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https://archive.org/details/neavenlyfatherleOOnavi
THE HEAVENLY FATHER.
THE
FAN
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LECTURES ON MODERN ATHEISM.
B
ERNEST NAVILLE,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE
(ACADEMY OF THE MORAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES),
LATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
By HENRY DOWNTON, - M.A.
ENGLISH CHAPLAIN AT GENEVA,
—‘‘To this deplorable error I desire to oppose faith in Gop as it has been
given to the world by the Gospel—faith in the HEAVENLY FATHER.”
Author’s Letter to Professor Faraday (v. p. 193).
London and Cambridge :
MACMILLAN, AND CO.
1865.
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PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER.
PREFACE.
Turse Lectures, in their original form, were de-
livered at Geneva, and afterwards at Lausanne, be-
fore two auditories which together numbered about
two thousand five hundred men. A Swiss Review
published considerable portions of them, which had
been taken down in short-hand, and on reading
these portions, several persons, belonging to dif-
ferent countries, conceived the idea of translating
the work when completed by the Author, and cor-
rected for publication. Proof-sheets were accordingly
sent to the translators as they came from the press:
and thus this volume will appear pretty nearly at
the same time in several of the languages of Europe.
The hearty kindness with which my fellow-coun-
trymen received my words has been to me both a
vi PREFACE.
delight and an encouragement. The expressions of
sympathy which have reached me from abroad allow
me to hope that these pages, notwithstanding the
deficiencies and imperfections of which I am keenly
sensible, reflect some few of the rays of the truth
which God has deposited on the earth, thereby to
unite in the same faith and hope men of every
tongue and every nation.
ERNEST NAVILLE.
GENEVA, May, 1865.
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
THE appearance of this translation so long after
that of the original work is in contradiction to the
foregoing statement of the Author, that it would
appear at nearly the same time with it. The delay
has been due to causes beyond the translator’s con-
troul—in part to the difficulty of revising the press
at so great a distance from the place of publication,
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. vil
the translator being resident at Geneva. This latter
circumstance causes an exception in another par-
ticular as regards this translation, the proposal to
translate the Lectures having been made to the
Author, and kindly accepted by him, during the
course of their delivery at Geneva. |
The mere statement by the Author of the num-
bers, large as they were, of those who formed the
auditories, can give but a small idea of the enthu-
siasm with which they were received by the crowds
which thronged to hear them, and which were com-
posed of all classes of persons, from the most dis-
tinguished savant to the intelligent artisan.
It is not to be expected that the Lectures when
read, even in the original, and still less in a trans-
lation, can produce the vivid impression which they
made on those, who, with the translator, had the
privilege of hearing them delivered,—the Author
having few rivals, on the Continent or elsewhere,
in the graces of polished eloquence; but the subjects
treated are, it is to be feared, of increasing im-
portance, not abroad only, but in England; and in
Vill NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
fact one Lecture, the fourth, is in a large measure
occupied with forms of atheism which owe their
chief support to English authors. In that Lecture
the Author shews that the spiritual origin of man
cannot “be put out of sight beneath details of phy-
siology and researches of natural history,” and that
these not only “cannot settle,” but “ cannot so much
as touch the question.”
The same Lecture is occupied in part by a practi-
cal refutation of the prejudice against religion drawn
from the irreligious character of many men of science.
The Author’s subject has led him in the present
work to confine his illustrations on this head to the
question of natural religion: but the translator will
avow that a main motive with him to undertake the
labour of this translation has been the wish to prove,
in the instance of the distinguished Author himself,
that men of incontestable eminence as metaphysical
philosophers may hold and profess boldly their faith
in doctrines, which many who affect to guide the
religious opinions of our youth would teach them to
despise as the heritage of narrow minds, and to cast
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. 1X
away as incompatible with the highest intellectual
cultivation. Such doctrines are those of the fall
and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine
agency in his recovery, his need of propitiation by
the sacrifice of the God-Man—l’ Homme-Dieu. These
truths are explicitly stated by the Author in his
former course of lectures—Za Vie LHternelle,’ in
which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal
life which is the portion of the righteous, he does
not shrink from declaring his belief in its awful
counterpart, the eternal condemnation of the wicked.
“The offence of the Cross” has not “ ceased,”
and many finding that these are the opinions of
this Author, will perhaps lay down his book as
unworthy of their attention: yet the editor, bio-
erapher, and expositor of the great French thinker,
Maine de Biran, will not need introduction to the
intellectual magnates of our own or of any country.
The translator will be thankful, if some of those,—
the youth more especially,—of his own country,
1 A translation of this work, by an English lady, has been
published by Mr. Dalton, 28, Cockspur street.
X NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
who have been dazzled by the glare of false science,
shall find in this work a help to the reassuring of
their faith, while they learn in a fresh example that
there are men quite competent to deal with the pro-
foundest problems which can exercise our thoughts,
who at the same time have come to a conviction,—
compatible as they believe with principles of the
clearest reason,—of the truth of those very doctrines
which form the substance of evangelical Christ-
janity. In saying this, the translator is far from
claiming the Author as belonging to the same school
of theology with himself: but differing with him on
some important points, he has yet believed that this
volume is calculated to be of much use in the present
condition of religious thought in England, and in
this hope and prayer he commends it to the blessing
of Him, whose being and attributes, as our God
and Father in Jesus Christ, are therein asserted and
defended.
GENEVA, November, 1865.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
Our Ipea oF Gop . > ; , 1
LECTURE II.
Lire witHout Gop . ; : ; : ‘ 41
Part I.—TueE INDIVIDUAL . ? 2 43
Part II.—Soctety . : 3 eta hig bs 70
LECTURE III.
Tue REVIVAL OF ATHEISM . : , : ; 114
LECTURE IV.
NATURE ‘ : : L L ; : 170
LECTURE V.
HUMANITY : : f ‘ À : Me 288
LECTURE VI.
Tue CREATOR. ; i A : : eae (ste
LECTURE VII.
Tuer FATHER . : : : ; À è 330
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LECTURE I.
QR DAY OTICEG OFF
(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.—At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)
GENTLEMEN,
Some five-and-twenty or thirty years
ago, a German writer published a piece of verse
which began in this way: “Our hearts are oppressed
with the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought
of the ancient Jehovah who is preparing to die.”
The verses were a dirge upon the death of the living
God; and the author, like a well educated son of the
nineteenth century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon
the obsequies of the Eternal.
I was young when these strange words met my
eyes, and they produced in me a kind of painful
bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven
them in my memory. Since then, I have had oc-
casion to learn by many tokens that this fact was
B
> LECTURE I.
not at all an exceptional one, but that men of in-
fluence, famous schools, important tendencies of the
modern mind, are agreed in proclaiming that the
time of religion is over, of religion in all its forms,
of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath
the social disturbances of the day, beneath the dis-
cussions of science, beneath the anxiety of some and
the sadness of others, beneath the ironical and more
or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the founda-
tion of many intellectual manifestations of our time
these gloomy words: “ Henceforth no more God for
humanity!’ What may well send a shudder of
fright through society—more than threatening war,
more than possible revolution, more than the plots
which may be hatching in the dark against the
security of persons or of property—is, the number,
the importance, and the extent of the efforts which
are making in our days to extinguish in men’s souls
their faith in the living God.
This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to com-
municate to you, but I should wish also to confine
it within its just limits. Religion (I take this term
in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say
that it is, either dead or dying. I want no other
proof of this than the pains which so many people
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 5
are taking to kill it. It is often those who say
that it is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution,
who apply themselves to this work. They are too
generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack upon
a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by
the intensity of their exertions, that in their own
opinion they have something else to do than to give
a finishing stroke to the dying.
Present circumstances are serious, not for religion
itself, which cannot be imperilled, but for minds
which run the risk of losing their balance and their
support. Let it be observed, however, that when it
is said that we are living in extraordinary times, that
we are passing through an unequalled crisis, that the
like of what we see was never seen before, and go on,
we must always regard conclusions of this nature
with distrust. Our personal interest in the circum-
stances which immediately surround us produces on
them for us the magnifying effect of a microscope :
and our principal reason for thinking that our epoch
is more extraordinary than others, is for the most part
that we are living in our own epoch, and have not
lived in others. A mind attentive to this fact, and
so placed upon its guard against all tendency to
exaggeration, will easily perceive that religious
4 LECTURE I.
thought has in former times passed through shocks
as profound and as dangerous as those of which we
are witnesses. Still the crisis is a real one. Taking
into account its extent in our days, we may say that
it is new for the generation to which we belong; and
it is worthy of close consideration. To-day, as an in-
troduction to this grave subject, I should wish first to
determine as precisely as possible what is our idea of
God; to enquire next from what sources we derive it;
and lastly to point out, as clearly as I may, the
limits and the nature of the discussion to which I
invite you.
In asking what sense we must give to the word
‘God,’ I am not going to propose to you a meta-
physical definition, or any system of my own: I am
inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the
bosom of modern society, in the souls which live by
this idea, in the hearts of which it constitutes the joy,
in the consciences of which it is the support.
When our thoughts rise above nature and human-
ity to that invisible Being whom we speak of as God,
what is it which passes in our souls? They fear,
they hope, they pray, they offer thanksgiving. If
a man finds himself in one of those desperate positions
in which all human help fails, he turns towards
~
OUR IDEA OF GOD. J
Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of
one of those instances of revolting injustice which
stir the conscience in its profoundest depths, and
which could not on earth meet with adequate punish-
ment, we think within ourselves,—There is a Judge
on high! If we are reproved by our own conscience,
the voice of that conscience, which disturbs and some-
times torments us, reminds us that though we may
be shut out from all human view, there is no less an
Eye which sees us, and a just award awaiting us.
Thus it is (I am seeking to establish facts) that the
thought of God operates, so to speak, in the souls of
those who believe in Him. If you look for the mean-
ing common to all these manifestations of man’s
heart, what do you find? Fear, hope, thanksgiving,
prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power
intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to
act upon our destinies. This is the idea which is
found at the basis of all religions; not only of the
religion of the only God, but of the most degraded
forms of idolatrous worship. All religion rests upon
the sentiment of one or more invisible Powers,
superior to nature and to humanity.
When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it
disengages from the general sentiment of power the
6 LECTURE I.
definite idea of the cause which becomes the expla-
nation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by
virtue of its very constitution, finds a need of con-
ceiving of an absolute cause which escapes by its
eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite cha-
racter the bounds of limited existences; a principle
the necessary being of which depends on no other;
in a word a unique cause, establishing by its unity
the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with
the idea of the sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches
itself to it as the only thought which accounts to it
for the world and for itself.
The Creator is, first of all, He whose glory the
heavens declare, while the earth makes known the
work of His hands. He is the Mighty One and the
Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who
directs at once the chorus of stars in the depths of the
heavens, and the drop of vital moisture in the herb
which we tread under foot.
If, after having looked around, we turn our regard
in upon ourselves, we then discover other heavens,
spiritual heavens, in which shine, like stars of the
first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart
of man to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded :
truth, goodness, beauty. Now we feel that we are
OUR IDEA OF GOD. Fi
made for this higher world. Material enjoyments
may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of
unworthy passions, pursue what in its essence is only
evil, error, and deformity ; but, if all the rays of our
true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues from
the depth of our souls and protests against our debase-
ment. Our aspirations towards these spiritual ex-
cellences are unlimited. Our thought sets out on its
course :—have we solved one question? immediately
new questions arise, which press, no less than the
former, for an answer. Our conscience speaks :—
have we come in a certain degree to realise what is
right and good? immediately conscience demands of
us still more. Is our feeling for beauty awakened ?
Well, sirs, when an artist is satisfied with the work
of his hands, do you not know at once what to think
of him? Do you not know that that man will never
do anything great, who does not see shining in his
horizon an ideal which stamps as imperfect all that
he has been able to realise? The voice which urges
us on through life from the cradle to the grave, and
which, without allowing us a moment’s pause, 1s ever
crying— Forward! forward! this voice is not more
imperious than the noble instinct which, in the view
of beauty, of truth, of good, is also saying to us—
8 LECTURE I.
Forward! forward! and, with the American poet,
Excelsior ! higher, ever higher! Many of you know
that instinct familiar to the climbers of the Alps,’ as
they are called, who, arrived at one summit, have no
rest so long as there remains a loftier height in view.
Such is our destiny; but the last peak is veiled in
shining clouds which conceal it from our sight.
Perfection,—this is the point to which our nature
aspires; but it is the ladder of Jacob: we see the
foot which rests upon the earth; the summit hides
itself from our feeble view amidst the splendours of
the infinite.
These objects of our highest desires—beauty in
its supreme manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite
truth—are united in one and the same thought—God!
The attributes of the spiritual are never in us but as
borrowed attributes ; they dwell naturally in Him
who is their souree. God is the truth, not only
because He knows all things, but because He is the
very object of our thoughts; because, when we study
the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws
which He has imposed on things ; because, to know
truth is never anything else than to know the creation
or the Creator, the world or its eternal Cause. God
1 Aux grimpeurs des Alpes.
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 9
it is who must be Himself the satisfaction of that
craving of the conscience which urges us towards
holiness. If we had arrived at the highest degree
of virtue, what should we have done? We should
have realised the plan which He has proposed to
spiritual creatures in their freedom, at the same time
that He is directing the stars in their courses by that
other word which they accomplish without having
heard it. God is the eternal source of beauty. He
it is who has shed grace upon our valleys, and
majesty upon our mountains; and He, again, it is
(I quote St. Augustine) who acts within the souls
of artists, those great artists, who, urged unceasingly
towards the regions of the ideal, feel themselves
drawn onwards towards a divine world.
God then above all is He who 7zs,—the Absolute,
the Infinite, the Eternal,—in the ever mysterious
depths of His own essence. In His relation to the
world, He is the cause; in His relation to the lofty
aspirations of the soul, He is the ideal. He is the
ideal, because being the absolute cause, He is the
unique source, at the same time that He is the object,
of our aspirations: He is the absolute cause, because
being He who is, in His supreme unity, nothing
could have existence except by the act of His power.
10 LECTURE I.
We are able already to recognise here, in passing,
the source at which are fed the most serious aber-
rations of religious thought. Are truth, holiness,
beauty considered separately from the real and in-
finite Spirit in which is found their reason for exist-
ing? We see thus appear philosophies noble in their
commencement, but which soon descend a fatal slope.
The divine, so-called, is spoken of still; but the
divine is an abstraction, and apart from God has no
real existence. If truth, beauty, holiness are not the
attributes of an eternal mind, but the simple expres-
sion of the tendencies of our soul, man may render at
first a sort of worship to these lofty manifestations of
his own nature; but logic, inexorable logic, forces
him soon to dismiss the divine to the region of
chimeras. These rays are extinguished together with
their luminous centre; the soul loses the secret of
its destinies, and, in the measureless grief which pos-
sesses it, it proclaims at length that all is vanity.
We shall have, in the sequel, to be witnesses together
of this sorrowful spectacle.
Such is the basis of our idea of God: we must
now discover its summit. Before the thought of this
Sovereign Being, by whose Will are all things, and
who is without cause and without beginning, our
OUR IDEA OF GOD. LE
soul is overwhelmed. We are so feeble! the thought
of absolute power crushes us. Creatures of a day,
how should we understand the Eternal? Frail as we
are, and evil, we tremble at the idea of holiness.
But milder accents, as you know, have been heard
upon the earth: This Sovereign God—He loves us.
In proportion as this idea gains possession of our
understanding, in the same proportion our soul has
glimpses of the paths of peace. He loves us, and we
take courage. He hears us, and prayer rises to Him
with the hope of being heard. He governs all, and
we confide in His Providence. When your gaze is
directed towards the depths of the sky, does it never
happen to you to remain in a manner terrified, as
you contemplate those worlds which without end are
added to other worlds? As you fix your thoughts
upon the immeasurable abysses of the firmament,—as
you say to yourselves that how far soever you put
back the boundary of the skies, if the universe ended
there, then the universe, with its suns and its groups
of stars, would still be but a solitary lamp, shining as
a point in the midst of the limitless darkness,—have
you never experienced a sort of mysterious fright and
giddiness? At such a time turn your eyes upon
nearer objects. He who has made the heavens with
12 LECTURE I.
their immensity, is He who makes the corn to spring
forth for your sustenance, who clothes the fields with
the flowers which rejoice your sight, who gives you
the fresh breath of morning, and the calm of a lovely
evening: it is He, without whose permission nothing
occurs, who watches over you and over those you
love. Possess yourselves thoroughly with this thought
of love, then lift once more your eyes to the sky, and
from every star, and from the worlds which are lost
in the furthest depths of space, shall fall upon your
brow, no longer clouded, a ray of love and of peace.
Then with a feeling of sweet affiance you will adopt
as your own those words of an ancient prophet:
“Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither
shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I ascend up into
heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell,
behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right
hand shail hold me: then you will understand
those grand and sweet words of Saint Augustine, some
of the most beautiful that ever fell from the lips of
aman: “ Are you afraid of God? Run to His arms!”
Thus our idea of God is completed,—the idea of
1 Psalm cxxxix. 7—10.
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 18
Him whom, in a feeling of filial confidence, we name
the Father, and whom we call the Heavenly Father,
while we adore that absolute holiness, of which the
pure brightness of the firmament is for us the visible
and magnificent symbol. Goodness is the secret of
the universe ; goodness it is which has directed power,
and placed wisdom at its service. |
My object is not to teach this idea, but to defend
it: itis not, I say, to teach it, for we all possess it.
There is no one here who has not received his portion
of the sacred deposit. This sacred idea may be
veiled by our sorrows, perverted by our errors,
obscured by our faults; but, however thick be the
layer of ashes heaped together in the depth of our
souls—look closely: the sacred spark is not extin-
guished, and a favourable breath may still rekindle
the flame.
We have considered the essential elements of
which our idea of God is composed. And whence
comes this idea? What is its historical origin ?
I do not ask what is the historical origin of religion,
for religion does not take its rise in history ; it is met
with everywhere and always in humanity. Those
who deny this are compelled to “search in the dark-
ness for some obscure example known only to them-
14 LECTURE I.
selves, as if all natural inclinations were destroyed by
the corruption of a people, and as if as soon as there
are any monsters, the species were no longer any-
291
thing.’” The consciousness of a world superior to
the domain of experience is one of the attributes
characteristic of our nature. “If there had ever been,
or if there still anywhere existed, a people entirely
destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an
exceptional downfall which would be tantamount to
a lapse into animality.”? I am not therefore in-
quiring after the origin of the idea and sentiment of
the Deity, in a general sense, but after the origin of
the idea of the only and Almighty Creator as we
possess it. In fact, if religion is universal, distinct
knowledge of the Creator is not so,
Our own past strikes its roots into the historic soil
which, in the matter of creeds, is known by the name
of paganism or idolatry. At first sight what do we
find in the opinions of that ancient world? No trace
of the divine unity. Adoration is dispersed over a
thousand different beings. Not only are the heavenly
bodies adored and the powers of nature, but men,
animals, and inanimate objects. The feeling of the
1 J. J. Rousseau.
* Les Origines Indo- Européennes, by Adolphe Pictet, ii. 651.
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 15
holiness of God is not less wanting, it would seem,
than the idea of His unity. Religion serves as
a pretext for the unchaining of human passions.
This is the case unfortunately with religion in general,
and the true religion is no exception to the rule: but
what characterises paganism is that in its case religion,
by its own proper nature, favours the development of
immorality. Celebrated shrines become the dens of
a prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered
to the gods; the religious rites of ancient Asia, and
those of Greece which fell under their influence, are
notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false
deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often
also dishonoured by frightful sacrifices. The ancient
civilization of Mexico was elegant and even refined
in some respects; but the altars were stained, every
year, with the blood of thousands of human beings;
and the votaries of this sanguinary worship devoured,
in solemn banquets, the quivering limbs of the victims.
Let us not look for examples too far removed from
the civilization which has produced our own. In the
Greek and Roman world, the stories of the gods were
not very edifying, as every one knows: the worship
of Bacchus gave no encouragement to temperance,
and the festivals of Venus were not a school of
16 LECTURE I.
chastity. It would be easy, by bringing together
facts of this sort, to form a picture full of sombre
colouring, and to conclude that our idea of God, the
idea of the only and holy God, does not proceed from
the impure sources of idolatry. The proceeding
would be brief and convenient; but such an estima-
tion of the facts, false because incomplete, would
destroy the value of the conclusion. In pagan an-
tiquity, in fact, the abominations of which I have
just reminded you did not by themselves make up
religious tradition. Side by side with a current of
darkness and impurity, we meet with a current of
pure ideas and of strong gleams of the day.
Almost all the pagans seem to have had a glimpse
of the Divine unity over the multiplicity of their
idols, and of the rays of the Divine holiness across the
saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a Greek who
wrote these words: “ Nothing is accomplished on the
earth without Thee, O God, save the deeds which
1 -}t) washes
the wicked perpetrate in their folly.”
theatre at Athens that the chorus of a tragedy sang,
more than two thousand years ago: “May destiny
aid me to preserve unsullied the purity of my words
and of all my actions, according to those sublime
1 Cleanthes, Hymn to Jupiter.
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 17
laws which, brought forth in the celestial heights,
_ have Heaven alone for their father, to which the race
of mortal men did not give birth, and which oblivion
shall never entomb, In them is a supreme God, and
one who waxes not old.” It would be easy to
multiply quotations of this order, and to shew you in
the documents of Grecian and Roman civilization
numerous traces of the knowledge of the only and
holy God. Listen now to a voice which has come
forth actually from the recesses of the sepulchre: it
reaches us from ancient Egypt.
In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the
religious idea was in popular practice complete. But,
under the confused accents of superstition, the science
of our age is succeeding in catching from afar the
vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of
a large number of mummies have been discovered
rolls of papyrus containing a sacred text which is
called the Book of the Dead. Here is the translation
of some fragments which appear to date from a very
remote epoch. It is God who speaks: “TI am the
Most Holy, the Creator of all that replenishes the
earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of mortals.
I am the Prince of the infinite ages. Iam the great
1 Sophocles. Œdipus R.
18 LECTURE I.
and mighty God, the Most High, shining in the
midst of the careering stars and of the armies which
praise me above thy head....It is I who chastise
and who judge the evil-doers, and the persecutors of
godly men. I discover and confound the liars... .
I am the all-seeing Judge and Avenger.... the
guardian of my laws in the land of righteousness.”
These words are found mingled, in the text from
which I extract them, with allusions to inferior
deities; and it must be acknowledged that the trans-
lation of the ancient documents of Egypt is still
uncertain enough. Still this uncertainty does not
appear to extend to the general sense and bearing of
the recent discoveries of our savants. Myself a simple
learner from the masters of the science, I can only
point out to you the result of their studies. Now,
this is what the masters tell us as to the actual state
of mythological studies. Traces are found almost
everywhere, in the midst of idolatrous superstitions,
of a religion comparatively pure, and often stamped
with a lofty morality. Paganism is not a simple fact:
it offers to view in the same bed two currents, the
one pure and the other impure. What is the relation
| Handbuch der gesammten ägyptischen Alterthumskunde, von
Dr. Max Uhlemann. Leipzig, 1857.
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 19
between these two currents? A passage in a writer
of the Latin Church throws a vivid light upon their
actual relation in practical life. It is thus that
Lactantius expresses himself: When man (the pagan)
finds himself in adversity, then it is that he has
recourse to God (to the only God). Ifthe horrors of .
war threaten him, if there appear a contagious disease,
a drought, a tempest, then he has recourse to God...
If he is overtaken by a storm at sea, and is in danger
of perishing, immediately he calls upon God; if he
finds himself in any urgent peril, he has recourse to
God.... Thus men bethink themselves of God when
they are in trouble; but as soon as the danger is
past, and they are no longer in any fear, we see them
return with joy to the temples of the false gods, make
to them libations, and offer sacrifices to them.’ This
is a striking picture of the workings of man’s heart in
all ages; for, as our author observes, “God is never
so much forgotten of men as when they are quietly
enjoying the favours and blessings which He sends
* As regards our special object, this page
them.”
reveals in a very instructive manner the religious
condition of heathen antiquity. The thought of the
sovereign God was stifled without being extinguished ;
1 Institutions divines, 11. 1. 2 Id.
20 LECTURE I.
itawoke beneath the pressure of anguish ; but ordinary
life, the life of every day, belonged to the easy wor-
ship of idols.
It may now be asked what is the historical relation
between the two currents of paganism of which we
have just established the actual relation in practical
life. Did humanity begin with a coarse fetichism
and thence rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions ?
Do the traces of a comparatively pure monotheism
first shew themselves in the most recent periods of
idolatry? Contemporary science inclines more and
more to answer in the negative. It is in the most
ancient historical ground (allow me these geological
terms) that the laborious investigators of the past
meet with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut
to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and
come back a few years afterwards: in place of the
tree cut down you will find coppice-wood; the sap
which nourished a single trunk has been divided
amongst a multitude of shoots, This comparison
expresses well enough the opinion which tends to
prevail amongst our savants on the subject of the
historical development of religions. The idea of the
only God is at the root,—it is primitive; polytheism
is derivative. A forgotten, and as it were slumbering,
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 21
monotheism exists beneath the worship of idols; it is
the concealed trunk which supports them, but the
idols have absorbed all the sap. The ancient God
(allow me once more a comparison) is like a sovereign
confined in the interior of his palace: he is but
seldom thought of, and only on great occasions ;
his ministers alone act, entertain requests, and receive
the real homage.
The proposition of the historical priority of mono-
theism is very important, and is not universally
admitted. It will therefore be necessary to shew
you, by a few quotations at least, that I am not
speaking rashly. One of the most accredited mytho-
logists of our time, Professor Grimm, of Berlin, writes
as follows: “The monotheistic form appears to be
the more ancient, and that out of which antiquity in
its infancy formed polytheism.... All mythologies
lead us to this conclusion.’”
Among the French
savants devoted to the study of ancient Egypt, the |
Vicomte de Rongé stands in the foremost rank.
This is what he tells us: “In Egypt the supreme
God was called the one God, living indeed, He who
made all that exists, who created other beings. He
is the Generator existing alone who made the heaven
1 Deutsche Mythol. Third edition, page Lx1v.
27 LECTURE I.
and created the earth.” The writer informs us that
these ideas are often found reproduced “in writings
the date of which is anterior to Moses, and many of
which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns ;”
then he comes to this conclusion: “ Egypt, in posses-
sion of an admirable fund of doctrines respecting the
essence of God, and the immortality of the soul, did
not for all that defile herself the less by the most
degrading superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently
summed up, the religious history of all antiquity.’”
As regards the civilization which flourished in India,
M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the
subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what con-
cerns the religious idea, at the following conclusion:
“To sum up: primitive monotheism of a character
more or less vague, passing gradually into a poly-
theism still simple, such appears to have been the
7? One of our fellow-
religion of the ancient Aryas.
countrymen, who cultivates with equal modesty and
perseverance the study of religious antiquities, has
procured the greater part of the recent works pub-
lished on these subjects in France, Germany, and
England. He has read them, pen in hand, and, at
1 Annales de philosophie chrétienne, t. 59, p. 228. r.
2 Les Origines Indo- Européennes, ii, 720.
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 29
my urgent request, he has kindly allowed me to look
over his notes which have been long accumulating.
I find the following sentence in the manuscripts
which he has shewn me: “The general impression
of all the most distinguished mythologists of the
present day is, that monotheism is at the foundation
of all pagan mythology.”
The savants, I repeat, do not unanimously accept
these conclusions: savants, like other men, are rarely
unanimous. It is enough for my purpose to have
shewn that it is not merely the grand tradition
guaranteed by the Christian faith, but also the most
distinctly marked current of contemporary science,
which tells us that God shone upon the cradle of our
species. The august Form was veiled, and idolatry
with its train of shameful rites shews itself in history
as the result of a fall which calls for a restoration,
rather than as the point of departure of a continued
progress.
The august Form was veiled. Who has lifted the
veil? Not the priests of the idols. We meet in the
history of paganism with movements of reformation,
or at the very least of religious transformation :
Buddhism is a memorable example of this; but it is
not a return towards the pure traditions of India or
24 LECTURE I. .
of Egypt which has caused us to know the God
whom we adore. Has the veil been lifted by reflec-
tion, that is to say by the labours of philosophers?
Philosophy has rendered splendid services to the
world. It has combated the abominations of idolatry ;
it has recognised in nature the proofs of an intelligent
design ; it has discerned in the reason the deeply felt
need of unity; it has indicated in the conscience the
sense of good, and shewn its characteristics; it has
contemplated the radiant image of the supreme beauty
—still it is not philosophy which has restored for
humanity the idea of God. Its lights mingled with
darkness remained widely scattered, and without any
focus powerful enough to give them strength for
enlightening the world. To seek God, and con-
sequently to know Him already in a certain measure;
but to remain always before the altar of a God
glimpsed only by an élite of sages, and continuing for
the multitudes the unknown God: such was the
wisdom of the ancients. It prepared the soil: but it
did not deposit in it the germ from which the idea of
the Creator was to spring forth living and strong, to
overshadow with its branches all the nations of the
earth. And when this idea appeared in all its splen-
dour, and began the conquest of the universe, the
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 25
ancient philosophy, which had separated itself from
heathen forms of worship, and had covered them with
its contempt, contracted an alliance with its old
adversaries. It accepted the wildest interpretations
of the common superstitions, in order to be able to
league itself with the crowd in one and the same
conflict with the new power which had just appeared
in the world. And this sums up in brief compass
the whole history of philosophy in the first period of
our era.
The monotheism of the moderns does not proceed
historically from paganism; it was prepared by the
ancient philosophy, without being produced by it.
Whence comes it then? On this head there exists no
serious difference of opinion. Our knowledge of God
is the result of a traditional idea handed down from
generation to generation in a well-defined current of
history. Much obscurity still rests upon man’s
earliest religious history, but the truth which I am
pointing out to you is solidly and clearly established.
Pass, in thought, over the terrestrial globe. All the
superstitions of which history preserves the remem-
brance are practised at this day, either in Asia or in
Africa, or in the isles of the Ocean. The most
ridiculous and ferocious rites are practised still in the
26 LECTURE I,
light of the same sun which gilds, as he sets, the
spires and domes of our churches. At this very day,,
there are nations upon the earth which prostrate
themselves before animals, or which adore sacred
trees. At this very day, perhaps at this hour in
which I am addressing you, human victims are bound
by the priests of idols; before you have left this
room, their blood will have defiled the altars of false
deities. At this very day, numerous nations, which
have neither wanted time for self-development, nor
any of the resources of civilization, nor clever poets,
nor profound philosophers, belong to the religion of
the Brahmins, or are instructed in the legends which
serve as a mask to the pernicious doctrines of Buddha.
Where do we meet with the clear idea of the Creator ?
In a unique tradition which proceeds from the Jews,
which Christians have diffused, and which Mahomet
corrupted. God is known, with that solid and general
knowledge which founds a settled doctrine and a
form of worship, under the influence of this tradition
and nowhere else. We assert this as a simple fact
of contemporary history; and there is scarcely any
fact in history better established.
The light comes to us from the Gospel. This
light did not appear as a sudden and absolutely new
OUR IDEA OF GOD. 27
illumination. It had cast pale gleams on the soul of
the heathen in their search after the unknown God ;
it had shone apart upon that strange and glorious
people which bears the name of Israel.’ Israel had
preserved the primitive light encompassed by tem-
porary safe-guards. It was the flame of a lamp, too |
feeble to live in the open air, and which remained
shut up in a vase, until the moment when it should
have become strong enough to shine forth from its
shattered envelope upon the world. The worship of
Jehovah is a local worship; but this worship, local-
ised for a time, is addressed to the only and sovereign
God. To every nation which says to Israel as Atha-
liah to Joash :
I have my God to serve—serve thou thine own,!
Israel replies with Joash :
Nay, Madam, but my God is God alone;
Him must thou fear: thy God is nought—a dream !?
Israel does not affirm merely that the God of
Israel is the only true God, but affirms moreover that
the time will come when all the earth will acknow-
ledge him for the only and universal Lord.
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LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 67
of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I
have made no allusion to those affections in which
the heart manifests its highest qualities. Shall we
forget the joys of pure love? the domestic hearth ?
friendship? country? Do not fear that, having
given myself up to a fit of misanthropy, I am come
hither to blaspheme the true happinesses of life. But
do the affections of earth offer us sufficient guarantees ?
We have need of the infinite to answer to the im-
mensity of our desires; in the presence of those we
love, have we no need of the Eternal that we may
Jean our hearts on Him? Will not all human love
become a source of torment, if we have no faith in
the love of Him who will stamp holy affections with
the seal of His own eternity ?
A single question will suffice to enlighten us on
this head. Do you know the feeling of anxiety?
We all know it, though in different degrees. Epi-
demical disease may appear. ‘The cholera has started
on its course; it has left the interior of Asia, and is
approaching. The report is current that neighbour-
ing cities have begun to feel its ravages. Those we
love—in a month, in a week, where will they be?
War is declared. We hear of preparations for death ;
the sovereigns of Europe apply themselves to calcula-
68 LECTURE II.
tions which seem to portend torrents of blood. If
war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have
to take up arms, that daughter who will one day
perhaps find herself at the mercy of an unbridled
soldiery But let us not look for examples so
far away. Have you no dear one in a distant land
of whom you are expecting tidings? And those who
are near you! ‘To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps,
while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is
discovering its first symptoms Have you re-
ceived the hard lessons of death? Ifyou see children
playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it
happen to none of you to think of another child,
once the joy of your fireside, now lying beneath the
sod? Does it never happen to you, by a sinister
presentiment, to see features you love to gaze on
convulsed with agony or pale in death? And yet
you must either see the death of your beloved ones,
or they must lay you in the earth; for every life
ends with the tomb, and we do but walk over graves.
When the soul has been thus wounded by anxiety,
for this poisoned wound there is one remedy, but only
one: “God reigns!” Nothing happens without the
permission of His goodness. And of all those who
are dear to us, we can say: “ Father, to Thy hands
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PEAR ESRI
SOCIETY.
