LIBRA^RY
Theological Seminary
PRINCETON, N. J.
BL 51 ,84413 1863 V
Saisset
-1863
Emile Edmond, 181
Ess
3y on religious
^^ 1 ^ u„
MODERN PANTHEISM.
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive
in 2008 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/essayonreligious02sais
ESSAY
RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY
BY M. EMILE SAISSET,
Professor of the History of Philosophy in the Faculty of Letters of Paris.
WITH MARGINAL ANALYSIS, NOTES,
CRITICAL ESSAY, AND PHILOSOPHICAL APPENDIX,
VOLUME IL
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO.
DUBIJN: JOHN ROBERTSON & CO.; AND HODGES &: SMITH.
1863.
Edinburgh :
Tiirnlull l5* Spears, Printers, 21 George Street.
CONTENTS.
Seventh Treatise — Pantheism of Heg-e!
PAGE
I
|^art 331,— ^eDitations,
First Meditation,
41
Second Meditation,
46
Third Meditation,
77
Fourth Meditation,
83
Fifth Meditation,
123
Sixth Meditation,
145
Seventh Meditation,
162
Eighth Meditation,
171
Ninth Meditation,
182
Essay: by the Translat
or,
193
'^ppznnix.
I. Natural and Revealed Religion,
II. Christlanity and Platonism,
III. Philosothy and Religion,
Index, ....
231
242
267
269
^ebentl) Creatine-
The Pantheism of Hegel,
It is impossible to doubt that Kant's idea of God phiioso-
is quite inconsistent with his system. But I can- p^^'^ s^"^"
not at once conclude that Kantism is false. For Kant,
if I take this system by itself, after eliminating g^f^^Jj'^^
every heterogeneous ingredient from it, it appears Hegel. "'
to form a sufficiently united whole, and that whole
is possibly the truth.
The last doubt which I wish to settle is con-
nected with the question of the definite conclusion
of the Kantian system. I hear it said that Kantism
leads to the Idealism of Fichte, and that this
Idealism itself conducted Fichte to a Subjective
Pantheism, from which arose the Absolute Pan-
theism of Schelling and Hegel.
What is the definite meaning of the formula, ^^^^^l^"
Idealism, subjective Pantheism, absolute Pan-tise.
theism ? What is the strange genealogy which jj subje^-
deduces Fichte from Kant, Schelling from Fichte, tive Pan-
and Hegel from Schelling ? I wish to understand n^ Abso-
all this. I wish especially to find a key to the ^"^^. p^""
txiGism
system of Hegel, since I am assured that it con- and espe-
tains the final conclusions of German philosophy, ^^^i^^jj^p,
I. One point which is clear to me is, that theism!
II. A
2 SEVENTH TREATISE.
f. Idealism phllosopliical movement excited by Kant could
Two^sys-''' ^^^ s^^^P ^^^^^ ^^^^- ■'• ^^^^ clearly, indeed, recog-
tems in niscd the fact, that the Critique of the Pure Reason^
and the Critique of the Practical Reason do not
form one homogeneous philosophy, but, in some
sort, two distinct and even contrary philosophies,
Avhich no artifice of logic or of analysis can solder
together.
I do not insist upon the additional fact, that
Kant has written a third criticism, the Critique of
the Judgment^ which, fastened on to the two
others by ingenious combinations, enriches them
undoubtedly, but also complicates to excess the
whole system.
Fichtecon- But I couseut to euclose myself within the
even^he^ Hmits of the Critique of the Pure Reason^ and to
first of the forget all the rest. Has the system, thus simpli-
ian systems fied, pcrfcct rigour and perfect unity ? Such is
—that con- |-]-^g questiou which Fichte put to himself It led
the C/7/,>,.- him to substitute a new doctrine for that of his
of the Pure niaster, which at first he merely proposed to make
Reason— \^ i ; r r
wanting in morc pcrtect. Accordmg to r ichte, the system
comL!""^ developed in the Critique of the Pure Reason is
tency. esscutially wanting in that logical severity which,
in his estimation, is the characteristic of true
science.
The system The first assertiou of Kant is, that nothing can
Lrts with b^ produced in thought, except as the sequence
an enor- of cxperieucc and of the phenomena which strike
Soi^"' our senses. But these phenomena, which the
with a mind meets with and does not produce, pre-sup-
'^^^ ' '''^' pose a foreign principle. Thus we have, at the
very outset, an enormous concession,, which ruins
by anticipation the whole system of Critical Philo-
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 3
sophy. What ! Science has the subject — the
human mind — for its impassable barrier ; and yet
there exists another thing : and the first condition
of science is to postulate an object which science
does not know, which it cannot attain, and which
is the only origin of all ! Science, then, starts
with a hypothesis, and with a hypothesis contra-
dictory in its very nature. It leaves its principle
outside of itself, or rather it has no principle — it
does not exist.
The end which Fichte proposes to himself in Fichte's
his Theory of Science is to give to science a true, fa\™o?'
that is to say, an absolute principle, reposing only '^J^"2!vt"
upon itself, and leaving a basis to all the rest. ~
Here, the idealism of Kant is accepted in all its
rigour. There is no longer any arbitrarily sup-
posed objective element, even as a simple pheno-
menon. All is severely deduced from the sub-
ject, the sole term of knowledge admitted by
idealism. Fichte's problem is just this: to bring
out philosophy whole and entire from the Ego ;
and this bold reasoner proposes to give his deduc-
tion a more than mathematical exactitude. Al-
gebra rests upon the law of identity, which is
thus expressed: A = A. Fichte maintains that
this law implies another, the only one which a
philosopher is entitled to admit without proof, and
also the only one which he requires: Me = Me.
When you say A = A, you intend to affirm This prin-
nothing upon the existence of A. You only ^^p^^^^'^^^J^j^
affirm that if A is A, A can be nothing else th^nln form and
A. The proposition A = A, is therefore, says'^'"'''-
Fichte, absolute only in its for?n^ and not in its
matter or contents. I know not if A exists prac-
4 SEVENTH TREATISE.
tically and materially or not; but it matters not.
I am formally certain that given A, A cannot
differ from A, and that there is a necessary rela-
tion between these two terms. It is by the
analysis of this relation that Fichte undertakes to
prove the existence of the Ego. In the propo-
sition A = A, he argues, the first A is not con-
sidered under the same point of view as the
second. The first A, as we have seen, is laid
down conditionally, the second absolutely. What
reduces these two terms to unity, puts them in a
certain relation, judges, affirms, and constitutes
this relation ? Evidently the Ego. Take away
the Ego^ and you take away the relation, the two
terms, the proposition A = A. Above it, then,
there is a higher and more immediate truth.
The principle of identity is only absolute mform;
the principle Me = Me is absolute both in form
and matter; it alone is truly absolute.
Fichte'> I need not follow Fichte in the course of his
£^. and deduction, the most subtle and artificial which
can be conceived. It is enough for me to know
that he pushed to the utmost the strange idea of
deducing a vast system of philosophy from this one
principle, the Ego. Upon this needle's point he
pretends to rest the entire edifice of human be-
liefs. Nature and God are but developments of
the Ego. The Ego alone is the principle, ex-
plaining, laying down, creating all; explaining,
laying down, creating itself. I know not whether
I should wonder more at the excess of extrava-
gance to which the human mind may be carried,
or at the amazing richness of its resources. By
Kant it was condemned to be ignorant of the
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 5
universe and of God, locked up in the prison of
the Ego. Let him alone. This one reserved
point will give him back all the rest. From the
furthest limits of scepticism he will even pass to
the most absolute dogmatism. But a little while
ago he doubted of everything. Now he vaunts,
not merely that he knows Nature, but that he
creates her. Nay, he vaunts that he creates
God. Such are the very expressions, at once
absurd and logical, of Fichte.
Yes ! Fichte draws nature and God from the
Ego. The Ego implies the Non-Ego. It limits
itself. It is only itself by opposing to itself
another which is not itself. It poses itself only
by opposing its contrary. It is itself the link of
this opposition, the synthesis of this antinomy.
In fact, if the Ego only exists for itself by limit-
ing itself, the faculty of self-limitation which it
possesses, implies that, in itself, it is infmite and
illimitable. Beyond the divisible and relative
EgOy opposed to the Non-Ego, there is, therefore,
an absolute Ego, comprising nature and man. This
Absolute Ego is God. Here, then, is thought in Reiathe
possession of its three essential objects; here are |^' [^^^^j^_
man, nature, and God, in their necessary rela- tithesis oi
tion, members of one identical thought, with^^^^^^"^'
three terms, at once separated and reconciled; ^0/''^^^?°
here is a philosophy worthy of the name; a"^ "^ '
rigorous, demonstrated, homogeneous science, start-
ing from one great principle to follow out and to
exhaust all its consequences.
Such in its general principle is the metaphysics
of Fichte. His morality is a logical, though per-
haps unforeseen, consequence of this. It is
6 SEVENTH TREATISE.
Morality fouiided upoii the Ego^ whose eminent character-
drawn ig|-|(3 jg liberty. To preserve one's own liberty.
Ego. whose one's Ego^ is duty; to respect the Ego^ the liberty
character- q£ Qthers, is another not less sacred duty which
iii)eity. becomes the foundation of right. Hence the
noble stoicism of Fichte, and that passion for
liberty, which were in such perfect hannony with
the masculine strength of his character and the
generous part which he played in the political
affairs of Germany.
But the But the importance of the system of Fichte
metaphy- jQgg not He here. I find his greatness and ori-
tion of'his ginality in the extraordinary metaphysics so justly
mofTm^'^ and boldly called by himself Subjective Absolute
portant as Idealism. It has this singular feature, that in
JJj^^PJ"^]"^^ pushing the scepticism of Kant to its extremest
matism of cousequeuces, it prepares the way for the dogma-
anS^Helei. ^^^^ ^f Schelliug and of Hegel. Not only does
it prepare the way for, but even begins and con-
tains this dogmatism. Fichte openly aspires to
absolute science. He explains all things — man,
nature, and God. He leads German philosophy,
if I may venture to say so, from the subjective to
the objective by the subjective itself. From
absolute scepticism he flings it into an enormous
dogmatism. Setting out from a teaching so
timid that it scarcely ventures to affirm one actual
being, it is the prelude of that ambitious philoso-
phy which embraces in its enormous frameworks
the history of man and that of nature, and pre-
tends to an unmeasured, unreserved, and univer-
sal explanation of all things.
ir. Subject- II. Schelling began his philosophical career by
theirm"'and ^cceptiug the system of Fichte, as Fichte had at
Schelling. first adopted that of Kant. His first writing,
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 7
composed at the age of twenty, has this signifi- scheiiing
cant title: Of the Ego as the Principle of Philoso-'^^"^' ^'^^"^
phy. But he was not long in perceiving the
absolute impossibility of retaining philosophy
within the narrow boundaries where she could
not breathe. Human thought, gone astray upon
the track of Fichte, had lost nature : the question
was to win her back.
Nature exists in presence of the Ego. This is a The pro-
simple fact, but a fact which science should explain. ^^^"V^.^
But the example of Fichte has proved that every scheUing:
attempt to deduce nature from the Ego, the object ^'ijjj'^^^"^
from the subject, is radically impotent. One thought, no
would succeed no better in deducing the subject Jy°I^j|jJ
from the object, the Ego from nature, thought being, and
from being. Thus there is no being without re^.c^Wn"^^ °
thought, no thought without being, and no means thought
r ^ 1 • -L ° r • -L • 1 • • into being.
or resoivmg thought mto bemg or bemg mto or being
thought. ScheUing put the exact problem of^"^°
philosophy to himself in these .terms. *'
I can explain to myself, without much difficulty, common
the solution to which he was led. According to ['j^l,"^ ^/^ f
him, thought and being, the subject and the object, and object
cannot be at. once indivisible and inseparable, s'^bj'e"/.''^^^^
unless there be one principle common to both, atject. Schei-
once subjective and objective, intelligent and Intel- ^^^l^^ ^°^"'
ligible, the only source of thought and being. This
principle, this absolute subject-object, as ScheUing
calls it, is the leading idea of his philosophy.
Ahriost in the same way, Spinoza was led to his Analog)-
unity of substance. His master, Descartes, had J^j^^^'j^^^Jj^ ,
laid down a fundamental duality, at the beginning in which
of science. He had recognised extended '^'^^^^^andSpTn^za
in face of thinking being. How was their co-exis- were led to
8 SEVENTH TREATISE.
their con- tciice, Still iTiore, their union, to be explained?
elusions. Malebranche, a precursor of Kants idealism, had
denied that bodies can be known. Berkeley,
anticipating Fichte, had tried to explain exten-
sion as a creation of thought. Spinoza, feeling
beforehand the uselessness of these attempts,
loudly declared that the co-existence of thought
and extension was only possible by an infinite
substance, at once extended and thinking, at once
nature and humanity.
The ana- ^he analogy is marked, but I must take care
logy not to exaggerate it. The movement of German
SchXng philosophy has a character peculiar to itself, and
and Spinoza an Originality, which, however limited, is real as
pressed °too far as it goes. Schelling is not merely the
^^'■- plagiarist of Spinoza. Yet he had read and
admired Spinoza from his youth, while the fierce
controversy, which divided Mendelsohn and Jacobi,
and in which all the thinkers in Germany took
part, was a few years earlier than the first writings
of Schelling, and struck him so strongly, that in
his first essay he openly expressed a hope of "one
day realising a system, which should be the pen-
dant of the Ethica of Spinoza." It was just what
actually happened.
T. (a.) In the universe of Spinoza there are
anT df ffJr- two worlds, at once united and opposed, the world
ences q^ thought or of souls, and the world of extension
between ^ '
Schelling or of bodies. These worlds interpenetrate one
s"?noza ai^other. Every soul has a body, every body has
I. Ana- a soul. Thought has its own laws, so has nature ;
logies. 1^^^ these laws strictly correspond. One of the
Spinoza, main theorems of Spinoza is this ; '^ The order and
connection of ideas is the same as the order and
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 9
connection of things." ^ What is the secret of this
identity? This — that thought and extension,
souls and bodies, are but two sides of one and
the same extension. Nature is God in extension
and motion ; the soul is God in thought. God
being one, the laws of his development are one.
Thus all existences interpenetrate one another ; all
is united and identified.
(,3.) Schelling also set out from this duality, (^.) schei-
thought or the subject, things or the object, or^^^o-
again, nature and humanity. Nature has laws ;
but a law is something essentially intellectual, it is
an idea. Nature, therefore, is penetrated through
and through with intelligence. On the other side,
humanity also has its laws ; it is free, no doubt,
but it is not given up to chance. Absolute laws
govern its development. There is a kindred, then,
between humanity and nature. From whence does
their distinction come ? Because nature obeys its
laws without consciousness, while humanity is
conscious of its laws. In other words, there is
being in thought, the ideal in the real, and there
is also thought in being and the real in the ideal.
The difference is that thought predominates in one
direction and being in another ; but, at bottom,
thought and being are inseparable. There is,
therefore, a common principle, which developes
itself, sometimes with, and sometimes without self-
consciousness. This is the God of Schelling.
2. So far, the Dutch philosopher and the Ger- ,. Differ -
man philosopher are at one. Here comes the^"<^*=*-
point at which they diverge.
(a.) In the universe of Spinoza, there is ^"^(a.) with
abyss between thought aud extension. Thought spinoza,
1 Ethica, Part H., prop. 7.
10 SEVENTH TREATISE.
an eternal and cxtensIon in this system, indeed, are always
relation of represented as God, but there is no kind of union
between bctweeu these two portions of his being. The
anTbe^n ^^^^ ^^ ideas flows ou oue side, the tide of bodies
on the other. God embraces them, it is true, but
the contrary waves are never united in this infinite
ocean.
