms of religion, recover at

length his full independence!"[59] All the mists of abstraction have now

disappeared: here we are on ground which is hideously clear. Humanity is

no longer in question, but the worship of _self_; it is the complete

enfranchisement of selfishness.

While the proud idealism of the Germans was thus, by its own weight,

descending into the level flats of thought, a political movement was

agitating Germany. Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an

enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not

simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the

irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice.

In the year 1845, the attention of the Swiss authorities was drawn to

certain secret societies, composed of Germans, and having for their

object a revolution in Germany, but which had established their basis of

operations on the Swiss territory. The inquiries of the police issued in

the discovery of twenty-seven clubs bound together by secret

correspondence. Working-men were induced on various pretexts to attend

meetings, of which the real object was only gradually disclosed to

them. If they were reckoned worthy, they were initiated into the plan of

a social reform, the basis of which was atheism.[60] One of the

principal agents in this work of proselytism, Guillaume Marr, exclaimed:

"Faith in a personal and living God is the origin and the fundamental

cause of our miserable social condition." And he deduced as follows the

practical consequence of his theory: "The idea of God is the key-stone

of the arch of a tottering civilization; let us destroy it. The true

road to liberty, to equality, and to happiness, is atheism. No safety on

earth, so long as man holds on by a thread to heaven.--Let nothing

henceforward shackle the spontaneity of the human mind. Let us teach man

that there is no other God than himself, that he is the Alpha and the

Omega of all things, the superior being, and the most real reality." We

have still to explain the nature of this spontaneity, free from every

shackle. One of the editors of the journal conducted by Marr discloses

it by quoting some verses in which Henri Heine expresses the wish to

see _great vices, bloody and colossal crimes_, provided he may be

delivered from a _worthy-citizen virtue_, and an _honest-merchant

morality_![61] A little later, a journal of German Switzerland asserted,

that in order to set free man's natural instincts and propensities, it

is indispensable to destroy the idea of God.[62]

These, I am well aware, are the screams of a savage madness. But after

all, and be this as it may, Marr was publishing his journal at Lausanne

in 1845, and in 1848 he was named representative of the people, by a

considerable majority, in one of the largest cities of Germany. And this

was by no means an isolated fact. Atheism showed itself in the ephemeral

parliament of Frankfort as a sort of party, of which M. Vogt, says the

_Revue des Deux Mondes_, was the great orator.[63]

The German revolution was put down by the bayonet, but the doctrines of

which it had revealed the existence, left vestiges for a long time in

the country of the terror which they had inspired. Alarm was felt for

the various interests threatened, and noble souls were stirred with

compassion by the conviction forced upon them of the spiritual miseries

of their brethren. A powerful reaction took place, as well in the

religious as the philosophical world. This reaction has produced

salutary results; but the object is not fully attained. Open the

journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these

days, the principal centre of materialism. It is unhappily so rich in

this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to

furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.

Doctor Büchner has published, under the title of _Force and Matter_, a

small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately

been translated into French.[64] Materialism is there set forth with

perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity.

The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of

experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the

researches of philosophy. It would seem therefore that the question of

the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies.

Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe

infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in

order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what

journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by

means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have

occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that

experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a

metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out,

Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good

philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own

without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues

who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in

making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of

their own despotism.

We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth

with _éclat_ by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and

projects, and lastly materialism. The elements are the same as in

France, but exhibit themselves in a different order. This diversity

suggests some observations worth your attention.

France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose

to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the

greater part of its atheistical manifestations. German atheism, having

as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man

was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.[65] We may

inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to

the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural

movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.

Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man,

and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence. We are

nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without

leaving any trace of ever having been together. Is not this a thing to

be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world? Why then are the

apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and

uttering shouts of triumph? It is that they feel themselves free,

emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,

... that brood of idle fear

Fine nothings worshipped,--_why_, doth not appear;

The gods--whom man made, and who made not man.[66]

Emancipation! Such is the watchword of materialism. Listen, for example,

to the conclusion of Baron d'Holbach's _System of Nature_: "Break the

chains," says he, "which are binding men. Send back those gods who are

afflicting them to those imaginary regions from whence fear first drew

them forth. Inspire with courage the intelligent being; give him energy;

let him dare at length to love himself, to esteem himself, to feel his

own dignity; let him dare to emancipate himself, let him be happy and

free." Strange accents these, at the close of a large philosophical

treatise intended to prove that there is nothing in the universe but

matter. Whence proceeds the dignity of that fragment of matter which

calls itself man? Understand well what passes in the mind of these

philosophers. In proportion as man lowers his own origin, in the same

proportion,--if he does not wish to make himself a brute, in order to

live as do the animals,--he exalts himself in an inevitable sentiment of

pride. In vain does he give out that the material frame is everything;

he feels that thought is more than the material frame; and he accords to

himself the first place in the universe. The materialist ignores the

Eternal Mind in order to emancipate himself; and whatever he may say,

his real deity is not the atom, but himself. The encyclopedists, sons of

an age which yielded at once to noble influences and to guilty

seductions, united the worship of progress to a degrading philosophy.

Consider with what a feeling of pride they lowered man, and you will

understand why eternal nature gave place to sacred humanity. When

France had fallen into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little

dust in an earthen vase which was offered for public adoration, but they

led in procession through the streets of Paris a woman who was called

the goddess Reason.

So it was that materialism ended in the adoration of man. Let us

endeavor to understand how the adoration of man turns again to

materialism. The mind endowed with intelligence and will is more

elevated in the scale of being than inert bodies. This is for us an

evident truth. Could one demonstrate it by reasoning? I do not know; but

in contesting it, we should contradict the plainest evidence. Reason is

superior to matter. If, with the school which extends from Pythagoras to

Saint Augustine, and from Saint Augustine to Descartes, we connect

reason with God as its principle, the grand science of metaphysics is

founded. But if reason does not rise to God, what will happen? This

reason, which proclaims itself superior to matter, is not, as we have

said already, the individual thought of Francis, Peter, or John. If an

individual presented himself as being reason itself, the absolute

reason, and said, "I am the truth," it would be necessary to take one of

three courses. If we thought that he spoke truly, and if we received

his testimony, it would be necessary to worship him, for he would be

God. If it were feared that he spoke truly, and those who so feared were

unwilling to acknowledge his rule, it would be necessary for them to

kill him in order to endeavor to kill the truth. If it were thought that

he spoke falsely, it would be necessary to watch him, and the moment he

committed an act dangerous for society, to shut him up, for he would be

a madman. But the philosophers make no such pretension. The reason of

which they speak is the reason common to all, a reason which is not that

of an individual, but that of which all rational individuals partake.

This common, universal, eternal reason,--where and how does it exist?

Reason manifests itself by ideas, and ideas are the acts of minds. To

imagine an idea without a mind of which it is the act, is the same thing

as to imagine a movement without a body of which it is also the act, in

a different sense. Take away bodies, and there is no more movement. Take

away intelligences, and there are no more ideas. The philosopher who

speaks of an idea which is not the idea of an intelligence, utters words

which have no meaning. The reason which is not that of any created

individual remains therefore absolutely inconceivable without the

eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible

conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself

in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of

ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized

with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is

always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on

shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the _positive_ by a

violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive

materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty

pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene

Doctor Büchner and his fellows.