WE have just studied what life without God would
be for the individual. Let us now direct our at-
tention 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 Cesar. 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." The religious con-
! Christian States have given the force of law to institutions,
such, for instance, as monogamy, which date their origin from the
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. GE
victions of individuals do not belong to the State;
religious sentiments are not amenable to human
tribuhals; and it would be hard to say whether it
is the spiritual or the temporal order of things which
Gospel records. Here we have the normal development of civiliza-
tion: 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 in-
terests 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 establish-
ment of national religions, decreed by the temporal power and vary-
ing 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 juris-
diction of a definite political body. Ifthe 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.
te LECTURE II.
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 appli-
cation 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
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. to
on the history of ancient civilization,’ with the ex-
press intention of shewing that the conception which a
people has of God is the true root of its social organ-
ization. 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 dis-
tinction 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.” 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 j
he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the con-
dition necessary to the existence of civilized societies.
1 Etudes orientales, 1861.
? 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.
8 Franck, Philosophie du droit ecclésiastique, pages 117 and 118.
14 LECTURE II.
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 deteriora-
tion, 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
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 75
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 institu-
tions, as in manners, the triumph of force characterises
barbarous times. The right of the strongest is the
twofold negation of justice and of love; and what
characterises 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 com-
munities happy. These are the two essential con-
ditions 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
76 LECTURE II.
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 developes 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 honour 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 labours
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 ! How has slavery disappeared
little by little! How has man been rediscovered
1 Schmidt, Æssai historique sur la Société civile dans le monde
romain, Bk. 1. ch. 3.
a a +
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 17
beneath that living thing of which was made, one
while an instrument of labour, 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 founda-
tions of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable
epoch you will meet with a written document, the
first in which is shewn 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:
“‘T 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: con-
template 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 rela-
tions of states, belligerent rights, civil laws, political
institutions, all these things of which the Gospel has
78 LECTURE II.
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 realise the communication of
advantages among all. Justice overthrows the arti-
ficial 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 18 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
ee ee ee à 0 —
—
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 79
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 facade of one of 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 pos-
sesses 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
80 LECTURE II.
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 labour at its restoration. Hence-
forward we can understand that love of suffering and
of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the hos-
pital, 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 rigours, 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 realise, up to the
limits of what is possible, all the hopes of philan-
throphy. 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. Ob-
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 81
serve, 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 dis-
pense 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 connexion 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
G
82 LECTURE II.
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 licence 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 neighbour. 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 mani-
festation. 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?
:
|
i
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 83
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 whatso-
ever. For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at
the decline of the ancient world. Those pantheons
in which all religions were received, welcomed, pro-
tected, 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 bar-
barian, 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
84 LECTURE II.
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 acknow-
ledged; He is the Master of souls: faith founds
liberty.
The Witness to universal truth appears before
Rome as represented by a deputy of Cesar. 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 ieaving
to Cesar the things which were Cesar’s, to place
a Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legisla-
tion above the legislation of the empire. Therefore
the Roman city determined to give a death-blow to
. P a
DR A CS an HS di. “RS D Sn Dé nee épund
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 85
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 prin-
ciples 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 mis-
86 LECTURE II.
taken: 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 !!
Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his
fellow men to acts which wounded his conscience,
aman, 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 was not less a seed
of liberty. Liberty was not born in history; but if
1 La liberté que j’ aime est née avec notre 4me
Le jour où le plus juste a bravé le plus fort.
2 Tertullian.
ee UN
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 87
you wish to fix a date to its grandest outburst, you
have it here; there is no other which can be com-
pared with it.
Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying
so, that [ 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 Groene! first
obtained extensive success when Roman society was
in the lowest state of corruption, and that its re-
presentatives were but too much affected by the evils
which it was their mission to combat.
It must not be forgotten that there came after-
wards 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
88 LECTURE II.
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 ap-
preciate 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.
a
Ee
D a ee
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 89
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 propor-
tion 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 re-
ligious 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? here 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 Switzer-
90 LECTURE II.
land 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 Pensylvania
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 con-
clusions by remarking that the condition of com-
munities is a complex phenomenon depending upon
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 9]
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, free-
dom 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 con-
secrate 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 favour of tolera-
92 LECTURE II.
tion; 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 1S
not less certain. Some years ago, at nearly the same
epoch, the Pere 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.’ 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
1 Le Père Lacordaire, by the Comte de Montalembert, p. 26.
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 93
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.’”!
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 endeavour to penetrate below facts, in
* De Pautre rive, by Iscander (in Russian). Iscander is the
pseudonym of M. Herzen.
94. LECTURE II.
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 in-
tolerance. 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 com-
manded 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 analyse this feeling.
LIFE WITHOUT Gop. 95
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 neighbour. 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 fur-
nishes 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 martyr-
dom, 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 for-
96 LECTURE II.
getful 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 thé
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 im-
prisonment, 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
yemain, 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 con-
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 97
clusion, similar to that which placed in belief the
source of intolerant passions. Let us once more re-
flect 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 re-
spect 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
patronising compassion. But these weak minds 2TOW
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 ?
H
98 LECTURE II.
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 con-
science of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what
repose we should have in the State! If we pro-
claimed 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
Lie
Faith carries with it the remedy for fanaticism,
but where shall be found the remedy for the fanat-
icism 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 weak-
ness 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
————— mé. ÉS à.
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 99
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 indif-
ference paralyses the sources of generous sentiments,
and ends in the same results as the spirit of coward-
ice. 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 paralysed by
doubt allow to be perpetrated have besides a sadder
character than those which are perpetrated by pas-
sions, 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
100 LECTURE II.
as sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they
find all spectacles equally instructive and curious.’
I have felt it necessary to insist on these con-
siderations. Direct attacks upon religious truth are
perhaps less dangerous than the efforts by which
modern infidelity endeavours to estrange us from
God, by persuading us that doubt is the guarantee
of liberty, and that belief rivets the chains of bond-
age. Many consciences are disturbed by these affirm-
ations. 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 spec-
tacles that earth can shew, is that of a community
animated with a true and profound faith, in which
1 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.
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 101
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 con-
viction !
To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up at 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 civiliza-
tion 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 ex-
istence 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.’" Let us
raise still higher this lofty thought, and say: “ How
sacred is human society, when, beneath the eye of
1 De Legibus, ii. 7.
102 LECTURE II.
the common Father, the inequalities of life are ac-
cepted 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 con-
solation, 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, | 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
= ”
is ©. nm, ©
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 103
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 spread-
104 LECTURE II.
ing like a deleterious miasma through all classes of
society. Thoughtless men! (I am unwilling to sup-
pose 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 con-
sequences 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 Pro-
vidence 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
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 105
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 in-
famous 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.”
À religion was necessary for the people; but Voltaire
and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the
F rench 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 ?!
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
1 Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire
Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os décharnés ?
106 LECTURE II.
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 judge-
ment 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 con-
tempt. If they are forcibly kept back from realising
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 disorganised societies which are terrified
at their own dissolution, until a strong man comes,
and, taking advantage of this very terror, takes and
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 107
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 peo-
ple, 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 senti-
ment!’ men exclaim. “You would build up a doc-
trine 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 favour 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 ;
108 LECTURE II,
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 moments 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. Ifit 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
1
\
-
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 109
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 con-
sequences,”
So wrote the patriarch of modern scep-
tics, 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 adver-
saries 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,” re-
torted J. J. Rousseau: “TI 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.”
‘ Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having
access to the original, I re-translate the French translation.—Tr. ]
110 LECTURE II.
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 dis-
avows, 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 calcula-
tions. 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 pre-
liminary 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:
NE a et
‘
:
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 111
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 phi-
losophers : “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!" It is impossible to accept this arbitrary di-
vision of the divine attributes, There is but one and
the same God, the Substance of truth, the inexhaust-
ible 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 endeavour 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
1 Vacherot, La metaphysique et la science, Preface, p. xxix.
12 LECTURE II.
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, con-
stituent elements of our spiritual existence. If there
exist an irreconcilable antagonism between science
and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and uni-
versal 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 feel-
ings; 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 con-
structed. 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
Ps)
LIFE WITHOUT GOD. 113
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 dis-
appears. God is the light of the spiritual world.
We prove His existence by shewing that without
Him all returns to darkness. This demonstration is
as good as another.
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 J upiter 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 vigour
always new,’ they accused Socrates of being an
atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who pro-
claimed the existence of God more certain than any
theorem of geometry, has been denounced as an
1 Xenophon, Memorab. of Socrates, Bk. iv. 10.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 115
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 Christ-
ians 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 in-
tention, but which trouble the sincerity of history.
These are the brands of servitude, which must dis-
appear 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 affirm-
ing that certain writers, some of whom are just now
the favourites of fame, are shaking the foundations of
all religion, one exposes no one to severities which
have disappeared from our manners, one only exposes
116 LECTURE III.
oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and
fanaticism. But candour 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
ee:
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 uncon-
sciously 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 labours of the intellect
often escape, by a noble inconsistency, the natural
results of their theories. Therefore, in the inquiry
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM, LV
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 affirma-
tion 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 be-
wilderment; 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
118 LECTURE III.
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 doc-
trine, 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.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 119
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 dis-
cover 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.’* From
the moment that the reason endeavours to see dis-
tinctly, 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,
1 La Religion naturelle. Preface.
120 LECTURE III.
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 in-
telligent and learned young men. Their hope was
to translate Christianity into a purely rational doc-
trine, 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” T'wenty years have passed, and
things bear quite another aspect. To language ex-
pressive 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
1 Emile Saisset, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, of March, 1845.
hl
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 121
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 ;* but, among men specially devoted to
the study of matter, many succumb to the temptation
of refusing to recognise anything as real which does
not come under the experience of the senses. This
however is not one of the points which offer them-
selves 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 recognising the importance of
1 See the Lettres sur les vérités, les plus importantes de la révéla-
tion, by Albert de Haller, translated into French by one of his
grandsons. Lausanne, Bridel, 1846.
re? LECTURE III.
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 under-
stand 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 accom-
plishes 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 recognises one of the manifestations of the
supreme Will, and immortal hope enables him to
support the evils which he does not succeed in de-
stroying. But this is not enough for impatient
9
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 128
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 organisation of society
alone hinders the realisation of good and of happiness.
The resignation of believers appears to them a stupid
lethargy, and in their patient expectation of a judg-
ment to come they see only an obstacle to the imme-
diate 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 1s
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 ardour 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 labours of the renovators of society. The one
class desire to realise, in an ever larger measure, just-
ice 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 realisation of their
124 LECTURE III.
theories. These two classes of men seem at times to
be fighting all together in the mélée 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 flee-
ing from the sun.
In order to form a just estimate of the labours 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 re-
mark 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 in-
tellectual power and elevated sentiment, has lately
published, unhappily, twelve hundred pages destined —
to maintain the thesis that God does not exist. -
1 La Métaphysique et la Science, 2tom. Oct. 1858.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 125
Man conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding
that perfection realised either in the world or in
himself, he rises to the conception of a real and
perfect being: such is the usual process of meta-
physical 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 per-
fection of which we have the idea is realised 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
realised. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situa-
tion 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
126 LECTURE III.
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 popu-
lar 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 endeavouring “to set humanity free from illu-
sions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions, from
* Let us say the same
deceitful idols and powers.”
thing in simpler terms: M. Littré professes the doc-
1 Notice sur M. Littré, page 57.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 127
trines 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.”
‘In spite of some appearances to the contrary,”
says M. Littré, “the positive philosophy does not
accept atheism.”” Why? Because atheism pretends
to give an explanation of the universe, and that after
_ a fashion is still theology. Minds “veritably eman-
cipated”’ profess to know nothing whatever on ques-
tions which go beyond actual experience. They do
not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts.
Ihe attempt is a bold one, but it fails; men do not
succeed in emancipating themselves from the laws of
reason. ‘lhe 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
Paroles de philosophie positive, page 33. ? Idem, page 30.
128 LECTURE III.
he makes this proscription, he speaks of the “eternal
motive powers of a boundless universe." Boundless!
eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the
instincts of the reason coming to light! behold all
the divine attributes appearing! Adoration is with-
drawn 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 recognise the object of
his worship and give it its true name.”
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
1 Paroles de philosophie positive, page 34.
2 Aperçus généraux sur la doctrine positiviste, par M. de Lombrail,
ancien élève de l’école polytechnique. The author says in his
preface: ‘‘ Auguste Comte examined this work with the conscientious
attention which he was accustomed to give to the simplest task.
He desired by his useful counsels to render it worthy of publication.”
+
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 129
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 archeology, with
which we here have nothing to do. They are re-
garded as forming a philosophical and religious
school, and it is in that connexion 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 electicism of
M. Cousin. We find in their writings the pre-
tension to limit science to the experimental study of
nature and to humanity. We afterwards find there
the pretension to understand and to accept all doc-
trines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics
bestow particular attention on the phenomena of re-
ligion, 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
K
130 LECTURE III.
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.’ 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 develope 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
1. Revue des Deux Mondes, of 15th Jan. 1860, page 367.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 131
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.
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 maintain-
ing their balance between the affirmation and nega-
tion 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.
SS ee ee ee a ae
1 Je soupçonne entre nous que vous croyez en Dieu.
N’allez pas dans vos vers en consigner l’aveu ;
Craignez le ridicule, et respectez vos maîtres.
Croire en Dieu fut un tort permis à nos ancétres.
Mais dans notre âge! Allons, il faut vous corriger
Hi suivre votre siècle, au lieu de le juger.
132 LECTURE III.
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.”?
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 super-
stition; 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
1 Entre ces deux chemins j’ hésite et je m’ arréte.
Je voudrais à l’ écart suivre un plus doux sentier.
Il nen existe pas, dit une voix secrète :
En présence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.
Je le pense, en effet: les âmes tourmentées
Vers l’un et l’autre excès se portent tour à tour;
Mais les indifférents ne sont que des athées;
Ils ne dormiraient plus, s ils doutaient un seul jour.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 133
employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty,
of religion, of immortality; their pages seem some:
times 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 produc-
tions of French philosophy, and you will have no
difficulty in recognising 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." And here is a fact still more sig-
1 See, for example, La Religion naturelle, by Jules Simon; Essai
134 LECTURE III.
nificant, 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.”
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
de philosophie religieuse, by Emile Saisset; De la connaissance de Dieu,
by A. Gratry; La raison et la christianisme, douze lectures sur P ex-
istence de Dieu, by Charles Secrétan; Essai sur la Providence, by
Ernest Bersot; De la Providence, by M. Damiron; JL’ Idee de Dieu,
by M. Caro; Théodicée, Etudes sur Dieu, la Création et la Providence,
par Amédée de Magerie.
1 See, for example, the Etudes orientales of M. Franck, the
Bouddha of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire ; L’ Histoire de la philosophie
au XVIITe siécle, of M. Damiron,
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 135
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:
“YT have only had one disciple who has understood
me—and he has misunderstood me.”
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 137
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 cer-
tainly 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; but it sums them all up in its formule,
it gives them, by its scientific way of representing
them, a pernicious authority, it multiplies them by
an execrable propaganda.’”
It was through Feuerbach principally that the
evolution was to be brought about which has led the
Hegelian system, severely idealistic in its commence-
ment, to favour 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
1 Toutes ces révoltes de la matière en furie.
2 Revue des Deux Mondes, April, 1850.
138 LECTURE III.
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. Feuer-
bach has put atheism into a definite shape, and dis-
engaged 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.””
Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacri-
fices ; the emancipation is incomplete. What is this
humanity to which man owes himself? An abstrac-
tion, an idol still, an idol to be overthrown if he
would obtain perfect independence. Listen to the
1 Qu est-ce la religion ? page 586 of the translation of Ewerbeck.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 139
German Stirmer, deducing from the doctrine its ex-
treme consequences: “Perish the people,” he ex-
claims, “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!" All the mists of abstraction
have now disappeared: here we are on ground which
is hideously clear. Humanity is no longer in ques-
tion, 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
1 Revue des Deux Mondes of 15th April, 1850, p. 288.
140 LECTURE III.
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.’ 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.
1 General Report addressed to the Conseil d’ Etat of Neuchâtel on
the secret German propaganda, and on the clubs of Young Germany
in Switzerland, by Lardy, Doctor of law. Neuchatel, 1845.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 141
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 /* A little later, a journal of German Switz-
erland asserted, that in order to set free man’s natural
instincts and propensities, it is indispensable to de-
stroy the idea of God.”
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 shewed 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.’
The German revolution was put down by the
bayonet, but the doctrines of which it had revealed
1 Pourvu qu’ on le délivre d’une vertu bourgeoise et d’une morale
@ honnêtes négociants. Blatter der Gegenwart für sociales Leben.
2 See the Chroniqueur Suisse of 19 Jan. 1865.
3 April, 1850, p. 292.
142 LECTURE III.
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 con-
viction 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 un-
happily 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 Biichner has published, under the title of
Force and Matter, a small volume which has rapidly
reached a seventh edition, and has lately been trans-
lated into French.” Materialism is there set forth
with perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately,
with perfect audacity. ‘The author pretends to con-
fine himself strictly within the domain of experience,
and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he pro-
| Force et Matière, by Louis Büchner, Doctor in medicine: trans-
lated into French from the seventh edition of the German work, by
Gamper, Leipzig, 1863.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 143
scribes 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 ascer-
taining 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 ex-
perience 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 dema-
gogues 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
144 LECTURE III.
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 characterises at the present day the greater
part of its atheistical manifestations. German athe-
ism, having as its starting-point an abstract idealism
of which the adoration of man was the result, has
descended to the levels of materialism." 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.
1 My object is to point out the atheistical systems which are being
produced in various parts of Europe, and not to estimate, in a general
way, the tendency of contemporary philosophies. The reader, who
would understand the position occupied by materialism in relation to
German thought in general, may consult with advantage, Le Ma-
terialisme contemporain, by Paul Janet, Paris, 1864; and the review
of this work by M. Reichlin-Meldegg (Zeitschrift für Philosophie,
Sechsundvierzigster Band). A Swiss writer, M. Bühner, has lately
published a learned work on the subject entitled: Le Matérialisme
au point de vue des sciences naturelles et des progrès de U esprit humain,
by Nath. Bühner, member of the Société helvétique des sciences natu-
relles, translated from the German, by O. Bourrit, 1 vol. 8vo. (Genève
(imprimerie Fick), 1861.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 145
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 to-
gether. 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.!
Emancipation! Such is the watchword of material-
ism. 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 afilicting them to those imaginary
regions from whence fear first drew them forth. In-
spire with courage the intelligent being; give him
y .... Ces enfants de I’ effroi,
Ces beaux riens qu’ on adore, et sans savoir pourquoi,
Ces dieux que l’homme a faits et qui n’ ont pas fait l’homme.
( CyRANO DE BERGERAC.
L
146 LECTURE III.
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 philo-
* sophical treatise intended to prove that there is no-
thing 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 in-
evitable 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 ency-
clopedists, sons of an age which yielded, at once to
noble influences and to guilty seductions, united the
worship of progress to a degrading philosophy. Con-
sider 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
re ar
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 147
into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little dust
in an earthern 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 endeavour 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 demon-
strate it by reasoning? I do not know; but in con-
testing 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. [fan 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
148 LECTURE III.
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 neces-
sary for them to kill him in order to endeavour 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 in-
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 149
conceivable 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
Biichner and his fellows.
Lhe great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as
it is often said to be, the combat of idealism against
materialism. Idealism begins well, and we must not
refuse to acknowledge the services which it has
rendered to the cause of truth. But philosophy
must follow the road traced out in an ancient adage:
Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad su-
pertora. If the mind does not go to the end of
this royal road; if idealism, having surmounted the
1 From outer to inner things, and from inner to higher.
150 LECTURE III.
fascinations of the senses, remains in ideas, without
ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of
matter and the worship of the idea call mutually
one to another, and revolve in a fatal circle. The
struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds
one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied
honour, the adversaries breakfast together, and gather
strength to combat, in case of need, a common enemy.
The great combat which forms the main subject of
the history of ideas is the combat between belief in
God and an atheistical philosophy. Whether atheism
admits for its first principle an atom without a
Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is
a fact very important for the history of philosophy,
but the importance of which is small enough in
regard to the interests of humanity.
We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into
Germany, let us now cross the British Channel, and
observe what is going on in England.
England, at the close of the seventeenth and the
beginning of the eighteenth century, was the prin-
cipal centre of irreligion. France gave the patent
of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in
part from this foreign source. An active propaganda
for the diffusion of impious and immoral writings
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 151
had been established in Great Britain. A strong
reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we
see formed various societies having for their object
the diffusion of good books and respectable journals.”
These efforts were crowned with success. England,
by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices
for the diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its
respect for the Lord’s-day,’ assumed” the character-
istic marks of a Christian nation. Grand measures
adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity,
placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously
philanthropic civilization; but as Père Gratry has
remarked, ‘more than in any other people, there
are in the English people the old man and the new.”
The strange contrasts which are presented by the
political action of this double-people are found also
in the productions of its thought, in which, while
the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit
of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy.
1 See the Report of Mr. H. Roberts, in the Comptes rendus du
Congrès international de bienfaisance de Londres, vol. ii. page 95, and
the 23rd Bulletin de la Société genevoise @ utilité publique, 1863.
2 Par son respect pour le jour du Dimanche.
3 revétit.
4 La Paix, méditations historiques et religieuses, par A. Gratry,
prêtre de I’ Oratoire.—Septiéme méditation : P Angleterre.
152 LECTURE III.
À book is instanced, of materialistie tendency,’ pub-
lished in 1828, of which a popular edition was printed
with a view to extend the opinions which it ad-
vocated. There were sold of this edition, in a short
time, more than eighty thousand copies. A thought-
ful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a statistical state-
ment, according to which English publications, openly
atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six
hundred and forty thousand copies.”
If we pass from the current literature to scientific
publications, we shall meet with facts of the same
order. The Hegelianism and the scepticism of the
critical school are creeping into the works of some.
theologians. The theories of positivism, reduced to
shape in France, have passed the channel, and have
obtained in England more attention perhaps than in
the country of their origin. They have been adopted
by a distinguished author, Mr. Stuart Mill; and
a female writer, Miss Martineau, has set them forth,
in her mother-tongue, for the use of her fellow-
countrymen.’ Positivism is even in vogue, and has
1 The Constitution of Man, by G. Combe. The popular edition
was printed at the expense of Mr. Henderson.
? Infidelity : its aspects, causes, and agencies, by Thomas Pearson.
People’s edition, 1854, page 263.
3 Auguste Comte et la Philosophie positive, par E. Littré, page 276.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 153
become “fashionable” amongst certain literary and
intellectual circles in Great Britain.’
In less elevated regions of the intellectual world
of England, an organised sect commends itself to our
attention. This sect has given to its system of
doctrine the name of Secularism. It has a social
object—the destruction of the Established Church
and the existing political order. It has a philosophy,
the purport and bearing of which we will inquire of
Mr. Holyoake. The following is the answer of the
chief of the secularists:—‘ All that concerns the
origin and end of things, God and the immortal soul,
is absolutely impenetrable for the human mind. The
existence of God, in particular, must be referred to
the number of abstract questions, with the ticket not
determined. It is probable, however, that the nature
which we know, must be the God whom we inquire
after. What is called atheism is found in suspension
2
in our theory.”* The practical consequence of these
1 “Positivism, within the last quarter of a century, has become
an active, and even fashionable mode of thought, and nowhere more
so than amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in England.”
The Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of modern Criticism, Leetures
on M. Renan’s ‘ Vie de Jésus/ —by John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of
the College of St. Mary, in the University of St. Andrew. Macmillan
and Co., 1864.
2 See Pearson: Infidelity, particularly page 316, and Christianity
and Secularism, the public discussion—, particularly page 8.
154 LECTURE III.
views is, that all day-dreams relating to another
world must be put aside, and we must manage so as
to live to the best advantage possible in the present
life." Hence the name of the system. Secularism
teaches its disciples to have nothing to do with
religion in any shape, that they may confine them-
selves strictly to the present life. It is an attempt
of which the express object is to realise life without
God.
These doctrines formed the subject of public dis-
cussions, in London in 1853, and at Glasgow in
1854. The meeting at Glasgow numbered, it is said,
more than three thousand persons? The sect em-
ploys as its means of action open-air speeches, the
publication of books and journals,* and assemblies for
giving information and holding debates in lecture-
rooms. ‘There are five of these lecture-rooms in
London. I have seen the programme, for 1864, of
the meetings held at No. 12, Cleveland Street, under
the direction of Messrs. Holyoake and J. Clark.
There are, every Sunday,—a discourse at eleven
o'clock, a discussion at three o’clock, a lecture at
1 —dans le siècle.
2 Vapereau’s Dictionnaire des contemporains—Art. Houyoake.
3 I have had in view here the first numbers of The Secular World,
and of The National Reformer, Secular Advocate, for 1864.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 155
seven o'clock. The programme invites all free-
thinkers to attend these meetings. Some of the
assemblies are public; for others a small entrance fee
is demanded. London is the principal centre of the
association; but it has branches all over the country,
and it numbers in Great Britain twenty-one lecture-
rooms, particularly at Liverpool, Manchester, Bir-
mingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.’ Secularism
naturally seeks to magnify, as much as may be, its
own importance; and it is not to the declarations of
its apostles that we must refer in order to estimate
the extent and influence of its action. At the same
time the existence of a society, the avowed object of
which is the diffusion of practical atheism, cannot be
regarded with indifference. At the present moment
the affairs of the sect would not appear to be flourish-
ing. A year ago a secularist orator had delivered
a vehement speech in favour of virtue. Just as he
had resumed his seat, a policeman entered the room
and took him into custody. A few days afterwards
the Times informed its readers that the. orator of
virtue had just been condemned for theft to twelve
months’ hard labour.? In the Secular World of the
1st January, 1864, Mr. Holyoake complains that
1 The National Reformer of 2nd Jan. 1864. ? MS. information.
156 LECTURE III.
a great many mauvais sujets seem to seek in secular-
ism a kind of cheap religion. He declares that he is
going to use energetic efforts to purify the sect, and
seems to intimate that he shall retire if his efforts
fail. Let us leave him to wrestle against the in-
vasion of the orators of virtue, and let us pass from
England into Italy.
While Italy is seeking to deliver itself from the
bayonets of Austria, it is threatened with subjection
to the influence of the most pernicious German doc-
trines. After having bent, like nearly all Europe,
in the eighteenth century, beneath the blast of sen-
sualism, Italy made a noble effort to renew more
generous traditions. Two eminent men, Rosmini
and Gioberti, the second especially, succeeded in
exciting in the youth of Italy a passionate interest in
doctrines in which liberty and vigour of thought were
united with the confidence of faith. This intellectual
movement preceded and prepared a national move-
ment, the course of which has been precipitated by
the intrigues of politics and the intervention of the
arms of the foreigner. At the present time the in-
fluence of Rosmini and of Gioberti is on the decline.
Hegelianism is being installed with a certain éclat in
the university of Naples. Nothing warrants us in
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 157
hoping that this system will not produce upon the
shores of the Mediterranean the same depravation of
philosophic thought which it has produced in Ger-
many. In the ancient university of Pisa, M. Auguste
Conti, a brave defender of Christian philosophy, sted-
fastly maintains the union of religion and of specula-
tive inquiry,’ and the centre of Italy is less affected
perhaps than the extremities of the Peninsula by the
spirit of infidelity. But as we go further north, we
encounter in the writings of Ferrari the utterance of
a gloomy scepticism, and in those of Ausonio Franchi,
formerly a journalist at Turin, and now a Professor
at Milan, the manifestations of an almost undisguised
atheism. Ausonio Franchi, or rather the man who
assumes that pseudonym, is an ex-priest, who, “while
maintaining severely the rule of good morals and the
dignity of life,” has turned with violent animosity
against his former faith. He exerts some influence
over the youth of Italy, and has met with warm
! Readers unacquainted with the Italian language will find a
compendious exposition of M. Conti’s philosophy, in a small volume
published, in 1863, under the title of Ze Camposanto de Pise ou le
Scepticisme, (Paris, librairies Joël Cherbuliez et Auguste Durand;
1 vol. in-18.)
? Such is the testimony rendered to him by M. Aug. Conti in his
work, La Philosophie italienne. (Paris, Joël Cherbuliez et Auguste
Durand; one small vol. 18mo.)
158 LECTURE III.
admirers in England and Germany. Franchi’s pro-
fession of faith reduces itself to these very simple
terms:—“The world is what it is, and it 1s because
tt is; any other reason whatever of its essence and of
its existence can be nothing but a sophism or an
illusion.”? All inquiry into the origin of things is
a pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves
to the experience of the present life, and look for
nothing beyond it. The author treats with sufficient
disdain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton,
and Leibnitz. It has seemed to me that his under-
standing, a little obscured by passion, misconceives
the true purport of the reasonings which it rejects,
and by thus impairing their force, assumes to itself
the right to despise them.
The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do
not stop at Christian dogma. He denies all value to
those higher aspirations of the human soul which
constitute reason, in the philosophical meaning of the
term. Now, this radical negation of the reason is
what those Italians who do not scruple to practise it
denominate Rationalism. And this very unwarrant-
able use of a word is in fact only a particular case of
1 Le Rationalisme (in French), published with an introduction, by
M. D. Bancel, Brussels, 1858, page 27.
| -lélie
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 159
a general phenomenon. To criticise, means to ex-
amine the thoughts which present themselves to the
mind in order to distinguish error from truth. The
Frenchmen, who call themselves the critics, are men
who require that the intellect shall make itself the
impartial mirror of ideas, but shall renounce the
while all discrimination between truth and error.
The term scepticism, in its primary signification,
contains the idea of inquiring, of examining; and
they give the name of sceptics to the philosophers
who declare that there is nothing to discover, and
consequently nothing to examine, or to search for!
One is a free-thinker only on the express condition of
renouncing all such free exercise of thought as might
lead to the acceptance of beliefs generally received.
This is verily the carnival of language, and the bal
masqué of words. These corruptions of the meaning
of terms are highly instructive. Doctrines contrary
to the laws of human nature bear witness in this way
to a secret shame in producing themselves under
their true colours. Just as hypocrisy is an homage
which vice pays to virtue, so these barbarisms are an
homage which error pays to truth.
To return to Italy: that beautiful and noble
country has not escaped the revival of atheism.
160 LECTURE III.
The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political
struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged,
will favour for a time, it may be feared, the develop-
ment of evil doctrines.! But the lively genius of the
Italians will not be long in attaching itself again to
the grand traditions of its past history; and the
inhabitants of the land, whose soil was trodden by
Pythagoras and Saint Augustine, will not link them-
selves with doctrines which always run those who
hold them aground sooner or later upon the sad and
gloomy shores of a vulgar empiricism.
We have not leisure, Gentlemen, to extend our
1 The learned author appears to intimate that the distractions of
the Papacy, consequent on its political struggles for temporal power,
hinder the salutary influence which it might otherwise exercise in the
suppression of evil doctrines. The Translator feels it due to himself
to state here, once for all, that he has no sympathy whatever with :
such a view of the influence of the Papacy. On the contrary, he is
disposed to attribute to the Church of Rome most of the evils which
afflict, not Italy only, but all the countries over which she has any
power. Perhaps, having “felt the weight of too much liberty” in
his own Church, the excellent author, fundamentally sound in his
own views of Christian doctrine, as is proved abundantly by his
writings, has been led by a natural reaction to give too much weight
to the opposite principle of authority. The concluding pages of his
former work, La Vie Eternelle, indicate a mind toa painfully and
sensitively averse to all controversy with a corrupt Church, in con-
sideration of the acknowledged excellences of many of her individual
members,—her Pascals, Fénélons, Martin Boos, Girards, Gratrys,
and Lacordaires.— Translator.
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 161
study to all parts of the globe, and besides, there are
countries with regard to which information would
fail me. Therefore I say nothing of Holland, where
we should have, as I know, distressing facts to
record. The silence imposed on Spain upon the
subjects which we are discussing would render the
study of that country a difficult one. I am wanting
in data regarding America. Let us conclude our
survey by a few words about Russia.
If we are warranted in making general assertions
in speaking of that immense empire, we may say that
the Russian people, taken as a whole, is good and
pious, badly instructed, and often the victim of
ignorance or of superstition, but disposed to open
its heart to elevated and pure influences. The clergy
is ignorant, though with honorable and even brilliant
exceptions, It is too much cut off from general
society, and consigned to a sort of caste, of which it
would be most desirable to break down the barriers,
in order to allow the influence of the representatives
of religion to extend itself more freely. The young
nobles, and the university students in general, are,
in too large a proportion, imbued with irreligious
principles. Various atheistical writings, those of
Feuerbach amongst others, have been translated into
M
162 LECTURE III.
Russian, printed abroad, and furtively introduced into
the empire. M. Herzen, a well-known writer, has
published, under the pseudonym of Iscander, a work
full of talent, but in which come plainly into view
the worst tendencies of our time.’ In his eyes, life
is itself its own end and cause. Faith in God is the
portion of the ignorant crowd, and atheism, like all
the high truths of science, like the differential calculus
and the laws of physics, is the exclusive possession of
the philosophical few. When Robespierre declared
atheism aristocratic, he was right in this sense, for
atheism is above the reach of the vulgar; but when
he concluded that atheism was false, he made a great
mistake. This error, which led him to establish the
worship of the Supreme Being, was one of the causes
of his fall. When he began to follow in the wake of
the conservatives, as a necessary consequence he
would lose his power.” The writings of Iscander
have exerted a veritable influence in Russia. M.
Herzen appears to have lost much of his repute, by
1 De? autre rive (in Russian).
2 Del autre rive. v. Consolatio.—This chapter is a dialogue be-
tween a lady and a doctor. I have considered the doctor as express-
ing the thoughts of the writer. The form of dialogue, however,
always allows an author to express his thoughts, while declining, if
need be, the responsibility of them.
THE REVIVAI OF ATHEISM. 163
the exaggerated and outrageous course he has taken
in politics; but it is to be feared that the traces of
his action are not altogether effaced.