(3 ) With i'^-) ^^ '^^ quite otherwise in the system of
Sciieiiing, ScheUing. The total of beings forms one con-
Ind"being tiuuous auS homogcucous whole, in which each
form a form of existeuce leads to a higher form. Nature is
geiTeous not destitute of intelligence, as with Spinoza. An
whole. infinite current of thought circulates throuo-h every
portion, only this thought does not at once arrive at
the plenitude of its being. It is, at first, thought
so deaf and so obscure that it absolutely escapes
from itself. By degrees, it becomes clearer and
falls back upon itself; first it feels itself, then it
distinguishes itself, then it arrives at self-reflec-
tion, self-possession, and perfect self-knowledge.
"Nature," says Schelling, "sleeps in the plant,
dreams in the animal, wakens in man." This
marvellous development is what the Germans call
the progress or processus of being (prozess) and if
we are to believe them, the idea of the processus is
the peculiar conquest of Schelling, and his great
claim to distinction. This, however, is to forget
that Leibnitz, and Aristotle, two thousand years
before Leibnitz, had conceived nature as a series
of homogeneous forms, rising from gradation to
gradation to an ever-increasing perfection. But
this is comparatively unimportant, as Schelling
evidently copied neither Leibnitz nor Spinoza,
nor any one else. It was the movement of his
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. ii
own thought, it was the current of the Kantian
philosophy, which led him on to the philosophy of
identity.
In point of fact the system of Schelling — in Scheiiing's
one sense an extreme reaction against the doctrine part^!"a
of Fichte — is, in another sense, a continuation of it. reaction
Does not Fichte also admit the absolute identity of pfrti"y^a
things '^. Did he not resolve the opposition of the cpntinua-
Ego and the Non-Ego into a superior principle ? Fichte.'
Only this superior principle was always understood
to be the Ego^ and hence the idealistic and subjec-
tive character of the whole system. This ideality,
admitted by Fichte, Schelling generalises and trans-
forms. It is with him no longer locked up in the
narrow prison of the Ego — it is the foundation of
all things. It may be said that Schelling has taken
the frames of his philosophy from the hands of
Fichte ; but in enlarging them he has given them
infinite amplitude. He has caused exiled nature
to enter into the system of Fichte, and scattered
reality over it in handfuls.
3. The evolution of German philosophy could ni. Abso-
not stop short with Schelling. The system ofthelsm^Tnd
Schelling, indeed, contained a principle, but it did H^g^^-
not furnish any means of giving it scientific de-ScheUing
velopment. Schelling had conceived the sum total ^^^)^^ ^^^
of things as the progressive series of the varied the identi-
forms of one identical principle. But how are we dpCof
to grasp this principle.'' how are w^e to find the law whose
of its development? how are w^e to demonstrate it .''forms all
This Schelling never did. thl^^ro'"
Why does this principle develope itself.'' whygressive
does it become alternately gravitation, light, acti- ^'^"^^•
vity, consciousness ? Are we to question experi-
12 SEVENTH TREATISE,
Hhinteiiec- encc ? Expenciice only collects, but cannot ex-
a" vain "'""' plain, facts. Shall we say that the subject-object
attempt, developcs itself by its very nature? It will be
asked, in return, what its nature is? and this Schel-
ling in no way determines. The occult quality of
an unknown principle must be admitted here.
How many mysteries and hypotheses ! and what
end do they all serve ? Take away experience,
and there is no apparent mode of constructing
science regularly, or even of sketching its faintest
outlines. Under the pressure of this diiSculty,
Schelling imagined his intellectual intuition^ a trans-
cendental faculty which attains the absolute with an
immediate grasp, without passing through the
laborious steps of analysis and reflection. But
Schelling was never able to throw any light upon
the equivocal nature of this alleged intuition. Is
it a natural gift, or an abnormal privilege of the
human mind? We know not. What can be
obscurer, more arbitrary, or more incompatible with
the conditions of science ? German philosophy
must take a step further, or abandon its principle.
Hegel's Hegel took this last step. Hegel sought for,
logic. ^j^d believed that he found, a method of construct-
ing and demonstrating absolute science. That
method he calls logic.
Hi5 prin- It is no easy matter to understand the logic of
"fdentit^^^ ^^^^^' ^^ ^ ^^ ^^^ comprehend his meaning, it is
of contra- characterised by two great novelties which are
dictones." closely couuected. First, he pushes further than
Schelling had ever done, and to its very utmost
limit, the principle of the absolute identity of
thought and being ; then, as a consequence of this
very excess, he introduces a law which is the re-
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL.
13
rived from
Kant'j
versal of all received ideas — namely, that con-
tradictions are identical, that being is identical
with nothing, the finite with the infinite, and life
with death.
However strange these novelties may appear, The" iden-
I think that I can perceive their root in the ^^^v °^ <=°"
doctrine of Kant. Suppose that Kant could tories" de-
have risen from his grave in 1820, on seeing"!
what philosophy had become in the hand ofarTdnJ
Hegel, there can be no doubt that he would "^'^'
have exclaimed, like Malebranche when he read
Spinoza, that it was a fearful chimera. And
yet, upon closer inspection, those two strange
and perilous principles — the identity of contra-
dictories and the identity of thought and being —
are already in the system of Kant. Has not
Kant, in the dialectical portion of his work, set the
example of opposing ideas to one another, and of
proving that contradictory propositions are equally
true ? Is not Hegel's logic, in this point of view,
the development of the antinomies ?
What is still more evident, and still more im-The
portant is, that Kant prepared the way for the^^s^^j
absolute identification of thought and being. '< identity
The history of this principle, of which Ger-''^^^°'!^^^,
J J • I- I, 1, 1 and being
many is so proud, and m which she makes similarly
her principal reputation to consist, is an infi- fjl^J^'^^^j^^
nitely curious study. We see it born from Kant, Kantian
developed in Fichte, transformed in Schelling, andthShwsof
finally grown to its fullest maturity in the system phenomena
of Hegel. According to Kant, what we call laws forms^of
of nature are really the forms of our intelligence o"'' ^"teiH-
T 1 1 1 ri-ii pgence ap-
applied by us to phenomena. 1 he great error or pHed to
philosophers is to detach these laws from their true^^'^'"-
lan
the
14 SEVENTH TREATISE.
Traced principle, which is the human mind or subject, to
thorough" transport them into things, to objectify them.
^'f'lv ^"'^ ^^^^ loved to make the idea of his philosophical
to Hegef. reform sensible, by comparihg it to that which his
countryman, Copernicus, had introduced in astro-
nomy. The vulgar believe that the stars turn
round the earth, which does not accord with the
exact observation of facts. Reverse the hypothesis.
Make the earth revolve round the sun. All con-
tradiction vanishes. Everything is explained and
cleared up. Just so; we are accustomed to sub-
ordinate thought to being, while, in truth, accord-
ing to Kant, being is subordinated to thought.
From this conception to that of Fichte there is
but a step. If things are only what thought
m.akes them, it is thought which constitutes and
creates things. The Ego^ in thinking and laying
down itself, creates itself. This is the absolute
identity of thought and being, explicitly professed
by Fichte, and boldly, but logically deduced from
the fundamental idea of Kant, only that this absolute
identity has the peculiar impress of Fichte's sys-
tem, I mean to say, that it is purely psycholo-
gical and subjective. With Fichte, being, like
thought, is ever the Ego or a development of it.
Fichte could give no other meaning to the iden-
tity of thought and being, but upon condition of
going beyond his system. Schelling took up, and
radically transformed the system of Fichte. In
his eyes, the Ego and the Non-Ego have an equal
reality ; nature and humanity subsist face to face.
They find their union in a principle at once ideal
and real, subjective and objective, which consti-
tutes and contains them.
THE PANTHEISM OE HEGEL. 15
The identity of thought and being, of subject
and object, conceived as real and objective, is the
common principle of the philosophy of Schelling,
and that of Hegel, aftd we have seen that both
one and the other are closely linked with previous
doctrines. Let us now glance at the difference
of the two systems. Schelling identifies thought
and being only in their first principle, which is
God ; but below God, thought and being are dis-
tinguished without separation. There is more
being in nature, more thought in man. If it be
so, thought and being are two different things,
and the principle of identity is at fault. Logically,
if thought and being are one and the same essence,
thought should not only be. found wherever being
is, but it should be met with in the same propor-
tion. Why is this equilibrium broken, and how
is it possible that it should be broken? Why is God
more in humanity than in nature ? The question
is, no doubt, a rash one, but it is one which he,
who is bold enough to maintain that absolute
science is possible for man, is imperatively called
upon to answer. But this question Schelling does
not, and cannot, solve. He is thus convicted of
inconsistency. He proclaimed the principle of the
identity of thought and being. He cleared it
from the relative and subjective character, which
disfigured it in Fichte and in Kant, but he did not
dare to develope it rigorously. And thus his
philosophy only propped itself up by hypotheses,
or by disguised loans which he made from experi-
ence.
Hegel makes it his special glory that he was
bolder and more consistent than his predecessor.
l6 SEVENTH TREATISE.
The uiti- He professes to draw from the principle of iden-
iTa^ri?J?o'f^^ty ^^'^^^^ neither Schelling, nor any other philo-
truiy abso- sopher had been able to make it yield — a science
tky/ ^^' of the development of things.
Hegelian Thought and being are one. But why two
principles. ^yQj-js to express One thing ? Let us not say
Thought thought and being ; let us say, the idea. The
=tdea'"^ /W^^, here is Hegel's God ; the development of the
idea=God. idea, here is reality ; the knowledge of this devel-
menf of' opmeut, here is science. The science of the idea
idea = is called lone, and thus metaphysics and loeic are
reality. r J J ^
Knowledge coutounded.
of develop- Thanks to this truly absolute identity, science
scienci becomes possible. It is reduced to determining
Science of ^j-^g necessarv relations of ideas. In the theory of
idea=logic. ^ i n- r ^ •
Science ochellmg, we were rorced, sometimes to rest upon
thus be- experience to describe the movement of beine
comes pos- .a /i-ii-i rr ^ i-
sibie m nature (which did not aiiord a real science),
kn'cS'wiJdge sometimes to give scope to the imagination, and
of the laws to preseut hypothesis disguised under the sound-
of the idea, j^^ name of intellectual intuition. This arose from
the fact that the essence of the first principle re-
mained undetermined, and that an arbitrary dis-
tinction was admitted between the objects of
thought and thought itself. But now that we
know that this first principle is the idea, and that
nature and humanity are nothing but the develop-
ment of the idea, the law of the idea once known,
science is found.
The laws of ^ ^^k Hegel how the law^s of the idea can be
the idea de- determined. He answers this question by his
thTiaJoT logic, which is the scientific determination of the
the idea- j^ws of the idea. They are all deduced from one
tradict(^°" fundamental law, the law of the identity of con-
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 17
tradictories. According to Hegel, all thought, all
being, every idea encloses a contradiction. This
contradiction not only exists in things, but consti-
tutes them. Life is essentially the synthesis and
union of two elements, which together are mutually •
exclusive, and require one another.
At first sight Hegel owns that this doctrine is
repugnant to common sense, and appears favour-
able to scepticism. The Pyrrhonists triumph in
the opposition of ideas ; but this opposition is not
at all embarrassing to the true philosopher, who
sees in it the condition, and the very movement
of life.
Common sense, far from rejecting the principle
of the identity of contradictories, is perpetually
w^itnessing to it,^ Does it not maintain firmly,
from age to age, the difference and identity of
the soul and the body, the co-existence and op- which is
position of God's foreknowledge and man's free J^^JJ^^^^^^^^
will.'' To abandon one of these truths for the mon sense.
other, under the vain allegation that they are ^^J^ ^{^^^^J^^^
contradictor)^, would be to fail in common sense. Theology-.
Examine common sense in its highest form, reli-
gion. Does not the religious soul adore a God
at once Personal and infinite, a God at once im-
moveable and living, visible and invisible I The
sceptic believes that he triumphs in opposing these
' Hegel's law of the identity of contradictories has been anticipated
by Heraclitus. "When extravagant wits and pretenders to wisdom shall
assert things evidently repugnant to sense or reason ; that snow and coal
have the like appearance (as did Anaxagoras) : that all motion is im-
possible (as Zeno) : that contraaidory propositions may be consistent {as Hera-
clitus''''^. Barrow, Sermon viii. " The Being of God proved from uni-
versal consent," in "The Christian Faith, explained and vindicated."
Hpa/cXetros to dvri^ovv crvfxcpepov /cat c/c tQv diatpepovTUv KaWiaTTju
ap/xoviav Kal irdvTa /car' ^piv ybeadai.. — Arist. Ethic. Nic, lib. viii. i.]
II. B
t8 seventh treatise.
attributes to each other: it is because his reasoning
has extinguished his reason. While he is torment-
ing himself by turning from one of these contraries
to the other, an elevation of the heart to God unites
them. Has not the Christian religion, the most
reasonable of all religions, been teaching men for
the last eighteen hundred years, that God made
the world out of nothing, that God was made
man '^. Are there not there just as many contra-
dictions as there are propositions, but contradic-
tions full of reason, life, and truth ?
In science. The scicuces preseut us with a thousand ex-
amples of the identity of contradictories. In phy-
sics, do we not admit without difficulty that light
supposes darkness .^ Imagine a light without a
shadow. Objects equally illuminated can no
longer be distinguished, and this uniform day is
precisely equivalent to night. Thus light implies
its contradictory, obscurity. Not only does it
suppose, but it bears darkness within itself and
engenders it: and on the other hand, while pro-
ducing it, it realises itself. The product is
effective light, colour.^
From these quaint but simple examples we
may form a general idea of the system of Hegel.
Three mo- Every idea encloses three elements, or to use the
Tve'^ Idea o^^hodox Hegelian language, three moments. It
may be considered in itself, in its opposition to the
contrary idea which it implies, or finally, in the
unioyi which conciliates them.
The first moment is that of the idea in itself ;
> [" Erit igitur lumen quasi coloris color." — Jul. C. ScJig, Di Subtil,
Exerc. Ixxi.]
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL, 19
the second, that of the idea out of itself; the First «*-
third, that of the idea in itsef and/i/r itsef. The ^^'^^==idea
idea first exists simply and immediately; then it Second ;«.-
is divided and opposed to itself; then, finally, it '"^'"'^7.''^''^
reduces its two members to unity. 1 ne moment Third mo-
di unity is that of life, of concrete, individual ^'J^^=!j^^^^^^^
reality. He who only considers the idea in its/or iudf.
earlier moments knows nothing but abstractions,
and this is the common weakness of the vulgar,
and of those philosophers who follow the logic of
the schools. The vulgar holds to that first view
of things which makes us know them in a state
of mixture and confusion. This is the perception
of the senses. The understanding is applied to
this gross matter, divides and decomposes it. Here
oppositions come out conspicuously. All things
appear contrary. Life and death, motion and
repose, soul and body, fact and right, society and
nature, philosophy and religion. Minds which
fasten upon these oppositions cannot fail to fall
into scepticism; an absurd extreme, as far re-
moved from common sense as it is from true phi-
losophy. But to stop short at scepticism is to
know very imperfectly the nature of things and
the power of thought. The understanding is
above the senses.^ but reason is above the under-
standing. What the understanding separates,
the reason unites. Things which seemed incom-
patible appear united. Confusion is succeeded
by order, war by peace, doubt by faith, the
anguish of the soul and the hesitations of reason-
ing by the serenity of an afiSrmation, which is sure
of itself, and the fulness of a perfect comprehen-
sion. Life and death are but the two moments of
20 SEVENTH TREATISE.
existence; fact and right, the two aspects of one ne-
cessity; society, an advance made upon nature;
philosophy, a finished development of religion.
I can see how Hegel may have been led to the
principle of his logic and of all his philosophy,
the identity of contradictories. His constant me-
Method of thod is to find in every idea a contrary idea, and
f^egei. j-Q ^j^i|-g them in a third idea; to oppose thesis
coJdi'ngtT^^^ antithesis, and reunite them in a synthesis;
him. to consider the idea successively in itself^ outside
of itself and for itself We thus arrive at a new
idea, which is nothing but the first idea, vivified
by the very opposition which it has met, become
concrete and living, instead of dead and abstract.
The same idea thus transformed, meets with
a new contradiction, a new opposition, to come
out victorious from it, and so on, ad infinitum^
from the simplest idea which contains the germ
of all the rest, to the most compound, which ex-
presses its fullest development. The chain of
these oppositions is science. It consists in bring-
ing out the universal identity. Setting out from
a primitive idea at the lowest degree of thought,
it finds this at the summit, and all the intermediate
ideas are nothing, but the same idea unfolding
itself infinitely.
Tripaitite This general view enables me to take my bear-
HleeHan^^ ings in the midst of that vast edifice of accumu-
phiiosophy. lated abstractions, where the thought of Hegel
plays with unparalleled subtlety and fertility.
Nothing remains external to this system, and I
am not unwilling to allow that there is in it an
immense effort to embrace and explain all things.
The work of Hegel comprises three parts:
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 21
logic ^ properly, so called; the philosophy of nature; Logic, phi-
and the philosophy of mind. The first and last ;r72^,7phi_
principle of things, which Hegel calls the idea, lo^ophy of
should first be contemplated in itself, in the depths
of its yet unmanifested essence, in those necessary
and primitive laws which constitute it, and which
at a later period are reflected in all its works.
The science of the idea in itself is pure logic,
the key-stone of the whole system.
The idea — ^by a necessary sequence of its na- ^^^'^r*^^ «/
the idea
■pure
ture, such as logic has described and explained it — itself^
developes itself; or, to use a better expression, ^''■^''•
splits itself and lavs bare the element of contra- ^/^i^^^e of
• ■ tiiG scrips
diction which was enfolded within it. It was of necessary
God in Himself; it becomes nature; eternal andT?"'5"^'
r 11 1 • r *"^^
immutable, it falls under the conditions of time =phiiosophy
and change. The philosophy of nature developes "-^"''^"''^'
for us the series of necessary movements which
carry the idea across all the degrees of the scale
of sensible beings. The laws of mechanics,
chemistry, and physiology resolve themselves into
a series of oppositions. But the final principle,
which presides over this development, decides
that the contradiction necessarily assumed at the
outset should be necessarily destroyed in the sequel.
The idea, which in nature was ignorant of and
denied itself, returns upon itself and becomes
mind. The science of the return of the idea to Science of
itself is the philosophy of mind. Religions, arts, ^f^^hf -je"
systems, social institutions, are but different upon itself
phases of that evolution which is regulated by an ^^^^^"■^ '-^
eternal and inflexible geometry. The history of
humanity reflects that of God. It is a living
logic. It is God who realises Himself; who,
22 SEVENTH TREATISE.
setting out from Himself, returns to Himself,
thus closing the infinite and eternal circle.
I resume these three great divisions. Logic,
in the system of Hegel, occupies the position
which in ordinary systems is assumed by Theo-
dicea. It is the science of God, considered in
Himself before creation (at least, if the words
God and creation have any meaning here).
Strange Theodicea truly ! where, in place of the
sublime attributes of eternal justice, infinite good-
ness, pure and unmingled beauty, I find a dry
enumeration of abstract ideas — being, nothing,
quality, quantity, measure, identity, difference.
These ideas form a chain whose first link is
the idea of being; all the others presuppose it,
while it presupposes none of them. But the
idea of being or being — for Hegel here iden-
tifies these two things, as he always does —
is identical with nothing. What is being con-
sidered in itself? It is absolutely undetermined
being, neither finite nor infinite, neither mind
nor matter — that which has neither quantity,
quality, nor relation. All this may be affirmed
of nothing. To think upon nothing is to abstract
from all the fonns of existence, which is conse-
quently the same thing as to think upon being in
itself. On the other side, Hegel does not deny
that being and nothing, the existent and the non-
existent, are two contradictory terms. They are
at once contradictory and identical. Contradiction
in identity is the supreme law of thought and things.
Thus, from the idea of being, the primitive
matter of things, comes out the idea of nothing.
But being and nothing do not remain as they are.
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL, 23
Being at once excludes and call for nothing. This
double movement excites a third idea, which Hegel
calls becoming, and which reconciles the other two.
Becoming is the idea of development, by which a
being becomes that which it was not before. This
idea implies simultaneously that of being and that
of nothing ; it is their synthesis. We are now
free from the confused abstraction, where all is
lost and mingled. We set foot upon the solid
ground of reality. We have to do with determined
being, with quality.
Athwart this endless deduction, which I shall The
make no attempt to follow out in detail, the lead- J^f^olomy
ing idea of Hegel's system is maintained with sin- carried out
gular firmness. In all cases, the idea traverses J^S!" ""^^
three necessary moments. It is first the con-
fused identity of contraries, then it divides itself to
go back finally to its primitive identity, illuminated
and quickened. This is the dominant law of all
spheres of thought, not only physics, astronomy,
and the natural sciences, but also psychology,
morals, jurisprudence, the history of civilisation, of
religions, and of philosophies.
There are three faculties in the human mind : i^ppHed to
sensation, which gives ideas confusedly; the un-\^'^]''^'''
derstanding, which disentangles and opposes ; the
reason, which unites them.
Man is first for himself a confused unity of a
soul and a body. This unity is split by reflection.
The soul opposes the body, but it perceives that
the body is still itself, and then it refers it back to
itself as a necessary moment of its existence.
Inman, allatfirst is mingled — instinct, will^ reason.
The man already exists in the child without doubt,
24
SEFEJSITH TREATISE.
but in an abstract and undetermined way. He is
in h'wuelf^ not for himself. The age of reflection
comes. An opposition emerges between instinct
and reason, nature and will. Hence evil, but hence
also good. Good supposes evil ; for he who does
good without struggle, solely by the impulse of an
excellent nature, is not truly good. Here, ac-
cording to Hegel, is a brilliant verification of the
principle of his logic. We cannot conceive good
without at the same time conceiving evil. Good,
in one sense, therefore, implies evil, and yet ex-
cludes it. This is the contradiction to be solved.
Hegel believes that he attains the solution by
demonstrating that at botton instinct and reason
are identical. Instinct is reason which is igno-
rant of itself. After being opposed to itself in
the struggle between the will and nature, it
recognises their identity, and henceforth all be-
comes order in the pacified souL Instinct under-
stands that to obey reason is to be faithful to
oneself. Reason understands that it is not des-
tined to extinguish or violently suppress instinct,
but to guide it; and the intelligent and volun-
tary harmony of instinct and reason is virtue,
the source of happiness. People imagine that
virtue and happiness are two different things, but
that is a narrow philosophy of the understanding.
Reason identifies what the heart of the honest
man never separates, well-doing and well-being,
P^^j^g^ jg_ virtuous action and felicity.
veiopments Everywhere, on the surface, are contradiction
ciVie^of "he ^^^ difference ; everywhere, at bottom, are har-
identity of mouy aud identity. What, apparently, can be more
toris! ^^' opposed than philosophy and religion ? What
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 25
more different than various religious worships?
What more contrary than philosophical systems ?
Yet, in reality, all these religious institutions, whose
variety confounds and whose opposition astonishes
us, are but members of one body and moments of
one idea. The idea which is developed in the
harmonious course of religions, is the same which,
under clearer forms, displays its ever-diverse, yet
ever-identical, nature in the regular movement of
philosophic systems. The laws of logic, every-
where present, because they are the foundation of
all, determine and preside, with sovereign power,
over this twofold evolution. Applied to
There are three great religions — the Oriental J^^^'^^.^?^''^'^''''
religion, the Greek religion, and the Christian
religion, which correspond to the three necessary view of "
moments of the logical idea. The Oriental re-^hristi-
ligion is the idea of God in its first moment, ^'
comprising all the rest in their confused unity.
Man adores God, but without knowing Him and
without knowing himself. The universe, man,
and God, form as yet but an indistinct whole,
nature. The Greek religion is the idea of God at
the moment of diremption and contradiction. God
is divided, so to speak, ramified into a thousand
branches, opposed to man and to Himself. The in-
finite is lost and dissolved in the finite. The
Christian religion, in its very essence, is the reli-
gion of reconciliation. The daughter of the East
and of Greece, Christianity reproduces and iden-
tifies them. God, who was ignorant of Himself
in the obscure symbols of India, who, in a certain
sense, wandered out of Himself in the prodigious
variety of contrary divinities in Greece and Rome,
26 SEVENTH TREATISE.
came back to Himself, and took clear conscious-
ness and perfect possession of Himself in Chris-
tianity. Thus Christianity is the sole, complete,
true, self-evident religion; it is God knowing Him-
self, and affirming Himself to be God.
What are called the mysteries of the Christian
religion are the absolute laws of things, obscure
to the senses, to the understanding absurd and
contradictory, to the reason clear and harmonious.
Is not the first of these mysteries that of the Holy
Trinity ? But the Holy Trinity is the very prin-
ciple of logic under the form of a symbol. The
Father is the idea in itself; the Son is the idea
out of itself., in its visible manifestation ; the
Spirit is the idea in itself and for itself arrived
at the ultimate term of its movement, recog-
nising itself as identical in all the degrees
which it has traversed. In the bosom of the
Father are found the three moments of the idea,
but as yet in a purely ideal form; being or
power, the object of thought ; the word, or intelli-
gence, or again, thought engendered by being;
finally, love, which proceeds from and unites the
two. This purely ideal trinity is realised by
creation, the kingdom of the Son ; but, to fasten
creation to its principle, the finite must know
itself infinite, man must know himself God — this
is the kingdom of the Spirit. To philosophy it
pre-eminently belongs to realise the kingdom of
the Spirit upon earth. Philosophy, in fact, it is
which, by linking the symbols of Christianity to
the laws of thought, explains and demonstrates
that which religion could only assert — the intimate
union of God and man. The first form of this
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 27
union is found in the Christian community of the
Church in its cradle ; the second has been the
organised Church ; the last will be the State, to
which all religious creeds are invited to ally them-
selves one day under the law of reason and of
liberty.
I m.ust frankly confess that my first sentiment, Weakness
as I leave these strange speculations of modern °|^!^^''"'^;'
Germany, is one of astonishment that, in the^ io^^Pv
country of Leibnitz, they should have been able
to enthrall men's minds so long.
Unless I am much deceived, German philosophy. The belief
for the last half century, has been under the [^^^^^ ^^^"^^^'^
dominion, and, as it were, under the spell of an is attainable
illusion, that of believing that absolute science is f-' ^^^
•1 1 r 1 1 • • numan
possible for the human mind. Absolute science — mind the
by which term I mean to denote the universal and Zo^7
adequate explanation of all things — is the chimera of German
which German philosophy has been pursuing since p^'^^'^p 5'-
the time of Fichte, and each of the systems to
which it has by turns given birth is merely an
effort to seize the elusive phantom.
It is said that this unmeasured confidence in This
pure theory arises from the speculative genius of ^euff^dL?
the Germanic race. This explanation is true, as not arise
far as it goes ; but insufiicient. For this land of ^o^^[he
enthusiasm has produced such great critics as speculative
Wolf, Heyne, and Paulus. This chimerical race fh" oer*^*
has given birth to Kant. "^^"-5
I should rather be apt to believe that it is the rather a
very excess of doubt, in the doctrine of Kant, J^^^^^°"
which has produced, in that of Hegel, the oppo- excessive
site extreme of dogmatic pride. In philosophy, q''/^^^^/^'"'
account must be made of two essential elements.
28 SEVENTH TREATISE,
On one side, there is the human mind, with its
nature, its limits, its weaknesses of every kind.
On the other, there is the sum of things, their
essence, and their relations. To reduce the
human mind to the sole knowledge of its own
constitution, in forgetfulness of the nature of
things, is to deny science. To conceive science
as independent of the nature of the human mind,
its constitution, laws, and limits, is to deny it again;
for it is to make it impossible and contradictory.
Kant's German philosophy aifords the spectacle of
extreme these two oDDOsite extremes. Kant begins by
scepticism . . ^ r ^ • • i -i i
and Hegel's recognismg the ract that m science philosophers
extreme \i2iYQ not (riveu sufficicut Weight to the human mind,
dogmatism. o ^ ^ o _ '
to the subject. This is a profound as well as solid
view, from whence an incomparable analysis of
reason has arisen. But soon, dragged on by his
own principle, this wise thinker forgets his wisdom
so far as to debar the human mind from all access
to the reality of things. Hegel flung himself into
the opposite extreme. The author of the Critique
of the Pure Reason scarcely ventured to affirm the
existence of external objects ; the author of the
Logic professes to know them thoroughly, and to
demonstrate their origin, essence, and laws. The
father of German philosophy pared down Theo-
dicea to a suspicion of the possibility of God.
To the last inheritor of that philosophy, the
Divine nature has no mysteries. The number
and order of His attributes are discovered with
the same clearness as the properties of geome-
trical curves. Kant imprisoned reason in the
circle of experience. Hegel refuses all scientific
authority to experience ; all must be demonstrated
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL.
29
in philosophy, that is to say, deduced from pure
ideas. For the master, the highest conceptions
of the human mind had a merely relative and sub-
jective value ; if we believe the disciple, nothing
relative and subjective has any place in the frame-
works of science.
Thus, of the two necessary terms of all know- common
ledge — the human mind and things — Kant sup-P?^"^^"
presses the second, Schelling and Hegel narrow the Scheiii'ng.
first, Fichte marks the transition from one extreme ^^^ Hegei,
to the other. In fact Fichte, even while exaggerat- belief in
ing Kantism, pursues the chimera of absolute [^'^^^^p''^^'"
science ; but it is in the Ego that he flatters himself absolute
with the hope of finding it. Like Kant he sup- '"^"*'^-
presses things, but he preserves their ideas, and
prepares the future transformation, which is about
to construct things themselves out of these ideas.
Thus Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (and one
might add to these eminent names those of all the
philosophers of modern Germany) have this com-
mon point through all their differences, viz., that
they believe that absolute science is possible, that
they search after, and attempt to construct it.
Hence their common method^ which is as chime- Their
rical as the object which it pursues. Its dis-^^j^^^
tinctive feature is the suppression of experience .^ or the sup-
at least its complete subordination to the data oi^J^^^^l
pure reason. Germany has the most complete
contempt for observation. To attend to facts is,
in its estimation, to fall into empiricism, the lowest
stage of intellectual degradation. Science is
essentially the explanation of things. But experi-
ence explains nothing. Science in explaining de-
monstrates. Experience can demonstrate nothing.
30 SEVENTH TREATISE,
It is enclosed in necessary limits. It knows what
happens at a given time or place. But science
must have universal and durable results. Experi-
ence is the work of a finite mind, and consequently
always relative and subjective. Science is, by its
very essence, absolute and objective.
Absolute Evidently, if philosophy pursues absolute
science in- scieuce, the philosophic method is the a priori
volves an / i i i
a priori method, founded upon pure ideas, following the
methcxi. order of things, explaining and deducing every-
thing, despising experience, recognising no limit
and no condition. By such a science such a
method is absolutely required. These two
chimeras are made for one another !
The most If I am not much mistaken, the secret of all
Shdstic German speculation is here. The double illusion
principles which I have just pointed out appears to have for
UngVnd ^t^ necessary consequences — (i.) The principle
Hegel of the identity of thought and being, the common
th^ideaT fouudatiou of the system of Hegel and Schelling.
of such a (^2.) The still more dangerous principle of the
and such a identity of contradictories, of which the Hegelian
science. jogic is a perpetual application. (3.) The eminently
Pantheistic idea of the processus of things, which
makes of the human mind the ultimate term, in
which the successive developments of existence
are at last concentrated and reflected.