The Russian Empire has been for a long time, in
the eyes of the West, only an immense garrison;
but now for some years past it has been taking
rank among the number of intellectual powers, and
nowhere in Europe is the ascending march of civiliza-
tion displaying itself by signs so striking. The
Summons to liberty of so many millions of men,
which has just been accomplished by the generous
initiative of the ruling power, and with the consent
of the nation, testifies that that vast social body is
animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But
in the solemn phase through which she is passing,
Russia is exposed to a great danger. She is running
the risk of substituting for a national development,
drawn from the grand springs of human nature,
a factitious civilization, in which would figure together
the fashions of Paris, the morals of the coulisses of
the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the
West. May God preserve her!
We have passed in review some of the symptoms
of the revival of atheism, and it is impossible not to
acknowledge the gravity of the facts which we have
164 LECTURE III.
established. What must especially awaken solici-
tude is, that the irreligious manifestations of thought
have assumed such a character of generality, that the
sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce
in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews,
(I allude especially to the French-speaking public),
widely-circulated journals which take good care not
to violate propriety, and which could not with im-
punity offend the interests or prejudices of the social
class from which their subscribers are recruited,
are able to entertain without danger, and without
exciting energetic protestations, the productions of
an open, or scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are
ample reasons for thoughtfulness ; but this thought-
fulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to
do with a challenge the very audacity of which
inspires me with confidence, rather than with dread.
In fact all the productions of irreligious philosophy
rest on one and the same thought, the common watch-
word, of the secularism of the English, of the rational-
ism of the Italians, of the positivism of the French,
and which may even be recognised, with a little
attention, under the haughty formulas which bear the
name of Hegel. And the thought is this: The earth
is enough for us, away with heaven; man suffices for
oe
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 165
himself, away with God; reality suffices for us, away
with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting our-
selves with the world as it is. It is attempted
ridiculously enough to place this wisdom under the
patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are
bidden, forsooth, to see in the negation of the real
and living God, a conflict of progress with routine, of
science with a blind tradition, of the modern mind
with superannuated ideas." We know of old this
defiance hurled against the aspirations of the heart,
the conscience, and the reason. We know the des-
tined issue of this ancient revolt of the intellect
against the laws of its own nature. ‘There were
atheists in Palestine in the days when the Psalmist
exclaimed, “The fool hath said in his heart, There
is no God.’” There were atheists at Rome when
Cicero wrote,’ that the opinion which recognises gods
appeared to him to come nearest to the resemblance
of truth. A poet of the thirteenth century has ex-
pressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in
1 Le Rationalisme, par Ausonio Franchi, page 19.— Force et matière,
par le docteur Buchner, page 262.— Paroles de philosophie positive,
par Littré, page 36.—La Métaphysique et la Science, par Vacherot,
page xiv. (Première édition.)
2 Ps. xiv. 1.
3 De Natura Deorum.
166 LECTURE III.
vogue among a great many of our contemporaries:
He dares nothing great, who believes that there
71 There were atheists in the seventeenth
are gods,
century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound
them, and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits
of their time.” And who, again, does not know that
in the eighteenth century atheism marched with head
aloft, and filled the world with its clamours. The
attempt to do without God has nothing modern about
it, itis met with at all epochs. The means employed
now-a-days to attain this end have nothing new
about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with
the characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of
which are transient crises. The moment the negation
is blazoned openly, humanity protests. Why? Be-
cause man will never be persuaded to content himself
with the earth, and with what the earth can give him:
his nature absolutely forbids it. When we compare
the reality with the desires of our souls, we can all
say with the aged patriarch Jacob: “Few and evil
have been the days of my pilgrimage;’® we can all
say with Lamartine:
1 Nil audet magnum qui putat esse Deos.
? See Bossuet: Sermon sur la dignité de la religion.
§_Gen. xlyii. 9.
ee ag 5, e-
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 167
Though all the good desired of man
In one sole heart should overflow,
Death, bounding still his mortal span,
Would turn the cup of joy to woe.!
And it is not the heart only which is concerned
here; without God man remains inexplicable to his
own reason. The spiritual creature of the Almighty,
free by the act of creation, and capable of falling into
slavery by rebellion,—he understands his nature and
his destiny; but it is in vain that the apostles of
matter and the worshippers of humanity harangue
him in turn to explain to him his own existence.
Man is too great to be the child of the dust; man is
too miserable to be the divine summit of the universe.
“Tf he exalts himself, I abase him; if he abases him-
self, I exalt him; and I contradict him continually,
until he understands at last that he is an incom-
prehensible monster.’”
“The proper study of mankind is man;” and
man remains an enigma for man, if he do not rise to
God. So it is that our very nature is a living pro-
test against atheism, and never allows its triumphs
: Quand tous les biens que l’homme envie
Déborderaient dans un seul cœur,
La mort seule au bout de la vie
Fait un supplice du bonheur.
2 Pascal.
168 LECTURE III.
to be either general, or of long duration. A solid
limit is thus set to our wanderings; and, to the
errors of the understanding, as to the tides of the
ocean, the Master of things has said, “ Ye shall go
no further.” Therefore atheists may become famous,
but, destitute of the ray which renders truly illus-
trious, humanity refuses them the aureole with which
it encircles the brows of its benefactors. This aureole
it reserves for the sages which lead it to God, for the
artists which reveal to it some of the rays of the
immortal light, for all those who remind it of the
titles of its dignity, the pledges of its future, the
sacred laws of the realm of spirits. Humanity desires
to live; and to live it must believe; for it must
believe in order to love and to act. Atheism is a
crisis in a disease, a passing swoon over which the
vital forces of nature triumph. Now the vital forces
of humanity are neither extinct nor stupefied in our
time. The world of literature is sick, and grievously
sick in some of its departments; but even there
again are manifesting themselves noble and powerful
reactions. Then look in other directions. Contem-
plate the religious movement of society at large, the
wide efforts making in the domain of active benefi-
cence, the progressive conquests of civilization, the
a
THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM. 169
awakening of conscience on many subjects :—T could
easily instance numerous facts in proof of what I ad-
vance, and say to you:
Know, by these speaking signs, a God to-day
As yesterday the same—the same for aye:
Veiling, revealing, at His sovereign will,
His glory,—and His people guarding still.
Wrestle then against the invasion of deadly doc-
trines, wrestle and do not fear. If men rise against
God in the name of the modern mind, of the science
of the age, of the progress of civilization, do not suffer
yourselves to be stunned by these clamours. Let the
past be to you the pledge of the future! To make of
atheism a novelty, is an error. To make of it, in
a general way, the characteristic of our epoch, is
a calumny.
1 Reconnaissez, Messieurs, à ces traits éclatants,
Un Dieu tel aujourd’ hui qu’ il fut dans tous les temps.
Il sait, quand il lui plaît, faire éclater sa gloire,
Et son peuple est toujours présent à sa mémoire,
LECTURE IV.
NATURE,
(At Geneva, 27th Nov. 1863.—At Lausanne, 25th Jan. 1864.)
GENTLEMEN,
The thoughts of man are numberless ;
and still, in their indefinite variety, they never relate
but to one or another of these three objects: nature,
or the world of material substances, which are re-
vealed to our senses; created spirits, similar or supe-
rior to that spirit which is ourselves; and finally God,
the Infinite Being, the universal Creator. Therefore
there are two sorts of atheism, and there are only
two. The mind stops at nature, and endeavours
to find in material substances the universal principle
of existence; or, rising above nature, the mind stops
at humanity, without ascending to the Infinite Mind,
to the Creator. We have seen how clearly these two
doctrines appear in contemporary literature. We
NATURE. 171
have now to enter upon the examination of them, and
this will afford us matter for two lectures.
The word nature has various meanings; we em-
ploy it here to designate matter, and the forces which
set it in motion, those forces being conceived as blind
and fatal, in opposition to the conscious and free
force which constitutes mind. Matter and the laws
of motion are the object of mechanics, of chemistry,
and of physics. Do these sciences suffice for resolving
the universal enigma? Such is precisely the ques-
tion which offers itself to our examination.
Let us first of all determine what, in presence of
the spectacle of the universe, is the natural move-
ment of human thought, when human thought pos-
sesses the idea of God. I open a book trivial enough
in its form, but occasionally profound in its contents:
the Journey round my room, of Xavier de Maistre.
The author is relating how he had undertaken to
make an artificial dove which was to sustain itself
in the air by means of an ingenious mechanism.
I read:
“TI had wrought unceasingly at its construction
for more than three months. The day was come for
the trial. I placed it on the edge of a table, after
having carefully closed the door, in order to keep the
177 LECTURE IV.
discovery secret, and to give my friends a pleasing
surprise. A thread held the mechanism motionless.
Who can conceive the palpitations of my heart, and
the agonies of my self-love, when I brought the
scissors near to cut the fatal bond ?—Zest!—the
spring of the dove starts, and begins to unroll itself
with a noise. I lift my eyes to see the bird pass;
but, after making a few turns over and over, it falls,
and goes off to hide itself under the table. Rosine
(my dog), who was sleeping there, moves ruefully
away. Rosine, who never sees a chicken, or a pigeon,
or the smallest bird, without attacking and pursuing
it, did not deign even to look at my dove which was
floundering on the floor. This gave the finishing
stroke to my self-esteem. I went to take an airing
on the ramparts.
“] was walking up and down, sad and out of
spirits as one always is after a great hope disap-
pointed, when, raising my eyes, I perceived a flight
of cranes passing over my head. I stopped to have
a good look at them. They were advancing in
triangular order, like the English column at the
battle of Fontenoy. I saw them traverse the sky
from cloud to cloud.—Ah! how well they fly, said
I to myself. With what assurance they seem to
NATURE. 173
glide along the viewless path which they follow.—
Shall I confess it? alas! may I be forgiven! the
horrible feeling of envy for once, once only, entered
my heart, and it was for the cranes. I pursued
them, with jealous gaze, to the boundaries of the
horizon, For a long while afterwards, motionless in
the midst of the crowd which was moving about me,
I kept observing the rapid movement of the swallows,
and I was astonished to see them suspended in the
air, just as if I had never before seen that pheno-
menon. A feeling of profound admiration, unknown
to me till then, lighted up my soul. I seemed to
myself to be looking upon nature for the first time.
I heard with surprise the buzzing of the flies, the
song of the birds, and that mysterious and confused
noise of the living creation which involuntarily cele-
brates its Author. JIneffable concert, to which man
alone has the sublime privilege of adding the accents
of gratitude! Who is the author of this brilliant
mechanism? I exclaimed in the transport which
animated me. Who is He that, opening his creative
hand, let fly the first swallow into the air? It is He
who gave commandment to these trees to come forth
from the ground, and to lift their branches toward
the sky!”
174 LECTURE IV.
Here is a charming page, and containing, though
apparently trivial in style, a good and sound phi-
losophy. Let us translate this delightful description
into the heavier language of science.
The intellect is one of the things with which we
are best acquainted; logic is the science of thought,
and logic is perhaps, among all the sciences, the one
best settled on its bases. The intellect discovers
itself to us in the exercise of our activity. We pursue
an object, we combine the means for attaining it, and
it is the intellect which operates this combination.
What happens if we compare the results of our
activity with the results of the power manifested in
the world? When we consider in their vast ensemble
the means of which nature disposes, when we remark
the infinite number of the relations of things, the
marvellous harmony of which universal life is the
produce, we are dazzled by the splendour of a wisdom
which surpasses our own as much as boundless space
surpasses the imperceptible spot which we occupy
upon the earth. Think of this: the science of nature
is so vast that the least of its departments suffices to
absorb one human lifetime. All our sciences are
only in their very beginning; they are spelling out
the first lines of an immense book. The elements of
NATURE. 175
the universe are numberless; and yet, notwithstand-
ing, all hangs together; all things are linked one to
another in the closest connexion. The savants there-
fore find themselves in a strange embarrassment. They
are obliged to circumscribe more and more the field
of their researches, on pain of losing themselves in an
endless study; and, on the other hand, in proportion
as science advances, the mutual relation of all its
branches becomes so manifest that it is ever more
and more clearly seen that, in order to know any
one thing thoroughly, it would be necessary to know
all. It needs not that we seek very high or very
far away for occasions of astonishment: the least of
the objects which nature presents to our view contains
abysses of wisdom.
The acquired results of science appear simple
through the effect of habit. The sun rises every
day ; who is still surprised at its rising? The solar
system has been known a long while; it is taught
in the humblest schools, and no longer surprises any
one. But those who found out, after long efforts,
what we learn without trouble, the discoverers,
reckoned their discoveries very surprising. Kepler,
one of the founders of modern astronomy, in the
book to which he consigned his immortal discoveries,
176 LECTURE IV. FA
exclaims :’ “The wisdom of the Lord is infinite, as
are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens!
sing His praises. Sun, moon, and planets, glorify
Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celes-
tial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them!
And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by
Him, and in Him, that all exists What we know
not is contained in Him as well as our vain science.
To Him be praise, honour, and glory for ever and
ever!” These words, Gentlemen, have not been
copied from a book of the Church; they are read in
a work which, as all allow, is one of the foundations
of modern science.
I pass on to another example, and I continue to
keep you in good and high company. Newton set
forth his discoveries in a large volume all bristling
with figures and calculations.” The work of the
mathematician ended, the author rises, by the con-
sideration of the mutual interchange of the light of all
the stars, to the idea of the unity of the creation;
then he adds, and it is the conclusion of his entire
work: ‘The Master of the heavens governs all
things, not as being the soul of the world, but as
1 Harmonices mundi, libri quinque.
2 Philosophie naturalis principia mathematica.
eee se. Se ee Oe
<7
NATURE. 177
being the Sovereign of the universe. It is on ac-
count of His sovereignty that we call Him the
Sovereign God. He governs all things, those which
are, and those which may be. He is the one God, and
the same God, everywhere and always. We admire
Him because of His perfections, we reverence and
adore Him because of His sovereignty. A God
without sovereignty, without providence, and with-
out object in His works, would be only destiny or
nature. Now, from a blind metaphysical necessity,
everywhere and always the same, could arise no
variety ; all that diversity of created things accord-
ing to places and times (which constitutes the order
and life of the universe) could only have been pro-
duced by the thought and will of a Being who is
the Being, existing by Himself, and necessarily.”
Here, Sirs, are noble thoughts, expressed in noble
style. I recommend you to read throughout the
pages from which I have quoted a few fragments.
Let us now analyse the ideas of this great astronomer
as thus expounded. We may note these three affr-
mations :
1. The universe displays an admirable order
which reveals the wisdom of the Power which
governs it.
178 LECTURE IV.
2. The universe lives; it is not fixed, and its varia-
tions suppose an intelligent Power which directs it.
3. The variable existence of the universe shews
that it is not necessary; it must have its cause in
a Being who is the Being, necessarily, by His proper
nature.
Such are the views of Newton. Examine this
course of thought, and see if it is not natural. Ob-
servation reveals to us facts. Facts in themselves,
isolated facts, are nothing for the mind; but in the
facts of nature, human reason discovers an order,
and in that order it recognizes its own proper laws.
To keep within the domain of astronomy—there is
harmony between our mind and the course of the
stars. If you have any doubt about this, 1 appeal
to the almanac. We there find it stated that in such
a month, on such a day, at such an hour, there will
be an eclipse of the sun or of the moon. How comes
the editor of the almanac to know that? He has
learnt it from the savants who have succeeded in
explaining the phenomena of the skies. The savant
therefore can in his study meet with the intelligence
which directs the universe. If he makes no mistake
in his calculations, the eclipse begins at the precise
hour which he has indicated. If the eclipse did not
NATURE. 179
take place at the instant foreseen, no one would
suspect Nature of not following the course prescribed
by the directing intelligence ; the inference would be
that there had been a fault in observation, or an error
of figures on the part of the astronomer,
When science, then, does its part well, the mind
of man encounters another mind which is governing
the world and maintaining it in order. The special
science of nature stops there, as we shall explain
further on; but this is not all that man requires,
when he makes use of all his faculties, All is
passing and changing in the domain of experience ;
and reason seeks instinctively the cause of change-
able facts in an unchangeable Being, the cause of
transient phenomena in an eternal Being. Nature,
therefore, does not suffice to account to us for itself.
It demands a power to direct it, an intelligence to
regulate it; an absolute eternal Being as its cause.
This is what reason imperatively requires ; and when
we possess the idea of God, nature reveals to us His
power and His wisdom.
This is an old argument, and they call it common-
place. It is commonplace, in fact; it has appeared
over and over again in the discourses of Socrates, in
the writings of Galen, of Kepler, of Newton, of
180 LECTURE IV.
Linnæus. Yes, this argument has fallen so low as
to be public property, if we can say that truth falls
when it shines with a splendour vivid enough to
enlighten the masses. If I desired to bring together
here the testimony of all the savants who have seën
God in nature, the song of all the poets who have
celebrated the glory of the Eternal as manifested by
the creation, the enumeration would be long, and
T should soon tire out your patience. You can un-
derstand therefore that if there are, as the mis-
anthrope Rousseau says there are, philosophers who
hold in such contempt vulgar opinions that they
prefer error of their own discovery to truth found out
by other people, then the ancient argument, which
infers the wisdom of the Creator from the order of
the creation, must be the object of but small esteem
with them. Still I for my part take this old argu-
ment for a good one, and I mean to defend it.
Nature is verily and indeed a marvel placed be-
fore the observation of our minds. The growth of
a blade of grass, the habits of an ant, contain for an
attentive observer prodigies of wisdom. A drop of
dew reflecting the beams of morning, the play of
light among the leaves of a tree, reveal to the poet
and the artist treasures of poetry. But too often,
NATURE. 181
blinded by habit, we are unable to see; and when
our mind is asleep, it seems to us that the universe
slumbers. A sudden flash of light can sometimes
arouse us from this lethargy. If science all at once
delivers up to us some one of those grand laws which
reveal in thousands of phenomena the traces of one
and the same mind, the astonishment of our intellect
excites in our soul an emotion of adoration. When
the first rays of morning light up with a pure bright-
ness the lofty summits of our Alps; when the sun at
his setting stretches a path of fire along the waters
of our lake, who does not feel impelled to render
glory to the supreme Artist? When dark cold fogs
rest upon our valleys at the decline of autumn, it
only needs sometimes to climb the mountain-side, in
order to issue all at once from the gloomy region,
and see the chain of high peaks, resplendent with
light, mark themselves out upon a sky of incompar-
able blue. Often have I given myself the delight of
this grand spectacle, and always at such a time my
heart has uttered spontaneously from its depths that
hymn of adoration :
Tout l’ univers est plein de sa magnificence.
Qu’ on Il’ adore, ce Dieu, qu’on l’invoque à jamais !!
1 The whole universe is full of His magnificence.
May this God be adored and invoked for ever!
182 LECTURE IVY.
Such is, in the presence of nature, the spontaneous
movement of the heart and of the reason. But
a false wisdom obscures these clear verities by clouds
of sophisms. When your heart feels impelled to
render glory to God, there is danger lest importunate
thoughts rise in your mind and counteract the im-
pulse of your adoration. Perhaps you have heard it
said, perhaps you have read, that the accents of
spiritual song, those echoes, growing ever weaker,
of bygone ages, are no longer heard by a mind
enlightened by modern science. I should wish to
deliver you from this painful doubt. I should wish
to protect you from the fascinations of a false science.
I should wish that in the view of nature, even those
who have as yet no wish to adore, with St. Paul,
Him whose invisible perfections are clearly seen
when we contemplate His works, may at least feel
themselves free to admire, with Socrates, “the su-
preme God who maintains the works of creation in
the flower of youth and in a vigour ever new.” Let
us examine a few of the prejudices which it is sought
to disseminate, in order to deprive of their force the
reasonings of Newton, and to turn us from the
opinions of Kepler.
It is said that science leads away from God, and
NATURE, 183
that faith continues to be the lot only of the ignorant.
Listen on this head first of all to the Italian Franchi.
“The class of society in which infidels and sceptics
especially abound is that of savants and men of
letters,—men, in short, who have gone through
studies, in the course of which they have certainly
become acquainted with the famous demonstrations
of the existence of God. But no sooner have they
examined them with their own eyes, and submitted
them to the criterion of their own judgment, than
these demonstrations no longer demonstrate any-
thing; these reasonings turn out to be only para-
1 Here we have the thesis in its general
logisms.”
form: to become an infidel or a sceptic, 1t is enough
to be a well educated man. The German Biichner
will now shew us the application of this notion to the
special study of nature. ‘ At this day, our hardest
labourers in the sciences, our most indefatigable
students of nature, profess materialistic sentiments.’”
The same tendencies are often manifested among
French writers. The author of a recent astronomical
treatise, for example, draws a veil of deceitful words
over the profound faith of Kepler, and takes evident
pleasure in throwing into relief the tokens of sym-
1 Le Rationalisme, page 19. 2 Force et Matière, page 262.
184 LECTURE IV.
pathy bestowed unfortunately by the learned Laplace
upon atheism.’ Here then we have open attempts to
found a prejudice against religion on the authority of
science; and these attempts disturb the minds of not
afew. J ask two questions on this head. Is it true,
in fact, that modern naturalists are generally irre-
ligious? Is it possible that the science of nature,
rightly considered, should lead to atheism ??
Let us begin with the question of fact; and first
of all let us settle clearly the bearing and object of
this discussion. I wish to destroy a prejudice, and
not to create one. Iam not proposing to you to take
the votes of savants, in order to know whether God
exists. No. Though all the universities in Europe
1 Les Mondes, Causeries astronomiques, by Guillemin; see p. 122
(3rd edition), where Kepler is described as an intelligence ‘penetrated
by a profound faith in nature and exalted by a noble pride.” See
also pages 327 and 336.
* The question discussed in these pages must not be confounded —
with that of the relations between the science of nature and the
documents of revelation. Whether nature can be explained without
God is one question. Whether geology is in accordance with the
language of the book of Genesis is another question, as regards both —
its nature and its importance. This latter subject does not come
within the scope of these lectures. I will merely call attention to
the fact, that if nature and the sacred text are fixed elements, this is
not the case with the interpretations of theologians, and the results of
geology. It is difficult to pronounce upon the exact relation of two
quantities more or less indeterminate.
NATURE. 185
should unite to vote it dark at mid-day, I should not
cease on that account to believe in the sun, and that,
Gentlemen, in common with you all, and with the
mass of my fellow-men. I have instituted a sort of
inquiry in order to ascertain whether modern natu-
ralists have in general been led to atheistical senti-
ments, as some would have us believe. In appealing
to the recollections of my own earlier studies and
subsequent reading, I have marked the names of the
men best known in the various sciences, and I have
inquired what religious opinions they may have
publicly manifested. I will now give you briefly
the result of my labour.
I have left astronomy out of the question, con-
sidering that, notwithstanding the great notoriety of
Laplace, we have in Kepler and Newton a weight of
authority sufficient to counterbalance that which it is
desired to connect with his name. Descending to the
earth, we encounter first of all the general science of
our globe, or geography. In this order of studies
a German, Ritter, enjoys an incontestable preemi-
nence. He is called, even in France, the “ creator
of scientific geography.” Scientific geography rests
for support on nearly all the sciences: it proceeds
from the general results of chemistry, physics, and
186 LECTURE IV.
geology. Had then the vast knowledge of Ritter
turned him away from God? I had read somewhere’
that he was one of those savants who have best
realized the union of science and faith. One of my
friends who was personally acquainted with him
has described him to me, not only as a man who
adored the Creator in the view of the creation, but
as an amiable and zealous Christian, who exerted
himself to communicate to others his own convic-
tions.
From the general study of the globe, let us pass
to that of the organized beings which people its
surface. Does botany teach the human mind to
dispense with God? Let us listen to Linneus. I
open the System of Nature,’ and on the reverse of the
title-page I read: “O Lord, how manifold are Thy
works! in wisdom hast Thou made them all: the
earth is full of Thy riches.”’ I turn over a few
leaves, and I meet with a table which comprises,
under the title, Æmpire of Nature, the general classi-
fication of beings. ‘The commencement is as follows:
“ Eternal God, all-wise and almighty! I have seen
Him as it were pass before me, and I remained con-
? In the writings of M. de Rougemont, if I am not mistaken.
2 Systema nature. 3 Ps. civ. 24.
NATURE. 187
founded. I have discovered some traces of His foot-
steps in the works of the creation; and in those
works, even in the least, even in those which seem
most insignificant, what might! what wisdom! what
inexplicable perfection !—If thou call Him Destiny,
thou art not mistaken, it is He upon whom all
depends. If thou call Him Nature, thou art not
mistaken, it is He from whom all takes its origin.
If thou call Him Providence, thou speakest truly ;
it is by His counsel that the universe subsists.”
Another great naturalist, George Cuvier, takes care
to point out that “Linnæus used to seize with marked
pleasure the numerous occasions which natural history
offered him of making known the wisdom of Pro-
vidence.”’!
Thus modern botany was founded in a
spirit of piety. Has it, at a later period, made any
discoveries calculated to efface from the life of vege-
tables the marks of Divine intelligence? Allow me
to introduce here a personal souvenir. I received
lessons in my youth from an old man, who, having
once been the teacher of De Candolle, remained his
friend.’ By a rather strange academical arrangement,
M. Vaucher found himself set to teach us—not botany,
1 Biographie universelle.
2 A. P. de Candolle, by A. de la Rive, pp. 12 and 18.
188 LECTURE IV.
for which he possessed both taste and genius,’ but |
a science of which he knew but little, and which he ©
liked still less. So it came to pass that a good part -
of the hour of lecture was often filled up with familiar
conversations. ‘These conversations took us far away
from church history, which we were supposed to be
learning. The misplaced botanist reverted, by a
natural impulse, to his much-loved science; and I
have seen him shed tears of tender emotion, in his
Professor’s chair, as he spoke to us of the God who. L
made the primrose of the spring, and concealed the
violet under the hedge by the wayside. Therefore is
the recollection of that old man not only living in my —
memory, but also dear to my heart. Still he was
a savant, an enthusiastic naturalist; and, in the broad
light of the nineteenth century, he felt and spoke like —
Linnæus.
Let us pass to the study of animals. I had the”
wish, some years ago, to procure the best of modern …
treatises upon physiology. I was directed to the
work of Professor Müller, of Berlin. This book has
not lost its value, —for, this very morning, a student
of our faculty of sciences came to me to borrow it, by
1 M. Vaucher’s principal title to scientific distinction is his
Histoire des conferves d’eau douce, Genève, an xt (1803), 4°.
NATURE. 189
the advice of his masters. Müller was a great phy-
siologist, and he made an open profession of the
Christian religion. Have we not the right to con-
clude that he believed in God? In France, I could
cite more than one name in support of my thesis;
I confine myself to a single fact. The attention of
the scientific world has very recently been occupied
with the discoveries of M. Pasteur. M. Pasteur has
ascertained that the decomposition of organized bodies,
after death, is effected by the action of small animals
almost imperceptible, the germs of which the larger
animals carry in themselves, as living preparatives
for their interment. The design of Providence reveals
itself to his understanding, and he writes: “The
immediate elements of living bodies would be in
a manner indestructible, if from the beings which
God has created were taken away the smallest, and,
in appearance, the most useless. Life would thus
become impossible, because the return to the atmo-
sphere and to the mineral kingdom of all that has
ceased to live would be all at once suspended.’* In
other words: I have studied facts hitherto incom-
pletely observed, and my study has revealed to me
1 Comptes rendus de l Académie des Sciences of 20 April, 1863,
page 738.
190 LECTURE IV.
a new manifestation of that Divine wisdom of which
the universe bears the impression.
England possesses à naturalist of the first order,
whom his fellow-countrymen take a pleasure in com-
paring to George Cuvier—Professor Owen. This
savant lectured, a few months ago, before a numerous
auditory, on the relations of religion and natural
science.’
He is fully possessed of all the information
which the times afford,—is not ignorant of modern
discoveries,—is, in fact, one of the princes of con-
temporary science. Well, Gentlemen, Mr. Owen
repeats, with reference to animals, what Newton
was led to say by his contemplation of the heavens,
and Linnæus by his study of the plants. He is not
afraid to admire with Galen the marvellous wisdom
which presided over the organization of living bodies.
His discourse is entitled, Zhe Power of God in His
Animal Creation. The more we understand, he says,
the more we admire, the more we adore. He pauses
in view of the marvellous productions of nature,
1 Exeter Hall Lectures— The Power of God in His Animal Creation,
pamphlet in 12mo. This remarkable lecture contains a twofold pro-
test—against the blindness of those savants who fail to recognise the
presence of God in nature ; and against the pretensions of those theo-
logians who attack the certain results of the study of nature, relying
upon texts more or less accurately interpreted.
NATURE. 191
beside which the most delicate works of human in-
dustry appear, beneath the microscope, but coarse
rough hewings; he compares our most highly finished
machines to the living machines made by the hand of
God, and infers that, not to discern intelligence in the
relation of means to ends, necessarily implies in the
mind a defect similar to that of eyes which are unable —
to distinguish colours. Mr. Owen declares that such
a state of mind and feeling in a naturalist may pro-
voke blame from some and pity from others, and
remains for him, so far as he is concerned, absolutely
incomprehensible.
Again, do the most learned chemists find in the
study of the elements of matter a revelation of
atheism? M. Liebig, I have been told, is one of
the first chemists of our epoch. He believed he had
discovered an application of chemistry to agriculture,
the effect of which would be to furnish a remedy
to the exhaustion of the soil. His discovery turned
out false, and a more attentive study of his subject
led him to ascertain that the object which he was
pursuing was actually realised by Divine Providence
in a way of which he had had no suspicion. The
following is his own account of this, published in
1862: “After having submitted all the facts to
192 LECTURE IV.
a new and very searching examination, I discovered
the cause of my error. I had sinned against the
wisdom of the Creator, and I had received my just
punishment. I was wishing to perfect His work,
and, in my blindness, I thought that in the admirable
chain of laws which preside over life at the surface of
the earth, and maintain it ever in freshness, there
was wanting a link which I, feeble and impotent
worm, was to supply. Provision had been made for
this beforehand, but in a way so wonderful, that the
possibility of such a law had not so much as dawned
1 Here is a con-
upon the human understanding.”
fession very noble in its humility; and to this
chemist, who thus renders glory to God, no one of his
colleagues could say: “If you had as much science
as we, you would say no more about the wisdom of
the Creator.”
Let us pass on to natural philosophers. I have
taken a special interest in this part of my inquiry,
because I had read in the productions of a literary
man of Paris, that modern physics have placed those
at fault who defend the doctrine of the living and
true God. I inquired accordingly of a man, very
1 Chemistry applied to Agriculture and to Physiology (in German).
Seventh edition. Introd. page 69.
NATURE. 193
well able to give me the information, whether there
exists in Europe a natural philosopher holding a
position of quite exceptional distinction. I received
for reply: “ You may say boldly that, by the unani-
mous consent of men of science, Mr. Faraday, in
regard both to the greatness and range of his dis-
coveries, is the first natural philosopher living.”
After having thus made myself sure, therefore, on
this point, I took the liberty of writing to Mr.
Faraday the following letter:
“Geneva, 380th October, 1863.
STR.
“I have the intention of commencing shortly, at
Geneva, and for an auditory of men, a course of lectures
designed to combat the manifestations of contemporary atheism.
To this deplorable error I desire to oppose faith in God, as
it has been given to the world by the Gospel, faith in the
Heavenly Father.
“One of my lectures will be specially devoted to the removal
of prejudices against religion which have their origin in natural
science. It is said very often, and very boldly, that modern
physics and modern chemistry demonstrate the unfounded
character of religious beliefs. These theses are maintained at
Geneva as elsewhere. I should wish to reply that natural
science does not of itself turn men from God, and that without
being able to give faith, it confirms the faith of those who
believe: this I should wish to establish by citing names
invested, in science, with an incontestable and solid renown.
Will you, Sir, authorise me to make use of your name?”
O
194 LECTURE IV.
Mr. Faraday, in reply, sent me the following
letter, dated 6th Nov. 1865.
FOIE,
AU “You have a full right to make use of my —
name : for although I generally avoid mixing up things sacred
and things profane, I have, on one occasion, written and
published a passage which accords to you this right, and which
I maintain. I send you a copy of it. I hope you will find
nothing in any other part of my researches, to contradict or
weaken in any way whatever the sense of this passage.
“TI beg you to transmit my best remembrances to my friend —
M. de la Rive...... ce
The passage thus indicated establishes a line of
demarcation, very strongly (perhaps too strongly)
drawn between researches of the reason and the
domain of religious truth, and contains a profession
of positive faith in Revelation. The author affirms
that he has never recognised any incompatibility
between science and faith, and makes the following
declaration: “ Even in earthly matters I reckon that
‘the invisible things of God from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made, even his eternal power and
Godhead.’”’
A literary man of Paris declares to us that natural
science leads away from God: one of the first savants
NATURE. 195
of our time informs us that the scientific contempla-
tion of nature renders the wisdom of God manifest.
The question is one of fact. To whom shall we give
our confidence? For my part, since it is natural
philosophy which is in question, I rank myself on
the side of the Natural Philosopher.
We will here terminate this review. It is time,
however, which fails us, not subject-matter, for con-
tinuing it. You may have noticed that the name
of no one of the savants of Switzerland figures in
this inquiry. Nevertheless our country would have
furnished a rich mine for my purpose. It contains
(and it is one of its best privileges) a goodly number
of savants, whom the observation of the facts of
matter have not caused to forget the claims of mind,
and who know how to raise their souls to the Author
of the marvels which they study. You will under-
stand therefore that it has not been from anxiety for
my cause, but from a motive of discretion, that
I have forborne to bring into this discussion the
names of men in whom we have a near interest, and
many of whom perhaps are present in this assembly.
I will take advantage of Mr. Faraday’s letter to
make a single exception, by naming M. de la Rive.
More than once, and in public, we have heard him
196 LECTURE IV.
distinctly point out the place occupied by the sciences
of mind in relation to the natural sciences, and
render glory to the Creator. And I do not think
that any one, in Switzerland or elsewhere, can claim
to speak with disdain, in the name of the physical
sciences, of the religious convictions boldly professed
by our learned fellow-countryman.’
Recollect, Gentlemen, that I have not undertaken
to prove the existence of God, by making appeal to
the authority of men of science. All I have sought
to do has been to destroy a prejudice. They tell us,
and scream it at us, that the best naturalists become
atheists. This is not true, as I think I have shewn.