Absolute For the construction, indeed, of absolute
biuveln science, it is not enough that the order of ideas
ideitsand should express the order of things. The ideas
qui"?d for must embrace, penetrate, and constitute the things,
aosoiute Xhe ideas must be the things. Suppose that
Know e ge. ^.j^j^^^ ^^^ Separated, or only distinct from ideas,
a doubt is possible as to the perfect conformity of
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 31
the ideas to the things. The essence of things
is surmised, perceived through a medium ; it is not
grasped and thoroughly mastered. Absolute
science is overthrown, if there is not a perfect
identity between ideas and things.
Absolute science must start from a first idea, Absolute
and deduce all others from it. What can this'"^"'^^
idea be ? The vaguest and most comprehensive from the
of all, the idea of undetermined being. But how j'^^^ °^."^
•' - •11 determine
are we to pass from undetermmed to real bemg, being.
from the abstract to the concrete, from the nega-
tion of existence to life ? There is a contradiction
there. Well ! Instead of concealing it, let us
boldly accept it.
Contradiction then will be at the very origin
From
O^^^ thence will
of things. Let this primitive contradiction foUow the
become the fundamental law of thought andofX^^''
being. Let it be found again and again in all "identity
nature. Let it be the hidden force by which dicdo^nJ/'
ideas come out, one from the other, from the and its
poorest to the richest — so that definitively ^^"^1^" J"
nothing is the principle, God the term, and '-nothing
nothing becomes God. God"'"
But how can the human mind know and de-
scribe this vast and marvellous evolution ^. On
one condition only — that the human mind be the
superior degree in which everything ends, the
final circle which envelopes and penetrates ail the and to
rest — on condition that the human mind is all, i;]^"^^"'''
that Man is God. Man divinized — such is the
last word of German philosophy.
Schelling says that God is the absolute subject- o/"ht1'^
object. Hegel says that He is the idea, infinite tems of
mind. But we must understand each other f^j'^H^^ei.
32 SEVENTH TREATISE.
clearly. The subject-object, considered prior to
its development, is but an abstraction, an empty
identity. I say as much of the infinite mind, of
the idea in itself. Hegel himself declares that
the idea in itself is identical with nothing. If
this be God, it is necessary to explain it frankly.
But it is not so. The God of German philoso-
phy is not at the commencement, but at the end
of things. This God is the human mind; or
rather, God is at once at the origin, at the end,
and in the middle; which is just tantamount to
saying that there is no God distinct from things.
How far In default of more solid merit, have these
dortrines Strange doctrines that of novelty ? Here again is
original? Que of the illusious of German philosophy.
German Nothing cau be more artless than these pre-
troriVin-^ tensions to originality on the part of our neigh-
aiity. hours bcyond the Rhine. In the Hegelian school
especially they have been carried to the furthest
point. Hegel, in his Lessons on the History of
Hegel's Philosophy, only recognises two great epochs —
o7ph1b-''^^ ttie Greek epoch and the Germanic epoch. But
sophy. it is a matter of course that German philosophy
is comprised between Kant and Hegel. This is
to erase, with one stroke of the pen, from the
annals of human thought, scholasticism and French
philosophy, such names, for instance, as those of
Abelard and Descartes. We can understand
that Germany should treat French philosophers
with this haughty contempt. But is it not the
extreme of ingratitude thus to humiliate Leib-
The great- . ^ °
est ideas of UltZ .
^h-l^'^^h ^^^^ is the more revolting, inasmuch as these
arJnororl- proud coutemuers of the philosophy of the seven-
ginal.
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 33
teenth century have not disdained to borrow They come
from it its most original views. partly from
The following great ideas, which constitute all
the force and riches of Schelling, come from Leib-
nitz: —
(1.) The principle of the universal homogeneity
of substances.
(2.) The law of continuity^ according to which
all beings are interlinked and placed on the
scale.
(3.) The inner dynamism^ which all through
nature makes itself felt, under the apparent
mechanism of its phenomena.
(4.) The profound analogy between the laws
of the universe and the laws of humanity.
Has not another Cartesian, Spinoza, a large Partly from
part to claim in the speculations of Germany ? I ^p*"*'^^-
have formed a positive conclusion, that the prin-
ciple of the identity of thought and being, is the
very fundamental doctrine of Spinozism. Hegel
accuses the Jew of Amsterdam of having mistaken
the occidental principle, the modem principle of
personality — of having made of God necessity, or
absolute existence, without recognizing in Him
the subject, the person. But is it becoming in
Hegel to raise against Spinozism such an accusa-
tion, however well-founded in other respects ? Has
he respected in God or in man the personality
w^hich he invokes — he^ who from the summit of
being to its lowest gradation, has seen nothing
but the rigorous geometry of the idea.^^ While
distinguishing himself from Spinoza, Hegel never-
theless recognizes a great precursor to German
philosophy. Who, in the name of wonder ^. Not
34 SEVENTH TREATISE.
Spinoza. Perhaps Descartes. No ; it is a Ger-
man of the sixteenth century, the chimerical author
of the Daivn of Mornings the philosophical cobbler
of Gcerlitz, Jacob Boehme !
Kofthe I ^^^ Hegd himself speak: "We shall see,"
originality says he in a Celebrated discourse, "that amongst
phiSsoph" those nations of Europe where the sciences are
cultivated with zeal and authority, philosophy has
been left nothing but the name, the idea of it has
perished, it only exists in the German nation.
We have received from nature the mission of being
the preservers of this sacred fire, as to the Eumol-
pidse of Athens was confided the preservation of
the mysteries of Eleusis, and to the inhabitants of
Samothracia that of a higher and purer worship ;
as in still older times, the universal spirit had given
to the Jewish nation the consciousness that he
would come forth renewed from her."
What astonishes me most in the artless vanity
of these words, is that the history of philosophy,
which has been cultivated so deeply and patiently
by the compatriots of Hegel, and by Hegel him-
self, has not in the slightest degree altered the
serenity of their speculative pride. Without going
back to the early times of Greek philosophy ; I
find about the time of the decline of Greek and
Roman civilization, a philosophical movement, full
of striking analogies with that which has agitated
Germany for sixty years, I speak of the Alexan-
drian philosophy. It also had been preceded by a
radical scepticism, that of Q^nesidemus, of Agrippa,
and of Sextus ; it also flung itself into the contrary
extreme, to embrace the phantom of absolute
science. Like Hegel, Plotimus disdains experi-
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL. 35
ence ; like him, he pretends to seize the absolute
order of things, and not only to seize it, but to de-
duce it, and to demonstrate it; both admit a dialec-
tic movement in being which is reflected in science,
and which identifies reason and being in the idea.
At Alexandria as at Berlin, the mysteries of the ^'^^^^''''"
divine essence are clearly discerned, they are ana- philosophy
lysed into three elements, at once distinct and inse- o/the gS-
parable, a primitive trinity which is found at the "^^^^ ^^
bottom of every thing, and of every thought. ^/LeTbnitz
This trinity becomes to these two schools a sort ^^^ ^Pj"'^-
p • 1 1 • 1 -IT! za. as above
or magic wand, which removes every veil, lights up indicated.
every obscurity, and effaces every difference. Phi-
losophical systems are brought together, religious
symbols are confounded, everything is interpene-
trated and united. At the summit of this trinity,
beyond all the determinations of thought and
being, reigns the absolute unity, the identity of
existence with nothing, the abyss where human
thought, after having run round the necessary
circle of its revolutions, comes to seek repose in
the annihilation of consciousness and personality.
Thus, in both cases, there is the same principle,
the search after absolute science : the same method,
purely rational speculation : the same results, the
identity of contradictories, and man made one
with God.
This, then, is the beginning and the end of
German philosophy ; it begins with scepticism, it
ends with Pantheism. And these are the two
springs where the rising generations are to drink
and be satisfied. Kant pours them out scepticism,
Hegel pantheism, and these two currents of ideas
meet in the doctrine of an impersonal God.
3^ SEVENTH TREATISE.
Thus in vain have Descartes and Malebranche,
Newton and Leibnitz, exhausted their genius, to
The scepti- organise into a system the universal belief of the
Kam°^d h^^*^^ ^^^^- ^^^ Personal God, the God of
the Panthe- common seuse, the God of spiritual philosophy,
eeTconf ire "^^^^ give way, and in His stead scepticism and
tointro- Pantheism leagued together must introduce the
doctdne of Undetermined substance of being. Once for all I
an imper- pause, and ask myself seriously : Must I come to
this at last ? Is this result the answer to my long
historical researches ? I have read enough, I have
talked enough, the age of maturity comes, I will
shut my books, I will fold myself within myself,
and consult henceforth my reason alone.
sonal God,
1 [The question of the consistency of Hegelianism with Christianity
has been anxiously discussed. There appear to be three parties in the
Hegelian school. The droit is occupied by such men as Bauer who, hold-
ing the Hegelian doctrine of God in man, receive the Gospel history.
The milieu has for its exponents those who, like Rosencrantz, only deny
deny the supernatural events of the Saviour's life. The gauche is repre-
sented by Strauss, who, with the anti-historial spirit of all thorough
Pantheists, evaporates the whole life of Christ into the " meteoric
regions of idealism," and who agrees with Hegel himself that " the
Christian idea of God's oneness with mankind as a sensible history is
abolished, and degraded into a distant, dreamy vision." (Hegel ei
V Hcgelianesme, par M. Edmond Scherer, cf. Michelet, Geschichte der
Systeme der Philosophic^ TI., pp. 638-659. Mill on the Mythical Interpre-
tation of the Gospels.)
The Hegelian trichotomy, applied to the Gospel history by Strauss,
nms thus. The moment of confusion has a spontaneous expression in
the evangelists. The moment of contradiction is supplied by the nega-
tions of history and of science. The moment of identity is found in the
combination of faith and science in the school of Hegel ! Christ has
disappeared as person and fact ; He abides as idea, and the union of God
and man is realised in humanity. I need scarcely observe that Neander,
Tholuck, and Ol'hausen, have overthrown this unhistorical scheme; an
admirable critici.'-m of Strauss is to be found in Dr. Mill on the Mythical
Interpretation of the Gospels. There are just two points to which I would
allude in this note, (i.) The most original portion of Strauss, his
" ideological Christology," is really in the New Testament, in such texts
as, " crucified with Christ," '• risen with Him," appearing with Him in
glory." The points of difference are, that the " ideological Christology"
THE PANTHEISM OF HEGEL, 37
of the New Testament only applies to regenerate humanity ; and, still
more, that that ideology is based upon distinctly historical grounds by
those who first preached it, and who, having a really ideological version
of the Resurrection before their eyes, pronounced it to be a '• babbling,"
and a "gangrene." (2.) The character of Christ is a knot which the
Hegelian Christology can never cut. Either Christ created the Church,
or, the Church created Christ ; but the Church could not have created
Christ, therefore, Christ created the Church.
The ablest exponents of Hegelianism consider his system equally in-
consistent with man's immortality. Mankind, with Hegel, is mathe-
matically immortal, because new generations supply the place of those
which perish ; like a spring which at any moment we term analogously
the same with that which has existed in the same place, because other
waters pour in with pauseless rapidity ; or, like a tree, which h fgura-
tively styled perennial, while the apparently permanent green with
which it is invested is made up of successive generations of leaves. But
in the immortality which Scripture reveals, each leaf upon the tree, and
each drop in the river is immortal and imperishable. — Cf. August : Be
Chit: Dei, XXIT., I. (See also VI.)]
pan 3i%
ESSAY ON RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY.
MEDITATIONS.
jfir0t jHeMtation*
Is there a God?
I REFLECT within myself and say, "Whence comes why do i
it that I must always think of God ? I exist, I J^^J^ °^
live ; existence and life are dear to me. I find
around me a thousand objects which please and
interest What need I more to fill my soul? and
why do I seek something beyond? Why? Be-
cause I feel but too well that I am imperfect, and
set in the midst of imperfection. When I consider
my being, I see it pass away like a rapid stream.
My ideas, my sensations, my desires, all change
every hour ; and, in the same way around me,
there is no being that is not passing from motion
to repose, from progress to decay, from Hfe to
death. Amid these vicissitudes, like a wave borne
on by other waves, I roll in the immense torrent
that bears all things to the unknown shore. This
change — this perpetual change, is the universal law
— is my condition.
And the more I reflect, the more I see that this i am led to
condition belongs to the very nature of things, cha'nge^and
Within me, and without of me, being is ever impertec-
changing, because it is limited. I find myself con-
fined in a comer of space and time. In vain I strain
And all
nature.
42 FIRST MEDITATION,
all the springs of my frail corporeal machine; I can
only lay hold of the few objects that are within my
reach. I think, but among the numberless truths
Man, that I perceive I can but seize some, and these only
on condition of concentrating my thoughts in a nar-
row circle, beyond which I see dimly, or not at all. I
love, but my power of loving, which turns with a sud-
den impulse towards all which contains some evident
or secret perfection, can only cling to frail, perish-
able, changeable objects, not one of which fulfils
the promises it made. Everywhere there is a limit.
I change its place, but I cannot destroy it : still I
feel it, still it weighs me down. There is in me
an indefinite power of development, which aspires
to unfold itself in a thousand different ways, and
which, meeting everywhere with obstructions, now
strains violently against them, now falls back upon
itself, weak and weary, discouraged. And the
reason of this continual change within and around
me is this : we all, inhabitants of this world, great
and small, thinking atoms, blades of grass, grains of
sand, are, in our different degrees, and under forms
infinitely various, imperfect beings, striving after
perfection, but only reaching it in an imperfect
manner.
Why am I? But why am I imperfect? why do I bear such
My reason r • i i •
of existence 3- lorm, m such a manner, at such a time, or m
is not in such a placc ? Why do I exist at all ? I know
"^^^ ' not, and this proves invincibly that the reason of
my own existence is not within myself, that my
being is not a first being, but a borrowed and
relative existence.
Now, whenever I contemplate my being thus,
as radically imperfect and incapable of self-exist-
ence, there arises in my soul the idea of the perfect
IS THERE A GOD ? 43
Being. I conceive Him perfect in all the infinite idea of the
powers of His being. Whilst I am endeavouring, "^l^^^^
across the waves of time, to gather the broken
fragments of my life, and to develope imperfectly
some one of my powers, He, concentred in an im-
mutable present, enjoys the absolute plenitude of
His existence in its eternal expansion. I find every-
where limits, either in the beings who surround
me and press upon me, or in the form and degree
of my own powers. He is the being without
limits, the only being of His kind, the being to
whom nothing is wanting. All the powers of life
are concentred in Him, those that I know as well
as those infinitely more numerous, of which I have
no idea. In imperfect beings, limited and unequal,
they are subject to strife, to negation, to discord.
In Him all is infinite, positive, fall, equal, alone,
harmonious. This plenitude, this harmony, this
unity of all the powers of being, is the supreme
good, is the absolute beautiful, is the Being of be-
ings, is God. This idea of the perfect being
charms me. How vast, how sublime it is ! but is it
not too far from me ? On the contrary, it is as
near as possible. Plunged in the whirl of passing
things, I may, for an instant, be seduced by their
charms. I may, falling in love with myself, be
sometimes dazzled and intoxicated with a feeling
of my own strength, but it is because I only look
at the surface of things. As soon as I return to
myself, as soon as I examine the depths of my
nature, I am terrified at the weakness, the incon-
sistency, the incurable fragility of my being, and
I feel that it would vanish away if it were not sup-
ported by the true Being. There is no efibrt of
the mind in this, no circuitous thought, no reason-
44 FIRST MEDITATION.
ing process ; there is a sudden, spontaneous, irre-
sistible impulse of my imperfect soul, turning to its
eternal principle, feeling itself live and exist in Him.
When I come to reflect and to reason on these
two objects of my thought — the imperfect being
The exist- that I am and the perfect Being by whom I exist
God, like — ^ see that it would be madness to suppress one
our own, qj- other of these two terms. I find them at the
conclusion end of all my analyses, at the beginning of all my
"ism^^^^°' r^^sonings. They compose, in their indissoluble
union, the permanent foundation of my consciousness,
ma^^ob- Can I think on duration which passes away,
^"h^^ah 3.1 ways preceded and always followed by another
imperfect duration, without conceiving eternity? Can I
and perfect represent to myself a certain space, surrounding a
smaller space, and surrounded by a larger, without
Thought of ..^.' -30 T 1 u-
duration coucciviug immensity i^ Can i contemplate a being
leads to finite, changeable, in process of development, without
space' to conceiving the Being who is infinite, immutable, per-
iTfiliT''^^' ^^^^ ''* "These two ideas call one to the other, and
infinite, are linked by a necessary connection. But am I
not the dupe of a fortuitous reciprocal relation,
which is, perhaps, only in words? Nay, how should
it be in the words if it were not in the ideas, and
how in the ideas if it were not in the things? Besides,
is not this connection most simple ? Before the
imperfect being there must be the Perfect Being ;
before that which only exists in a temporary, local,
and relative manner, there must be that which
exists fully and absolutely. This is simple, clear,
evident ; it is a natural axiom ; it is the first of
axioms ; it is the supreme law of my reason.
Shall I endeavour to destroy, by an artifice of
reflection, what nature has so deeply engraven in
my consciousness ? I have tried it more than once
IS THERE A G0D1 45
without ever being able to succeed. Supposing The idea of
that there is no perfect being, how should I^^^J"/^^e^^
have the idea of one? Could I have created it? destroyed
But with what elements and after what model? ^7 j^^^^^'
I might accumulate ages and spaces, I should never
make immensity or eternity. In vain should I heap
size upon size, in vain should I choose among exist-
ences all their powers, all their features of beauty or
perfection : these accumulated masses, these beau-
ties, these powers, ever increased, purified and com-
bined by the most powerful imagination, would
never give me the infinite, the absolute, the per-
fect. Moreover, what are ideas in general ? They
are forms of thought; and what is thought in gene-
ral? What is its essence ? It is to represent that
which is. How, then, should it represent that
which is not? Finally, if I were to analyse the
idea of an imperfect being, I find that the imper-
fect being is one who has not within itself the
reason of its own existence, and supposes, conse-
quently, something beyond itself. If, then, I were
to conceive the imperfect being as exhausting all
existence, I should conceive it at the same time as contingent
supposing, and not supposing something beyond ^^^ !"^p|=.''"
itself, which is a palpable contradiction. necessary
I could bring forward many more reasons and ^efnr'^^^'^^
show that 1 cannot deny the perfect being without
being liable to a re duct io ad absurdwn. But that
is useless. I am in a region above reflection and
reasoning — in the region of primary ideas and evi-
dent principles. I lay down, then, as a principle,
as a truth self-evident and anterior to all other
truth, that my contingent and imperfect being, and
every other analogous being, has its reason in the
necessary and perfect being.
^econti iaetiitation.
Is God accessible to Reason ?
Proof that I KNOW that before this universe of which I form
Bdrf'^ex-^ a part, and which is a moving collection of fragile
ists by and imperfect beings, there is the perfect being
Himself. ^i^Q ^jQj^g g^-g^g ^^ Himself. This is the first
ray of light that breaks upon my night ; and I
scarcely perceive it, when it seems to vanish, and
leaves me involved in darker shadows. For what
is the signification of these words ; God exists
by Himself.? I find a profound mystery in the very
evidence they afford. I cannot doubt that the
Perfect Being necessarily contains in Himself the
principle of His own existence. Otherwise God
would not be God, the perfect being. For not
existing by Himself, He would exist by some
anterior principles. He would only have a commu-
nicated, perishable, dependent existence. And this
extraneous principle, whence He must draw His
being, would be the true God, unless, in its turn,
it depended upon some other principle, and so on,
infinitely ; and thus there would be no first prin-
ciple, no God. Therefore, it is certain that the
Negative perfect being must exist by Himself.
Being" b^y ^es, it is cvideut enough, but that does not
Himself, make it more easy to understand, for what is the
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 47
meaning of self-existence ? If a negative notion
were sufficient, I should say, To be self-existent
is to have no need of a beginning. I understand
this well enough, for I have only to look at my-
self, or at any other being whatsoever in the uni-
verse, to know what it is, to need a beginning.
I know negatively what it is, to be self-existent, ^°^^ 9^."^
but when I want to form a positive notion of the self?
self-existent being, I feel myself face to face with
an insoluble enigma. Were I to say that God
creates Himself, it would be using mere words,
for if I accept this explanation seriously, it signi-
fies that God is both the cause and effect of Him-
self, He was then before He made Himself, He
was then before existing : two contradictions — so
we are reduced to say that God has no need of a
Creator, that He is uncreated. I fall back upon
a notion purely negative and indirect.
Were I to say that God is perfect, and that js God's
His perfection is the reason of His existence, even perfection
this thought which had appeared to me solid, and of^Htr°"
profound, is an illusion. No one has yet suc-^^i"?^
ceeded, perfection being given, in deducing exist-
ence from it. Who shall attempt it where so
many have failed ? If the perfection of God is
the reason of His existence, we must say, to speak
rigorously, that God is perfect before existing,
which is a contradiction. Reason being so consti-
tuted that she submits every conception to the
conception of existence, that she can conceive
nothing anterior to existence, we must here invoke
some human faculty superior to reason, some
unheard of esctatic intuition.
But perhaps I am wantonly making difficulties
48 SECOND MEDITATION.
Shall we for myself. God is being itself. Is it not quite
must exht? pl^iri that being must exist ? No, it is not quite
We are met plain ; for liow many times at the end of all my
swer, Why reflectious on the origin of things have I met
not nothing? ^\[\^ this problem. Why is there anything
rather than nothing ? I mean rigorously nothing,
neither imperfect being nor perfect being, neither
finite being, nor infinite being, neither God, nor
universe, neither man, nor space, nor time, nor
movement, nor number, in fact, absolutely no-
thing.
Our ignor- \ sj^^ll be told that this supposition is contra-
God. dictory, and that trying to conceive absolute
nothing, I myself destroy the conception, for I
at least exist who conceive the nothing. It is
true, I cannot evidently draw out the hypothesis
of nothing, as an hypothesis actually realised ;
but that does not prevent me from conceiving
nothing as possible, having abstracted myself as
well as everything else. What matters it that I
have no positive idea of self-existence .f* If I could
conceive it, I should know how and why it exists,
and I need not ask, Why is there anything?
This question shows me the depths of my own
incurable ignorance ; it shows me my absolute in-
capacity of attaining God in His essence. I know
that God is : I know not why He is. His essence
escapes me. I can say what it is not ; I cannot
say what it is.
God incon- It is uot cuough to say that God is incompre-
w7ii as 7n- hensible. God in His essence, God as self-existent,
frehen- is absolutely inconceivable to any other being but
Himself. When we say that all in God is infinite,
and, consequently, infinitely disproportioned to
sibL
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 49
man, and consequently incomprehensible, we speak
the truth. When we say that there is in God an
infinity of perfections, an infinity incomprehensible
to a finite being, we speak truth again ; but we
speak the whole truth when we say that the
essence of God is wholly inaccessible to us ; and
it is quite conceivable to say that the essence of
God is incommunicable; God alone is God. We
must be God to understand what God is in Him-
self, and why He exists ; where is the root of His
perfections, and what mysterious tie unites them.
Then it avails me nothing to have found God,
since this knowledge only shows me the infinite
depth of the abyss of ignorance, where my thought Yet no need
is lost. But let not my soul therefore despair, or scepti-
Let me examine closer. We cannot know the"^"^-
essence of God, but it does not follow that we
can know nothing about Him. We cannot know in God'is
His essence because it is incommunicable, but
evidently all in God is not incommunicable, for we
exist, we think, we love, we act. And thought,
and life, and activity, and love, are everywhere
diffused around us. God has not then remained
within Himself, enwrapped in the mystery of His
essence : God has manifested Himself, God has
communicated Himself. Why, how, we know not,
but the fact is certain, the universe is there.
There is then something incommunicable in God,
namely the essence of His being. There is also
something communicable, namely the powers of
His being, thought, love, joy, and life.
We know besides that God is perfect. With-
out understanding, without even conceiving the first
foundation of His essence, we know that all that
communi-
cable.
50 SECOND MEDITATION.
is in Him, is there under the form of perfection, that
is to say, under the form of immensity, of eternity,
of absokite plenitude, and of entire completeness.
Why, then, should we not know God according
to the measure of our needs and earthly condition ?
Without indiscreet haste, or timid mistrust, instead
of groaning over the weakness of our nature, let
us walk by its light, and to strengthen our steps
let us make use of what we know best in the
world, our own thought.
Our We think, doubtless weakly, sometimes well,
thought sometimes ill, always much worse than we wish,
to^ Perfect^ but as a matter of fact we think. Among all
Thought, beings, we have the privilege of exerting that
superior power of thought which is called reason,
and which has truth for its object. We know
very clearly what constitutes truth. No doubt
we do not always attain to it, but we know always
that it consists in the agreement of thought and
being.^ Without being, there is no thought,
without thought the being escapes from itself, it
is as if it had not been. Thought reflecting being,
being laying hold of itself by thought, this is
truth. Now, why is thought imperfect ? Be-
cause it is limited, either in its object, or in itself.
Being escapes it, and often in its effort to seize it
lets it escape. Because it pursues with too much
ardour, it is always trying to embrace a larger
quantity of being, and to lay hold of a higher
degree of purity, and it never attains its object.
Thought is an incomplete power, which attains
' ["Veritas est affectus orationis conveniens menti, et aflectus mentis
conveniens rei , . . falsitas erit in notlonibus, quje ?unt in anima, prop-
terea quod cse rebus adxquatce non sunt."' — J. C, Scaliger, De Subtil.,
Excrcit. II.]
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 51
action only by effort, aided by time, across a thou-
sand intermediaries, a thousand obstacles, a thou-
sand mistakes. And even when it attains some
particular truth, it cannot stop there. It perceives
immediately another distant truth which attracts
it, so that having taken breath, it dashes forward
again, always restless, desirous, greedy of truth,
never satisfied. This aspiration ever disappointed,
teaches us to conceive the ideal of the perfect
thought, I mean thought in a state of absolute
completion, embracing all being, embracing it with
a sure hold, and with a single glance, without effort,
without intermediary, without succession, without
limit, without weakness, without the least imper-
fection. O, we cry, what a sublime ideal were
this ! With what ineffable joy should we follow
such a possession of truth I and we say well, for
living truth, truth laying hold on itself, and enjoy-
ing itself, perfect joy in the full possession of truth,
is God.
But what if all this is but a delusion, a chimera what if
of my reason, which gives reality to that which ^^^j^^^^^^^
it desires. What if, making a God in my own
image, composed of all that is best in myself, I
have invented a God who has no existence but
for me alone ? I said just now, and I thought I
demonstrated, that between God and man there
is a difference which is absolute, and not relative;
a difference of nature, and not of degree.
It is true the finite has no proportion with the Finite and
infinite; but let us weigh this well — between thejjjj^^^^j^t.
intellects that we possess and the complete intel-
lect, there is the infinite. Our thought, and
every imperfect thought, is a power in the way
52 SECOND MEDITATION.
of development; this is its essence and its neces-
sary law. Divine thought is a thought fully de-
veloped, which by its essence is anterior to all de-
velopment. Finite thought implies effort, infinite
thought excludes it. Finite thought is displayed
under the form of time, infinite thought subsists
and is maintained under the form of eternity. It
knows none of the conditions of an imperfect in-
telligence, nothing of limit, or time, or space, or
succession, consequently nothing of memory, or
reasoning, or induction, or any of those human
intermediaries between an infinite truth and a
finite thought; nothing of those laborious opera-
tions which are the torment and confusion of our
reason. It is but the pure essence of thought,
thought adequate to being, intuition having con-
sciousness of itself, thought taking hold of being,
and taking hold of itself. On one side an indefi-
nite virtuality, tending towards action without
being able to reach it, on the other the absolute
infinite act, excluding all virtuality, all effort, all
measure, all degree, all interval between itself
and its end. The difference is not of degree, but
of nature and essence; it is the difference between
time and eternity, between the finite and the infi-
nite, the relative and the absolute.
God has in- Also, since God is the universal Being, the
and'^on*^*^ Being to whom nothing is wanting, He must pos-
sciousness. sess intelligence. There could not be less in the
Perfect Being than in the imperfect, in the cause
than in the elfect. God could not be the source
of being and yet not be the source of that intelli-
gence without which being would be as though it
were not. And if God be intelligent He must
rS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 53
perform acts of intelligence. He must have in-
tuition and consciousness of Himself. For in
reality to imagine a thought without intuition,
and without consciousness, would be to keep the
name while taking away the thing; unless I
should venture to say that there is nothing in
common between divine thought and human
thought. And then these words, God thinks,
would have no sense to man. The consciousness
of thought would be an imperfection, sleep would
be better than waking, and God, as said one of the
ancients, would be like a man asleep. Where
would be His dignity ? " No," cries another sage,
"no, by Jupiter! they wiU not persuade me that
thought, a soul, motion, and life, do not belong
to the Absolute Being; that this Being neither
lives nor thinks, that he remains motionless, im-
mutable, a stranger to the august and holy powers
of intelligence."
And the sages were right. God is not an ab- God is not
solutely incommunicable being;, having no rela- ?^^°^"^^^y
• 1 1 1-1 1 r XT- incommu-
tion with that which proceeds n-om Him. Itnicabie.
there be in His essence a mystery which baffles
me, there is also in it a dazzling light which
shines to the eye of my reason, and charms it.^
He is reason itself, eternal reason; not the dark
1 [It has been said that " not our logical mensurative faculty, but
our imaginative one, is king over us," and that " a symbol is ever, to
him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-
like." — Carlyle, Sartor Resartus. The opposite aspects of the infinite
God are thus revealed to us under apparently contradictor)- symbols in
the Bible: "The Lord said that He would dwell in the thick dark-
ness;" yet '-He dwelleth in the light which no man can approach
unto." — I Kings viii. 12; i Tim. vi, 16. What is the conclusion of
philosophy, as indicated above, but the translation into modern lan-
guage of God's "dwelling in thick darkness," yet ''in light imap-
proachable."]
54 SECOND MEDITATION.
germ of thought, but thought complete ; not ab-
stract truth, but truth substantial and active,
which diffuses itself and communicates itself infi-
nitely. Rejoice, my soul, thou hast found God,
the living God, the true God.
OBJECTIONS OF A PYRRHONIST.
I was resting joyfully in the idea of eternal
truth, the divine harmony of being with thought,
the complete type of the perfect life. I said to
myself, Here is a certain victory; here is a first
step made on firm land. I may advance in safety,
and I congratulated myself on having set aside
books, systems, the disputes of the schools, and
permitted my mind to give itself free scope, and
to taste at will the pure luxur}^ of free thought.
But it is all in vain. Books follow me; they
fling themselves in my path, and force me to stop
in spite of myself. Sometimes Kant impedes my
way, sometimes Spinoza. And when I succeed
in putting to flight the illustrious dead, their liv-
ing disciples rush to the assault. I cannot take
one step out of my retreat without meeting with
scepticism or pantheism, in the person of some
one of my friends.
To-day it is a sceptic with whom I have to do.