There do exist atheists who cultivate the natural
sciences,—no doubt of the fact. But even though
half the whole number of naturalists were atheists,
inasmuch as other naturalists, and those some of the
1 Since these words were spoken, M. de la Rive has been named
an associated member of the Institute of France (Academy of
Sciences), and thus elevated to the first of scientific dignities. It
might be shewn, I believe, that the greater number of the eight
associates of the Academy of Sciences to be found in the world,
make profession of their faith in God the Creator, the Almighty and
Holy One. The silence which others may have preserved on the
subject would, moreover, be no authority for concluding that they
do not share in beliefs and sentiments which they have not had the
occasion perhaps of publicly expressing.
NATURE. 197
greatest, find in their studies new motives to adora-
tion, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true
cause why these savants repudiate religion has no-
thing to do with their science. We shall come to be
more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass
now from the question of fact to considerations of
sound reason.
The weakness of the human mind leads it to
forget the facts with which it is not occupied. All
special culture of the intellect risks consequently the
paralysing a part of our faculties. Hegel, lost in
abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to
construct by pure reasoning the history of nature and
that of the human race. A geometrician, who no
longer saw in the world anything but theorems and
demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a
dramatic masterpiece, ‘ And what does that prove ?”
A physiologist absorbed in the study of sensible
phenomena says: ‘ Where is that soul they talk of?
I have never seen it.” ‘lhese are phenomena of the
same order. This infirmity of the mind, which leads
certain savants to think that the ordinary subject of
their studies is everything, must not be imputed to
science. A man accustomed to the exclusive observa-
tion of material phenomena, may become a materialist
198 LECTURE IV.
by the effect of his mental habits, and this really
happens, in fact, in too many instances; but the
study in itself is not responsible for this result. Let
us endeavour to prove this, by clearly defining the
object of the natural sciences.
When the matter of a phenomenon is given to us,
the understanding proposes to itself three questions:
1. How does the fact manifest itself? what is the
mode of its existence? The answer gives us the law
of the phenomenon. Bodies fall to the ground at
a determined rate of speed: the determination of this
rate is the law of their fall.
2. What is the real effective power which pro-
duces the phenomenon? This is the inquiry after
the cause.
8. What is the intention which presided at the
production of the phenomenon? This is the search
after the object, which philosophers call the final
cause.
What we call understanding or explaining a fact,
is answering these three questions; it is finding the
law, the cause, the end. This analysis was made by
Aristotle, and seems to have been well made. The
science of nature, as it is conceived by the moderns,
does not undertake to satisfy entirely the desires of
NATURE. 199
the human mind. It confines itself to the first ques-
tion; it classes phenomena; it then seeks their law;
arrived at this, it stops. The cause and design of
things remain out of the sphere of its investigations ;
the question of God therefore continues foreign to it.
A story is told that when Buonaparte expressed
his astonishment that the Marquis de la Place could
have written a large book on the system of the
universe, without making any mention of the Creator,
the learned astronomer replied to his sovereign : “Sire,
I had no need of that hypothesis.” The answer is
admissible if we regard only the science of nature.
An astronomer has no need of God in order to follow
out the series of his calculations, and compare their
results with the course of the stars; a chemist has no
need of God in order to ascertain the simple elements
combined in composite bodies; a natural philosopher
has no need of God in order to determine the laws of
waves of sound or of electric currents. The science
of nature does not demonstrate the existence of God;
still less can it deny His existence. To deny God,
it would be necessary for science to demonstrate that
there is no order, and consequently no cause of the
order to discover; for when we point out the harmony
of the universe, we manifestly prepare a basis for the
200 LECTURE IV.
argument which, from the intelligence recognised in
the phenomena, will infer the intelligence of the
Power which governs them. To prove that there is
no order would be to prove that there is no science.
For any one who well understands the value of
terms, the words atheistical science contain a con-
tradiction; they signify science which proves that
there is no science.
Such, Gentlemen, is the real state of the question.
Our savants, when they remain faithful to their
method, seek to determine the laws of phenomena,
and do not occupy themselves either with the First
Cause of nature, or with its general object; they
leave the question of God on one side. Whence
come then the negations of naturalists? They arise
in this way: those savants who succeed in strictly
confining themselves within the limits of their science
are rare exceptions. Almost always the man intro-
duces his thoughts into the work of the savant, and
the results of his study appear to him religious or
irreligious, according to his views of religion. New-
ton ends his book with a hymn to the Creator; but
it is not the mathematical principles of nature which
have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He per-
ceives the rays of His glory because He believes in
NATURE. 201
Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks that his
researches disprove the existence of God, because
God is veiled from his soul. In both cases it is
a doctrine foreign to pure natural science which
gives a colour to its results. Self-deception is very
common in this matter, and in both directions. The
religious mind does not understand how it is possible
to contemplate the universe, and not see inscribed
upon it distinctly the name of its Author; and the
intrusion of atheism into the sciences of observation
is veiled beneath confusions of ideas which it is of
importance for us to dissipate.
Modern science, as we have said, stops. at laws,
without troubling itself with causes. The laws
which determine the series of facts as they offer
themselves to observation express the mode of the
action of the causes. ‘There are here two ideas
absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and the
manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks
that his science is everything, he must conclude that
we can know nothing beyond the laws, and that an
insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power
of which they express the action. But he rarely
succeeds in keeping this position, and deceives his
reason by confounding the laws which he discovers
202 LECTURE IV.
with the causes with which his mind is not able to
dispense. He says first of all with Franchi, “the
universe is what it is”; this is the general formula
of all the truths of experience; then he adds with the
same author, “it is because it is.” This because
means nothing, or means that laws are their own
causes. If it is asked, What is the cause of the
motion of the stars? they will give for answer the
astronomical formule which express this motion, and
will think that they have explained the phenomena
by stating in what way they present themselves to
observation. This is a curious example of that con-
fusion of ideas which opens the door to atheism.
An English naturalist, Mr. Darwin, has shewn
that in the successive life of animal generations, the
favourable variations which are produced in the
organization of a being are transmitted to its de-
scendants and ensure the perpetuity of its race,
while the unpropitious variations disappear because
they entail the destruction of the races in which
they are produced. He tells us: “This preserva-
tion of favourable variations and the rejection of
injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.”
What does the author understand by law? He
1 On the Origin of Species, page 81. Fifth edition.
NATURE. 203
answers: “the series of facts as it is known to
us." Here we have the true definition of law: it
is the simple expression of the series of the facts;
the cause remains to be sought for. I open the book
in another part. The author is speaking of the eye;
and his doctrine is that the eye of the eagle was
formed by the slow transformations of an extremely
simple visual apparatus. There will have been then,
in the development of animal existence, first of all
a rudimentary eye, then an eye moderately well
formed, and then the eye of the eagle, because the
favourable modifications of the organ of sight will
have been preserved and increased in the course of
ages. Such is the series of facts, such is the law;
suppose we grant it. What is the cause? The
optician makes our spectacles; who made the eye
of the eagle, by directing the slow transformations
which at length produced it? Let us listen to the
author: “There exists an intelligent power, and
that intelligent power is natural selection, constantly
on the watch for every alteration accidentally pro-
duced in the transparent layers, in order carefully
1 On the Origin of Species. The text is—‘‘the necessary series
of facts; but it would be to do the writer wrong to impute to him
the idea that observation reveals to us what is necessary, in the
philosophical import of the word.
204 LECTURE IV.
to choose such of those alterations as may tend to
produce a more distinct image. .... Natural selection
will choose with infallible skill each new improve-
ment effected.’”* Natural selection is a law; a law is
the series of facts; it seems that we must seek for the
power which directs this series of facts; but, lo, the
series of facts itself is transformed into a power—into
an intelligent power—into a power which chooses
with infallible skill! The confusion of ideas is com-
plete. The mind is on a wrong scent; it concludes
that the law explains everything, and has itself no
need of explanation. The idea of the cause disap-
pears, and, as Auguste Comte expresses it, “science
conducts God with honour to its frontiers, thanking
Him for His provisional services? This is not
perhaps the idea of Mr. Darwin, but it is at any
rate the idea of some of his disciples, as we shall see
by-and-by.
Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight.
Let us now see the fate to which are consigned those
other requirements of the reason—the eternal and
the infinite. I take up Dr. Biichner’s book, and
I read: “ We are incapable of forming an idea, even
1 On the Origin of Species,
* Caro, L’ Idée de Dieu, page 47.
NATURE. 205
approximately, of the eternal and the infinite, be-
cause our mind, shut up within the limits of the
senses, in what regards space and time, is quite un-
able to pass these bounds so as to rise to the height
of these ideas.” I follow the text, and thirteen lines
further on, in the same page, I read, ‘“ Therefore
matter and space must be eternal.”* Observe well
the use which this writer makes of the great ideas of
the reason. Is it desired to employ them to prove
the existence of God? He will have nothing to do
with them. Is the object in question to deny God’s
existence? He makes use of them; and all in the
same page. This is coarse work, no doubt, and
Dr. Biichner damages his cause; but, under forms,
often more subtle and more intelligent, the same
sophism turns up in all systems of materialism.” It
is affirmed that we have no real idea of the infinite,
and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need
which reason feels of this idea by applying it to
matter.
1 Force et Matière, page 181.
2 The Büchner proceeding is found again pretty exactly in Les
Mondes of M. Amédée Guillemin. This writer affirms (page 60 of
the third edition) that science does not approach metaphysical ques-
tions; and asserts in the same page, ten lines further on, that astro-
nomical experience leads our reason to the idea of the eternity of the
universe. After that, he may laugh, if he will, at lovers of the absolute.
206 LECTURE IV.
Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the
natural sciences, in the interest of metaphysics. I
am not attacking but defending them. I am en-
deavouring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them
from the outrages which are offered to them by
materialism, while it seeks to cover with their noble
mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on
the one hand, and theologians and philosophers on
the other, are too often at war. They are men, and
as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not
unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or
with jealous rivalries, or with the miserable struggles
of envy: with these things the passions are charge-
able. But never render the sciences responsible for
the errors of their representatives. Take away
human frailties, and you shall see harmony estab-
lished; the study of matter will thus agree with the
study of mind, and the idea of nature with the idea
of God. You will see all the sciences rise together
in a majestic harmony. I say rise, and I say it
advisedly ; for the sciences also form a part of that
golden chain which should unite the earth to heaven.
The assertion that the science of nature leads away
from God, expresses nothing but a prejudice. It is
not true in fact, and on principles of right reason it is
NATURE. 207
impossible: the demonstration is complete. Atheism
is a philosophy for which the natural sciences are in
no degree responsible. We shall not undertake here
the general discussion of this philosophy. Let us
confine ourselves to the examination of the pretence
which it puts forward to find a new support in the
results of modern science.
The nineteenth century bestows particular atten-
tion upon history, and it is not only to the annals
of the human race that it directs its investigations.
Geology and paleontology dive into the bowels of
the earth in order to ask of the ground which carries
us testimony as to what it carried of old. Astronomy
goes yet further. It endeavours to conjecture what
was the condition of our planet before the appearance
of the first living being. It remarks that the sun is
not fixed in the heavens, and that our earth does not
twice travel over the same line in its annual revolu-
tions. It appears that stars are seen in course of
formation; it is suspected that some have wholly
disappeared. Nature is not fixed, but is undergoing
modifications—lives, in fact. The actual state of the
universe is but a momentary phase in a development
which supposes thousands of ages in the past, and
seems to presage thousands more in the future.
208 LECTURE IV.
These conceptions are the result of solid and in-
contestable discoveries. They have disturbed men’s
minds, but what is their legitimate import? Why,
Newton’s argument receives new force from them.
From a blind metaphysical necessity, everywhere
and always the same, said this great man, no varia-
tion could spring. ‘The more it is demonstrated that
the universe is in course of development and modifi-
cation, the more clearly comes into view the neces-
sity of the supreme Power which is the cause of its
modifications, and of the Infinite intelligence which
is directing them to their end. This appears to be
solid reasoning, and nevertheless atheism has en-
deavoured to strike its roots in the ground of modern
discoveries. It does this in the following way.
If the universe as it is, with the infinite variety of
beings which people it and the marvellous relations
which connect these beings mutually together, could
be shewn to have sprung all at once from nothing,
or to have emerged from chaos at a given instant,
in its full harmony, the boldest mind would not
venture to regard this miracle of intelligence as the
product of chance. But modern science, it is said, no
longer admits of this simple explanation of things:
‘God created the heavens and the earth.” This
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NATURE. 209
phrase is henceforward admissible only in the cate-
chism. We know that all has been produced by
slow degrees, starting from weak and shapeless rudi-
ments. This grand marvel of the universe was not
made all of one piece. Man is of recent date; quad-
rupeds at a certain epoch did not exist; animals had
a beginning, and plants also. The earth was once
bare. Formerly, it was perhaps only a gaseous mass
revolving in space. In course of time, matter was
condensed ; in time it was organised in living cellules ;
in time these cellules became shapeless animals; in
time these animals were perfected. Time appears
therefore to be the “universal factor’; and for the
ancient formula, “the universe is the creation of
God,” we are able to substitute this other formula,
the result, most assuredly, of modern science, “the
universe is the work of time.”
In all this, Gentlemen, I have invented nothing.
All I have done has been to put into form the theory,
the elements of which I have met with in various
contemporary productions.’ They bewilder us by
heaping ages upon ages, and in order to explain
nature they substitute the idea of time for the ideas
of power and intelligence. They seem to suppose
1 See in particular the Revue des Deux Mondes, passim.
Le
210 LECTURE IV.
that what is produced little by little is sufficiently
explained by the slowness of its formation.
These aberrations of thought have recently been
manifested in a striking manner on the occasion of
the publication of Mr. Darwin’s book. This natural- ;
ist has given. his attention to the transformation of
organised types. He has discovered that types vary
more than is generally supposed; and that we pro-
bably take simple varieties for distinct species. His
discoveries will, I suppose, leave traces strongly
marked enough in the history of science. But Mr.
Darwin is not merely an observer; he is a theorist,
dominated evidently by a disposition to systematise.
Now minds of this character, which render, no doubt,
signal services to the sciences of observation, are all
like Pyrrhus, who, gazing on Andromache as he
walked by her side,
Still quaffed bewildering pleasure from the view.
Their theory is their lady-love; they love it pas-
sionately, and passionate love always strongly ex-
cites the imagination. Mr. Darwin then has put.
forth the hypothesis, that not only all animals, but
all vegetables too, might have come from one and the
1 S’enivrait en marchant du plaisir de la voir.
NATURE. EI
same primitive type, from one and the same living
cellule. This supposes that there was at the be-
ginning but one single species, an elementary and
very slightly defined organization, from which all
that lives descended in the way of regular generation.
The oak and the wild boar which eats its acorn, the
cat and the flea which lodges in its fur, have com-
mon ancestors. The family, originally one, has been
divided under the influence of soil, climate, food,
moisture, mode of life, and by virtue of the natural
selection which has preserved and accumulated the
favourable modifications which have occurred in the
organism. Mr. Darwin, I repeat, appears to me a
man strongly disposed to systematise, but I do not
on this account conclude that he is mistaken. The
question is, what opinion we must form of his doc-
trine on principles of experimental science? Pro-
fessor Owen’ does not appear to allow it any value;
M. Agassiz does not admit it at all;? and, without
crossing the ocean, we might consult M. Pictet, who
would reply, that judging by the experimental data
which we have at present, this doctrine is an hypo-
1 See the lecture above mentioned.
? Lettres sur les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, by Lieutenant-Colonel
Ferri Pisani, page 400.—Letter of 25 Sept. 1861.
212 LECTURE IV.
thesis not confirmed by the observation of facts. We
will leave this controversy to naturalists. What will
remain eventually in their science of the system under
discussion? The answer belongs to the future en-
lightened by experience and by the employment of
a sage induction. What is the relation existing be-
tween these systematic views and the question of the
Creator? ‘This is the sole object of our study.
The opinions of the English naturalist are very
dubious as to the vital questions of religious phi-
losophy. J have pointed out to you the confusion
of his ideas in the use which he makes of natural
selection. In the text of his book, he admits, in the
special case of life, the intervention of the Creator
for the production of the first living being, and he
does not speak of man, except in an _ incidental
sentence, which only attentive readers will take any
notice of. If we do not take the liberty to look a
little below the surface, we must say that Mr. Darwin
remains on the ground of natural history. Therefore
I spoke to you of the aberrations of philosophic
thought which have been produced on the occasion
of his book. These aberrations are the following:
5 On the origin of species, in the Archives des sciences de la
Bibliothèque universelle, March, 1860.
NATURE. 218
First of all, natural selection has been taken for
a cause, or rather as dispensing with the necessity for
a cause, by means of a confusion of ideas for which
the author is responsible. ‘The system has therefore
been understood as implying, that organised beings
were formed without plan, without design, by the
mere action of material causes, and as the result of
modifications casual at first, and slowly accumulated.
Divine intelligence and creative power thus seemed
to be disappearing from the organization of the uni-
verse, and to disappear especially before the lapse of
time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes.
But while the system was taking wing, and soaring
aloft, lo! the Creator at the commencement of things,
and man conceived as a distinct being at the highest
point of nature, have risen up as two. idols and
paralysed its flight. To Mr. Darwin, however,
have speedily succeeded disciples compromising their
master’s authority, and addressing him in some such
language as this: “ You, our master, do not fully
follow out your own opinions; you strain off gnats,’
and swallow camels. It is not more difficult to see in
the living cellule a transformation of matter, and in
man a transformation of the monkey, than to point
1 Vous coulez des moucherons.
214 LECTURE IV.
out in a sponge the ancestor of the horse. Cast
down your idols, and confess that matter developed
in course of time, under favourable circumstances,
is the origin of all that is.” Matter, time, circum-
Stances—these things have taken the place of God.
This, Gentlemen, is a philosophy, properly so
called, which vainly pretends to find a support in the
observation of facts. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the
rival of Cuvier, set forth views analogous to those
which Mr. Darwin has lately reproduced. But in
his replies to the attacks which were made upon his
system, he affirmed that his theory offered “one of
the most glorious manifestations of creative power,
and an additional motive for admiration, gratitude,
and love." Two different interpretations may there-
fore be given to the system. I wish to shew you
that these interpretations proceed in all cases from
considerations external to the system. The system
in itself, as a theory of natural history, could not in
any way afiect injuriously the great interests of
spiritual truth.
In order solidly to establish this assertion, I will
1 In his Principes de philosophie zoologique, a collection of answers
made by Geoffroy, in the discussions of the Académie des Sciences,
in 1830,
NATURE. 215
suppose the hypotheses of the most advanced dis-
ciples of Mr. Darwin to have been verified by ex-
perimental science. I take for granted that it has
been proved that all plants and all animals have
descended, by way of regular generation, from living
cellules originally similar; and that the material
particles of the globe, at a given moment, drew
together to form these cellules. And now where do
we stand? Will God henceforward be a superfluous
hypothesis? Do the atheistical consequences which
it is desired to draw from this doctrine proceed
logically from it? Most certainly not!
I observe first of all that there exists a great
question relative to the beginning of things. Matter
is perfected and organised in process of time—but
whence comes matter itself? Is it also formed little
by little in process of time? Does non-existence
become existence little by little? So it is said in
the preface to the French translation of Mr. Darwin’s
book. But this appertains to high metaphysics; and
I pass on.
If time is the factor of all progress by a necessary
law, this necessity must be everywhere the same.
Have the elements of matter all the same age? If
so, why have some followed the law of progress, and
216 LECTURE IV.
others not? Why has this mud and this coal re-
mained mud and coal, age after age, while these
other molecules have risen, in the hierarchy of the
universe, to the dignity of life? Why have these
molluscs remained molluscs throughout the succes-
sion of their generations, while others, happily trans-
formed, have gradually mounted the steps of the
ladder up to man? Whence comes this aristocracy
of nature? Are the beings which we call inferior
only the cadets of the universe, and are they too in
their turn to mount all the steps of the ladder?
Must we admit that there is going on the continual
production, not only of living cellules which are be-
ginning new series of generations, but also of new
matter, which, setting out from the most rudimentary
condition, is beginning the evolution which is to
raise it into life? They do not venture to put forth
theses of this nature, and, in order to account for the
diversity of things, recourse is had to circumstances.
The diversity of circumstances explains the diversity
of developments. But whence can come the variety
of circumstances in a world where all is produced
in the way of fatal necessity, and without the inter-
vention of a will and an intelligence? This is the
remark of Newton. Study carefully the systems
NATURE. pag br
of materialism: their authors declare that to have
recourse to God in order to account for the universe
is a puerile conception unworthy of science, because
all explanation must be referred to fixed and im-
mutable laws; and then you will be for ever sur-
prising them in the very act of the adoration of
circumstances. Convenient deities these, which they
summon to their aid in cases which they find em-
barrassing.
But we will not insist on these preliminary con-
siderations. We have allowed, for argument’s sake,
that all organised beings have proceeded by means
of generation from cellules presenting to sensible
observation similar appearances. Natural history
cannot prove, nor even attempt to prove, more. Let
us transport ourselves, in thought, to the moment at
which the highest points of the continents were for
the first time emerging from the primitive ocean.
We see, on the parts of the soil which are half-dried,
and in certain conditions of heat and electricity,
particles of matter draw together and form those
rudiments of organism which are called living cel-
lules. These cellules have the marvellous faculty of
self-propagation, and the faculty, not less marvellous,
of transmitting to their posterity the favourable modi-
218 LECTURE IV.
fications which they have undergone. (Generations
succeed one another; gradually they form separate
branches. New characteristics shew themselves ; the
organisms become complicated, and becoming compli-
cated, they separate. ‘The vegetable is distinguished
from the animal; the plant which will become the
palm-tree is distinguished from the oak which is in
course of formation, and the ancestor of the future
bird is already different from that of the fish. We
follow up this great spectacle. The ages pass, they —
pass by thousands and by millions, they pass by
tens of millions. We need not be stinting in our
allowance of time; our imagination will be tired of
conceiving of it sooner than thought of supplying it.
And at what shall we have arrived at last? At the
universe as it has been for some few thousands of
years past; at the world with its vegetables of
a thousand forms, grouped by classes and series,
with the families of animals, with the relations of
animals to plants, with the unnumbered harmonies of.
nature. Let us choose ont one particular, on which 4
to fix our attention. Shall it be a she-goat—
Upstretched on fragrant cytisus to browse ?
This will suit our purpose, although the cytisus, —
NATURE. 219
unless [ am mistaken, has no perfume except in
M. de Lamartine’s verses, Let us fix our attention
on a cytisus with its yellow clusters hanging down,
and the goat bending its pliant branches as it browses
on the foliage. Here is a very small detail in the
ample lap of nature. Let us come closer, and to help
our ignorance, let us provide ourselves with a natu-
ralist who will answer for us the questions suggested
by this simple spectacle. And what have we now
before us? The various relations of the animal’s
organization to the vegetables on which it feeds.
In the organization and functions of these two living
beings, in the equilibrium and movements of their
frames, in the circulation of sap and of blood, we
have the application of the most secret laws of
mechanism, of physics, and of chemistry. Then
again, in the relations which the animal and the
plant sustain with the ground which bears them,
with the air they breathe, with the sun which en-
lightens them, with heat and light, with the moisture
of the air and its electricity—in all this we see the
universal relations which connect all the various
parts of the wide universe with each one of its
minutest details. In this simple spectacle we have,
in fact, reciprocal relations, the balance of things,
220 LECTURE IV.
the harmony which maintains the universal life—
intelligence, in short, in the organization of beings,
in the characteristics which divide them, in the
classes which unite them, in the relations of these
classes amongst themselves ;—wonders of intelligent
design, of which the sciences we are so proud
of are spelling out, letter by letter, line after line,
the inexhaustible abysses: this is what we find
everywhere. Let us now come back to our primitive
cellules.
All the living beings which people the surface
of the globe are composed materially of some of the
elements of the earth’s substance. The birth there-
fore of the first living beings could only offer to the
view the bringing together of some of the elements
of the soil; this is not the matter in question.
The primitive cellules were to all appearance alike.
Weighed in scales, opened by the scalpel, placed
beneath the microscope, they would have offered no
appreciable difference; I grant it: it is the supposi-
tion we have agreed to make. Therefore they were
identical, say you. I deny it, and here is my proof:
If the cellules had been identical, they would not
have given, in the successive development of their
generations, the diverse beings which people the
NATURE. 221
world, and the relations which unite them. Alike to
your eyes, the cellules differed therefore by a con-
cealed property which their development brought to
light. You have told me as a matter of history how
the organization of the world was manifested by slow
degrees ; you have given me no account of the cause
of that organization.
It is said in reply: “ We do know the origin of
those developments which you refer to a supposed
intelligence. ‘The living beings are transformed by
the action of food, climate, soil, mode of life. They
experience slight variations in the first instance; but
these variations are established, and increase; and
where you see a plan, types, and species, there is
really only the result of modifications slowly ac-
cumulated. Nature disposes of periods which have
no limit, and everything has come at its proper time,
in the course of ages.” They are always proposing
to us to accept of time as the substitute for in-
telligence. Jam tempted to say with Alcestis :
Time in this matter, Sirs, has nought to do.?
You know what intelligence is; you know it by
knowing yourself. Is there, or is there not, in-
1 Voyons, Messieurs, le temps ne fait rien à I’ affaire.
=m
222 LECTURE IV.
telligence in the universe? Allow me to reproduce
some old questions: If a machine implies intelli-
gence, does the universe imply none? If a telescope
implies intelligence in the optician, does the eye
‘imply none in its author? The production of a
variety of the camelia, or of a new breed of swine,
demands of the gardener and the breeder the patient
and prolonged employment of the understanding ;
and are our entire flora and fauna to be explained
without any intervention of mind? And if there is
intelligence in the universe, is this intelligence a
chemical result of the combination of molecules? is
it a physical result of caloric or of electricity? It is
in vain that you give to material agents an unlimited
time; what has time to do here? Whether the
world as it now exists arose out of nothing, or
whether it was slowly formed during thousands of
ages, the question remains the same. With matter
and time, you will not succeed in creating intelli-
gence; this were an operation of transcendent al-
chemy utterly beyond our power. In the theory of
slow causes, the adjective ends by devouring the
substantive; it seems that by dint of becoming slow
the causes become superfluous. A breath of reason
upsets, like a house of cards, the structures of this
NATURE. 225,
erring and misnamed science. Time has a relative
meaning and value. We reckon duration as long or
short, by taking human life as our measure. But
they tell of insects which are born in the morning,
arrive at mature age at mid-day, and only reach the
evening if they are patriarchs of their race. Is it not
easy to conceive of beings organized for an existence
such that our centuries would be moments with them,
and centuries heaped together one of our hours?
Suppose one of these beings to be contemplating our
geological periods, and slow causes will to him appear
rapid causes, and the question of intelligence will be
the same for him as for us. |
It is manifest that the attempt is being made to
restore the worship of the old Chronos, to whom the
ancients had erected temples. Let us look the idol
in the face. Time appears at first to our imagination
as the great destroyer. He is armed with a scythe,
and passes gaunt and bald over the ruins of all that
has lived. When he lifts up his great voice and
cries—
Mighty nations famed in story
Into darkness I have hurled,—
Gone their myriads and their glory
(Lo! ye follow) from the world:
My dark shade for ever covers
Stars I quenched as on they rolled :—
224 LECTURE IVY.
the beautiful and frightened girl in the song is not
singular as she exclaims in her terror:
Ah! we’re young, and we are lovers,
Spare us, Reaper gaunt and old!!
Such is the first impression which time makes
upon us. But. birth succeeds to death. From an
inexhaustible spring, nature sends gushing forth new
products and new developments. Youth full of hope
trips lightly over the ground, without a thought that
the ground it treads on is the vast cemetery of all
past generations. If we fix our thoughts on the
permanence of life and the manifestations of progress,
time appears to us as the great producer. Destroyer
of all that is, producer of all that is to be, time has
thus a double form. It is a mysterious tide, ever
rising and ever receding; it is the power of death,
and it is the power of life. All this, Gentlemen, is
for the imagination. In the view of a calm reason,
time is the simply negative condition of all develop-
1 Sur cent premiers peuples célèbres,
J’ai plongé cent peuples fameux,
Dans un abime de ténèbres
Où vous disparaitrez comme eux.
J’ ai couvert d’une ombre éternelle
Des astres éteints dans leur cours.
—Ah! par pitié, lui dit ma belle,
Vieillard, épargnez nos amours !
“NATURE. | 229
ment, as space is the negative condition of all motion.
Just as without bodies and forces infinite space could
not produce any motion; so, without the action of
causes, ages heaped on ages could neither produce
nor destroy a single atom of matter, or a single
element of intelligence. Time is the scene of life
and of death; it neither causes to be born, nor to
die,
The struggle which we are now maintaining
against the philosophers of matter is as ancient as
science, and was going on, nearly in the same terms,
more than two thousand three hundred years ago.
About five hundred years before the Christian era
was born at Clazomene, a city of Ionia, the son of
Eubulus, who was to become famous by the name of
Anaxagoras. He fixed his abode at Athens, and the
Athenian people gave him a glorious surname,—they
called him Intelligence. On what account? There
were taught at that time doctrines which explained
the world by the transformations of matter rising
progressively to life and thought, without the inter-
vention of a mind. The philosopher Anaximander
gave out that the first animals had their origin in the
watery element, and became modified by living in
drier regions, so that man was only a fish slowly
Q
226 LECTURE IV.
transformed. “I am quite willing to grant it,” re-
plied Anaxagoras; “but for your transformations
there must be a transforming principle. Matter is
the material of the world, no doubt; but it could not
produce universal order except as ruled by intel-
ligence.” The Athenians admired this discovery.
For us, Gentlemen, the discovery has been made
a long while. Let us not then be talking in this
discussion about modern science and the lights of
the age. Our natural history is much advanced as
compared with that of the Greeks; but the vital
question has not varied. Does nature manifest the
intervention of a directing mind, or do we see in it
only a fortuitous aggregation of atoms?
Intelligence radiates from the face of nature, and
it is in vain that men endeavour to veil its splendour.
Nevertheless I consent to forget all that has just been
said, in order to intrench myself in an argument,
which of itself is sufficient for the object we have in
view to-day. Our object is to prove that material
science does not contain the explanation of all the
realities of the universe. Even though they had
succeeded in persuading us that there is no intelli-
gence in nature, it would still be necessary to explain
the origin of that intelligence which is in us, and the
NATURE. Loe
existence of which cannot be disputed. Whence
proceeds the mind which is in ourselves?
Let us first of all give our attention to a strange
contradiction. ‘Those savants who make of the hu-
man soul a simple manifestation of matter, are the
same who wish to explain nature without the inter-
vention of the Divine intelligence. In order to keep
out of view the design which is displayed in the
organization of the world, they take a pleasure in
finding nature at fault, and in pointing out its imper-
fections. Still, they do not pretend to be able to do
better than nature; they would not undertake the
responsibility of correcting the laws of life, and
regulating the course of the seasons. They do not
say, “We could make a better world,” but “We
can imagine a world more perfect than our own.”
Now what is our answer? Simply this: “You are
right.” Nature is not the supreme perfection, and
therefore we will not worship it. How admirable
soever be the visible universe, we have the faculty of
conceiving more and better. We understand that the
atmosphere might be purified, so that the tempest
should not engulf the ships, nor the thunderbolt
produce the conflagration. We dream of mountain-
heights more majestic than the loftiest summits of
228 LECTURE IV.
our Alps, of waters more transparent than the pure
crystal of our lakes, of valleys fresher and more
peaceful than the loveliest which hide among our
hills. The spectacle of nature awakens in us the
powers of thought, and the sentiment of beauty draws
us on to the pursuit of an ideal which surpasses all
realities. Nature is not perfect: let us be forward to
acknowledge it, and let us draw from the fact its
legitimate consequence. The stream cannot rise
higher than its source, If man conceives an ideal
superior to nature, he is not himself the mere product
of nature. By what strange contradiction is it af-
firmed at once that our spirit overpasses the bounds
of all the realities which encompass it, and that it
has not a source more elevated than those realities ?
Listen to a thought of that weighty writer Mon-
tesquieu:’ “ Those who have said that a blind fatality
has produced all the effects which we see in the world,
have said a great absurdity; for what greater ab-
surdity than a blind fatality which should have
produced intelligent beings?” Without, restricting
ourselves to this simple and solid argument, let us
see how they will explain man by nature. For this
end, we must examine the theory of the perfected
1 Esprit des Lois, Bk. I. chap. 1.
NATURE. 229
monkey, which, introduced to us by the lectures of
Professor Vogt and the spirited rejoinders of M. de
Rougemont, made a great noise as it descended a
short time ago from the mountains of Neuchâtel.!
À celebrated orator said one day to an assembly of
Frenchmen: “TI am long, Gentlemen; but it is your
own fault: it is your glory that I am recounting.”
Have not I the right to say to you: “I am long,
Gentlemen, but it is worth while to be so; it is our
own dignity which is in question.”
Man is a perfected monkey! I have three pre-
liminary observations to make before I proceed: to
the direct examination of this theory.
In the first place, this definition transgresses the
first and most essential rules of logic. We must
always define what is unknown by what is known.
This is an elementary principle. What a man is,
I know. To think, to will, to enjoy, to hope, to fear,
are functions of the mental life. These words answer
to clear ideas, because those ideas result directly from
our personal consciousness. But what is the soul of
a monkey? The nature of animals is a mystery, one
© Leçons sur ? homme, by Carl Vogt (lectures delivered during the
winter of 1862—1863, at Neuchâtel and at Chaux-de-Fonds), 1 vol.
8vo. Paris, 1865.—L’ Homme et le Singe, by Frédéric de Rougemont,
pamphlet, 12mo. Neuchâtel, 1868.
230 LECTURE IV.
which is perhaps incapable of solution, and which, in
all cases is wrapped in profound darkness, because
the animal appears to us an intermediate link be-
tween the mechanism of nature and the functions of
the spiritual life, which are the only two conceptions
we have that are really clear and distinct. In taking
the monkey therefore as our point of departure for
the definition of man, we are defining what is clear
by what is obscure.