Scepticism His opinious are in general quite in accordance with
~^j'P^r those of Sir William Hamilton, the great Scotch
the Hamii- critic. Like him he has passed the Rhine, and been
initiated in the German philosophy, whose darkest
labyrinths have no secrets for him. It is espe-
cially the doctrine of Kant that has seduced and
toman
form
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? ^^
fascinated him, so that in the recent attempts of
Schelling and Hegel he sees only an added proof of
the impotence and the incorrigible pride of reason.
^'I confess God as well as you, says he, but I
believe in Him in another manner. God is not
to me an object of science, but an object of faith; Revelation
I speak of that natural faith vvhich has been re- °( *'^f '"^"
fused to no man, and which has a more extensive which,
circle than reason. The visible world, the finite, j^o"^^^^'^""'
, . . , belongs to
or, m more precise terms, ' the conditioned m faith, not
space and time,' is the domain where reason and^^^^"*^"'
science display themselves; that which is beyond
it escapes them. I agree, that 'the very con-
sciousness that we have of our impotence to con-
ceive anything beyond the finite and the relative,
inspires us by an astonishing revelation with faith
in the existence of something unconditioned, be-
yond the sphere of comprehensible reality.'-^ But
do not triumph in this confession, for this uncon-
ditioned, this absolute, although real and certain,
is not the less outside of science. Science is
composed essentially of positive and determined
notions, and the absolute is to the human mind
only a negative idea absolutely undeterminable.
^' See what happens when you dare to determine
the nature of God. Your God is, you say, the
Being of beings; that first principle which philo- The abso-
sophers in France call the perfect Being, and in^"^^*
Germany the Absolute. Pray what is the abso-
lute ? As long as you confine yourself to nega-
tive determinations you are all right. You say
the absolute is the infinite, the eternal, the immu-
1 Sir W. Hamilton's Discusstom on Philosophy and Literature. See espe-
cially Appendix I. ; Conditions of the Thinkable.
56 SECOND MEDITATION,
table, the one, the simple. That means that
God has no precise limits ; that He is neither in
space nor time ; that He is incapable of motion,
of variety, of difference, which are all void and
negative notions. To speak thus is not only to
say nothing about God, but it is to acknowledge,
without knowing it, that He is inaccessible to
man. Man, in fact, by his nature, is subject in
all his acts to the laws of space and time. This
is why his reason cannot exercise itself on any
object without imposing on it this double con-
dition. To say that the absolute is without rela-
tion to space and time, is to say that He is with-
out relation to human reason ; that He will
always be to it an algebraic X, the X of an in-
soluble equation.
Sceptical You feel this yourself, and you try to come to
to^TsitiTe positive determinations. God, you say, is intelli-
determina- geuce, consciousuess, reasou, truth ; and, if we
GoT *^ You ^^^ yo^ go on, you will tell us presently that He
are pro- is love aud joy, active power and liberty, wisdom,
Ind^mao-ni Justice, foresight, holiness, anything you please,
fying your But do you uot perceive that you are the dupe
mlnity!' of '^ pl^y of the imagination, which is thus making
to itself an idol of human elements .f* Thought,
love, joy, and liberty, are but modes and relations
of your particular being; that is to say, the acci-
dental and changeable forms of a little being wan-
dering in a corner of the earth, in the midst of
infinite space. Can you call that atom, more or
less amplified, God? And what an extreme
of pride to see only man in the universe ^. Is
not God the God of all beings ? why confine
Him and cut Him down to the proportions of
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 57
man ? Why not say He is matter when you
aver He is spirit ? By what right do you give
Him thought, and deny Him motion ? And then
in the narrow circle where you want to contain
Him, why choose that which suits yOurself ; why
accept this, and refuse that, while all modes of life
are one and inseparable ? God possesses joy ac-
cording to you; He must then suffer sadness.
You attribute to Him thought and consciousness ;
He must then think as man thinks. He must
recollect, reason, and conclude; He sees and hears.
He must have eyes and hands. You are ashamed
of this idol, which is your own creation, and you
try to make it a little less material. You take
away first the senses, then memory, then reason-
ing, till, by refining and retrenching, you have
nothing leift but an empty abstract thought, a
thought which does not think, a nothing.
"The strength of your reasoning is this princi- Proof that
pie, that all that is in the effect must be in the .^^'^ ^^'°"
cause. But this principle is false; for otherwise cessibie to
we must transport into God not only finite forms ^^°"&^^-
of existence, but also duration, succession, and
extent, without which these forms vanish.
"You would attach yourselves to the idea of
Divine thought, no doubt, because you think this
safer ground than any other. Well, let us try
it. Assuredly if there is a truth that contempo-
rary philosophy has put in a strong light, it is
that all truth supposes the distinction of the sub-
ject and the object. There must be a subject
who thinks, there must be an object who is
thought; there must be a relation between the
58 SECOND MEDITATION.
two terms. Nothing is plainer. Well, do you
know what follows rigorously from this admis-
sion ? This — ^that the Absolute is absolutely in-
accessible to man; further, inaccessible to Himself.
In a word, the Absolute is a contradiction to the
laws of thought. How, in fact, should the Ab-
solute admit of thought, since He is absolutely
one, and thought implies a division and a differ-
ence ? Besides, thought is only real when it seizes
itself. It supposes, then, consciousness, the Ego.
From the "If God thiuks, God has consciousness, God
Tou^h''^ says I. Now to say I, is to distinguish oneself
from something else; it is to place an extraneous
object before oneself. The I, consciousness, can
only belong to a particular finite being, limited
by other beings. This is the meaning of the
celebrated formula, ' The Ego supposes the Non-
Ego.' Then to suppose an Absolute being who
says I, is evidently to deny His being abso-
lute; it is to deny Him while you assert Him.
We must believe, then, one of two things : either
that God thinks without consciousness of His
thought — that is to say, that He thinks without
the necessary conditions of thought; or thinking
really that He has consciousness, that He says I ;
and then He is no longer God.
Can the " The Absolutc, then, considered in itself, is not,
bethought and cannot be, intelligence and thought; it can-
by man?^ not think itself; can it be thought by man ? No.
ectatk^' For to think the absolute, is to tiike the absolute
intuition. fQj. ti^g object of tliought; therefore to distinguish
oneself from it, to set oneself outside of it. But
according to its definition, the Absolute is that
which embraces everything, and outside of which
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 59
nothing can exist, or be conceived. Schelling
understood perfectly the contradiction which exists
between the Absolute and the laws of thought;
and he admits, in God, a thought absolutely unde-
termined, a thought which is mingled with His
being, and which he calls the absolute indiffer-
ence of these two terms. Such a thought is
equivalent to the annihilation of thought. But
better still — Schelling goes on to ask, how man
can think the Absolute. He knows and acknow-
ledges that the Absolute cannot enter into human
consciousness, the Absolute being one, and con-
sciousness implying opposition between the sub-
ject and the object. So what does he do.^ he
imagines a human intuition of the absolute, which
is accomplished outside of consciousness, and
which he calls contemplation or intellectual intuition.
It is, says he, a flash of lightning, a sudden rap-
ture. Ask him not to describe it; it avoids
^analysis, for it avoids reflection and even conscious-
ness. In this mysterious act every distinction
vanishes between the subject and the object of
thought. It is not God on one side and the soul
on the other. God and the soul are identified.
We are in thorough mysticism.
"But we do not escape from the discussion by
taking refuge in mysticism and ecstasy. For if
we place ecstasy outside of reason and knowledge,
we confess ourselves conquered, and if we accept
the discussion we are reduced to say that there is
a thought which is in contradiction with the
essence of thought. Nor if we admit this thought
are we any better off*, for since it is outside con-
sciousness, it is outside memory. ' We come
6o SECOND MEDITATION.
out of intellectual intuition,' says Schelling, ' as
out of a state of death ; we come out of it by
reflection.' This is impossible, — we cannot re-
flect on that which does not come within the range
of our consciousness ; we cannot recollect that
which we have not perceived and felt. Supposing
the act of intuition to be complete, having no pos-
sible relation with our consciousness, it would
remain entirely extraneous to us.
Dilemma. " Tliis, then, is the state of the question, If you
confine yourself to excluding from God all the
forms of finite existence, all positive determination,
you confess that God is indeterminable, and that
the science of God is a void and negative science.
If you try to determine positively the nature of
God, either you have a god made in the imiage of
finite being, a false god, an idol, or else you give
to God contradictory attributes ; as, for instance,
thought without the necessary conditions of
thought. Then adding to thought, love, joy, and
liberty, but love without need, joy without sad-
ness, liberty without effort, you think you advance
in the knowledge of God, and that you make His
nature to consist of an harmonious union of all
perfections, while all the time you are making of
Him a monstrous assemblage of all contradictions.
History " In point of abstract reasoning, this is what logic
must be says^ In point of fact, there is but one way of
consulted. < . ,^ . '. iii'
solvmg the question, that is to consult the history
of systems, and the history of religions. What,
in fact, is any doctrine, philosophical or religious,
but a manner of conceiving the origin of beings,
that is to say, of determining the Absolute ? One
philosopher conceives the Absolute as substance,
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 6i
another as cause, another as unity ; and all are
persuaded that they possess an Absolute perfectly
pure, unfettered by any condition or relation — the
true Absolute. Now substance is not the Absolute,
for it implies modes. Cause is not the Absolute,
for it is relative to its eiFects. Intelligence is not
the Absolute, for it is only realised by consciousness,
difference, and opposition. Unity even, is not
the Absolute, for it necessarily engenders variety ;
and if it does not engender it, it expresses nothing,
and itself vanishes in absolute indetermination.
There is no middle way; there must be either a
determinate, conditional, relative God, or an un-
determined God, who may be reduced to these
three syllables the Ab-so-lute — and then follov/s
the logic of Hegel, which identifies this Absolute
with nothing. One of his own disciples, Oken,
has given the real formula of this God-nothing of
Hegel, namely Zero.^
"This is the mere play of scholastic acuteness, "Reii-
but let us consider now the beliefs of human g?"''"'^^-^
tnis school.
science. There is at least one incontestable fact, "so many
which is, that all men savage and educated, have f^^'j^J"/ ^
the Abso-
lute."
' [Mr. Mansel, several years ago, gave a summary of these opinions
with equal learning, acuteness, and wit, —
"The land that produced one Kant with a K,
And many Cants with a C.
Where Hegel taught to his profit and fame,
That something and nothing were one and the same ;
Where, rear'd by Oken's plastic hands,
The ' Eternal Nothing of Nature ' stands ;
And Theology sits on her throne of pride,
As 'Arithmetic personified ;'
Where Feuerbach shows how Religion began
From the deified feelings and wants of man,
And the Deity ovv'n'd by the mind reflective
Is Human Consciousness made objective." —
Phrontistakn — Scenes from an unfinished Drama, pp. 13-14. J
62 SECOND MEDITATION.
alike felt a need of thinking of God, of making to
themselves some image of Him, of introducing the
Divinity into their homes and their consciousness.
Thence all religions — thenceFetichism, Polytheism,
Manicheism, Monotheism, which are so many dif-
ferent forms under which man strives to imagine the
Absolute. An endeavour touching and sublime,
but ever impotent, ever infinitely beneath its
object. This is why religions die, after having
lived, and are continually renewed with time,
places, races, nations, and the great movements of
civilisation. Consider the last and the most philo-
sophical of human religions, Christianity. You
will find in it, amidst the purest symbols, the proof
of the vanity of all symbols. When the God of
holy writ describes Himself, He lets fall from His
lips only that grand ironical sentence, ' I am that
I am.' The New Testament, it is true, is given
to complete the Old. God becomes incai-nate in
man, but how is this incarnation taught to the
Christian ^ Is it offered to his reason to under-
stand, or to his faith to adore ? The Word made
flesh is, we are told, a mystery, the great mystery.
It is, in fact, the expressive mystery, for God
made man, is the Eternal fallen into time, the
Absolute become relative, the Infinite finite. This
is the common foundation of all religions, and the
eternal despair of all philosophy. All religion is
the development of a symbol, and it is of the
nature of a symbol to represent under a form
that which is independent of all form, as it is of
the nature of a system to define that which is in-
dependent of all definition. This does not mean,
in the least, that philosophy and religion are with-
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 63
out object, and without truth, or that we must be
sceptical, or impious, or atheistical ; for philosophy
and religion are in the first place legitimate, inas-
much as they have their roots in the superior
elements of human nature, and in the second place,
they are efforts of ever increasing strength and
happiness to reach to purer symbols, and formulas
that are larger and more exact. Philosophy and
religion bear witness to the origin and the Divine
destiny of man. They bear him beyond the borders
of the real, and transport him into the boundless
realms of the ideal. They are true in their essence.
But they cannot be worth more than man himself,
and man is subject to change, the supreme law
of all that is imperfect and finite. Man must not
set himself in the place of God ; to God belongs
absolute truth, to man the immortal search after
truth."
Such are the arguments which I hear every day. This scep-
from men in whom a scepticism more or less ^icism is
confessed is united with the most brilliant intel- reaction.
lectual gifts, further enhanced by a noble inde-
pendence of character. I hear them, I admire
and I contradict them. My profound conviction
is, that this negative philosophy is a disease of our
times, a bitter fruit of our philosophical disputes,
a perhaps natural enough, but certainly most exor-
bitant reaction against the daring of speculative
pride. In a word, I see in this scepticism, which
is most frequently concealed, a little truth mingled
with a great deal of error.
It is easy to single out the little truth that it
contains — namely, the very simple fact, that the
64 SECOND MEDITATION.
True part, scieiice of things divine, as much and more than
lol^hlT" ^^y other science, has its shadows and its mys-
mystenes.i terics. I begin, then, by confessing that not
only the Absolute is incomprehensible, and also
the Infinite; but even that, considering Him in
His essence, in what He is of Himself, He is in-
conceivable to man. We know that He is. We
know neither why nor how He is.
Untrue This comes from the weakness of the human
Go'd's^IxL intellect, which is the real meaning of that prin-
tence can- ciple of the incomprehensibility of God that we
demon- ^^e and abuse so much. In fact, ours is a com-
strated. muuicated being ; the being in God is of another
nature. He exists of Himself. God is then dif-
ferent from us. The Being is His sublimest
name, and yet He has no name; for there is
beyond His attributes something which establishes
them, and constitutes them, and this something is
inaccessible and ineifable. For this reason the
existence of God, notwithstanding the genius of
Saint Anselm, and the accumulated efforts of
Descartes and Leibnitz, has never been rigorously
proved a priori. God alone knows why God
exists, and demonstrates eternally to Himself His
' [It is often assumed that there is something in the very conception
of a mystery as such, which at once baffles evidence, and precludes
examination. Unquestionably there are propositions which either con-
vey no ideas (e.g. those in an unknown tongue), or which are palpably
self-contradictory. It is important to bear in mind (and it is a prin-
ciple which cuts very deep in our controversy on the two opposite
sides of Romanism and Socinianism, that a mystery., far from involving
contradictions, or presenting no tangible truth, is an idea \\\\o'^q. general
outlines are traced with sufficient distinctness, while the particulars are
concealed. Thus mysteries^ in general, are possible, but the truth of a par-
ticular my slery must be decided by its evidence, l^eibnitz says, '■' Fossi-
bilitatem mysteriorum contra insultus infidelium et harreticorum a contra-
dictionibus vindico ; haud quidem veritatem, quae revelatione sola
stabiliri potest. "J *
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 6$
own existence, because He knows the how of it.
God alone sees in the idea of God, or as Leib-
nitz would say, in the simple possibility of God,
the reason of the existence of God. It is not thus
that men know the Divinity. They only know
it as the reason of their own existence and of that
of the universe. Nothing more.
What inference may be drawn from this .? That Tme con-
we must bow down before the eternal mystery .? I fusions ^
willingly do so. That we must take down the pre- incapacity
tensions of Pantheism, that proud and foolish ?^ '^''"'^^''"
1 •! 1 1-1 1 1 ^^Z God.
philosophy which pretends to penetrate to the
Divine essence, to set out with the adequate defi-
nition of God, and to deduce from it the complete
system and the universal evolution of beings ^. I Not that
assent to this also. But when, from the incon- J^^ti'^n^^of
ceivability of the essence of God, it is concluded God, and
that we know nothing at all about God ; when ^^^^J^ ^""'"
instead of comprising in precise limits the science theology,
of things divine, that science is set aside altogether;
I can go no further, and I enter my protest in the
name of common sense. ^' The heavens declare
the glory of God," this is the voice of common
sense, and science in the depths of its analysis
finds this principle, that the imperfect being has
its reason in the perfect Being, and consequently
that there must be in the perfect Being something
that may be communicated to the imperfect being,
and be to it a natural revelation of its principle.
To say that God has never manifested Himself, God mani-
is to say that He is by His nature absolutely in- ''^^^ "
communicable. Now, if God were incommuni-
cable, not only in His essence but in all that He
is, God would then be the only possible being.
66 SECOND MEDITATION,
Not only the sceptics, but even the idealists and
the mystics, those who deny life altogether, would
God is ab- |3g nght in that case. Life is everywhere ; I feel
teiiigence. it iu mysclf, I See it in the universe ; and of all
the forms under which it appears, the clearest,
the most certain, and the purest, is intelligence.
Intelligence is displayed in the whole universe.
• It is manifested among inferior beings by the laws
which direct them unknown to themselves. It
begins to work in the plants like a dim glimmer
of life. It has the sentiment of itself in the
beast. In man, finally, it knows itself, it possesses
itself; it shines, and is resplendent. But even in
man it acknowledges itself subject to the law of
development and change, to ignorance, to error,
to endeavour ; and is consequently incapable of
existing or subsisting by itself. There is then,
above nature and man, a first principle of intelli-
gence, and this principle must be intelligent, other-
wise there would be less in the cause than in the
eirect, which would be inadmissible. All that is
positive and real in the effect can only come from
its cause. Properly, there belong to the effect
only limits and relations. Now there is nothing
more real, more positive, or more clear than in-
telligence. God is therefore absolute intelligence,
perfect thought, truth in itself.
God is As a general thesis, as truly God is incompre-
?n Hif ^^ hensible in His essence, so truly He is accessible in
manifesta- His manifestations. I ascend to Him from the
tliTugh in- bosom of my own imperfection ; and knowing that
incompre- ^U that is real and positive in the imperfect being
in^His^ has its reason in the Perfect Being, it is enough
essence, f^y ^^ to couceive aright the communicable
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 67
powers of the Divine nature, to conceive them in
all their plenitude under the forms of immensity
and eternity.
But, I am told, this is just what cannot be objections:
done. You forget that the human mind can V ^"^J^J,
, . o , . . , . that God s
conceive nothmg that is not in space and time ; attributes
therefore, to say that the attributes of God must ^'"^ ^''. ^^
/ •/ . conceived
be conceived under the form of immensity and eter- under these
nity, is to say that they are in fact inconceivable, [o'^^dmi'^j.
I acknowledge that space and time are the forms that they
of imperfect existence, this is why reason can only cdvaMe"'
conceive it under this double condition ; but I say
that reason has other objects, that while imposing
on all the beings in the universe, the laws of time
and space, she acknowledges herself independent
of them. The proper objects of reason may be
characterised as universality, eternity, and infinity,
so that to submit reason and its objects to the laws
of space and time is to deny reason and truth.
Can we not conceive mathematical truths, and
moral truths, as eternal and universal? Do we
not know that before there were men injustice
was an evil, and justice a good, as before there
were circles the radii of a circle were equal ? You
will say that I, who think these things, think
them in time, that if geometry be eternal, the
geometrician is not so. True, but the privilege
of this geometrician of a day, is to conceive dis-
tinctly eternity from the bosom of time ; is to
place himself beyond the finite by the contempla-
tion of universal truths ; is to perceive above the
universe, beyond time and space, the divine type
of the Eternal Geometrician.
68 SECOND MEDITATION.
2. objec- 2. If it be said that we cannot understand an
c'a^nnot^un- ^^^ive intelligence which is not subject to the con-
derstand an ditious of time, I deny it. Thought in man, no
in action"^^ doubt, is previsiou, is recollection, is to reason, to
which is reflect, to abstract, to pay tribute to time in every
tionedby' way. But these are only discursive operations,
time. tj^at; is to Say, meaus of assisting the weakness of
our intuition. The essential of reason is intuition
sui conscia. To see, and to be aware that we see,
is the type of knowledge, is the divine model of
which human thought is a feeble image. Thought
in itself is then independent. Not only it has
nothing in it repugnant to the nature of God, but
it expresses, with a singular precision and clear-
ness, the incomparable perfection, and the radiant
beauty of that nature.
3. Objec- 3. At this rate, I am asked, if human reason
if°we have ^^^ transport into God all that there is real and
a right to positive in imperfect beings, why choose this and
SdaUthat^'^J^ct that? Why not transport into God exten-
is real and siou and duratiou, time and space, which are also
bdng^we surely something .? I reply, that time and space
have no are not real things, but ideal things ; and as to dura-
p^k^and tion and extension, I do not dispute that they are
choose. founded in reality, but they must not be confounded
with the effective properties of beings. They
have only an accidental and relative value, the
proof of which is, that they cannot be thought as
absolute. When you conceive time as absolute
you must cut off its succession and so destroy it.
On the contrary, when you conceive thought as
absolute, you only take away its limits ; you con-
ceive it as a perfect intuition, that is to say, in all
the purity of its essence.
5 GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 6^
This brings us to the end of the matter. There First and
is a timid scepticism which, proclaiming God as dpie^o"'
indeterminable, fears to carry out its opinion, and thorough-
dares not acknowledge either its first principle orSm.^'^"^"
its final consequence. Leaving these uncertain
spirits, let us inquire of more daring reasoners
whence they set out, and where they mean to end.?
This is their first principle, that thought never goes
beyond the relative, and the necessary consequence
is that the Absolute is absurd and contradictory.
Hear Hamilton and his disciples, they will tell
you that the law of thought and being is determi-
nation, and, consequently, negation and relation.
A thing only exists on one condition, which is to
be so and so, and to be conceived in such and such
a relation with him who thinks. Thence it follows
that every thinkable obiect must contain some neea- ^-J^^^}^ ,
r ■ -I 1 1 • • 11 Hamilton s
tion, tor, HI order to be this, it cannot be that — some proof that
difference, for in order to have such a property, it f^f/^^^n
must differ from that which has quite another pro- thinkable.
perty — and some relation, for, in order that I may
think of an object, it must be present and within
my reach. This being established, the Absolute,
by its very definition, is unthinkable and impos-
sible ; in fact, the Absolute is that which eludes
all negation, all difference, and all relation.
If I do not mistake, the whole system of these Falsehood
' ^ . . ofthe
reasonings rests on an error common to scepticism principle
and Pantheism, which formerly misled, and still ''^"^"'!
deceives, many a superior mind. This error con- natio ne-
sists in imagining that every determination is aS^^'°^®^'
negation. 0?nnis determinatio negatio est^ says
Hamilton after Spinoza. Nothing can be falser
70 SECOND MEDITATION.
or more arbitrary than this principle. It arises
from the confusion of two things essentially differ-
ent, namely, the limits of a being, and its deter-
Arising minate and constitutive characteristics. I am an
co^nTusion intelligent being, and my intelligence is limited ;
of the limits these are two facts equally certain. The possession
with its' "^ of intelligence is the constitutive characteristic of
constitutive niy beine:, which disting-uishes me from the brute
characte- ►— •
ristics. being. The limitation imposed on my intellect,
which can only see a small number of truths at a
time, is my limit, and this is what distinguishes
me from the Absolute Being, from the Perfect In-
telligence which sees all truths at a single glance.
That which constitutes my imperfection is not,
certainly, my being intelligent ; therein, on th(.
contrary, lies the strength, the richness, and the
dignity of my being. What constitutes my weak-
ness and my nothingness is, that this intelligence is
enclosed in a narrow circle. Thus, inasmuch as I
am intelligent, I participate in being and perfec-
tion ; inasmuch as I am only intelligent within cer-
tain limits, I am inperfect.
So that It follows from this very simple analysis that
\s'^A\cI\\y determination and negation, far from being identi-
different cal, differ from each other as much as being and
motion, nothing. According as a being has more or less
determinations, qualities, and specific characteris-
tics, it occupies a rank more or less elevated in the
scale of existence. Thus, in proportion as you
suppress qualities and determinations, you sink from
the animal to the vegetable, from the vegetable to
brute matter. On the other hand, exactly in pro-
portion as the nature of beings is complicated, in
proportion as their bodies are enriched with new
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 71
fiinctions and organs, as their intellectual and moral
faculties begin to be displayed, as more delicate
senses are added to their grosser senses, to sensa-
tion, memory, to memory, imagination, then the
superior faculties, reasoning, and reason, and will,
you rise nearer and nearer to man, the most compli-
cated being, the most determined and the most
perfect in creation.
If man were to lose his intelligence, I ask you,
would he thereby win perfection ? Apparently
not, and yet he would have one determination less.
Do you find that the progress of human life, from
infancy to virility, consists in the ever-increasing in-
determination of its faculties ? Quite the contrary.
Perfection in man is the increase and development
of faculties, the passing from power to act. Which
is then the least real being? the being, so to speak,
which is least a being .? The most indetermined
being ; and, consequently, which is the most real
being, the most perfect being, the being who is
most a being ? The most determinate being. In
this sense, God is the only being absolutely deter-
mined. For there must be something indeter-
mined in all finite beings, since they have always
imperfect powers, which tend toward their devel-
opment after an indefinite manner. God alone
the complete Being, the Being in whom all powders
are actualised, escapes by His own perfection from
all progress, and development, and indetermination.
It would be a pure illusion to imagine that different
determinations could, by any chance, limit or contra-
dict each other. Could intelligence prevent liberty ?
or the love of the beautiful extinguish the love of
the good, or truth, or beauty, or happiness be any
hindrance, the one to the other? Is it not evident.
72 SECOND MEDITATION,
on the contrary, that these are things perfectly
analogous and harmonious, which, far from exclud-
ing, require each other, which always go together
in the best beings of the universe, and when they
are conceived in their eternal harmony and pleni-
tude, constitute the living unity of God ?
Now, let us hear our sceptics. They say the
Absolute excludes all limits, and, consequently, all
But does determination. I reply, the Absolute has no limits,
not determi-'^^ is true, that is to say, that His beins: and the
nation imTpiy , . •/ ' 11 r n i
reiationi powers that are m rlim are all mil, complete, m-
finite, and eternal ; but far from these determina-
tions limiting His being, they characterise and con-
stitute it.
Does not every determination, say they, imply
relation ? By no means. If you call determina-
tion that which in imperfect beings belong to their
original limitation, such as their duration, their
material figure, their distance, I agree that these
determinations are relative, and that an absolute
duration, an absolute extension, an absolute dis-
tance are contradictory ideas ; but if you come to
intrinsic characters, to the constitutive qualities of
beings, such as thought and activity, there is no-
thing here w^hich implies a limit or a boundary —
nothing, consequently, which is repugnant to the
nature of the Absolute.
Thought What, says Hamilton, is not the Absolute one,
!iot?con- ^^^ ^^^s ^^^ thought imply diversity? Does it
tradiction. not suppose the difference between the subject
which thinks and the object thought.'^ not to men-
tion several other conditions. I reply, you con-
found the real unity of God with the abstract
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 73
unity of your imaginary Absolute. Doubtless,
thought — living thought, real thought — implies
the difference of subject and object. In this man-
ner there is diversity in the divine thought ; but
this variety does not exclude unity, for in God the
subject and the object are identical. A perfect
being who thinks himself is not one in the sense
of the unity of abstraction. He lives, he revolves
upon himself; he has in him a sort of spiritual
motion. But as this consciousness that the Perfect
Being possesses this contemplation that He enjoys,
supposes no separation between the subject and
the object, no disproportion, no interval, no effort,
no succession, there is nothing in it opposed to the
most rigorous unity.
Hamilton proceeds : You agree that the essen- uto think
tial condition of thought is the distinction of thej'/^o'^if
subject and the object. The subject lays itself_this
down on one side as the one who thinks, and it is ""t™^
opposed to the object which is thought. It follows
that the Absolute escapes the grasp of the human
mind for the human mind thinking the Absolute,
as the subject places itself outside of it, and as the
object places it in opposition to itself. Thus it
destroys the Absolute. I grant that when a man
thinks about God he makes himself distinct from
Him, but to make oneself distinct from Him is not
to be separated from Him. I think God as differ-
ent from myself ; that is not to think Him as finite,
as limited by me, or relative to me. I think God
as other than myself, but as the reason of my be-
ing. I distinguish myself from Him, but, at the
same time, I link myself to Him.
You tell me that Schelling has admitted the
to
im"
74 SECOND MEDITATION.
Pantheistic absurdity of such an intuition, that he has con-
mirfed " fesscd that the notion of the Absolute, under the
absolute condition of consciousness, is a contradiction, and
tradiction that the Only method of knowing the Absolute is
fundam^n ^^ ^^ oueself absorbed into it. I give you up
taUaws of the intellectual intuition of Schelling and the Abso-
thought— j^|.g q£ ^Yie Pantheists, which is an undetermined
not the , '
determined Absolute. I admit that such an Absolute is in
GoV'^^"^ contradiction with the fundamental law of thought
and being, that it is unthinkable to the human
mind and to itself. But then, this is but a vain
abstraction, not the determined God, not the living
God, who is intelligence, truth, and the eternal
consciousness of thought.
Reductioad You triumph when you see M. Schelling corn-
Hamilton, pelled, in order to justify his idea of the absolute,
to invoke some strange ecstatic intuition, and to
fall into a wild mysticism. But you are hastening
yourself to an extremity quite as dangerous, quite
as far from common sense. For after having
proved that the Absolute, such as you understand
Him, is indeterminable, you conclude that he is
absolutely unintelligible. What does this conclu-
sion signify .f^ In plain words it signifies that the
notion of God is absurd. You began by telling
us that the human mind must believe in something
unconditioned and Absolute, that the existence of
God is consequently certain, that common sense
has a reason for being religious, that all religions
have their foundation in truth, and now you tell
us that human thought can only think the relative,
that the relative only can exist and be thought, and
that all determination of the Absolute is contradic-
tory. Then, not only all the philosophical systems
IS GOD ACCESSIBLE TO REASON? 75
that have tried to explain God have stopped below
their ideal, but the ideal itself is a wild chimera.
Not only every religious symbol is incomplete and
insufficient, but every religious symbol is an ex-
travagance. We may no longer say that human
kind makes to itself symbols of God more or less
pure; the very idea of a religious symbol is a
contradiction ; consequently, all religion is false
and chimerical. Besides, how are we to estimate the
value of these different symbols ? There must be a
criterion. You say that the symbols of one religion
are infinitely richer that those of another — nobler,
more expressive, more poetical. Poetical, that is
just the word ; you make religion an affair of the
imagination. But the judge of poetry has his eye
fixed on the ideal of the beautiful ; you, on the
contrary — critics without a criterion — have no fixed
rule to measure the beautiful any more than the
good ; and you are obliged to say at last that truth
in matters of religion, as in matters of art, and in
every order of thought, is not made for man. Then
what means that divine origin, that superior des-
tiny, which you attribute to it ? The words divine
and heavenly have no sense from your lips. They
only call up an illusion, and, if you are right, the
best service one could do to humanity would be to
cure it of this illusion once for all. What is emptier
than an investigation which knows that it is object-
less ? what more fragile than a love without
hope ^ There is, you say, an exquisite pleasure
in the search, and, besides, we need not trouble
ourselves, men will be always sufficiently curious
to persist in it. Yes, as long as they are believ-
ing, as long as they are persuaded that truth and
76 SECOND MEDITATION.
goodness are not illusions. As soon as you shall
have persuaded them of this, they will sink into
incuriousness and torpor.