My second remark is this: If it is affirmed that
there is but one species, including all the animals and
man, so that man is only a monkey modified, and the
monkey, in its turn, an inferior animal modified ;
when once we have established the reality of man we
arrive at this result: all animals whatsoever are only
inferior developments of humanity, living foetuses
which, without having come to their full term, have
nevertheless the faculty of living and reproducing
themselves. The animal then is an incomplete man ;
a theory which raises great difficulties, but which is
more serious and more easy to understand than the
doctrine which would have man to be a consumma-
tion of the monkey.
In fact,—and this is my third observation,—when
the theory which | am examining is adopted, it must
NATURE. 231
be carried out to its consequences, and the bearing of
it clearly seen. Man, it is said, is the consummation
of the monkey. The monkey is an improvement
upon some quadruped or other, and this quadruped is
an improvement upon another, and soon. We must
descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most
elementary manifestations of life, and thence, finally,
to matter. If it is not admitted that pure matter is
a man in a state of torpor, it must be admitted that
man is a mélange of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote,
phosphorus—a mélange which has been brought little
by little to perfection. Such is the final inference
from the doctrine which we are examining; and
there are theorists who deduce it clearly. Now what
is it that goes on in the minds of these savants ?
When the object is to banish God from nature, the
creative Intelligence is resolved into thousands of
ages. When it is desired to get rid in man of the
reality of mind, they seek to resolve the human intel-
ligence into a long series of modifications which have
caused life to spring from matter, superior animals
from simpler organisms, and man from the animal.
Do not allow yourselves to be caught in this trap.
Maintain firmly, that, whatever the degree of intel-
ligence, of will, of spiritual essence, which may exist
Don LECTURE IY.
in animals, if that element is really found in them, it
demands a cause, and cannot, without an enormous
confusion of ideas, be regarded as a mere perfecting
of matter. In fact, a thing in perfecting itself, real-
ises continually more fully its own proper idea, and
does not become another thing. A perfect monkey
would be of all monkeys the one which is most a
monkey, and would not be a man. But let us leave
the animals in the darkness in which they abide for
our minds, and let us speak of what for us is less
obscure.
Our spiritual existence is a fact; it is of all facts
the one which is best known to us; it is the fact
without which no other fact would exist for us.
And whence proceeds our spirit? ‘lo this question,
natural history has no answer. It is easy to see this,
though we grant once again to natural history, when
made the most of by our adversaries, all that it can
pretend to claim. Suppose it proved, that in the
historical development of nature, man has a monkey
for his mother. T will grant it, and grant it quite
seriously in order to ascertain what will be the in-
fluence of this hypothesis upon the problem on which
we are engaged.
If all monkeys were fossils, and if we had a
NATURE. 290
natural history, also fossil, setting forth to us the
customs and habits of these animals; if the savages
that are said to be the nearest neighbours to monkeys
were all fossils; we should find ourselves in presence
of a progressive and continued development of beings,
and, for an inattentive mind, all would be easily ex-
plained by the slow and continued action of time.
But this is not the case. All the elements of nature
are before our eyes, from inorganic matter up to man.
We do not see that time suffices for savages to become
civilized, and still less for monkeys to become men.
I was, in the spring of this year, in the Jardin des
plantes at Paris, musing on the question which we
are discussing, and I took a good look at the monkeys.
Come now, I said to myself, canst thou recognise :
them as thine ancestors? The question was badly
put. The monkeys are not our ancestors, inasmuch
as they are living at the same time with us; they can
only be our cousins, and it would seem that they are
the eldest branch, as they have best preserved the
primitive type. But let us speak more seriously.
The races of monkeys have lived as long or longer
than we: it is neither time nor climate which has
made men of them. Recollect, I pray you, that the
words ‘time’ and ‘ progress’ explain nothing. There
234 LECTURE IV.
must have occurred favourable circumstances to trans-
form the earth’s substance into living cellules, and
the living cellules into plants clearly marked, and
into animals properly so called; and in the same
way there must have been a propitious circumstance
to transform the monkey into man. I think so, in
fact; and this propitious circumstance well deserves
to be studied with attention.
Man presents characteristics which distinguish him
profoundly from the animal races: no one disputes it.
He possesses speech; he is capable of religion; he
exhibits the varied phenomena of civilization, while
the animals succeed one another generations after
generations in the unrecorded obscurity of a life for
ever the same. Suppose we admit that human
phenomena presented themselves at first in a very
elementary form; in rudiments of language and rudi-
ments of religion,—although the historical sciences do
not quite give this result:—still suppose the case
that at a given moment a branch of the monkey
species presented the germ, as little developed as you
please, but real, of new phenomena. One variety of
the monkey species has been endowed with speech,
has become religious, capable of civilization, and the
other varieties of the species have not offered the
NATURE. | 235
same characteristics, although they have had the
same number of ages in which to develope them-
selves. Observe well now my process of reasoning.
Remark attentively whether -I oppose theories to
facts, whether I substitute oratorical declamations for
arguments. I grant the hypotheses best calculated,
as commonly thought, to contradict my theses. I
assume that natural history demonstrates by solid
proofs that the first man was carried in the bosom of
a monkey; and I ask: What is the circumstance
which set apart in the animal species a branch which
presented new phenomena? What is the cause?
That monkey-author of our race which one day
began to speak in the midst of his brother-monkeys,
amongst whom thenceforward he had no fellow; that
monkey, that stood erect in the sense of his dignity ;
that, looking up to heaven, said, My God! and that,
retiring into himself, said: I!—that monkey which,
while the female monkeys continued to give birth to
their young, had sons by the partner of his life
and pressed them to his heart; that monkey—what
shall we say of it? What climate, what soil, what
regimen, what food, what heat, what moisture, what
drought, what light, what combination of phosphorus,
what disengagement of electricity, separated from the
236 LECTURE IV.
animal races, not only man, but human society ?
humanity with its combats, its falls, its risings again,
its sorrows and its joys, its tears and its smiles ;
humanity with its arts, its sciences, its religion, its
history in short, its history and its hopes of im-
mortality ? That monkey, what shall we say of it?
Do you not see that the breath of the Spirit passed
over it, and that God said unto it: Behold, thou art
made in mine image: remember now thy Father
who is in heaven? Do you not see that though
we grant everything to the extreme pretensions of
naturalists, the question comes up again whole and
entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms
such theorists imagine that they have extinguished
the intelligence which radiates from nature, that in-
telligence again confronts them in man, and there, as
in an impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance.
Mark then where lies the real problem. Whether
the eternal God formed the body of the first man
directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the
slow series of ages, He formed the body of the first
man of the dust of the earth, by making it pass
through the long series of animality—the question is
a grave one, but it is of secondary importance. The
first question is to know whether we are merely the
NATURE. 284
ephemeral product of the encounter of atoms, or
whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul,
a reality in short, with which may connect itself
another future than the dissolution of the sepulchre ;
whether there remains another hope than annihilation
as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants
after fame, only that evanescent memory which time
bears away with everything beside.
This is the question. Do not allow it to be put
out of sight beneath details of physiology and re-
searches of natural history, which can neither settle,
nor so much as touch the problem. If therefore you
fall in with any one of these philosophers of matter,
bid him take this for all your answer: “ There is one
fact which stands out against your theory and suffices
to overthrow it: that fact is—myself!’ And since,
to have the better of materialism, it is sufficient to
understand well what is one thought of the mind,
one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance of the
conscience,—add boldly with Corneille’s Medea:
I,—I say,—and it is enough.
In fact, nature does not explain man, and to this
conclusion has tended all that I have said to you
to-day.
LECTURE V.
LL OMAN PTE Fe
(At Geneva, lst Dec. 1863.)
GENTLEMEN,
Man has need of God. If he be not
fallen into the most abject degradation, he does not
succeed in extinguishing the instinct which leads him
to inquire after his Creator. A false wisdom labours
to still the cravings which the truth alone can satisfy;
but false wisdom remains powerless, and betrays itself
continually by some outrageous contradiction. Here
is a curious example of this:
In a book which was famous in the last century,
and which was called the gospel of atheism,’ the |
Baron qd’ Holbach explains as follows the existence
of the universe: “The universe, that vast assemblage …
1 Système de la Nature, published under the pseudonym of
Mirabaud.
HUMANITY. 239
of all that exists, everywhere presents to our view
only matter and motion.—Nature is the grand whole
which results from the assemblage of different ma-
terial substances, from their different combinations,
and from the different motions which we see in the
universe.”
Here is a clear doctrine: all that exists,
the soul included, is nothing but matter in motion.
I pass from the beginning to the end of the work,
and I arrive at this conclusion: “O nature! sovereign
of all beings! and ye, her adorable daughters, virtue,
reason, truth! be ye for ever our sole divinities; to
you it is that the incense and the homage of the earth
are due.’”
If we try to translate this sort of hymn
in accordance with the express definitions of the
author, we shall obtain the following result: “O
matter in motion! sovereign of all material sub-
stances in motion! and ye, virtue, reason, truth, who
are various names of matter which moves, be ye the
only divinities of that moving matter which is our-
selves.” Yet this author was no blockhead. What
then passed in his mind? He laid down the thesis
of materialism: bodies in motion are the only reality.
But he is all the while a man. The need for adora-
" Système de la Nature, Part 1. chap. 1.
2 Ibid. Part 11. chap. 14.
240 LECTURE Y.
tion is not destroyed in his soul, and he deceives
himself. He defines nature as consisting wholly of
matter, and when he sets himself to worship it, he
entirely forgets his definition. This is not on his
part a piece of philosophical jugglery, but the mani-
festation of the real condition of our nature, which is
always giving the lie, in one direction or another, to
erroneous systems. The power of wholly maintaining
himself in error has not been granted to man. He
who denies God is always deifying something; and
all worship which is not that of the Eternal and
Infinite Mind is stultified by glaring contradictions.
Here is a recent example of this: We were not
a little surprised a short time since to see M. Ernest
Renan deny clearly enough the immortality of our
persons, and, in the opening of the very book in
which this negation appears, to find him invoking the
soul of his sister at rest with God.’ Elsewhere, the
same writer says that the Infinite Being does not
exist, that absolute reason and absolute justice exist
only in humanity, and he concludes his exposition of
these views by an invocation of the Heavenly Father.’
The Baron d’Holbach had put eight hundred and
1 Wie de Jésus. Dedication.
? Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 January, 1860.
HUMANITY. 241
thirty-nine pages between his materialistic definition
of the universe and his invocation of nature. Now-
a-days everything goes faster; and M. Renan places
but a few pages of the Revue des Deux Mondes
between his denial of God and his prayer to the
Heavenly Father. With this difference, which is to
the advantage of the writer of the eighteenth century,
the process is absolutely the same. The philosopher
declares God to be an imaginary being, and the future
life an illusion; but the man protests, and, by a
touching illusion of the heart, the man who in his
system of doctrine has neither God nor hope, finds
that he has a sister in the realms eternal, and a
Father in the heavens. It is impossible not to see,
especially in literary works destined to a success of
fashion, the seductive influence of art, the precautions
of prudence, the concessions made to public opinion;
but we cannot wholly explain the incredible contra-
dictions of the Holbachs and Renans, without allow-
ing full weight to that need for God which shews
itself even in the farthest wanderings of human
thought by sudden and abrupt returns.
The illusion which deifies matter in motion is
gross enough. It belongs only to minds which
Cicero called, in the aristocratic pride of a Roman
R
242 LECTURE Y.
gentleman, the plebeians of philosophy.’ It requires,
in fact, no great reflection to understand that truth,
beauty, and goodness are neither atoms nor a certain
movement of atoms. The attempt, which is to form
the subject of our study to-day, that of deifying man,
is a far more subtle one. Let us first of all inquire
into the origin of the strange worship which humanity
accords to itself.
Nature, considered separately from the beings
which receive sensible impressions from it, has
neither heat nor light. In a world peopled by the
blind, light would have no name. If all men were
entirely paralysed as to their sensations, the idea of
heat would not exist. Light and heat, regarded as
existing in matter itself, without reference to sensitive
organizations, are, in the opinion of our natural
philosophers, only determinate movements. In the
same way, if nature were without any spectator
whatever, beauty would not exist; if there were
nowhere any intelligence, truth would no longer be.
In the same way again, if there were no wills,
goodness, which is nothing else than the law of the
will, would be a word deprived of all meaning.
1 Plebeii philosophi qui a Platone et Socrate et ab ea familia
dissident.
- le ei
nn
HUMANITY. 243
Beauty expresses the object of the perceptions of the
soul. Truth denotes the quality of the judgments of
intelligences, Goodness (I speak of moral goodness)
expresses a certain direction of the free will. There
exist no means of causing to proceed from nature, or
from matter, the attributes of the spiritual being.
This is only done by imaginary transformations,
by a course of arrant juggling. The flame does
not feel its own heat, light does not see itself, the
planets know nothing of the laws of Kepler. Ma-
terialism is the result of a modesty wholly misplaced
which leads man to forget himself, in order to at-
tribute gratuitously to nature realities which exist
only in spiritual beings connected with nature by
a marvellous harmony. In order therefore to account
for the universe, we must raise ourselves above the
atom in motion, and penetrate into a higher world
where truth, beauty, goodness become the objects of
thought. Truth, beauty, goodness conduct the mind
to God, their eternal source. But there is a philo-
sophy which endeavours to stop midway in the
ascent of the Divine ladder, and thinks to satisfy
itself in the contemplation of the true, the beautiful,
the good, without connecting them with their cause.
This philosophy considers the true, the beautiful, the
244 LECTURE Y.
good, as ideas which exist by themselves, without
a supreme Spirit of which they are the manifesta-
tion. It has received, in consequence, the name of
idealism.
To conceive of ideas without a mind, ideas having ~
an existence by themselves, is a thing impossible ;
such a conception is expressed by words which give
back a hollow sound, because they contain nothing.
We have already stated this thesis; let us now
confirm it by an example. A literary Frenchman,
M. Taine, would make us understand in what manner
the universe may be explained without reference to
God, and by means of a pure idea, Listen well,
not to understand, but to make sure that you do not
understand: “The universe forms a unique being,
indivisible, of which all the beings are members.
At the supreme summit of things, at the highest point
of the luminous and inaccessible ether, pronounces
itself the eternal axiom; and the prolonged resound-
ing of this creative formula composes, by its inex-
haustible undulations, the immensity of the universe.
Every form, every change, every movement, every
idea is one of its acts." 3
M. Taine is a man of humour, and the burlesque
1 Les philosophes français du XIXe siècle, chap. XIV.
HUMANITY. 245
has a place in his philosophical writings; but in
the words which I have just read to you he seems
to have intended seriously to expound the system
which replaces God by an idea. Try now to form
a definite conception of this universe composed of the
undulations of an axiom. Do you understand how
an axiom undulates, and how the heavens and the
earth are only the undulations of an axiom? Making
all allowance for rhetoric and figures, do you under-
stand what can be the acts of an axiom, and how an
axiom pronounces itself without being pronounced ?
You do not understand it, as neither do I. Such
doctrines, then, as we have said, can only be the
portion of a small number of thinkers who have lost,
by dint of abstraction, the sentiment of reality. The
ideas—truth, beauty, good—will only exist for the
common order of men, under such a system, in the
human mind, where we have cognizance of them ;
and thenceforward, the ideal, or God, is nothing else
than the image of humanity which contemplates itself
in a sort of mirage. Thus it is that the adoration of
man by man is disengaged from the high theories of
idealism. Let us proceed to the examination of this
worship, which is cried up now-a-days in divers parts
of the intellectual globe.
246 LECTURE Y.
I open the Revue des Deux Mondes, of the 15th
February, 1861. As the author of the article I refer
to" appears to admit “that one assertion is not more
true than another opposed to it,’” we will not be so
simple as to ask whether he adopts the opinions
which he propounds. He presents to us, in a rapid
sketch, the principal tendencies of the modern mind.
The modern mind is here characterized by one of its
declared partisans; you will not take therefore for
a wicked caricature the picture which he puts before
us. Here then are the thoughts of the modern mind:
“There is only one infinite, that of our desires and
our aspirations, that of our needs and our efforts.’
The true, the beautiful, the just are perpetually
occurring ; they are for ever in course of self-forma-
tion, because they are nothing else than the human
mind, which, in unfolding itself, finds and knows
itself again.” This is only the French translation of
a saying celebrated in Germany: “God is not: He
becomes.” What we call God is the human mind.
What was there at the beginning of things? The
human mind, which did not know itself. What will
there be in the end? The human mind, which, in
1 Hégel et ? Hégélianisme, par M. Ed. Schérer.
2 Page 854. 3 Page 852. 4 Page 856.
HUMANITY. 247
unfolding itself, will have come to know itself, and
will adore itself as the supreme God. If this be
indeed the final object of the universe, it appears that,
in the opinion of these philosophers, the consumma-
tion of all things must be near. Once that humanity,
faithful to their doctrine, shall have pronounced the
lofty utterance, “I am God, and there is none else,”
the world will no longer have any reason for existing.
Such is the system of which we have to follow out
the consequences. Let us take as our point of com-
parison the old ideas which we are urged to abandon.
We usually explain human destinies by the con-
currence of two causes, infinitely distinct, since the
one is creative and the other created, but both of
which we hold for real: man, and God. Humanity
has received from its Author the free power which
we call will, and the law of that will which we name
conscience. The law proceeds from God, the liberty
proceeds from God; but the acts of the created will,
when it violates its law and revolts against its
Author, are the creation of the creature. God is
the eternal source of good, and liberty is a good; but
God is not the source of evil, which is distinctly a
revolt against Him, the abuse of the first of His gifts.
Together with will, man has received understanding,
248 LECTURE V.
and gives himself to the search after truth. Truth is
the object of the understanding, its Divine law. Error
is a deviation from the law of the understanding, as
evil is a deviation from the law of the will. Lastly,
with will and understanding, man has received the
faculty of feeling. This faculty applies itself to
the world of bodies, from which we receive pain or
pleasure. But our faculty of feeling does not stop
there. Above the animal life, the mind has enjoy-
ments which are proper to it, and the object of which
is beauty. Beauty is not only in nature and in
works of art, it is everywhere, in whatever attracts
our love. The sciences are beautiful, and the har-
mony of the truths which are discovered in their
order and mutual dependence causes us to experience
a feeling similar to that produced by the most delight-
ful music. Virtue is beautiful ; it shines in the view
of the conscience with the purest brightness, and,
as was said by one of the ancients, if it could reveal
itself to our eyes in a sensible form, it would excite
in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is
ugly when once stripped of the delusive fascination of
the passions; the vicious excesses of the lower nature
are ugly and repulsive as soon as the intoxication is
over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful errors
ST
Se
ee oe ee
HUMANITY. 249
but those which contain a larger portion of truth than
the prosaic verities, which are nothing else than false-
hoods put in a specious way. Beauty therefore is
the law of our feelings, as truth is the law of our
thought, and good the law of our will. We will not
inquire now what secret relations shall one day bring
together in an indissoluble unity of light, the good,
the true, and the beautiful, and in a unity of dark-
ness, evil, deformity, and falsehood. Let it suffice
to have pointed out how a threefold aspiration leads
man to God, under the guidance of the conscience,
the understanding, and the feelings; and that a three-
fold rebellion estranges him from God, by sinking
him into the dark regions of deformity, error, and
evil. Humanity has therefore a law; it has been
endowed with liberty, but that a liberty of which the
legitimate end is determined. It advances towards
this end, or it swerves from it. There is a rule above
its acts. The thing as it is may not be the thing as
it ought to be; rebellion is not obedience, and good
is not evil.
All these consequences are included in the idea of
creation. The struggle between two opposite prin-
ciples, a struggle which sums up human destiny, is
a fact of which each one of us can easily assure him-
250 LECTURE VY.
self in his own person. What will happen when
man, sensible of the law of his nature, and conscious
of this struggle, proceeds to encounter humanity ?
Each one of us carries humanity in his own bosom.
But humanity, the character of man which is common
to us, and which makes the spiritual unity of our
species, is found to be altered by the influence of
places, times, and circumstances. Our reason is
encumbered by prejudices of birth and education,
and by such as we have ourselves created in our
minds in the exercise of our will. Our sense of
beauty is vitiated and narrowed by local influences
and habits. Our conscience is likewise subjected to
influences which impair its free manifestation. Every
one needs to enlarge his horizon. By seeking occa-
sions of intercourse with our fellows, we shall learn
to discriminate true and eternal beauty in the diver-
sity of its manifestations; we shall distinguish the
truth from the individual prepossessions of our own
minds; good and evil, disengaged from the narrow-
nesses of habit, will appear to us in their real and
enduring nature. Our taste will be formed, our con-
science purified, our mind enlarged; we shall more
and more become men, in the high and full accepta-
tion of the term. In order that the meeting together
HUMANITY. 251
of the individual and of humanity may produce such
fruits, God must dwell continually in the sanctuary
of the conscience. The inner light is kindled in the
intercourse of the soul with its Creator; it is after-
wards brightened and nurtured by the soul’s inter-
course with the traces of God which humanity reveals.
But this light makes manifest within us, and without
us, great darkness. We have no right to abandon
ourselves to every spectacle which strikes our view.
If, in presence of what is passing in the world, we
are tempted to regard the prosperity of the wicked
with cowardly envy; if we would fill up, for the
satisfaction of our evil desires, the abyss which
separates the holy from the impure, the inner voice
lifts itself up and cries to us: Woe! woe to them
who call evil good, and good evil? God is our
Master, even as He is our good and our hope. The
fact of the revolts of humanity can have no effect
against His sovereign will. Soldiers in the service
of the Almighty, life is for us a conflict, and duty
imposes on us a combat.
Such, Sirs, is the explanation of our destinies, an
old, and, if you like, a vulgar one. Let us now give
our attention to the doctrine which deifies humanity,
1 Isa. xx, 20.
192 LECTURE Y.
and follow out its consequences. Humanity carries
within its bosom the idea of truth, the love of beauty,
the sense of good. What does it need more? These
noble aspirations mark for it the end of its efforts.
What will be wanting to a life regulated by duty,
enlightened by truth, ennobled by art? What will
be wanting to such a life? Nothing, or everything.
Nothing, if the search after good, truth, and beauty
leads to God. Everything, if it be sought to carry it
on without any reference to God, because from the
moment that man desires to be the source of light to
himself, the light will be changed into darkness, as
we said at the beginning of this lecture. Put God
out of view, and good, beauty, and truth will dis-
appear; while you will see produced the decline of
art, the dissolution of thought in scepticism, the ab-
solute negation of morality. Let us consider with
the attention it deserves, and in contemporary ex-
amples, this sad and curious spectacle.
I open a treatise by M. Taine. The English
historian Macaulay speaks of literary men who “ have
taken pains to strip vice of its odiousness, to render
virtue ridiculous, to rank adultery among the elegant
fashions and obligatory achievements of a man of
taste.” ‘The honest Englishman takes the liberty to
HUMANITY. 253
judge and to condemn men who have made so per-
nicious a use of their talents. This pretension to
make the conscience speak is in the eyes of the
French man of letters a gothic prejudice. Listen
how he expresses himself on the subject: “ Criticism
in France has freer methods.— When we try to give
an account of the life, or to describe the character, of
a man, we are quite willing to consider him simply
as an object of painting or of science.... We do not
judge him, we only wish to represent him to the eyes
and to set him intelligibly before the reason. We
are curious inquirers and nothing more. ‘That Peter
or Paul was a knave matters little to us, that was the
business of his contemporaries, who suffered from his
vices—At this day we are out of his reach, and
hatred has disappeared with the danger—I experience
neither aversion nor disgust; I have left these feel-
ings at the gate of history, and I taste the very deep
and very pure pleasure of seeing a soul act according
to a definite law—.’* You understand, Gentlemen:
the distinction between good and evil, as that be-
tween error and truth; these are old sandals which
must be put off before entering into the temple of
history ; and the man of the nineteenth century, if he
1 Essais de critique et @ histoire, pp. 8 and 9.
254 LECTURE V.
has taste and information, is merely an historian, and
nothing more. ‘The sacred emotion which generous
actions produce in us, the indignation stirred in us
by baseness and cruelty, are childish emotions which
are to disappear in order that we may be free to
contemplate vice and virtue with a pleasure always
equal, very deep, and very pure. We have not here
the aberration of a young and ill-regulated mind, but
the doctrine of a school. I open again the Revue des
Deux Mondes, and there I encounter the theory of
which M. Taine has made the application: “ We no
longer know anything of morals, but of manners; of
principles, but of facts. We explain everything,
and, as has been said, the mind ends by approving of
all that it explains. Modern virtue is summed up in
toleration."— Immense novelty! That which is, has
for us the right to be.*—In the eyes of the modern
savant, all is true, all is right in its own place.
The place of each thing constitutes its truth.’””
I cut short the enumeration of these enormities.
All rule has disappeared, all morality is destroyed ;
there is no longer any difference between right and
fact, between what is and what ought to be. And
1 Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 Feb. 1861, page 855.
2 Page 853. 3 Page 854.
HUMANITY. 255
what is the real account to give of all this? It is as
follows: Humanity is the highest point of the uni-
verse; above it there is nothing; humanity is God,
if we consent to take that sacred name in a new
sense. How then is it to be judged? In the name
of what rule? since there is no rule: in the name of
what law? since there is no law. All judgment is
a personal prejudice, the act of a narrow mind. We
do not judge God, we simply recount His dealings ;
we accept all His acts, and record them with equal
veneration. All science is only a history, and the
first requisite in a historian is to reduce to silence his
conscience and his reason, as sorry and deceitful
exhibitions of his petty personality, in order to accept
all the acts of the humanity-deity, and establish their
mutual connexion. The deification of the human
mind is the justification of all its acts, and, by
a direct consequence, the annihilation of all morality.
Let us look more in detail at the origin and develop-
ment of these notions.
Lhe individual placing himself before humanity is
to accept everything: this is the disposition recom-
mended to us, in the name of the modern mind.
Good and evil are narrow measures which minds be«
hind the age persist, ridiculously enough, in wishing
256 LECTURE V.
to apply to things. ‘We no longer transform the
world to our image by bringing it to our standard ;
on the contrary, we allow ourselves to be modified and
fashioned by it." The individual goes therefore to
meet humanity without any inner rule: he gives
himself up, he abandons himself to the spectacle of
facts. But the world is large, and history is long.
Even those who spend their whole life in nothing
else than in satisfying their curiosity, cannot see and
know everything. To what then shall be directed
that vague look, equally attracted to all points for
want of any fixed rule? At what shall it stop?
It will rest on that which shines most brilliantly,
like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines
more brightly than success; nothing more solicits
the attention. The glorification of success is the first
and most infallible consequence of moral indifference.
In leaving ourselves to be fashioned by the world
instead of bringing it to our standard, we shall begin
by according our esteem to victory. This philosophy
is come to us from Germany. It was set forth on
one occasion, in France, with great éclat, by the
brilliant eloquence of a man who has rendered signal
services to philosophy, and whose entire works must
1 Revue des Deux Mondes of the 15th Feb. 1861, page 854.
CO PR
HUMANITY. 200
not be judged of by the single particular which I am
about to mention. In the year 1829, M. Cousin was
developing at the Sorbonne the meaning of these
verses of La Fontaine, which introduce the fable of
the Wolf and the Lamb:
La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure:
Je vais le montrer tout à I’ heure.
He had written as the programme of one of his
lectures: Morality of Victory. Now see how he
justified this surprising title: “I have absolved vic-
tory as necessary and useful; I now undertake to
absolve it as just in the strictest sense of the word.
Men do not usually see in success anything else than
the triumph of strength, and an honourable sympathy
draws us to the side of the vanquished; I hope
I have shewn that since there must always be a van-
quished side, and since the vanquished side is always
that which ought to be so, to accuse the conqueror is
to take part against. humanity, and to complain of
the progress of civilization. We must go farther; we
must prove that the vanquished deserved to be SO,
that the conqueror not only serves the interests of
civilization, but that he is better, more moral than
the vanquished, and that it is on that account he is
the conqueror....It is time that the philosophy of
7 S
258 LECTURE V.
history should place at its feet the declamations of
philanthropy.’”
These words are worth considering. When Bren-
nus the Gaul was having the gold weighed which he
exacted from the vanquished Romans, he threw his
heavy sword into the balance, exclaiming, Væ vietis /
Woe to the conquered! He simply meant to say
that he was the stronger, and did not foresee that
a Gaul of the nineteenth century, availing himself of
the labours of learned Germany, would demonstrate
that being the stronger he was on that very account
the more just. But we must not wander too far from
our subject.
When the spectacle of the world is freely in-
dulged in without any application to it of the measure
of the conscience, what first strikes the view is
success. It is necessary therefore to begin with
rendering glory to success by declaring victory good.
Now, mark well here the conflict of the old notions
with the so-called modern mind. From the old
point of view, victory in the issue belongs to good,
because while man is tossed in strife and tumult,
God is leading him on; but the success of good is
realised by conflict, and the victory is often reached
1 Introduction à l histoire de la philosophie. Neuvitme leçon.
HUMANITY. 259
only after a long series of defeats. There are bad
triumphs and impious successes. What is proposed
to us is, to put aside the rule of our own judgments,
and to declare that victory is good in itself. The
old point of view, that of the conscience, does not
surrender without an energetic resistance; and that
resistance shews itself in the very words of M.
Cousin. His thesis is, that all victory is just. His
intention is therefore to approve victory. Why does
he say absolve? it is the term which he employs.
Since the matter in question is to absolve victory,
it is placed on trial. It is accused of being, like
fortune and fame, at one time on the side of good
and justice, at another on the side of injustice and
evil, Which then is the party accused? Victory.
Who is the advocate? An eloquent professor. Who
finally is the accuser? Do you not see? It is the
human conscience; the conscience which protests in
the soul of the orator against the theory of which he
is enamoured, and which forces him to say absolve
when he should say glor7fy. And in fact the choice
must be made: either to glorify victory, by treading
under foot that narrow conscience which sometimes
ranks itself with Cato on the side of the vanquished ;
or to glorify conscience by impeaching the victories
which outrage it.
260 LECTURE VY.
It is not sufficient, however, to sacrifice the con-
science in order to rescue from embarrassment the
philosophy of success. It strikes on other rocks
also. ‘The same causes are by turns victorious and
vanquished, and it is hard to make men understand
that, in conflicts in which their dearest affections are
engaged, they must beforehand, and in all cases, take
part with the strongest. It will be in vain for the
philosopher to say that the Swiss of Morgarten were
right, for that they beat the Austrians; but that the
heroes of Rotenthurm were greatly in the wrong,
because, crushed without being vanquished, they
were obliged to yield to numbers, and leave at last
their country’s soil to be trodden by the stranger ;—
the children of old Switzerland will find it hard to
admit this doctrine. Even in France, in that nation
so accustomed to encircle its soldier’s brows with
laurel, this difficulty has risen up in the way of M.
Cousin. Béranger, when asked for a souvenir of
Waterloo,
Replied, with drooping eyelid, tear-bedewed:
Never that name shall sadden verse of mine.!
But philosophy would be worth little if it had not
1 Jl répondit, baissant un ceil humide :
Jamais ce nom n’ attristera mes vers.
HUMANITY. 261
at its disposal more extensive resources than those
of a song-writer. M. Cousin therefore looked the
difficulty in the face. Victory is always good. But
how shall young Frenchmen be made to hear this
with regard to that signal defeat of the armies of
France? Listen: “It is not populations which ap-
pear on battle-fields, but ideas and causes. So at
Leipzig and at Waterloo two causes came to the
encounter, the cause of paternal monarchy and that
of military democracy. Which of them carried the
day, Gentlemen? Neither the one nor the other.
Who was the conqueror and who the conquered at
Waterloo? Gentlemen, there were none conquered.
(Applause.) No, I protest that there were none: the
only conquerors were European civilization and the
map. (Unanimous and prolonged applause.)””
To make the youth of Paris applaud at the re-
membrance of Waterloo is perhaps one of the most
brilliant triumphs of eloquence which the annals of
history record. But this rhetorical success is not
a triumph of truth. There were those who were
conquered at Waterloo; and, to judge by what has
been going on for some time past in Europe, it would
seem that those who were conquered are bent on
2 Introduction aU histoire de la philosophie. Treiziéme leçon.
262 LECTURE Y.
taking their revenge. We may infer from these
facts that all triumphs are not good, since truth may
be for a moment overcome by a false philosophy
tricked out in the deceitful adornments of eloquence.
But let us admit, whatever our opinion on the
subject, that the Waterloo rock has been passed
successfully ; we have not yet pointed out the main
difficulty which rises up in the way of this system.
If victory is good, it seems at first sight that defeat
is bad. But defeat is the necessary condition of
victory; and being the condition of good, it seems
therefore that it also is good; and the mind comes
logically to this conclusion: “Victory is good —
defeat is good, since it is the condition of victory ;—
all is good.” We set out with the glorification of
victory, and, lo! we are arrived at the glorification of
fact. All that is, has the right to be; in the eyes of
the modern savant whatever is, is right. M. Cousin
laid down the principle; he laid it down in a general
manner in his philosophical eclecticism, of which it
was easy to make use, as has in fact been done, in
a sense contrary to his real intentions. Our young
critics, wasting an inheritance of which they do not
appear always to recognize the origin, are doing no-
thing else, very often, than catching as they die away
the last vibrations of that surpassing eloquence.
HUMANITY. 263
In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is
right and good: such is the axiom for which the
labours of more than one modern historian had pre-
pared us. We are to seek for the relation of facts
one to another, that is to explain; and all that we
explain, we must approve. Let us follow out this
thought in a few examples.
It was necessary that Louis XVI should be be-
headed and the guillotine permanently set up, in
order to manifest the result of the disorders of Louis
XIV, of the shameful excesses of Louis XV, and of
the licentious immorality of French society. It was
necessary for Louis XIV to be an adulterer, Louis
XV a debauchee, the clergy corrupt, and the nobility
depraved, to bring about the shocks of the revolution.
The facts mutually correspond; I explain, and I
approve. In the eyes of the modern savant every-
thing is right.
It was necessary that Buonaparte should throw the
Corps législatif out of window, that he should let
loose his armies upon Europe, and leave thousands
of dead bodies in the snows of Russia, in order to
end the revolution, and extinguish the restless ardour
of the French. It needed the massacres of Sep-
tember, the gloomy days of the Terror, the anarchy
264 LECTURE Y.
of the period of the Directory, to throw dismayed
France into the arms of the crowned soldier who was
to carry to so high a pitch her glory and her in-
fluence. The facts correspond; I explain, and I ap-
prove. In the eyes of the modern savant, everything
is right.
I consider the character of Nero. I take him at
the commencement of his reign, when, being forced
to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, he exclaimed
—“ Would I were unable to write!” And then
again I regard him after he has perpetrated acts such
that to apply his name in future ages to the cruellest
of tyrants shall appear to them a cruel injury. What
has taken place in the interval? The development
of his natural character, Agrippina, Narcissus.... I
understand the play of all the springs which have
made a monster. As I am out of his clutches, my
detestation vanishes with the danger. “TI taste the
very deep and very pure pleasure of seeing a mind
act according to a definite law.” I understand, I ex-
plain, [ approve. In the eyes of the modern savant,
everything is right.
It would be impossible, Gentlemen, to pursue this
reasoning to its extreme limits without offending
against the commonest decency. We should have to
HUMANITY. 265
descend into blood and mire, continuing to declare
the while that everything is right. I pause therefore,
and leave the rest to your imaginations. Open the
most dismal pages of history. Choose out the acts
which inspire the most vivid horror and disgust, the
blackest examples of ingratitude, the meanest in-
stances of cowardice, the cases of most refined cruelty,
and the most hideous debaucheries : thence let your
thoughts pass to facts which bedew the eyelid with
the tear of tenderest emotion, to the cases of most
heroic self-devotion, to sacrifices the most humble in
their greatness; and then try to apply the rule of the
modern savant, and to say that all this is equally
right and good, and that whatever is has the right to
be. Open the book of your own heart. Think of
one of those base temptations which assault the best
of us, one of those thoughts which raise a blush in
solitude ; then think of the best, the purest, the most
disinterested of the feelings which have ever been
given to your soul; and try again to apply the rule
of the modern savant, and to affirm that all this is
equally good, and that all that is has the right to be.
I know very well that in general these doctrines are
applied to things looked at in the mass, and to the
far-off past of history; but this is a poor subterfuge
266 LECTURE Y.
for the defenders of these monstrous theses. Things
viewed in the mass are only the assemblage of things
viewed in detail. If the distinction of good and evil
do not exist for general facts, how should it exist for
particular facts? And how can we apply to the past
a rule which we refuse to apply to the present, seeing
that the present is nothing else than the past of the
future, and that the facts of our own time are matter
for history to our posterity? These, I repeat, are but
vain subterfuges. If humanity is always adorable, it
is so in the faults of the meanest of men as in the
splendid sins of the magnates of the earth; it is so
to-day as it was thirty centuries ago; the god in
growing old does not cease to be the same.
When the mind is engaged in these pernicious
ways, the spring of the moral life is broken, and the
practical consequence is not long in appearing. ‘The
philosophers of success, having become the philo-
sophers of the fait accompli, accept all and endure
all; but in another sense than that in which charity
accepts all, that it may transform all by the power of
love. It is the morality of Philinte:
I take men quietly, and as they are:
And what they do I train my soul to bear.!
1 Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils sont,
J’ accoutume mon âme à souffrir ce qu’ ils font.
HUMANITY. 267
These instructions are not very necessary. There
will always be people enough found ready to applaud
victory, and to fall in with the fact accompli. But is
it not sad to see men of mind, men of heart too, per-
haps, making themselves the theorists of baseness and
the philosophers of cowardice ?
There is still more to be said. From the glorifica-
tion of success the mind passes necessarily, as we
have just seen, to the glorification alike of all that is.
It would appear at first sight that the adept in the
doctrine must find himself in a condition of indif-
ference with regard to what prejudiced men continue
to call good and evil. This indifference however is
only apparent. When it is granted that nothing is
evil, the part of good disappears in the end. There
had been formed in ancient Rome, under pretence of
religion, a secret society, which had as its fundamen-
tal dogma the aphorism that nothing is evil The
members of the society did not practise good and evil,
it appears, with equal indifference, for the magistrates
of the republic took alarm, and smothered, by a free
employment of death and imprisonment, a focus of
murders, violations, false witness, and forged sig-
1 Nihil nefas ducere, hane summam inter eos religionem esse.
(Tit, Liy. lib. xxxix.'c. 13.)
268 LECTURE Y.
natures. This fact reveals, with ominous clearness,
a movement of thought on the nature of which it is
easy to speculate.
When man casts a vague glance over the world,
extinguishing the while the inner light of conscience ;
when he resigns himself to the things he contemplates
without applying to them any standard, what first
strikes his attention, as we have said before, is
success. And what next? Scandal. Nothing comes
more into view than scandal. In a vast city, thou-
sands of young men gain their livelihood laboriously,
and devote themselves to the good of their families:
no one speaks of them. A libertine loses other men’s
money at play, and blows out his brains: all the city
knows it. Honest women live in retirement; the
king’s mistresses form the subject of general conversa-
tion. Crime and baseness hide themselves; but up
to the limits of what the world calls infamy, evil
delights in putting itself forward, because éclat and
noise supply the means of deadening the conscience ;
while, as regards the grand instincts of charity, it has
been well said that—“ the obscure acts of devotedness
are the most magnificent.” The poor and wretched
shed tears in obscurity over benefits done secretly,
while folly loves to display its glittering spangles,
HUMANITY. 269
and shakes its bells in the public squares. There is
in each one of us more evil than we think; but there
is in the world more good than is commonly known.
There are concealed virtues which only shew them-
selves to the eye of the faith which looks for them,
and of the attention wnich discovers them. Bethink
you, especially, how the laws of morality set at de-
fiance appear again triumphant in the sorrows of
repentance; those laws have their hour, and that
hour is usually a silent one. Let a poet of genius
defile his works by the impure traces of a life spent
in dissipation, and his brow shall shine in the sight
of all with the twofold splendour of success and of
scandal. But if, stretched on a bed of pain, he
renders a tardy but sincere homage to the law which
he has violated, to the truth which he has ignored,
his voice will often be confined to the sick chamber ;
his companions in debauchery and infidelity will
mount guard perhaps around his dwelling, in order
to prevent the public from learning that their friend
is a defaulter. The ball and the theatre make a noise
and attract observation ; but men turn their eyes from
hospitals, those abodes in which, in the silence of
sickness, or amidst the dull cries of pain, there ger-
minate so many seeds of immortality. Yes, Sirs,
270 LECTURE V.
evil is more apparent than good. The violations of
the divine law have more éclat than penitence. And
what is the consequence? The man who abandons
himself to the spectacle of the world, and who takes
that spectacle for the rule of his thoughts, will see the
world under a false aspect, and, in his estimation,
evil will have more advantage over good than it has
in reality. It will appear to him altogether dominant,
and will thenceforward become his rule. From the
glorification of success, we passed to the glorification
of fact; from the glorification of fact, we arrive at last
at the glorification of evil. We have seen how is
illustrated the morality of victory. In the same
current of ideas, a book famous now-a-days, and
quite full of outrages to the conscience, supplies us
with illustrations of the morality of falsehood. M.
Ernest Renan, in his explanation of Christianity, has
applied, point after point, the theory which I have
just set forth to you. In order to estimate the grand
movements of the human mind, he frees himself from
the vulgar prejudices which make up the ordinary
morals, and abandons himself to the impression of
the spectacle which he contemplates. Jesus had a
success without parallel. This success was based on
charlatanism ; and it is habitually so. To lead the
HUMANITY. 27
nations by deceiving them is the lesson of history,
and the good rule to follow. We find falsehood
fortunate as matter of fact, we explain it, we ap-
prove it.
Whither then are we bound, under the guidance
of modern science? An irresistible current is draw-
ing us on, and causing us to leave the morals of
Philinthe in our rear. We are coming to those
which Racine has engraven in immortal traits in
the person of Mathan. When once conscience is put
aside, all means are good in order to sueceed ; and
the experience of the world teaches us that, to suc-
ceed, the worst means are often the best.
It is not only at the theatre that such lessons are
received; they come out but too commonly from the
ordinary dealings of life. Set a young man face to
face with the world as it exhibits itself, and tell him
to give himself up to what he sees, to let himself be
fashioned by life. He will soon come to know that
strict probity is a virtue of the olden times, chastity
a fantastic excellence, and conscientious scruples an
honourable simplicity. Evil will become in his
eyes the ordinary rule of life. When the socialist
Proudhon wrote that celebrated sentence, “ Property
is robbery,” there arose an immense outery. Ought
DATES LECTURE Y.
there not to arise a louder outcry around a theory
which arrives by a fatal necessity at this consequence:
“ Evil is good”?
But do these doctrines exercise any influence for
the perversion of public morals? Much; their in-
fluence is disastrous. And do the men who profess
them believe them, taking the word ‘believe’ in its
real and deep meaning? No; they often do mischief
which they do not mean to do, and do not see that
they do. They are intoxicated with a bad philosophy,
and intoxication renders blind. It is easy to prove
that these optimists, who in theory find that every-
thing is right, are perpetually contradicting them-
selves in practice. Address yourselves to one of
them, and say to him: “ Your doctrine is big with
immorality. You do not yourself believe it; and
when you pretend to believe it, you lie.” This man
who tolerates everything will not tolerate your free-
dom of speech. He will get angry, and, according to
the old doctrines, he will have the right to be so, for
insult is an evil. Then say to him: “ Here you are,
it seems to me, in contradiction with your system.
Everything is right; the vivacity of my speech there-
fore is good. All that is has the right to be; my
indignation is therefore a legitimate fact, and it ap-
re ee aa
HUMANITY. ye
pears to me that yours cannot be so unless you allow
(an admission which would be contrary to your
system) that mine is not so.” If you have to do
with a sensible man, he will begin to laugh. If you
have met with a blockhead, he will be more angry
than ever. This contradiction comes out in every
page, and in a more serious manner, in the writings
of our optimists. One cannot read them with atten-
tion, without meeting incessantly with the protest of
their moral nature against the despotism of a false
mode of reasoning. The man is at every moment
making himself heard, the man who has a heart,
a conscience, a reason, and who contradicts the phi-
losopher without being aware of it. Contradictions
these, honourable to the writer, but dangerous for the
reader, because they serve to invest with brilliant
colours doctrines which in themselves are hideous.
No, Gentlemen, it is impossible to succeed in
adoring humanity, preserving the while the least
consistency of reasoning. In vain men wish to accept
everything, to tolerate everything; in vain they wish
to impose silence on the inner voice: that voice rebels
against the outrage, and its revolt declares itself in
the most manifest contradictions. The Humanity-
God is divided, and the affirmation—“ Everything is
Ak
274 LECTURE Y.
right”—will continue false as long as there shall be
upon the earth a single conscience unsilenced, as long
as there shall be in a single heart
in that mighty hate
Which in pure souls vice ever must create ;!
that hatred which is nothing else than the indirect
manifestation of the sacred love of goodness.
The doctrine that all is equally good, equally
divine, in the development of humanity, explains no-
thing, because humanity, torn by a profound struggle,
condemns its own acts, and protests against its de-
gradations. It cries aloud to itself that there are
principles above facts, a moral law superior to the
acts of the will; and all the petty clamours of a
deceitful and deceived philosophy cannot stifle that
clear voice. Not only do these doctrines explain no-
thing, they do not even succeed in expressing them-
selves; language fails them. “Everything is right
and good.” What will these words mean, from the
time there is no longer any rule of right? How is
it possible to approve, when we have no power to
blame? The idea of good implies the idea of evil;
the opposition of good and evil supposes a standard
ee eS eee Ces haines vigoureuses
Que doit donner le vice aux âmes vertueuses.
HUMANITY. 275
applied to things, a law superior to fact. He who
approves of everything may just as well despise
everything. But contempt itself has no longer any
meaning, if esteem is a word void of signification,
We must say simply that all is as it is, and abandon
those terms of speech which conscience has stamped
with its own superscription. We must purify the
dictionary, and consign to the history of obsolete
expressions such terms as good, evil, esteem, con-
tempt, vice, virtue, honour, infamy, and the like.
The doctrine which, to be consistent with itself,
ought to reduce us to a kind of stupid indifference,
does such violence to human nature that its advocates
are incapable of enunciating it without contradicting
themselves by the very words they make use of.
All these extravagances are the inevitable con-
sequence of the adoration of humanity. The Human-
ity-God has no rule superior to itself Whatever it
does must be put on record merely, and not judged:
it is the immolation of the conscience, But on what
altar shall we stretch this great victim? Shall we
sacrifice it to pure reason, to reason disengaged from
all prejudice? Allow me to claim your attention yet
a few moments longer,
The Humanity-God in all its acts escapes the
276 LECTURE V.
judgment of the conscience. What measure shall
we be able to apply to its thoughts? None. The
God which cannot do evil, cannot be mistaken either.
For the modern savant all is true, for exactly the
same reason that all is right. The human mind
unfolds itself in all directions; all these unfoldings
are legitimate; all are to be accepted equally by
a mind truly emancipated. Furnished with this rule,
I make progress in the history of philosophy. The
Greek Democritus affirms that the universe is only an
infinite number of atoms moving as chance directs in
the immensity of space: I record with veneration this
unfolding of the human mind. The Greek Plato
affirms that truth, beauty, good, like three eternal
rays, penetrate the universe and constitute the only
veritable realities: I record with equal veneration
this other unfolding of the human mind. I pass to
modern times. Descartes tells me that thought is
the essence of man, and that reason alone is the
organ of truth. Helvetius tells me that man is a
mass of organised matter which receives its ideas
only from the senses. These two theses are equally
legitimate, and I admit them both. I quit now phi-
losophers by profession to address myself to those
literary journalists who deal out philosophy in crumbs
Seo DT
HUMANITY. DT
for the use of feuilletons and reviews. There I find
all possible notions in the most astounding of jumbles.
‘The villain has his apologist; the good man his
calumniator... Marriage is honourable, so is adultery.
Order is preached up, so is riot, so is assassination,
77 TI contemplate with a calm
provided it be politic.
satisfaction, with a very deep and very pure pleasure,
these various unfoldings of the human mind; I place
them all, with the same feelings of devotion, in the
pantheon of the intelligence. I cannot do otherwise,
inasmuch as there is no rule of truth superior to the
thoughts of men, and because the human mind is the
supreme, universal, and infallible intelligence.
But will our mind be able to entertain together
two directly opposite assertions? Will contradiction
no longer be the sign of error? We must come to
this; we must acknowledge that the modern mind,
breaking with superannuated traditions, has pro-
claimed the principle ‘ that one assertion is not more
true than an opposite assertion.” We must proclaim
that the thinker has not to disquiet himself “about
the real contradictions into which he may fall; and
that a true philosopher has absolutely nothing to do
1 Mélanges de Tüpffer. De la mauvaise presse considerée comme
excellente.
278 LECTURE YV.
‘with consistency.”* The fear of self-contradiction
may be excused in Aristotle and Plato, in St. Anselm
and St. Thomas, in Descartes and Leibnitz. These
writers were still wrapped in the swaddling-clothes of
old errors; the light of the nineteenth century had
not shone upon their cradles; but the epoch of en-
franchisement is come. These things, Gentlemen,
are printed now-a-days; they are printed at Paris,
one of the metropolises of thought!
Mark well whereabouts we are. We must admit
—what? that allis true. But, if all is true, there is
nothing true, just as if all is good, there is nothing
good. ‘There are thoughts in men’s heads; to make
history of them is an agreeable pastime; but there is
no truth. We must not say that two contradictory
propositions are equally true; that would be to make
use of the old notion of truth; we must say that they
are, and that is all about it. The night is approach-
ing, the sun of intelligence is sinking towards the
horizon, and thick vapours are obscuring its setting.
But wait!
It the Humanity-God is always right, it must be
* Revue des Deux Mondes of 15 Feb. 1861, page 854.—Etudes
critiques sur la littérature contemporaine, par Edmond Scherer,
page x. et xi,
‘mm —*
D PPT
HUMANITY. 279
that two contradictory propositions can be true at the
same time, since contradictions abound in the history
of human thoughts. If two contradictory propositions
can be true, there is no more truth. What then is
our reason, of which truth is the object? We are
seized with giddiness. Might not everything in the
world be illusion? and myself—? Listen to a voice
which reaches us, across the ages, from the countries
crowned by the Himalayas. “ Nothing exists....
By the study of first principles, one acquires this
knowledge, absolute, incontestable, comprehensible to
the intelligence alone: I neither am, nor does any-
thing which is mine, nor do I myself, exist.”’ What
is there beneath these strange lines? The feeling of
giddiness, which seeks to steady itself by language.
Here is now the modern echo of these ancient words.
One of those writers who accept all, in the hope of
understanding all, describes himself as having come
at last to be aware that he is ‘only one of the most
fugitive illusions in the bosom of the infinite illusion.”
One of his colleagues expresses himself on this sub-
ject as follows: “Is this the last word of all?—And
1 Sa’nkya—ka’rika’, 61 and 64. The text 61 in which occur the
words ‘‘ Nothing exists” is hard to understand, but there appears to
be no doubt of the meaning of No. 64. Non sum, non est meum, nec
sum ego.
280 LECTURE V.
why not?—The illusion which knows itself—is it in
fact an illusion? Does it not in some sort triumph
over itself? Does it not attain to the sovereign
reality, that of the thought which thinks itself, that
of the dream which knows itself a dream, that of
nothingness which ceases to be so, in order to re-
cognise itself and to assert itself?! We are gone
back to ancient India. You will remark here three
stages of thought. The fugitive illusion is man.
The infinite illusion is the universe. The universal
principle of the appearances which compose the uni-
verse is nothingness. Here is the explanation of the
universe! Nothingness takes life; nothingness takes
life only to know itself to be nothingness; and the
nothingness which says to itself, “I am nothing-
ness,” is the reason of existence of all that is. I said
just now that the sun was declining to the horizon.
Now the last glimmer of twilight has disappeared ;
night has closed in—a dark and starless night, Yes,
Sirs, but there is never on the earth a night so dark
as to warrant us in despairing of the return of the
dawn. Ifthe modern mind is such as it is described
1 Etudes critiques sur la littérature contemporaine, par Edmond
Scherer.—M. Sainte-Beuve, p. 354.
en
HUMANITY. 281
to us, it has lost all the rays of light; but the sun is
not dead.
The doctrine of non-existence and of illusion is
entirely incomprehensible, in the sense in which to
comprehend signifies to have a clear idea, and one
capable of being directly apprehended. But, if one
follows the chain of ideas as logically unrolled, in the
way that a mathematician follows the transformations
of an algebraical formula, without considering its real
contents, it is easy to account for the origin of this
theory. Ifthe human mind has no rule superior to
itself, if it is the absolute mind, God, all its thoughts
are equally true, since we cannot point out error
without having recourse to a rule of truth. If all
doctrines are equally true, propositions directly and
absolutely contradictory are equally true. If all is
true, there is no truth; for truth is not conceived
except in opposition to at least possible error. If
there is no truth, the human reason, which seeks
truth by a natural impulse belonging to its very
essence, as the magnetised needle seeks the pole,—
reason, I say, is a chimera. The truth which reason
seeks is an exact relation of human thought to the
reality of the world. If the search for this relation
is chimerical, the two terms, mind, and the world,
282 LECTURE V.
may be illusions. A fugitive illusion in presence of
an infinite illusion: there is all. You see that these
thoughts hang together with rigorous precision. The
darkness is becoming visible to us, or, in other
words, we are acquiring a perfect understanding of
the origin and developments of the absurdity. Put
God aside, the law of our will, the warrant of our
thought; deify human nature; and a fatal current
will run you aground twice over—on the shores of
moral absurdity, and on those of intellectual ab-
surdity. These sad shipwrecks are set before our
eyes in striking examples; it has been easy to in-
dicate their cause.
The consideration of the beautiful would give
occasion to analogous observations. The human
mind becoming the object of our adoration, we must
give up judging it in every particular, and suppress
the rules of the ideal in art, as those of morals in the
conduct, and truth in the intellect. We must form
a system of esthetics which accepts all, and finds
equally legitimate whatever affords recreation to the
Humanity-God, in the great variety of its tastes.
Then high aspirations are extinguished, the beautiful
gives place to the agreeable; and since the ugly and
misshapen please a vicious taste, room must be made
HUMANITY. 283
for the ugly in the Pantheon of beauty. Art de-
spoiled of its crown becomes the sad, and often the
ignoble slave of the tastes and caprices of the public.
I do not insist further. The pretension of the wor-
shippers of humanity is to make their conscience
wide enough to accept all, and to have their intellect
broad enough to understand all. They explain all,
except these three small particulars—the conscience,
the heart, and the reason. Goodness and truth
avenge themselves in the end for the long contempt
cast upon them; and the first punishment those
suffer who accept all, in the hope of understanding
all, is no longer to understand what constitutes the
life of humanity.
Let us not, Sirs, be setting up altars to the
human mind; for an adulterous incense stupefies it,
and ends by destroying it. Man is great, he is
sublime, with immortal hope in his heart, and the
divine aureole around his brow; but that he may
preserve his greatness, let us leave him in his proper
place. Let us leave to him the struggles which
make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries
which does him honour, the tears shed over his faults
which are the most unexceptionable testimony to his
dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict,
284 LECTURE V.
and hope; but let us not deify him; for, no sooner
shall he have said, “I am God,” than, deprived that
instant of all his blessings, he shall find himself
naked and spoiled. |
Before they deified man, the pagans at least trans-
figured him by placing him in Olympus. At this
day, it is humanity as it is upon earth that is pro-
posed to our adoration, humanity with its profound
miseries and its fearful defilements. They seek to
throw a veil over the mad audacity of this attempt,
by telling us of the progress which is to bring about,
by little and little, the realisation of our divinity,
But, alas! our history is long already, and no reason-
able induction justifies the vague hopes of heated
imaginations. Great progress is being effected, but
none which gives any promise that the profound
needs of our nature can ever be satisfied in this life.
Charity has appeared on the earth; but there are
still poor amongst us, and it seems that there always
will be. A breath of justice and humanity has
penetrated social institutions; still politics have not
become the domain of perfect truth and of absolute
justice, and there seems small likelihood that they
ever will. Industry has given birth to marvels; we
devour space in these days, but we shall never go so
—— -—
HUMANITY. 285
fast that suffering and death will not succeed in
overtaking us. The great sources of grief are not
dried up; the song of our poets causes still the
chords of sorrow to vibrate as in the days of yore.
Progress is being accomplished, sure witness of a
beneficent Hand which is guiding humanity in its
destinies; but everything tells us that the soil of
our planet will be always steeped in tears, that the
atmosphere which envelopes us will always resound
with the vibrations of sorrow. ar as our view can
stretch itself, we foresee a suffering humanity, which
will not be able to find peace, joy, and hope, except
in the expectation of new heavens and a new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness.
If there be no God above humanity, no eternity
above time, no divine world higher than our present
place of sojourn ; if our profoundest desires are to be
for ever deceived; if the cries we raise to heaven
are never to be heard; if all our hope is a future in
which we shall be no more; if humanity as we know
it is the perfection of the universe; if all this is SO,
then indeed the answer to the universal enigma is
illusion and falsehood. Then, before the monster of
destiny which brings us into being only to destroy
us, which creates in our breast the desire of happiness
286 LECTURE Y.
only to deride our miseries; in view of that starry
vault which speaks to us of the infinite, while yet
there is no infinite; in presence of that lying nature
which adorns itself with a thousand symbols of im-
mortality, while yet there is no immortality ; in
presence of all these deceptions, man may be allowed
to curse the day of his birth, or to abandon himself to
the intoxication of thoughtless pleasure. But, a secret
instinct tells us that wretchedness is a disorder, and
thoughtless pleasure a degradation. Let us have
confidence in this deep utterance of our nature.
Good, truth, beauty descend as rays of streaming
light into the shadows of our existence; let us follow
them with the eye of faith to the divine focus from
whence they proceed. All is fleeting, all is disap-
pearing incessantly beneath our steps; but our soul
is not staggered at this swift lapse of all things, only
because she carries in herself the pledges of a change-
less eternity. ‘The ephemeral spectator of an eternal
spectacle, man raises for a moment his eyes to heaven,
and closes them again for ever; but during the
fleeting instant which is granted to him, from all
points of the sky and from the bounds of the uni-
verse, sets forth from every world a consoling ray
and strikes his upward gaze, announcing to him that
HUMANITY. 287
between that measureless space and himself there
exists a close relation, and that he is allied to
eternity.”
And are these sublime pressentiments only dreams
after all? Dreams! Know you not that our dreams
create nothing, and that they are never anything else
than confused reminiscences and fantastic combina-
tions of the realities of our waking consciousness ?
What then is that mysterious waking during which
we have seen the eternal, the infinite, the perfection
of goodness, the fulness of joy, all those sublime
images which come to haunt our spirit during the
dream of life? Recollections of our origin! fore-
shadowings of our destinies! While then all below
is transitory, and is escaping from us in a ceaseless
flight, let us abandon ourselves without fear to these
instincts of the soul—
As a bird, if it light on a sprig too slight
The feathery freight to bear,
Yet, conscious of wings, tosses fearless, and sings,
Then drops—on the buoyant air.?
1 Xavier de Maistre.
* Soyons comme I’ oiseau posé pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop fréles,
Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant,
Sachant qu’ il a des ailes.
Victor HuGo.
LECTURE VI.
THE CREATOR.
(At Geneva, 4th Dec. 1863.—At Lausanne, 27th Jan. 1864.)
GENTLEMEN,
Man is not a simple product of nature;
in vain does he labour to degrade himself by desiring
to find the explanation of his spiritual being in matter
brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the
summit and principle of the universe; in vain does
he labour to deify himself. He is great only by
reason of the divine rays which inform his heart,
his conscience, and his reason. From the moment
that he believes himself to be the source of light, he
passes into night. When thought has risen from
nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its
impetus be not strong enough to carry it on to God.
These assertions do but translate the great facts of
man’s intellectual history. “There is no nation so
PAR, — >
CET PTE
THE CREATOR. 289
barbarous,” said Cicero," “there are no men so savage
as not to have some tincture of religion. Many there
are who form false notions of the gods;... but all
admit the existence of a divine power and nature... .
Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all
nations is to be reckoned a law of nature.” No dis-
covery has diminished the value of these words of the
Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of
human society, there remains always some vestige
of the religious sentiment. The knowledge of the
Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition ;
but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world
is found wherever there are men.
Cicero brings forward this universal consent as
a very strong proof of the existence of the gods.
The supporters of atheism dispute the value of this
argument. ‘They say: ‘General opinion proves no-
thing. How many fabulous legends have been set
up by the common belief into historic verities! All
mankind believed for a long time that the sun re-
volved about the earth. Truth makes way in the
! Firmissimum hoc afferri videtur, cur deos esse credamus, quod
nulla gens tam fera, nemo omnium tam sit immanis, cujus mentem
non imbuerit deorum opinio. Multi de diis prava sentiunt, id enim
vitioso more eftici solet; omnes tamen esse vim et naturam divinam
arbitrantur.... Omni autem in re consentio omnium gentium, lex
nature putanda est.— Tuseul. i. 18.
18)
290 LECTURE VI.
world only by contradicting opinions generally re- |
ceived. The faith of the greater number is rather
a mark of error than a sign of truth.” ‘This objection
rests upon a confusion of ideas. Humanity has no
testimony to render upon scientific questions, the
solution of which is reserved for patient study; but
humanity bears witness to its own nature. The uni-
versality of religion proves that the search after the
divine is, as said the Roman orator, a law of nature.
When therefore we rise from matter to man, and from
man to God, we are not going in an arbitrary road,
but are advancing according to the law of nature
ascertained by the testimony of humanity. It needs
a mind at once very daring and very frivolous not to
feel the importance of this consideration.
In our days atheism is being revived. In going
over in your memory the symptoms of this revival,
as we have pointed them out to you, you will per-
ceive that the direct and primitive negation of God
is comparatively rare; but that what is frequently
attempted is, if I may venture so to speak, to effect
the subtraction of God. Any religious theory what+
ever is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such
remarks as these: “ How is it that real sciences are
formed? By observation on the one hand, and by
, . _
SN Rs ee a ES -
el
THE CREATOR. 291
reasoning on the other. By observation, and reason-
ing applied to observation, we obtain the science of
nature and the science of humanity. But do we
wish to rise above nature and humanity? We fail
of all basis of observation; and reason works in
a vacuum. There is therefore no possible way of
reaching to God. Is God an object of experience?
No. Can God be demonstrated à prior? by syllo-
gisms? No. The idea of God therefore cannot be
established, as answering to a reality, either by the
way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it is
a mere hypothesis. We do not, however, it is added, |
in our view of the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid !) to
exclude the sentiment of the Divine from the soul, nor
the word God from fine poetry. We accept religious
thoughts as dreams full of charm. But is it a ques-
tion of reality? then God is an hypothesis, and hypo-
thesis has no admission into the science of realities.”
These ideas place those who accept them in a
position which is not without its advantages. When
a man of practical mind says with a smile, ‘Do you
happen to believe in God?” one may reply to him,
smiling in turn, “Have I said that God is a real
Being?” And if a religious man asks, “Are you
falling then into atheism?” one may assume an in-
292 LECTURE VI.
dignant tone, and say: “We have never denied
God: whoever says we have is a slanderer!” So
God remains, for the necessities of poetry and art.
But as we cannot know either what He is, or whether
He is, real life goes on in complete and entire inde-
pendence of Him. The taking up of this position
with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a
literary artifice. In other cases it is seriously done.
There are certain natures of extreme delicacy, which,
touched by the breath of modern scepticism, have lost
all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an
instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in
the absence of all belief, and they do not deny that
which they believe no longer. . Such a mind is in an
exceptional position. Is it yours? and would you
preserve it? Keep a solitary path, and do not seek
to communicate your ideas to others. Contact with
the public, and such an unfolding even of your own
thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work
of proselytism, would place you under the empire of
those laws which govern the human mind in these
matters. Now what are these laws? A poet has
already answered for us this question:
En présence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.!
1 In presence of Heaven, we must believe or deny. See Lecture III,
THE CREATOR. 293
A famous writer expands the same thought as
follows: “ Doubt about things which it highly con-
cerns us to know,” says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘1s
a condition which does too great violence to the
human mind; nor does it long bear up against it,
but in spite of itself comes to a decision one way
or another, and likes better to be mistaken than to
believe nothing.” Such is the law. We have met
with the pretension to maintain the mind independent
of God, without either denying or asserting His ex-
istence, and we have seen how completely this pre-
tension fails in the presence of facts. ‘The sceptic
makes vain efforts to continue in a state of doubt,
but the ground fails him, and he slips into negation:
he affirms that humanity has been mistaken, and that
God is not. But neither does this negation succeed
any the more in keeping its ground; it strikes too
violently against all the instincts of our nature. The
human mind is under an imperious necessity to
worship something; if God fails it, it sets itself to
adore nature or humanity; atheism is transformed
into idolatry. Recollect the destinies of the critical
school and of the positive philosophy! Let us now
examine, with serious attention, that attempt to
' Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard.
294 LECTURE VI.
eliminate God which is the starting-point in this
course along which the mind is hurried so fatally.
God is not, I grant, an object of experience. I
grant it at least in this sense, that God is not an
object of sensible experience. The experience of
God (if I may be allowed the expression), the feeling
of His action upon the soul, is not a phenomenon
open to the observation of all, and apart from de-
termined spiritual conditions. In order to be sensible
of the action of God, we must draw near to Him. In
order to draw near to Him, we must, if not believe
with firm faith in His existence, at least not deny
Him. The captives of Plato’s cavern can have no
experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery
on those who speak to them of the sun. I grant
again that God cannot possibly be the object of a
demonstration such as the science of geometry re-
quires; I grant it fully, I have already said so.
Every man who reasons, affirms God in one sense ;
and the foundation of all reasoning cannot be the
conclusion of a demonstration. God therefore, in the
view of science formed according to our ordinary
methods, is, I grant, an hypothesis. And here,
Gentlemen, allow me a passing word of explanation.
When I say that God is an hypothesis, I run the
THE CREATOR. 295
risk of exciting, in many of you, feelings of, astonish-
ment not unmixed with pain. But I must beg you
to remember the nature of these lectures. We are
here far from the calm retirement of the sanctuary,
and from such words of solemn exhortation as flow
from the lips of the religious teacher. I have intro-
duced you to the ardent conflicts of contemporary
thought, and into the midst of the clamours of the
schools. The soul which is seeking to hold com-
munion with God, and so from their fountain-head
to be filled with strength and joy, has something
better to do than to be listening to such discourses
as these. Solitude, prayer, a calm activity pursued
under the guidance of the conscience,—these are the
best paths for such a soul, and the discussions in
which we are now engaged are not perhaps altogether
free from danger for one who has remained hitherto
undisturbed in the first simplicity of his faith. But
we are not masters of our own ways, and the circum-
stances of the present times impose upon us special
duties. The barriers which separate the school and
the world are everywhere thrown down. Everywhere
shreds of philosophy, and very often of bad philo-
sophy,—scattered fragments of theological science,
and very often of a deplorable theological science,—
296 LECTURE VI.
are Insinyating themselves into the current literature.
There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a
political journal, which does not speak on occasion,
or without occasion, of the problems relating to our
eternal interests. The most sacred beliefs are attacked
every day in the organs of public opinion. At such
a juncture, can men who preserve faith in their own
soul remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut
up in the narrow limits of the schools? Assuredly
not. We must descend to the common ground, and
fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought.
For this purpose it is necessary to make use of terms
which may alarm some consciences, and to state ques-
tions which run the risk of startling sincerely religious
persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to com-
bat the adversaries on their own ground; and because
it is thus only that, while we startle a few, we can
prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a
passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in
their channel, shall be found to have left not so much
as a trace of their passage upon the Rock of Ages,
I now therefore resume my course of argument.
God is neither an object of experience, nor yet of
demonstration properly so called. In the view of
science, as it is commonly understood, of science
THE CREATOR. 297
which follows out the chain of its deductions, with-
out giving attention to the very foundations of all
the work of the reason, —God, that chief of all re-
alities for a believing heart, that experience of every
hour, that evidence superior to all proof, God is an
hypothesis. I grant it. Hence it is inferred that
God has no place in science, for that hypothesis has
no place in a science worthy of the name. But this
I deny; and in support of this denial I proceed to
shew that the hypothesis which it is pretended to
get quit of, is the generating principle of all human
knowledge.
Whence does science proceed? Does it result
from mere experience? No. What does experience
teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience,
separated from all element of reason, only reveals to
us our own sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher,
Hume, has proved to demonstration,—a demonstra-
tion which constitutes his glory. It is easy, without
having even a smattering of philosophy, to under-
stand quite well that science is formed by thought.
Now, if we did not possess the faculty of thinking,
it would not be given to us by experience. Thought
does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a
living body not possessed of reason: its eye will re-
298 LECTURE VI.
flect objects like a mirror, its tympanum will vibrate
to the undulations of the air; but it will have no
thoughts, and will know nothing.
Is science formed by pure reason? No. No one
can say what pure reason is, for the exercise of our
thought is connected indissolubly with experience.
But, without pausing at this consideration, let us
ask what pure reason can do, if deprived of all
objects of experience? One thing only, namely,
take cognizance of itself. Now the reason, in taking
cognizance of itself, only creates logic, that is to
say, the theory of the laws of knowledge. Some
philosophers, to be sure, have undertaken to prove
that reason, by dint of self-contemplation, might
arrive at the knowledge of all things. They have
maintained that all the secrets of the universe are
contained in our thought, and that by just reasoning
one may form the science of astronomy without look-
ing at the stars, and write the history of the human
race without taking the trouble to search laboriously
into the annals of the past. But these attempts to
construct facts, instead of observing them, have suc-
ceeded too ill to merit very serious attention.
Science does not proceed therefore either from
pure experience or from pure reason; whence does
THE CREATOR. 299
it really come? From the encounter of experience
and of reason. Man observes, and he ascertains that
facts are governed according to intelligent design.
He creates mathematics, and discovers that the phe-
nomena of the heavens and the earth are ruled accord-
ing to the laws of the calculus. His thought meets
in the facts with traces of a thought similar to his
own. If any one of you doubts this, I once more
appeal to the almanac. Science, then, has birth only
from a meeting of experience with reason; how is
this meeting effected? The whole question of the
origin of science is here. This encounter is not
necessary; it does not result simply from persever-
ance in observation. The encounter of mind and of
facts constitutes a discovery. The thought which
has governed nature may remain long veiled from
our mind. All at once perhaps the veil is lifted, and
the thought of man meets and recognises itself in the
phenomena which it is contemplating. We encounter
in this case the exercise of a special faculty, which is
neither the faculty of observing nor the faculty of
reasoning, but the faculty of discovering. When a
man possesses it to a certain degree, we call him
a man of genius. Genius, or the faculty of discover-
ing, is the generating principle of science. Still,
300 LECTURE VI.
strange to say, this principle is scarcely pointed out
by a great number of logicians. They develope at
length the rules of observation and the rules of
reasoning ; and it seems that, in their idea, the con-
junction of reason and experience is effected all alone
and of necessity. I taught logic myself in this way
for twenty years, until one day, thinking better upon
the subject, I was obliged to say to myself (forgive
me this rather trivial quotation) :
Tu n’avais oublié qu’ un point:
C’ était d’ éclairer ta lanterne.!
The meeting together of the understanding and of
facts is a discovery; and discovery depends upon
a faculty sung by poets, admired by mankind, and
too little noticed by logicians—genius. Genius has
for its characteristic a sudden illumination of. the
mind, a gratuitous gift and one which cannot be
purchased. But let us hasten to supply a necessary
explanation. Genius is a primitive fact, a gift; but
the work of genius has conditions, or rather a con-
dition—labour. Labour does not replace genius,
but genius does not dispense with labour; nature
only delivers up her secrets to those who observe
* Thou hadst only forgotten one point,
And that was, to light thy lantern.
THE CREATOR. 301
her with long patience. Newton was asked one day
how he had found out the system of the universe.
He replied with a sublime naïveté: “ By thinking
continually about it.” He so pointed out the con-
dition of every great discovery; but he forgot the
cause—the peculiar nature of his own intellect. It
was necessary to be always pondering the motions
of the stars; but it was necessary moreover to be
Isaac Newton. So many had thought on the sub-
ject, as long perhaps as he, and had not made the
discovery.
Labour, the condition of discoveries, should have
as its effect to recognise the methods really ap-
propriate to the nature of the inquiries, and to keep
the mind well informed in existing science. In fact,
every scientific discovery supposes a series of pre-
vious discoveries which have brought the mind to the
point at which it is possible to see something new.
For this reason it is that a discovery often presents
itself to two or three minds at once, when there are
found, at the same epoch, two or three minds en-
dowed with the same power. They see all together
because the onward progress of science has brought
them to the same summit: this is the condition; and
because they have the same power of vision: this is
302 LECTURE VI.
the cause. There is therefore a method for putting
ourselves on the road to discovery, but no method for
making the discovery itself. The man of genius sees
where others do not see; and when he has seen,
everybody sees after him. If, furnished with Gyges’
ring, you could gain access to the studies of savants
at the moment when a great discovery has just been
made, you would see more than one of them striking
his forehead and exclaiming: “Fool that I was!
how could I help seeing it? it was so simple.”
Truth appears simple when it has been discovered.
Discovery therefore, which has labour for its con-
dition, is the principle of the progress of science.
Under what form does a discovery present itself to
the mind of its author? As a supposition, or, which
is the same thing, as an hypothesis. Hypothesis is
the sole process by which progress in science is
effected. If we supposed nothing, we should know
nothing. In vain should we look at the sky and the
earth to all eternity, our eye would never read the
laws of astronomy in the stars of heaven, nor the
laws of life upon the bark of trees or in the entrails
of animals. This is true even of mathematics. The
contemplation, prolonged indefinitely, of the series of
numbers, or of the forms of space, would produce
Bix
THE CREATOR. 303
neither arithmetic nor geometry, if the human mind
did not suppose relations between the numbers and
the lines, which it can only demonstrate after it has
supposed them. The conditions are very clearly
seen which have prepared and made possible a fruit-
ful supposition, but the hypothesis does not itself
follow of any necessity. It appears like a flash of
light passing suddenly through the mind.
The carpenter’s saw opens a plank from end to
end on the sole conditions of labour and time; but
the discovery of truth preserves always a sudden and
unforeseen character. Archimedes leaps from a bath
and rushes through the streets of Syracuse, crying
out, “I have found it!” Why? The flash of genius
has visited him unexpectedly. Pythagoras discovers
a geometrical theorem; and he offers, it is said, a
sacrifice to the gods, in testimony of his gratitude.
He thought therefore, according to the fine remark of
Malebranche, that labour and attention are a silent
prayer which we address to the Master of truth: the
labour is a prayer, and the discovery is an answer
granted to it.
When this wholly spontaneous character of dis-
covery is not recognised, and when it is thought that
the observation of facts naturally produces their ex-
304 LECTURE VI.
planation, it must needs be granted that a discovery
is confirmed by the very fact that it is made. But
this is by no means the case. Hypothesis does not
carry on its brow, at the moment of its birth, the
certain sign of its truth. A flash of light crosses the
mind of the savant; but he must enter on a course,
often a long course, of study, in order to know
whether it is a true light, or a momentary glare.
Every supposition suggested by observation must be
confirmed by its agreement with the data of expe-
rience. Let us listen to a great discoverer—Kepler.
He is giving an account of the discovery of one of
the laws which have immortalized his name.
“After I had found the real dimensions of the
orbits, thanks to the observations of Brahe and the
sustained effort of a long course of labour, I at length
discovered the proportion of the periodic times to the
extent of these orbits. And if you would like to
know the precise date of the discovery,—it was on
the eighth day of March in this year 1618 that,—first
of all conceived in my mind, then awkwardly essayed
by calculations, rejected in consequence as false, then
reproduced on the fifteenth of May with fresh energy,
—it rose at last above the darkness of my understand-
ing, so fully confirmed by my labour of seventeen
THE CREATOR. 305
years upon Brahe’s observations, and by my own
meditations perfectly agreeing with them, that I
thought at first I was dreaming, and making some
petitio principii; but there is no more doubt about
it: it is a very certain and very exact proposition.”
All the logic of discoveries is laid down in these
lines; and these lines are a testimony rendered by
one of the most competent of witnesses. You see in
them the conditions of a good hypothesis: Kepler
has long studied the phenomena of which he wishes
to find the law; he has studied them by himself, and
by means of the discoveries of his predecessor Brahe.
The law has presented itself to his mind at a given
moment, on the eighth of March, 1618. But he does
not yet know whether it is a true light, or a deceptive
gleam. He seeks the confirmation of his hypothesis ;
he does not find it, because he makes a mistake, and
he rejects his idea as useless. The idea returns;
a new course of labour confirms it; and so the hypo-
thesis becomes a law, a certain proposition.
Such is the regular march of thought. An hypo-
thesis has no right to be brought forward until it has
passed into the condition of a law, by being duly
confirmed. ‘There are minds, however, endowed with
1 Harmonices mundi libri quinque.
306 LECTURE VI.
a sort of divination, which feel as by instinct the
truth of a discovery, even before it has been con-
firmed. It is told of Copernicus, that having dis-
covered, or re-discovered, the true system of planetary
motion, he encountered an opponent who said to him:
“Tf your system were true, Venus would have phases
like the moon; now she has none, and therefore your
system is false. What have you to reply ?”—“ I have
no reply to make,” said Copernicus, (the objection
was a serious one in fact); “but God will grant that
the answer shall be found.” Galileo appeared, and
by means of the telescope it was ascertained that
Venus has phases like the moon ;—the confidence of
Copernicus was justified. The scientific career of
M. Ampire, the illustrious natural philosopher, sup-
plies an analogous fact. Trusting, like Copernicus, to
a kind of intuition of truth, he read one day to the
Academy of sciences the complete description of an
experiment which he had never made. He made it
subsequently, and the result answered completely to
his anticipations. Genius is here raised to the second
power, since it possesses at once the gift of discovery
1 The authenticity of this reply is disputed; M. Arago gives it
in different terms; but the question is of small consequence here as
one of historical criticism, my object being not to establish a fact, but
to put an idea in a strong light by means of an example.
THE CREATOR. 307
and the just presentiment of its confirmation; but
these are exceptional cases, and in general we must
say, with Mithridates, that—
.... To be approved as true
Such projects must be proved, and carried through.1
We would encourage no one to attempt adventures
so perilous, but would call to mind in a great ex-
ample what is the regular march of science. Newton,
after he had discovered the law which regulates the
motions of the heavens, sought the confirmation of it
in an immense series of calculations. A true ascetic
of science, he imposed on himself a regimen as severe
as that of a Trappist monk, in order that his life
might be wholly concentrated upon the operations of
the understanding; and it was not until after fifteen
months of persistent labour that he exclaimed: “TJ
have discovered it! My calculations have really
encountered the march of the stars. Glory to God!
who has permitted us to catch a glimpse of the skirts
172
of His ways And astronomy, placed upon a wider
and firmer basis, went forward with new energy.
Tt is thus that the human mind acquires know-
ledge. How then does hypothesis come to be made
1 .... Pour être approuvés,
De semblables projets veulent être achevés.
308 LECTURE VI.
light of? How can it be seriously said that we
have excluded hypothesis from the sphere of science,
whereas the moment the faculty of supposing should
cease to be in exercise, the march of science would be
arrested ; since, except a small number of principles
the evidence of which is immediate, all the truths
we possess are only suppositions confirmed by ex-
periment? The reason is here: Our mind forms a
thousand different suppositions at its own will and
fancy; and it shrinks from that studious toil which
alone puts it in a position to make fruitful supposi-
tions. We are for ever tempted to be guessing,
instead of setting ourselves, by patient observations,
on the road to real discoveries. It is therefore with
good reason that theories hastily built up have been
condemned, and Lord Chancellor Bacon was right in
thinking that the human mind requires lead to be
attached to it, and not wings. Hence the inference
has been drawn that the simplest plan would be to
cut the wings of thought, without reflecting that
thenceforward it would continue motionless. Because
some had abused hypothesis, others must conclude
that we could do without it altogether.
Trivial and premature suppositions have therefore
discredited hypothesis, by encumbering science with
THE CREATOR. 309
a crowd of vain imaginations; but this encumbrance
would have been of small importance but for the
obstinacy with which false theories have too often
been maintained against the evidence of facts. If
Ampère had found his experiment fail, and had still
continued to maintain his statements, he would not
have given proof of a happy audacity, but of a
ridiculous obstinacy. Genius itself makes mistakes,
and experience alone distinguishes real laws from
mere freaks of our thought. We have maintained
the rights of reason in the spontaneous exercise of
the faculty of discovery ; but let us beware how we
ignore the rights of experience. It alone prepares
discoveries; it alone can confirm them. A system,
however well put together, is convicted of error by
the least fact which really contradicts it. A Greek
philosopher was demonstrating by specious arguments
that motion is impossible. Diogenes was one of his
auditory, and he got up and began to walk: the
answer was conclusive. You remember, if you have
read Walter Scott, the learned demonstration of the
antiquary who is settling the date of a Roman or
Celtic ruin, I forget which; and the intervention
of the beggar, who has no archeological system, but
who has seen the edifice in question both built and
310 LECTURE VI.
fall to decay. Reason as much as you like; if your
reasonings do not accord with facts, you will have
woven spider's webs, of admirable fineness perhaps,
but wanting in solidity.
It is time to sum up these lengthened considera-
tions. Science does not originate solely from ex-
periment, nor does it proceed solely from reason ; it
results from the meeting together of experience and
reason. Experience prepares the discovery, genius
makes it, experience confirms it. What distinguishes
the sciences is not the process of invention, which is
everywhere the same; but the process of control over
supposed truths. A mathematical discovery is con-
firmed by pure reasoning. A physical discovery is
confirmed by sensible observation joined with calcu-
lation. A discovery in the order of morals is con-
firmed by observation of the facts of consciousness.
Therefore it is that between the physical and moral
sciences there exists a broad line of demarcation.
Moral facts have not less certainty than physical
phenomena; but moral facts falling under the in-
fluence of liberty, all men cannot perceive them
equally under all conditions. An optical experiment
presents itself to the eyes, and all the spectators see
it alike, if at least they have one and the same visual
THE CREATOR. 311
organization; but a case of moral experience has
a personal character, and is only communicated to
another person on condition that he puts faith in the
testimony of his fellow. In this order of things
a man can observe directly only what he concurs in
producing. With this reservation, we may say that
the control of moral truths is made by experience
like that of physical truths. In all departments of
knowledge, a thought may be held as true when it
accounts for facts.
And so, Gentlemen, we conclude that every sci-
entific truth is, in its origin, a supposition of the
mind, the result of which is to produce the meeting
together of experience and reason, and so to permit
the rational reconstruction of the facts.
Every system is shewn to be at fault by facts,
if facts contradict it.
When a system explains the facts, we hold it as
proved just to the extent to which it explains them.
This accordance of our thought with the nature of
things is the mark of what we call truth.
If you grant me these premises, my demonstration
is completed, and it only remains for me to draw my
conclusions.
It is said that the idea of God can have no place
312 LECTURE VI.
in a serious science, because this idea comes neither
from experience nor from reason; that it is only an
hypothesis, and that hypothesis has no place in
science. I reply, grounding my answer on the pre-
ceding reasonings: No science is formed otherwise
than by means of hypothesis. For the solution of
the universal problem there exists in the world an
hypothesis, proposed to all by tradition, and which
bears in particular the names of Moses and of Jesus
Christ. This hypothesis has the right to be examined,
If it explains the facts, it must be held for true.
The idea of God comes therefore within the regular
compass of science; the attempt to exclude it is
sophistical.
Let us separate the idea of God from the whole
body of Christian doctrine of which it forms part, in
order that we may give it particular consideration,
What is this hypothesis which bears the names of
Moses and Jesus Christ? It is that the principle of
the universe is the Eternal and Infinite Being. His
power is the cause of all that exists; the conscious-
ness of His infinite power constitutes His infinite
intelligence. In Himself, He is He who ¢s ; in His
relation with the world, He is the absolute cause,
the Creator. This explanation of the universe is not
THE CREATOR. 510
the privilege of a few savants; it is taught and
proposed to all; and this is no reason why we should
despise it. If we further observe that this thought
has renovated the world, that it upholds all our
civilization, that thousands of our fellow-creatures
raise their voice to tell us that it is only from this
source they have drawn peace, light, and happiness,
we shall understand perhaps that contempt would be
foolish, and that everything on the contrary invites
us to examine with the most serious attention an
hypothesis which offers itself to us under conditions
so exceptional.
The hypothesis is stated. We must now submit it
to the test of facts. Where shall we find the elements
of its confirmation? Everywhere, since it is the first
cause of all things which is in question: we shall
find them in nature and in humanity; in the motions
of the stars as they sweep through the depths of
space, and in the rising of the sap which nourishes
a blade of grass; in the revolutions of empires, and
in the simplest elements of the life of one individual.
‘There is no science of God; but every science, every
study must terminate at that sacred Name. I shall
not undertake, therefore, to enumerate all the con-
firmations of the thought which makes of the Creator
314 LECTURE VI.
the principle of the universe: to recount all the
proots of the infinite Being would require an eternal
discourse. We have stammered forth a few of the
words of this endless discourse, by shewing that,
without God, the understanding, the conscience, and
the heart lose their support and fall: this formed the
subject of our second lecture. We saw further that
reason makes fruitless attempts to find the universal
principle in the objects of our experience—nature
and humanity. Let us follow up, although we shall
not be able to complete it, the study of this in-
exhaustible subject, by shewing that the idea of
the Creator alone answers to the demands of the
philosophic reason.
Philosophy, in the highest acceptation of the term,
is the search after a solution for the universal problem
the terms of which may be stated as follows: Ex-
perience reveals to us that the world is composed
of manifold and diverse beings; and, to come at once
to the great division, there are in the world bodies
which we are forced to suppose inert, and minds
which we feel to be intelligent and free. The uni-
verse is made up of manifold existences; this is quite
evident, and a matter of experience. Reason on the
other hand forces us to seek for unity. To com-
THE CREATOR. 919
prehend, is to reduce phenomena to their laws, to
connect effects with their causes, consequences with
their principles; it is to be always introducing unity
into the diversity. All development of science would
be at once arrested, if the mind could content itself
with merely taking account of facts in the state
of dispersion in which they are presented by ex-
perience. Each particular science gathers up a mul-
titude of facts into a small number of formule; and,
above and beyond particular sciences, reason searches
for the connexion of all things with one single cause.
To determine the relation of all particular existences
with one existence which is their common cause;
such is the universal problem. ‘This problem has
been very well expressed by Pythagoras in a cele-
brated formula, that of the Uni-multiple. In order
to understand the universe, we must rise to a unity
which may account for the multiplicity of things and
for their harmony, which is unity itself maintained in
diversity.
If you well understand this thought, you will
easily comprehend the source of the great errors
which flow from too strong a disposition to systema-
tize. Men of this mind attach themselves to in-
adequate conceptions, and look for unity where it
316 LECTURE VI.
does not exist. The barrier which we must oppose
to this spirit of system is the careful enumeration of
the facts which it forgets to notice. Materialism
looks for unity in inert and unintelligent bodies; it
suffices to oppose to it one fact—the reality of mind.
Fatalism seeks unity in necessity. Point out to it
that its destiny-god does not account for the fact of
repentance, for example, which implies liberty, and
it is enough. The worship of humanity forces you
to exclaim with Pascal—A queer God, that! There
is in the bitterness of this smile a sufficient con-
demnation of the doctrine. To seek for unity, is the
foundation of all philosophy. To seek for unity too
hastily and too low, is the source of the errors of
absolute minds. Absolute minds, however great
they may be in other respects, are weak minds, in
that they do not succeed in preserving a clear view
of the diversity of the facts to be explained. Take
the problem of Pythagoras; keep hold of the two
extremities of the chain; never allow yourselves to
deny the diversity of things, for that diversity is
plainly evidenced by human experience; beware of
denying their unity, because it is the foundation of
reason; then search and look through the histories
of philosophy: you will find one hypothesis, and one
x ee a a a PS
THE CREATOR. SL
only, which answers the requirements of the problem.
It goes back, as I believe, to the origin of the world ;
it was glimpsed by Socrates, by Aristotle, and Plato ;
but, in its full light, it belongs only to men who
have received the God of Moses, and who have
studied in the school of Jesus Christ. If this hypo-
thesis explains the facts, it is sound, for the property
of truth is to explain, as the property of light is to
enlighten.
Lhe doctrine of the Creator can alone account to
us for the universe, by bringing us back to its first
cause. ‘The first cause of unity cannot be matter
which could never produce mind; the first cause of
unity cannot be the human mind, which, from the
moment that it desires to take itself for the absolute
being, is dissolved and annihilated. The unity
which alone can have in itself the source of multi-
plicity, is neither matter nor idea, but power; power
the essential characteristic of mind, and infinite, that
is to say, creative power. The Creator alone could
produce divers beings, because He is Almighty, and
maintain harmony between those beings, because He
is One. Thus is manifested an essential agreement
between the requirements of philosophy and the re-
ligious sentiment; for religion, as we said at the
318 LECTURE VI.
beginning of these lectures, rests upon the idea of
Divine power. Reason and faith meet together upon
the lofty heights of truth. But let us not enter too
far into the difficulties of philosophy. Let us confine
ourselves to considerations of a less abstruse order.
The Creator is the God of nature. All the
visible universe is but the work of His power, the
manifestation of His wisdom. The poet of the
Hebrews invites to offer praise to the Most High,
not only men of every age and of all nations, but
the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the
cedars of the forest, the rain and the wind, the hail
and the tempest.” In the language of a modern
poet :
Thee, Lord, the wide world glorifies;
The bird upon its nest replies;
And for one little drop of rain
Beings Thine eye doth not disdain
Ten thousand more repeat the strain.?
And such thoughts are not vain freaks of the
imagination. Man, the conscious representative of
nature, the high-priest of the universe, feels himself
PPS CIVIL
? Le monde entier te glorifie,
L’ oiseau te chante sur son nid;
Et pour une goutte de pluie
Des milliers d’ êtres t’ ont beni.
THE CREATOR. 319
urged by an impulse of his heart to translate the
confused murmur of the creation into a hymn of
praise to the Infinite Being, the absolute Source of
life,—to Him who 7s, One, Eternal, —the first and
absolute Cause of all existence.
The Creator is the God of spirits. He is not
only the God of humankind; “the immense city of
God contains, no doubt, nobler citizens than man, in
reasoning power so weak, and in affections so poor.”
But let us speak of what is known to us: He is
the God of humankind. All nations shall one day
render glory to Him. Mighty words have resounded
through the world: “ Henceforth there is no longer
either Greek or barbarian or Jew; but one and the
same God for all.” The idols have begun to fall;
the gods of the nations have been hurled from their
pedestals; they have fallen, they are falling, they
will fall, until the knowledge of the only and sove-
reign Creator shall cover the earth as the waters
cover the sea.
The Creator shall one day be known of all His
creatures ; .and in each of His creatures He will be
the centre and the object of the whole soul; all the
1 Albert de Haller. Lettres sur les vérités les plus importantes de
la révélation. Lettre 2.
320 LECTURE VI.
functions of the spiritual life lead on to Him. What
is truth, beauty, good? We have already replied
to the question, but we will repeat our answer.
To possess truth is to know God; it is to know
Him in the work of His hands, and it is to know
Him im His absolute power, as the eternal source
of all that is, of all that can ever be, of all actual
or possible truth in the mind of His creatures. Truth
binds us to Him, “and all science is a hymn to His
glory."
He is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who
gives to the bird its song, and to the brook its
murmur. He it is who has established between
nature and man those mysterious relations which
give rise to noble joys. He it is who opens, above
and beyond nature, the prolific sources of art; the
ideal is a distant reflection of His splendour.
And goodness, again, is none other than He; it is
His plan; it is His will in regard of spirits; it is the
word addressed to the free creature, which says to it:
Behold thy place in the universal harmony.
Thus a triple ray descends from the uncreated
light, and before that insufferable brightness I am
dazzled and bewildered. There is no longer any
1 Kt toute la science est un hymne à sa gloire.
THE CREATOR. eae
distinction for me between profane and sacred; I
no longer understand the difference of these terms.
Wheresoever I meet with good, truth, beauty, be the
man who brings them to me who he may, and come
he whence he may, I feel that to despise in him that
gleam, would be not only to be wanting to humanity,
it would be to be wanting to my faith. If my
prejudices or habits tend to shut up my heart or to
narrow my mind, I hear a voice exclaiming to me:
“ Enlarge thy tent; lengthen thy cords; enlarge thy
tent without measure. Be ye lift up, eternal gates,
gates of the conscience and the heart! Let in the
King of glory!” All truth, all beauty, all good is
He.- Where my God is, nothing is profane for me.
To ignore any one of those rays would be to steal
somewhat from His glory.
Oh! the happy liberty of the heart, when it rests
on the Author of all good and of all truth. But if
the heart is at liberty, how well is it guarded too!
What is the most beautiful jewel (if we may venture
to use such language) in the immortal crown of
this King of glory? Powerful, He created power;
free, He created liberty. And to the free creature, in
the hour of its creation, He said: “ Behold! thou art
made in mine own image! my will is written in thy
Y
322 LECTURE VI.
conscience ; become a worker together with me, and
realise the plans of my love.” And that voice—I
hear it within myself. Ah! I know that voice well,
I know the secret attraction which, in spite of all my
miseries, draws me towards that which is beautiful,
pure, holy, and says to me: This is the will of thy
Father. But I know other voices also which speak
within me only too loudly: the voice of rebellion and
of cowardice, the voice of baseness and ignominy.
There is war in my soul. Enlightened by this inner
spectacle, I cast my eyes once more over that world
in which I have seen shining everywhere some divine
rays; and I see that by a triple gate, lofty and wide,
evil has entered thither, accompanied by error and
deformity. Then I understand that all may become
profane; I understand that there is an erring science,
a corrupting art, a moral system full of immorality.
But these words take for me a new meaning. There
is no sacred evil, there is no profane good; there
are no sacred errors and profane truths. Where
God is, all is holy; where there is rebellion against
God, all is evil. And so the God who is my light is
my fortress also; my heart is strengthened while it
is set at liberty, and I can join the ancient song of
Israel :
Jehovah is our strength and tower.
THE CREATOR. S25
Yes, Sirs, God is in all, because He is the uni-
versal principle of being; but He is not in all after
the same manner. God is in the pure heart by the
joy which He gives to it; He is in the frivolous
heart by the void and the vexation which urge it to
seek a better destiny ; He is in the corrupt heart by
that merciful remorse which does not permit it to
wander, without warning, from the springs of life.
God makes use of all for the good of His creatures.
Fe is everywhere by the direct manifestation of His
will, except in the acts of rebellious liberty, and in
the shadow of pain which follows that evil light
which leads astray from Him.
Having said that the idea of God the Creator
alone satisfies the reason, and raises up, upon the
basis of reason, man’s conscience and heart, I should
wish to shew you, in conclusion, that this idea
renders an account of the great systems of error
which divide the human mind between them. Truth
bears this lofty mark, that it never overthrows a
doctrine without causing any portion of truth which
it may have contained to pass into its own bosom.
What then,—apart from declared atheism, from
the dualism which has almost disappeared, and from
faith in God the Creator,—are the great systems
324 LECTURE VI.
which share the human mind between them? There
are two: deism and pantheism.
What is deism? It is a doctrine which acknow-
ledges that there is one God, the cause of the uni-
verse; but a God who is in a manner withdrawn
from His own work, and who leaves it to go on
alone. God has regulated things in the mass, but
not in detail, or, to employ an expression of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau (who came at a later period to
entertain better opinions), ‘God is like a king who
governs his kingdom, but who does not trouble him-
self to ascertain whether all the taverns in it are
good ones.” ‘The idea of a general government of
God which does not descend to details—such is the
essence of deism. |
What is pantheism, in the ordinary meaning of
the word? We have already said: it is a doctrine
which absorbs God in the universe, which confounds
Him with nature, and makes of Him only the inert
substance, the unconscious principle of the universe.
These are the two great conceptions which wrestle,
in the history of human thought, against the idea
of the Creator. These two systems triumph easily
one over the other, because each of them contains
a portion of truth which is wanting to its antagonist.
THE CREATOR. 325
They cannot support themselves because each of
them has in it a portion of error. This is what we
must well understand.
Deism contains a portion of truth; for it maintains
a Creator essentially distinct from the Creation, or,
according to an expression which I translate from an
ancient Indian poem: “One single act of His created
the Universe, and He remained Himself whole and
entire.” This thought is true. What is the error of
deism? It is that it makes a God like to a man who
works upon matter existing previously to his action,
and who puts in operation forces independent of
himself, and which he does nothing but employ.
In this way a watchmaker makes a watch which
goes afterwards without him, because the watchmaker
only sets to work forces which have an independent
existence, and which continue to act when he has
ceased his labour. We work upon matter foreign to
us. ‘The workman did not make matter, but only
disposes of it, and he can never do more than modify
the action of forces which do not proceed from his
will, and have not been regulated by his understand-
ing. But the Being who is the cause of all cannot
dispose of foreign forces which act afterwards by
themselves, since there exists in His work no prin-
326 LECTURE VI.
ciple of action other than those which He has Himself
placed in it.
Deism results therefore from a confusion between
the work of a creature placed in a preexisting world,
and the work of the Supreme Will which is in itself
the single and absolute cause of all. It contains an
element of dualism: its God does not create; but
organises a world the being of which does not depend
on him. Take what is true in deism—the existence
of the only God; remember that the Creator is the
absolute Cause of the universe; and the distinction
between ensemble and detail will vanish, and you
will understand that God is too great that there
should be anything small in His eyes:
God measures not our lot by line and square:
The grass-suspended drop of morning dew
Reflects a firmament as vast and fair
As Ocean from his boundless field of blue.}
In other words, take what is true in deism, and
accept all the consequences of it, and you will arrive
at the full doctrine of the creation.
Pantheism recognises the omnipresence of God in
1 Dieu ne mesure pas nos sorts à l’ étendue.
La goutte de rosée à l’ herbe suspendue
Y réfléchit un ciel aussi vaste, aussi pur
Que l’immense Océan dans ses plaines d’ azur.
LAMARTINE.
.
1
4
©
"
THE CREATOR. 321
the universe, or, if you like the terms of the school,
the immanence of God; this is its portion of truth.
When I open the Hindoos’ songs of adoration, and
find therein the unlimited enumeration of the mani-
festations of God in nature, I find nothing to com-
plain of. But when, in those same hymns, I see
liberty denied, the origin of evil attributed to the
Holy One, and man cowering before Destiny, instead
of turning his eyes freely towards the Heavenly
Father, then I stand only more erect and say: You
forget that if your God is the Cause of all, He is the
Cause of liberty. If liberty exists, evil, the revolt of
liberty, is not the work of the Creator. Your system
contradicts itself. You make of God the universal
Principle, and you are right; make of Him then the
Author of free wills, so that He will be no longer the
source of evil, and we shall be agreed.
Deism and pantheism therefore, pushed to their
legitimate consequences, are transformed and united
in the truth. And you see plainly that I am not
making, for my part, an arbitrary selection in these
systems. I am walking by one sole light, the light
which has been given to us, and which serves me
everywhere as a guiding clue:—The Lord is God,
and there is no other God but He.
328 LECTURE VI.
Such, Gentlemen, is the fundamental truth on
which rests all religion, and all philosophy capable
of accounting for facts. Such is the grand cause
which claims all the efforts which we are wasting too
often in barren conflicts—the cause of God. But do
I say the truth? Is it the cause of God which is at
stake? When a surgeon, by a successful operation,
has restored sight to a blind man, we are not wont
to say that he has rendered a service to the sun.
This cause is our own; it is that of society at large,
it is that of families, that of individuals; it is the
cause which concerns our dignity, our happiness; it
is the cause of all, even of those who attack it in
words of which they do not calculate the import,
and who, were they to succeed in banishing God
from the public conscience, would, with us, recoil in
terror at sight of the frightful abysses into which
we all should fall together,
It is time to sum up these considerations.
Inert and unintelligent matter is not the cause of
life and intelligence.
Human consciences would be plunged in irre-
mediable misery, if ever they could be persuaded
that there is nothing superior to man.
The universe is the work of wisdom and of power ;
THE CREATOR. 329
it is the creation of the Infinite Mind. What can
still be wanting to our hearts? The thought that
God desires our good,—that He loves us. If it is so,
we shall be able to understand that our cause is His,
that He is not an impassible sun whose rays fall on
us with indifference, but a Father who is moved at
our sorrows, and who would have us find joy and
peace in Him. This will be the subject of our next
and concluding lecture.
LECTURE VII.
THE FATHER.
(At Geneva, 8th Dec. 1863.—At Lausanne, 1st Feb. 1864.)
GENTLEMEN, |
We have proposed for solution the
problem which includes all others whatsoever—the
problem of the universe. What are the laws which
govern the universe? They are those which are the
objects of science, taking that word in its largest and
most general meaning. What is the cause of the
universe? The eternal power of the Infinite Mind.
These are the two answers which we have hitherto
obtained, but, as we have explained, a study is not
complete if it confine itself to these two answers.
When we know the law and the cause of an object
submitted to our study, we further look for the end
designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but the
direct result of the constitution of our understanding.
THE FATHER. 331
The universe is the creation of God. What is the
design: of the creation? I answer: the design of the
creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made
for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condi-
tion of their life and development; spiritual beings
are made for felicity. The moving spring of infinite
power is goodness: this is my thesis. If I succeed
in establishing it, it will follow that we shall in
imagination see issuing from the supreme unity of
the Infinite Being three rays: the power which
creates the being of things; the intelligence which
orders them; and the love which conducts them to
their destination. It will also follow that I shall
have justified the title under which these Lectures
were announced: Power and wisdom are attributes of
the Creator; the Father reveals Himself in goodness.
What shall be our method? Can we enter into
the counsels of God? By what means? To place
our understanding in the midst of the Divine con-
sciousness, there to behold the spring of the de-
terminations of the Infinite Being, were an attempt
so far exceeding our capacity, that it is impossible to
point out any means whatever by which it could be
made. This would be to conceive of God in His
eternal essence, independently of His relation to the
892: LECTURE VII.
universe, to nature, and to our reason. I do not say
merely that the attempt would be fruitless; I say
that we have no means of attempting this meta-
physical adventure. But might we not, in looking
at the work of God, discern in it the evidence of its
design? This is a process which we often follow in
regard to our fellow-creatures. Do we wish to know
the object which a man has in view in his labour?
He may himself disclose that object to us directly in
words, or we may endeavour to discover it. We
watch him at work, and by observing the way in
which he proceeds we sometimes come to know what
his thoughts are, because we find ourselves in presence
of the work of a mind, and we ourselves are mind.
Can we in the same way, by looking at the universe,
that grand work, succeed in discovering its end ?
The way on which we are entering raises two
objections, which proceed from the difficulties felt by
two classes of men of opposite views; and our first
business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary
difficulties.
You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in
proving the goodness of God, because evil is in the
world. I am not inventing, Gentlemen. A letter
containing this challenge has been addressed to me
THE FATHER. ooo
by one of you. It is manifest, since we propose to
ourselves to recognise in the work the intention of
the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness of
the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its
forms, sin, pain, imperfection, is the main objection
which can be addressed to us. Evil is real; it is
a sad and great reality ; I am forward to acknowledge
it, Any system which would prove that evil does
not exist, or, which comes to the same thing, that
evil is necessary, that good and evil in short are of
the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said
a culpable, system. ‘The strongest minds have worn
themselves out in such attempts with no result what-
ever. The great Leibnitz attempted an enterprise of
this nature. His system consisted in extenuating
evil as far as possible, and in pronouncing that
amount of evil, of which he could not dissemble the
existence, to be necessary. He failed. The strong
intellectual armour of one of the greatest geniuses
the world has ever seen was completely transpierced
by the sharp and brilliant shaft of Voltaire.
Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,
Sharpening the pangs ye make pretence to cure,
Poor comforters! in your attempts I see
Nought but the pride which feigns unreal glee!
O mortals, of such bliss how weak the spell!
334 LECTURE VII.
Ye cry in doleful accents—‘ All is well!”—
And all things at the great deceit rebel.
Nay, if your minds to coin the flattery dare,
Your hearts as often lay the falsehood bare.
The gloomy truth admits of no disguise—
Evil is on the earth!
For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our
old neighbour of Ferney. Yes, evil is on the earth;
and it constitutes, in the question which we are dis-
cussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of
difficulties. Let us listen to a modern poet ??
Why then so great, O Sovereign Lord,
Came evil from thy forming hand,
That Reason, yea, and Virtue stand
Aghast before the sight abhorred?
And how can deeds so hideous glare
Beneath the beams of holy light,
1 Tristes calculateurs des misères humaines,
Ne me consolez point, vous aigrissez mes peines;
Et je ne vois en vous que I effort impuissant
D’ un fier infortuné qui feint d’être content.
Quel bonheur, O mortels, et faible et misérable.
Vous criez: ‘Tout est bien” d’une voix lamentable;
L'univers vous dément, et votre propre cœur
Cent fois de votre esprit a réfuté V erreur.
Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre.
DéÉsasrRe DE LisBonne.
3 Pourquoi donc, O Maître suprême,
As-tu créé le mal si grand
Que la raison, la vertu même
S’ épouvantent en le voyant?
Comment, sous la sainte lumière,
Voit-on des actes si hideux,
THE FATHER. 335
That on the lips of hapless wight
Dies at their view the trembling prayer?
Why do the many parts agree
So scantly in thy work sublime?
And what is pestilence, or crime,
Or death, O righteous God, to Thee?!
We have only to put this poetry into common
prose to obtain this argument, namely,—The presence
of evil in the world is not compatible with the idea
of the goodness of God. Here is the objection in all
its force. And what is the answer? Simply this,
that God did not create evil. It was not He who
brought crime into the world. He created liberty,
which is a good, and evil is the produce of created
liberty in rebellion against the law of its being. I
borrow from Jean-Jacques Rousseau the development
of this thought. “If man,” says he, “ïs a free agent,
then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely
enters not jnto the ordained system of Providence,
and cannot be imputed to it. The Creator does not
1 Qu'ils font expirer la prière
Sur les lèvres du malheureux ?
Pourquoi, dans ton œuvre céleste,
Tant d’ éléments si peu d’ accord?
À quoi bon le crime et la peste,
O Dieu juste! pourquoi la mort?
ALFRED DE Musset, Espoir en Dieu.
336 LECTURE VII.
will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty
which He gives him. He has made him free in
order that he may do not evil but good by choice.
To murmur because God does not hinder him from
doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of
an excellent nature, attached to his actions the moral
character which ennobles them, and gave him a right
to virtue. What! in order to prevent man from
being wicked, must he needs be confined to instinct
and made a mere brute? No; God of my soul,
never will [ reproach Thee with having made it in
Thine image, in order that I might be free, good,
and happy, like Thyself.
“It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us
unhappy and wicked. Our vexations and our cares
come to us from ourselves.”
Such is Rousseau’s answer to the objection drawn
from the existence of evil. It is a good one. It is
so good that it is impossible to find a better. If we
are determined not to outrage the human conscience
by denying the reality of evil; if God is the sovereign
good, and if there is no other principle of things than. ;
He; evil cannot be accounted for otherwise than by |
the rebellion of the creature. But now, Rousseau’s
answer, excellent in itself and in the abstract, be-
THE FATHER. oot
comes profoundly inadequate, as the citizen of Geneva
goes on to develope his theory. Evil comes from the
creature; but each individual is not the exclusive
source of the evils which he does and suffers. To
attribute to each individual, not only the respon-
sibility of his acts, but the origin of the evil germs
which exist in his soul, is the untenable proposition
of a desperate individualism. There is evidently
among men a common property in evil; Rousseau
sees it clearly enough, but he makes vain efforts to
find in the organization of society and in the con-
dition of civilization the causes of pain and of sin.
When one has come to see clearly that the source of
evil is in the creature, the close mutual connexion of
created wills and their relations with nature present
a field for long and difficult study; and Rousseau
has no sooner discerned the road to truth than he
wanders away into byroads in which the solution of
the problem escapes him. This problem, Gentlemen,
I have the intention and desire of studying some day,
if God permit, with those of you who may be willing
to undertake it with me. We shall then have to
deal with an objection, or rather with a difficulty.
But this difficulty, which we cannot now dispose of,
must not hinder us from stating our thesis. In every
Z
338 LECTURE VII.
well-conducted study, the propositions to be main-
tained must be laid down and supported before
dealing with objections. If it were maintained that
evil is the principle of things, it would be necessary
first of all to endeavour to establish the thesis, in
which the existence of good would be brought for-
ward, and would constitute the objection. The
objection would have to be answered—Why has
good appeared in the world? And I would just say
in passing, that our libraries are full of treatises upon
the origin of evil, and I have never met with one
upon the origin of good. It appears therefore that
reason has always admitted, by a sort of instinct, the
identity of good, and of the principle of being. Our
thesis is that the principle of the universe is good.
We are going to try to demonstrate it. Afterwards
the difficulty, evil, will present itself, of which it will
be necessary to seek the explanation. “This will be
the natural sequel, and the necessary complement of
the course of lectures which we are concluding to-
day.
I pass to another difficulty, another challenge
which also has been addressed to me.
Your object, Christians have said to me, is to
establish that the principle and ground of all things
THE FATHER. 339
is goodness. This you will not be able to do without
departing from your prescribed plan, and entering
upon the domain of Christian faith properly so called.
In your examination of the universe will you leave
out of view Jesus Christ and His work? Do you not
know that it is by means of this work that the idea
of the love of God has been implanted in the world,
and that it is thence you have taken it? Do you
think to climb to the loftiest heights of thought, and
to make the ascent by some other road than over the
mountain of Nazareth and the hill of Calvary ?
Gentlemen, I declared my whole mind on this
subject at first starting. The complete idea of God
demands, for its maintenance, the grand doctrinal
foundations of our faith. Christian in its origin, firm
faith in the love of God the Creator requires for its
defence the armour of the Gospel. But before de-
fending this belief, we must first establish it; we
must shew that it has natural roots in human nature.
Christianity purifies and strengthens it, but it does
not in an absolute sense create it. The mark of
truth is that it does not strike us as something
absolutely new, but that it finds an echo in the
depths of our soul. When we meet with it, we seem
to re-enter into the possession of our patrimony. The
340 LECTURE VII.
Cross of Jesus Christ is without all contradiction the
most transcendent proof of the mercy of the Creator ;
but the Cross of Jesus Christ rather warrants the
Christian in believing in the Divine love than gives
him the idea of it. We must distinguish in the
Gospel between the universal religion which it has
restored, and the act itself of that restoration, which
constitutes the Gospel in the special sense of the
word. Now what I am here maintaining is the fact
of the existence in modern society of the elements of
the universal religion. I am far from sharing in the
illusions of my fellow-countryman Rousseau, when
he affirms that even if he had lived in a desert isle,
and had never known a fellow-man, he would never-
theless have been able to write the Profession de fot
du Vicaire Savoyard. I know very well that if
I were a Brahmin, born at the foot of the Himalayas,
or a Chinese mandarin, I should not be able to say
all that I am saying respecting the goodness of God.
The light which we have received—I know whence
it radiates; but, by the help of that light, I seek its
kindred rays everywhere, and everywhere I find
them in humanity.
Let us endeavour, then, according to our plan, to
recognise in the universe the marks of the Divine
THE FATHER. 341
goodness. Let us first of all interrogate the human
soul, which is certainly one of the essential elements
of the world; and let us interrogate it with regard to
the great fact of religion.
The universal religion presents to observation two
principal forms of mental experience: the sense of the
necessity for appeasing the Divine justice, and the
sense of the necessity for obtaining the help of God.
The sense of the necessity for appeasing justice
reveals itself in sacrifices. There are sacrifices which
are merely offerings of gratitude, and freewill gifts of
love. But when you see the blood of animals flowing
in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing
forth upon the altars, you will be unable to escape
the conviction that man, in presenting himself before
the Deity, feels constrained to appease a justice
which threatens him.
The sense of the need of help shews itself in
prayer; and this must be the especial object of our
study, because it is in the fact of religious invocation
that we shall encounter the idea, obscure perhaps,
but real, of the goodness of the First Cause of the
universe.
Prayer is a fact of the universal religion. Whence
is it that we derive a large part of what knowledge
342 LECTURE VII.
we have of the ancient civilizations of India and
Egypt? From ruins: and the chief of these ruins
are the ruins of temples, that is to say, of houses
of prayer. Would we go further back than these
monuments of stone? I interrogate those pioneers of
science who are searching for the traces of antiquity
in old languages,—in the ruins of speech. I inquire,
for example, of my learned fellow-countryman, M.
Adolphe Pictet: ‘You who have studied, with
patient care, the first origins of our race—what have
you discovered in the way of religion?” He replies :
“When I have gone as far back as historical specu-
lations can carry us by the aid of language, it appears
to me that I no longer see temples built by the hand
of man, but, beneath the open vault of heaven, I see
our earliest ancestors sending up together the chant
of prayer and the flame of sacrifice,”
And now, from this remote antiquity, I come
down to the paganism, in which modern civilization
had its beginning. Tertullian teaches us that the
pagans, seeming to forget their idols, and to offer
a spontaneous testimony to the truth, were often
wont to exclaim—Great God! Good God! What
1 Les origines indo-européennes, ou les Aryas primitifs,—The
above is a résumé, not a verbatim quotation.
THE FATHER. 343
in their mind was the order of these two thoughts,
the thought of greatness and that of goodness ? The
pediment of a temple at Rome bore this famous
inscription, Deo optimo maximo ; and Cicero explains
to us that the God of the Capitol was by the Roman
people named “ very good” on account of the benefits
conferred by him, and “very great” on account of
his power.’ It is the idea of goodness which here
appears to be first. But let us go more directly to
the root of the question: What do we gather from
the universality of prayer? What is it to pray ?
To pray is to ask. Prayer may be mingled with
thanksgivings, and with expressions of adoration, but
in itself prayer is a petition. This petition rises to
God: and when does it so rise? In distress, in
anguish. It is misery, weakness, the heart cast
down, the failing will, which unite to raise from
earth to heaven that long cry which resounds across
all the pages of history: Help!—I analyse this fact,
and inquire what it means. A request is made, and
for what? For strength, for tranquillity, for peace;
for happiness under all its forms. And of whom is
1 Quocirea te, Capitoline, quem propter beneficia populus Ro-
manus OPTIMUM, propter vim MAXIMUM nominavit. (Pro domo sua,
LVIL.)
344 LECTURE VII.
happiness asked? Of goodness. Justice is appeased,
power is dreaded, but it is goodness which is in-
voked. It is so in human relations. The man who
supplicates the fiercest tyrant only does so because he
supposes that a fibre of goodness may still vibrate in
that savage heart. Take from him that thought ;
persuade him that the last gleam of pity is extinct
in the heart to which he appeals, and you will arrest
the prayer on the lips of the suppliant. There will
remain for him only the silence of despair, or the
heroism of resignation.
To sum up :—Religion is a universal fact. “There
is no religion without prayer,’ said Voltaire, and he
never said better. There is no prayer without a con-
fused, perhaps, but real, conviction of the goodness
of the First Cause of the universe. If you could
stifle in man’s heart the feeling that the Principle of
things is good, you would silence over the whole
globe that voice of prayer which is ever rising to
God. Thus humanity itself testifies to the truth for
which I am contending. Humanity prays; it be-
lieves therefore in the goodness of God. This fact is
an argument. The heart of man is organized to
believe that God is good : it is the mark set by the
Worker Himself upon His work.
THE FATHER. 345
Let us study now another of the elements of the
universe. We have heard the answer of man’s heart;
let us ask for the answer of reason. Has reason
nothing to tell us respecting the intentions of the
Creator? Let us place it in presence of the idea of
God—of the Infinite Being, and see what it will
be able to teach us.
To attain my object, I must explain more par-
ticularly than as yet I have done, a word rendered
frivolous by the levity of our heart, a word defiled
by the disorder of our passions, and too often by the
unworthiness, and worse, of poets and novelists, but
which still, in its virgin purity, is ever protesting
against the outrages to which it has been subjected:
that word is love.
This word has two principal meanings. In the
Platonic sense of it, it is the search after what is
beautiful, great, noble, pure,—after what, as being
of the very real nature of the soul, attracts, fills, and
delights it. But there is another sort of love, which
does not pursue greatness and beauty, but which
gives itself; a love which seeks the wretched to en-
rich him, the poor to make him happy, the fallen to
raise him up. These two kinds of love seem to
follow different and even contrary laws. Here, for
346 LECTURE VII.
instance, is a description of what often occurs in a
large city." A man leaves his house in the evening
in order to be present at performances in which I am
willing to believe that everything bears the stamp of
nobleness and grandeur, or at least of a pure and
wholesome taste. He experiences keen enjoyment,
and that of an-elevated kind. The spectacle over,
he returns to his dwelling, and at a still later hour
he retires at length to his repose. He has not long
extinguished his luxurious tapers, perhaps, when
other men, who have slept while others were seeking
amusement, rise before daylight, and, lighting their
small lanterns, go forth to succour the unfortunate,
without witnesses and without ostentation.
T have taken this example from Xavier de Maistre.
Let me give you another from scenes more familiar
to ourselves. You know those pure summer morn-
ings, when one may truly say that the Alp smiles
and that the mountain invites. A young man quits
his dwelling at the first dawning of the day, in his
hand the tourist’s staff, and his countenance beaming
with joy. He starts on a mountain excursion. All
day long he quaffs the pure air with delight, revels
in the freedom of the pasture-grounds, in the view
1 See the Voyage autour de ma chambre of Xavier de Maistre.
cn
THE FATHER. 347
of the lofty summits and of the distant horizons.
He reposes in the shade of the forest, drinks at the
spring from the rock, and when he has gazed on
the Alpine chain resplendent in the radiance of the
setting sun, he lingers still to see—
Twilight its farewell to the hills delaying.!
Noble enjoyments! This young man enjoys be-
cause he loves. The spectacle of the creation speaks
to his heart and elevates his thoughts. He loves
that enchanting nature, which blends in a marvellous
union the impressions which in human relations are
produced by the strong man’s majesty and the
maiden’s sweetest smile.
On this same summer-day, another man has also
risen before the sun. He is devoted to the assuaging
of human miseries, and he has had much to do. He
has mounted gloomy staircases; he has entered dark
chambers; he has spent time in hospitals, in the
midst of the pains of sickness; he has come, in
prisons, to the relief of pains which are sadder still.
Day, as it dawned, gilded the summits of the Alps,
but he saw not that pure light of the morning. Day,
as it advanced, penetrated into the valleys, but he
did not notice its progress. The sun set in his glory,
1 Le crépuscule aux monts prolonger ses adieux.
348 LECTURE VII.
but he had no opportunity to admire either the bright
reflection of the waters, or the rosy tint of the moun-
tains. And yet he too is joyful because he loves.
He loves the fulfilment of stern duty, he loves
poverty solaced, and suffering alleviated.
Here are the two kinds of love. The disciple of
Plato rises, far.from the vulgarities of life, into the
lofty regions of the ideal, and feeds on beauty. Vin-
cent de Paul takes the place of a convict at the
galleys that he may restore a father to his children.
These two kinds of love seem to us to be contrary
one to the other: the one seeks itself, and the other -
gives itself. Still they are both necessary to life, for
in order to give we must receive. In the accomplish-
ment of the works of goodness, the soul would be
impoverished and would end by drying up in a
purely mechanical exercise of beneficence, had it no
spring from which to draw forth the living waters.
Man must himself find joy in order to diffuse it
amongst his fellows. But mark the incomparable
marvel of the spiritual order of things! The love
which gives itself is able to find its worthiest object
and its purest satisfaction in the very act of kind-
ness. There is joy in self-devotion; there is hap-
piness in self-sacrifice: the fountain furnishes its own
ce
———————
THE FATHER. 349
supplies. Thus are harmonised the two contrary
tendencies of the heart of man. ‘It is more blessed
?
to give than to receive; words, these, of Jesus
Christ, which, forgotten by the Evangelists, have
been recorded by the Apostle St. Paul. And since
the thought is a beautiful one, it has adorned the
strains of the poets: says Lamartine—
Dost thou happiness resign
To another? It is thine—
Larger for the largess—still !*
And Victor Hugo, personifying Charity, makes
her speak as follows:
Dear to every man that lives,
Joy I bring to him who gives,
Joy I leave with him who takes? .
And because this thought is profound as well as
beautiful, it has been taken up by the philosophers. '
“To love,’ said Leibnitz, “is to place one’s hap-
piness in the happiness of another.” Here is the
1 Tout le bonheur tu cèdes
Accroît ta félicité.
2 Chère à tout homme quel qu’ il soit,
J’ apporte la joie à qui donne
Et je la laisse à qui reçoit.
And Shakspeare—
“6... Mercy...is twice bless’d,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.”
Merchant of Venice.—[TR. ]
350 LECTURE VII.
connecting link between Platonic love and the love
which is charity. Hear how a Christian orator
comments upon these words:—‘ This sublime de-
finition has no need of explanations: it is either
understood at once, or it is not understood. The
man who has loved understands it; and he who has
not loved will’ never understand it. He who has
loved knows that a shadow in the heart of the beloved
one would darken his own: he knows that he would
reckon no means too costly—watchings, labours, pri-
vations—by which to create a smile on the lips of the
sorrowful; he knows that he would die to redeem
a forfeited life; he knows that he would be happy in
another’s welfare, happy in his graces, happy in his
virtues, happy in his glory, happy in his happiness.
The man who has loved knows all this; he who has
not loved knows nothing of it:—I pity him!”
But the great mistake, which seems peculiar to
our nature, is that we are ever connecting happiness
with the idea of receiving, and are always thinking
of giving as of a loss to ourselves. We do not
understand that selfishly to keep is to be impover-
ished, while freely to relinquish is to be enriched.
Yet here is the grand discovery of the spiritual life;
1 Lacordaire. Conférences de 1848.
THE FATHER. 301
and once this discovery made, in order that the
spiritual life may attain its object, it only remains to
find the strength to put it into practice. Selfishness
is wrong, no doubt, but it is not only wrong, it
is ignorant, for it looks for happiness where it is not;
and it is unhappy, for it wanders from the paths
of peace.
Let us now apply these considerations to the
Infinite Being, and to the problem of the end of the
creation, Leaving ourselves to the guidance of the
laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall
be able to attribute to the Creator in His work?
Will creation be the effect of a necessity? No, Sirs,
for in that case everything in the world would be
a matter of fate, and liberty would remain inex-
plicable. If a blind power were directing the Al-
mighty Will, we should return to the worship of
destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out
of a design of which the motive is interest? But
what conceivable interest can influence Him who is
the plenitude of being? Or will creation be a duty ?
But whence should come the obligation for the Being
who is in Himself the absolute law? Creation can
only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what
love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute
352 LECTURE VII.
disinterestedness, of supreme liberty. Allow me to
introduce into this discussion some eloquent words,
uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the re-
volutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which
we are debating was treated then, in the presence
of an excited crowd, by Père Lacordaire! He is
entering upon this question: What can have been
the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes
between love in the Platonic sense of it, for which he
retains the name of love, and the love which gives
itself, which he designates by the term—goodness.
‘Was it then love,” he asks, “which impelled the
Divine Will, and said to it unceasingly: Go and
create? Is it love which we must thus regard as our
first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in
the beauty of its object; and what beauty could
that dead and icy shade possess before God, which
preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give
a name without betraying the truth ?.... There
remained something, Sirs, be very sure, more gene-
rous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more
powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and
if you find it hard to understand me, if your own
endowments are unknown to you, listen to Bossuet
1 Conférences de 1848, p. 78.
Se SE
es et,
THE FATHER. 353
speaking of you:—‘ When God,’ says he, ‘made the
heart of man, the first thing He planted there was
goodness’: goodness; that is to say, that virtue
which does not consult self-interest, which does not
wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to
be solicited by the attraction of the beautiful, but
which stoops towards its object all the more, as it is
poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy
of contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man pos-
sesses that adorable faculty. It is not genius, nor
glory, nor love, which measures the elevation of his
soul,—it is goodness. This it is which gives to the
human countenance its principal and most powerful
charm ; this it is which draws us together ; this it is
which brings into communication the good and the
evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth,
the great mediating principle. See, at the foot of
the Alps, yon miserable crétin, which, eyeless, smile-
less, tearless, is not even conscious of its own degra-
dation, and which looks like an effort of nature to
insult itself in the dishonour of the greatest of its
own productions : but beware how you imagine that
that wretched object has not found the road to any
heart, or that his debasement has deprived him of the
love of all the world. No: he is beloved; he has
A A
354 LECTURE VII.
a mother, he has brothers and sisters; he has a place
at the cottage-hearth ; he has the best place and the
most sacred’ of all, just because of all he may seem
to have the least claim to any. The bosom which
nursed him supports him still, and the superstition of
love never speaks of him but as of a blessing sent of
God. Such is man!
“But can I say, Such is man, without saying
also, Such is God! From whom would man derive
goodness, if God were not the primordial Ocean of
goodness, and if, when He formed our heart, He had
not first of all poured into it a drop from His own?
Yes, God is good; yes, goodness is the attribute
which includes in it all the rest; and it is not with-
out reason that antiquity engraved on the pediment
of its temples that famous inscription, in which good-
ness preceded greatness.”
Now, to say nothing of the sparkling beauty of
these words, let us pause at this definite idea: The
Eternal, the first universal Cause of all things, in-
dependently of which nothing exists, could only
create under the impelling motive of the goodness
which gives, and not of the love which seeks re-
quital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract
as any theorem of geometry. But we have touched
THE FATHER. 305
the threshold of the infinite ; and we never touch the
threshold of the infinite without falling into some
degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in
the abstract, if we wish to analyse it in its real sub-
Stance, our view is confused. You understand well
that goodness increases in the proportion in which
its object is diminished. We are by so much more
good as we stoop to that which is poorer and more
miserable. What then shall be the infinite good-
ness? In order to find it, we must infinitely di-
minish its object: and here we encounter mystery.
To diminish an object infinitely is an operation im-
possible to our thought. This mystery is encountered
even in the mathematical sciences, We take a quan-
tity, halve it, and again halve this half, and so on
without end, but we shall never obtain the infinity
of smallness; for the quantity indefinitely divided
will always remain indefinitely divisible. At what-
ever degree of division we may have arrived, between
what remains and nothingness there extends always
the abyss of the infinite. So I seek for the object of
infinite goodness: that object must be infinitely des-
titute. I diminish accordingly the existence of the
universe: I extinguish all the rays of its beauty ;
I take from it order, life, measure, colour, light; I
356 LECTURE VII.
reduce it until it is nothing but formless matter,
a something—I know not what—which has no longer
a name. Vain attempt! This nameless something, .
so long as it is anything, will not be nothing. Be-
tween it and nothing there will always be the infinite.
If the goodness of God is applied to any object which
was existing independently of Him, however poor
and abject that object be conceived to have been,
then God is no longer the unique, the absolute
Creator. If imagination will cross the abyss, we
shall come of necessity to say—what? that the
object of infinite love must have been non-existence.
This is what the orator already quoted has done :—
‘ All perfection supposes an object to which to apply
itself. The divine goodness therefore requires an
object as vast and profound as itself. God dis-
covered it. rom the bosom of His own fulness He
saw that being without beauty, without form, without
life, without name, that being without being which
we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds
which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution
calling to a measureless goodness. Eternity was
troubled, she said to Time: Begin!”
This, Gentlemen, is eloquence. The thought in
itself does not bear a rigorous analysis; but do not
THE FATHER. 901
think that the lustrous beauty of the language is only
a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have
arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the
cloud is lighted up by the ray that issues from it.
Our goodness, finite creatures as we are, is so much
the greater as the object on which it is bestowed is
less. Infinite goodness must create for itself an
object. It does not love nothingness, but a creature
which is nothing in itself, a creature simply possible,
which, before owing to it the blessings of existence,
shall owe to it that existence itself, The only being
that we can represent to ourselves, by a sublime
image, as stooping towards nothingness, is He whose
look gives life. The creature is willed for itself, or,
—to quote the words of Professor Secrétan, addressed
to you last year, —the foundation of nature is grace.
We ask: What can have been the object of creation ?
Our reason answers : The Infinite Being can only act
from goodness, He can have no other object than the
happiness of His creatures.
And now I recapitulate. We ask what is the
1 La raison et le Christianisme : twelve lectures on the existence
of God, one vol. 12mo. In the Philosophie de la liberté (2 vols. 8vo.)
M. Secrétan has set forth, in a severely scientific form, the arguments
of which the reader has just seen the oratorical expression from the
pen of Pére Lacordaire. This agreement is worth notice, the dates
shewing that no communication was possible.
358 LECTURE VII.
object of creation; and whereas we cannot transport
ourselves into the inaccessible light of the Divine
consciousness, we question the work of God in order
to discern the intentions of the Creator. From the
fact that humanity prays, we gather the reply that
man has a spontaneous belief in the goodness of the
First Cause of°the universe. We place reason in
presence of the idea of the Infinite Being; reason
declares to us that He who is the plenitude of Being
could not have created except from the motive of
love. We understand that God has made all for
His own glory, and that His glory consists in the
manifestation of His goodness. These thoughts, in
their full light, belong to the Gospel revelation, but
they appear, under a veil, in the conceptions which
lie at the basis of pagan religions. Without entering
the temple of idols, we may bow the knee before the
pediment of the ancient sanctuary, and, beneath the
open vault of heaven, adore, with the Roman people,
that God whose goodness takes precedence of His
greatness.
The direct consequence of the principles which we
have just laid down is that happiness is the object of
our existence. Created by goodness, we can have no
other end than blessedness.
THE FATHER. 359
But beware of supposing that we can take for our
guide our desire of happiness, and ourselves calculate
its conditions. Happiness is our end; it is the will
of our Father; but we must let ourselves be con- :
ducted into it. If, shutting our ears to the voice
which lays upon us commands and obligations, we
would take our destinies into our own hands; if we
made the search after happiness our rule, understand-
ing happiness in our own way, we should be taking
for light fastastic gleams which would lead us into
abysses of ruin. The unruly propensities of our
heart would lead us to make ourselves the centre of
the world. To “live for self” is the motto of self-
ishness, and the watchword of unhappiness. To live
for God is the way to happiness. To live to God,
that is to say, over the ruins of our shattered selfish-
ness, to enter into order, to take our place in the
spiritual edifice of charity, and to share in the joy
which God allots to all His children—this is the end
of our creation. Once lifted to the height of this
thought, we are able to understand the great struggle
which rent the conscience of the ancients, because in
their times the light of truth illumined only at in-
tervals the clouds of error which covered the world.
There are in man two voices; the one leading
360 LECTURE VII.
him to happiness, the other calling him to holiness.
The first impulse of his nature is to start in eager
pursuit’ of mere enjoyment; but ere long the second
voice is heard, the voice of conscience, striving to
arrest him in his course. If man do not obey her
call, conscience becomes his chastiser. Hence arises
a painful struggle of conflicting feelings, and the
human mind is the subject of a strong temptation to
pacify itself by silencing one of the two voices. It
is the history of antiquity. Socrates, the wise Soera-
tes, had indeed cried aloud: Woe! woe to the man
who separates the just from the useful; and had
warned men that happiness may be found apart from
what is right and good. Cicero put into beautiful
Latin the lessons of the Grecian sage; but the torn
heart of man was not long in tearing the mantle of
the philosopher. From the thought, full and com-
plete as it is, of Socrates issued two celebrated sects,
one of which wished to establish man’s life on the
basis of duty without reference to happiness; and
the other on the basis of happiness without reference
to duty.
The Stoics attached themselves to duty; but the
need of happiness asserted itself in spite of them, and
sought satisfaction in the gloomy pleasure of isola-
THE FATHER. 361
tion, and in the savage joy of pride. The sage of
these philosophers sets himself free, not only from all
the cares of earth, but from all the bonds of the
heart, from all natural affection. Finally, by a con-
sequence, at once sad and odd, of the same doctrine,
the highest point of self-possession is to prove that
man is master of himself, by the emancipation of
suicide and in the liberty of death. The Stoic
philosopher declares himself insensible to the ills of
life; he denies that pain is an evil; and, on the other
hand, he claims the right to kill himself in order to
escape from the ills of existence! So ended this
famous school. At the same period, the herd of
Epicurus’ followers, giving themselves over to weak
and shameful indulgences, were thus in fact labouring
with all their might (this is Montesquieu’s opinion)
to prepare that enormous corruption under which
were to sink together the glory of Rome and the
civilization of the ancient world.
This struggle which rent the ancient conscience,
and which still rends the modern conscience wherever
the goodness of God continues veiled—this great
conflict is appeased when we have come to under-
stand that goodness is the first principle of things,
that happiness is our end, and that the stern voice of
BB
362 LECTURE VII.
conscience is a friendly voice which warns us to shun
those paths of error in which we should encounter
wretchedness. The conscience is the voice of the
Master; and the same authority which, speaking im
the name of duty, bids us—‘ Be good,” adds, in the
gentle accents of hope—‘‘ and thou shalt be happy.”
Happiness, duty,—these are the two aspects of the
Divine Will. Love is the solution of the universal
enigma. ‘Therefore, surprising as the thought may
be, it is our duty to be happy. Our profession of
faith, when we look above, must be: “ I believe in
goodness ;” and when we enter again into ourselves,
our profession of faith should be: “I believe in
happiness.” And we do not believe in it. Not to
believe in happiness is the root of our ills; it is
the original misery which includes all our miseries.
Triflers that we are, we give ourselves up to pleasure
because we do not believe in joy: frivolous, we run
after giddy excitement because we do not believe in
peace: with hearts corrupt, we abandon ourselves to
the devouring flame of the passions, because we do
not believe in the serene light of true felicity. But
the more the thought of God’s love enters our mind,
the more will faith in happiness issue from our soul
as a blessed flower. Happiness is the end of our
THE FATHER. 363
being; it is the will of the Father. ‘To each one of
us are these words addressed: God loves thee; be
happy! If therefore (and I address myself more
particularly to the younger of my hearers), if in the
depth of your soul you are conscious of a sudden
aspiration after true felicity, ah! do not suffer the
holy flame to be extinguished, do not talk of illu-
sions; do not, I pray you, resign yourselves to the
prose of life; to a dreary and gloomy contentedness
with a destiny which has no ideal. Your nature
does not deceive you; it is you who deceive your-
selves, if you seek your own welfare in the world of
foolish or guilty chimeras. Listen to all the voices
which speak to you of comfort; be attentive to all
the words of peace. Seek, labour, pray, till you are
able to utter, in quiet confidence, those words of the
Psalmist :
In peace I lay me down to rest;
No fears of evil haunt my breast:
In peace I sleep till dawn of day,
For God, my God, is near alway :
On Him in faith my cares I roll;
He never sleeps who guurds my soul.!
a
+ Je me couche sans peur,
Je m’endors sans frayeur,
Sans crainte je m’ éveille.
Dieu qui soutient ma foi
Est toujours près de moi,
Et jamais ne sommeille.
364 LECTURE VII.
God in the heart—this it is which adds zest to
our enjoyments, sanctifies our affections, calms our
griefs, and which, amidst the struggles, the sorrows,
and the harrowing afflictions of life, suffers to rise
from the heart to the countenance that sublime smile
which can shine brightly even through tears.
+
THE END.
CAMBRIDGE :—PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER.
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