Whatever you may say, this refined delight in
a useless search can only be attained by a small
number of chosen spirits, intoxicated with a
superabundant ardour which conceals from them
the real consequences of absolute scepticism — I
mean indifference. History is there to warn us.
It is two thousand years since Heraclitus said with
graceful melancholy, " We cannot bathe twice in
the same stream; everything becomes, nothing
remains." Soon after came Pyrrho, who com-
pleted thus the formula of Heraclitus: -'There is
nothing that is more false than true, more beau-
tiful than ugly, more good than bad." All is re-
lative. No ; all is not relative ; all is not given
up to change. There is one truth which remains,
and that living truth is God.
Can there be anything but God?
I HAVE set myself free from a harassing difficulty.
I have placed my belief in God beyond the
shadow of a doubt. My God is not an unde-
termined something, which thought cannot seize,
an empty form without contents, substance with-
out quality, thought without consciousness and
without ideas, being without existence, a phan-
tom which only appears to man's bewildered
gaze to drag him into a vain pursuit, or to lead
him to an unfathomable abyss. The God of my
consciousness is the Being who is truly perfect,
finished in all the powers of His being, determinate,
real, living. His life, as far as I can comprehend
it, is the life of intelligence, the fall possession of
truth, the perfect thought apprehending the per-
fect being, and apprehending itself without inter-
vention, without effort, with one simple, single,
eternal, equal act. And must this thought be
solitary, and, so to speak, egotistic, absorbed in
itself, solely occupied with itself? That were
strange. And yet how can we explain that the
Divine thought can come out of itself to con-
ceive anything beyond itself?
78 THIRD MEDITATION.
How can Anything, I say, anything but God. For God
lute'^orb ^^ ^^^^ perfect and infinite being, and beyond the
all? perfect being who possesses all the powers of
being, nothing is possible, nothing can be con-
ceived. I cannot elude this difficulty. It met
me at the moment when scepticism told me that
to think about the Absolute was to make myself
distinct from Him, and consequently to deny Him
as absolute; for how can the Absolute being be
anything but the whole of being, and where is
there room for anything besides Himself? Here
is the great mystery.
From the idea of perfect being it is impossible
to deduce the possibility of the imperfect being.
It seems indeed strange to be told that God
being given, all other beings follow as a matter of
course. This is to place oneself at the antipodes
of truth, to conceive God as insufficient to Him-
self, as a dark hidden germ which needs to be
developed. But the real difficulty is this. God
is a perfect being eternally complete. How can
there be anything else than God ?
I can conceive that a finite thinking being should
imagine something beyond himself; that is to
say, finite beings like himself. Or again, I can
conceive that such a being, seeing himself incom-
plete, should imagine an extension, or possible
increase of his being. But that the infinite and
perfect Being, who lives in Himself with a per-
fect life, should think of anything but Himself,
is what I cannot conceive. There are mysteries
everywhere. I hardly know that God exists,
and I find myself face to face with the mystery of
CAN THERE BE JNTTHING BUT GOD? 79
His inaccessible essence. I have just satisfied
myself, not without labour and trouble, that God
is a perfect idea, which embraces all that is and
all that can be; and when I seek to understand
how God can conceive other beings than Himself,
I feel my sight grow dim.
Shall I then stop short ? And because my Experience
reason, in its efforts to conceive the origin and J^iJ'gj''^""
order of things, has m.et with an insurmountable weU as pure
obstacle, must I despair, and weakly forego the^^^^^"'
search.^ No; pure reason is not my whole rea-
son; I can still call experience to miy aid ; for I am
not a celestial being disengaged from earthly ties,
and formed to contemplate face to face the Di-
vine essence ; I am an intelligence joined to
senses, and surely it were not too much to make
use of all the collected powers of my nature in
order to throw some light on this darkest of all
problems.
I feel myself live, and think. I see around me
millions of beings who display their activity in
space and duration. The earth and the skies,
motion and life, my equals and myself, are not
vain shadows. Therefore there is not a doubt
that the imperfect being exists, and if it has
being, I conclude that before being it was a pos-
sibility. When I say before being, I do not
mean to decide whether it began to exist. That
is of little consequence. From the moment that
such and such a being is granted as imperfect, it
follows that the possibility of that being is logi-
cally anterior to its reality. For being imperfect,
consequently not having in itself the reason of
its existence, it cannot exist without an anterior
8o CAN THERE BE ANTTHING BUT GOD ?
condition. Even if going backward through all
time, I could not find its beginning, its existence
would not the less depend upon a condition which
is beyond it, and which governs it, and that con-
dition is independent of duration, it is eternal.
It is quite evident that the perfect being is the
only one that can elude this law. He has in
Himself the reason of His own being, therefore
it does not depend on an anterior condition, but
the contingent being can only exist by finding
without itself the reason of its existence ; and
this is what I call its possibility.
For, granted the existence of a contingent and
imperfect being ; in order to exist it must have a
possibility, it must have beyond and without it a
reason for its existence, and that reason must be
independent of time. Then since this imperfect
being actually exists, whether or not it ever began
to exist is of little consequence, for there must
have been an eternal possibility of its existence.
Now where is the origin of this eternal possi-
bility of imperfect beings — this eternal reason for
their existence ? Clearly in God — since God, we
know, is the reason of existence in all that exists.
And since God is intelligent, knowing Himself
perfectly, and all that is in Him, how should He
not know this eternal possibility of beings t Hence
I conclude, not by a direct and immediate intuition
of my reason, but in an indirect manner, and with
the assistance of all my means of knowledge com-
bined, that there is in the divine intelligence be-
yond the eternal consciousness of the perfect be-
ing, the idea of the eternal possibility of the im-
CAN THERE BE ANTTHING BUT GOD ?8i
perfect being, an idea which embraces all possible
existences.
Now by what connection this eternal possi-
bility of the imperfect being is united to the exis-
tence of the perfect being, is a secret hidden from
every human eye — a mystery buried in the furthest
depths of the Divine essence. God alone knows
why God exists. God alone knows why any-
thing but God is eternally possible. The reason
of the being of God, and the reason of the eternal
possibility of the imperfect being, are two enigmas
linked one to the other, alike impenetrable. But
this hinders me not from knowing three things
certainly' — that the Perfect Being exists, and con-
tains within Himself the reason of His existence;
that imperfect beings are possible; and that the
reason of this possibility forms an integral part of
the Divine thought. Thus, then, my thought
has cast a bridge between God and the world.
Still I hesitate as I set my foot upon it, and fear
to trust it ; for, is it not a flagrant contradiction to
suppose that God, the perfect being, should think
within Himself of anything but Himself? If this
were but a difficulty I would pass on, but a con-
tradiction arrests me.
Let me examine it again. This is the point ofrheimper-
the question. It seems that the imperfect being Jj^f^^^J^^"
can only be conceived in two modes as distinct pres^jon of
from the perfect being — as a limit or as a pro- J-^^^^"^^— '^'^'
longation. But these two suppositions are equally not a limit
absurd ; for the infinite and perfect Being cannot, °[ion° °"^'
as infinite, be limited, as perfect, be prolonged or
expanded. Still I think I perceive a way to solve
the difficulty. Certainly the imperfect being can-
82 THIRD MEDITATION.
not limit or prolong the perfect Being, but it can
express Him — manifest Him by His image. Nor
is this idea a phantom which arouses and deceives
my imagination; it is rather a gleam which en-
lightens my reason, and dissipates my doubts. The
more 1 reflect the more I think I perceive clearly
that the perfect Being thinking Himself, thinks
also the imperfect being, not as a prolongation,
not as a limit, but as a possible expression of His
existence. And why should not the eternal Being
be eternally capable of expression ? Why, outside
eternity, should there not be time which is its
image ? Why, outside immensity, shall there not
be extent to express its grandeur ? Why, outside
the perfect thought, the eternal reason, the shad-
owless light that burns eternally — why should
there not be imperfect intelligences to reflect some
of its rays .? I may then, with all safety, cross the
bridge that I have constructed between God and
the universe. God alone exists eternally, but the
universe is eternally possible. God conceives it
eternally, conceiving Himself. He conceives it as
a possible expression of His infinite perfection.
This is the sum of the whole matter. I do not
understand why God exists, nor how the possi-
bility of imperfect being is connected with the ex-
istence of the perfect Being, but I am certain that
it contains no contradiction, and that is enough,
if not to satisfy my insatiable curiosity on divine
things, at least to settle the doubts in my mind,
and to give a little light and repose to its restless
ardour.
fount) ^eMtation^
God the Creator,
I THOUGHT I saw a ray of light amid the obscurity
of the problem of creation. Let me turn towards
that light, which is still weak and uncertain; I shall
see it perhaps grow larger and become more steady.
I know now, without the shadow of a doubt,
that God thinks the universe eternally, as a pos-
sible manifestation of the communicable powers of
His existence ; can I suppose that God would
remain indifferent, or powerless, in presence of
this image of Himself.? An indifferent God, a
powerless God, would be strange hypotheses ; but
before discussing them a priori^ there is one fact
that resolves the question. The universe exists.
God has not remained powerless or indifferent be-
fore the image of the universe eternally impressed
on His intelligence. He resolved to realise it —
He had power to effect it ; and He made use of
that power, because He was not indifferent, be-
cause He saw that the universe was good, because
He is good Himself, and because He loves all that
is like Him.
But let me not go too fast in these uncertain
and perilous paths. I represent to myself a God
:ion
k
God?
84 FOURTH MEDITATIOISI.
Am I au- ^}^Q wills, a God who resolves, a God who loves ;
thorised in . . , . ., , r t> •
speaking of but IS iiot this to attribute to the perfect iSemg
will, re- ^Q imperfect modes of my own being ? God has
and love in first appeared to me as a father, who desires to
produce a living image of Himself, to see a wit-
ness of His fecundity grow and increase. But is
not this image, which seems to me august and
touching, infinitely beneath the ineffable perfection
of the absolute Being ? Is it not a pious supersti-
tion of my heart, or rather an illusion of my pride,
and a degradation of the Divine essence ? When
we look at things with the cool eye of reason, can
love be conceived in the perfect Being ? The per-
fect Being is sufficient of Himself, and love is an
aspiration towards an object foreign to ourselves —
an effort to ennoble and complete our being, by
uniting it to another being, equal or superior.
Love is then the sign of an imperfect nature, and
cannot be conceived in a complete and infinite being.
I perceive the difficulty, but it presents itself in
vain; a secret instinct within me protests, and
tells me that love as well as intelligence is some-
thing divine. I can see but dimly, yet I feel with
an irresistible force, that there must be in love,
along with its terrestrial and human part, a celes-
tial and divine part; and I seek now, as before, to
divide its pure essence from its separable accidents.
The love of From the moment that I feel my existence, I
feel that I love ; I love to live — I love to think —
I love to love. All my powers please and delight
me, and I am happy to employ them; but every
where I meet with obstacles : I feel that I must en-
dure and struggle. My whole life is made up of this.
A feeling of power which makes me happy, and a
God
GOD THE CREATOR. 85
feeling of impotence which weighs me dowm and
torments me — a need of evolving my faculties,
and a weary effort to overcome the obstacles that
I meet — such is my own actual condition. And
this is an epitome of the drama of the universe,
where there are everywhere powers which limit
each other and strive together, which have here
the joy of triumph, there the weakness and the
torments of impotence and defeat.
It is a universal law that every being loves to
be, and seeks to maintain and develope its being ;
but if the love of being is inherent in being, is it
possible to conceive that the perfect Being could
be indifferent to be or not to be.^* God is, He thinks
Himself, He knows Himself to be perfect, how
should He not love to be and to think .? Whence
comes the law that unites ever)^where love and
being, if it does not reside in the very first prin-
ciple of all love and of all being .? And is there
anything in love and joy repugnant to this Divine
essence ? He knows Himself, He possesses Him-
self, He loves Himself, He enjoys His thought
and His perfection : from thence springs a felicity
which is sublime, incomparable, the complete type
of all felicity.
Love in the imperfect being is accompanied by imptrfec-
desire, by the need of developing and completing J^'°" °^
its being — so its joy is mingled with sadness, its We.
hope with fear, its possession with dissatisfaction.
Its power of loving can never be fully satisfied,
obstacles are constantly rising, and when there
are none the beloved object fails to yield what^'"'^"^^"''^-
it sought, and it wanders from object to object,
always seeking, and after a hundred vanished
86 FOURTH MEDIIATION.
illusions, always hoping for the peace and the
satisfaction which always eludes its grasp.
In the perfect Being on the contrary there is
one sole love which finds eternally its object, and
possesses it without effort, a love accompanied by
an eternal joy. Nor is there in these ideas of
love and joy and possession anything involuntarily
profane, or which my reason should mistrust, for
reason tells me that the essence of love is divine,
that the first principle of love is in God, and my
heart supporting my reason tells me that there is
nothing purer or more divine than joy in the pos-
session of the perfect life.
And now new lights appear, and I see a little
clearer into the mysterious depths of the origin
of things. If God is love, if God loves His being,
if He loves thought, love, joy, felicity, how should
He remain indifferent, before those beings, infinite
in number, whose idea made a part of the con-
sciousness that He had of Himself, of those beings
which, each according to its nature, according to
the form and degree of its power, reflects and
expresses in different manners the perfections of
the Creator.'' And if God loves these beings
before they exist, because loving Himself He
loves all that resembles Him, if God loves these
beings, why should he refuse them reality '^. for
this God must be impotent, the most absurd of all
suppositions, belied both by the idea of the all-
perfect Being, and by the existence of the universe,
that undeniable witness of the fecundity of God.
Thus, little by little, a kind of idea of the creation
forms itself in my mind — a very imperfect idea
of mingled light and shade, where I must be con-
GOD THE CREATOR, 87
tent to let dark mysteries lie beside shining truths,
aiming only at putting away contradictions, and
overstepping the limits of invincible ignorance.
Thus, then, the world, eternally thought as a
possible manifestation of the Perfect Being, is in
some sort the ideal and divine matter of creation.
The agent is the absolute power of God, and love
is the motive which inspired Him, and the reason
which determined Him to come forth out of Him-
self. Therefore this universe is a work of power,
of intelligence, and of love. Intelligence has eter-
nally conceived its germ, love has brooded upon
it, power has given it expansion.
OBJECTIONS OF A PANTHEIST.
As long as I keep it to myself the idea that I The state
have formed of the creative act is perfectly satis- ^^ "^'"^
factory. I congratulate myself on having regained pTmhasts.
by an effort of reflection the gift and the happi-
ness of faith. But as soon as I permit my thoughts
to venture forth and plunge again into the troubled
atmosphere, where one breathes only doubt, con-
tradiction, and sarcasm, in spite of myself I fall
anew into uncertainty. I see one of my friends
long enslaved by the doctrines of Plotinus, Spinoza, ^ Personal
and Hegel, smiling at the very name of God the conceived
Creator. bynK)dern
"It is rather late," says he, " to go back to the philosophy
old Theodicea. He must be a bold man who ~7t'^^"^'^^
01 beins^an
expects to succeed where Leibnitz has failed, old super-
We have done with all that: you must leave in the^^4\?e"d up.
88 FOURTH MEDITATION.
abysses of the past, the personal God, the God
who creates by chance or through benevolence,
the solitary and capricious artist who wakens up
now and then from his sleep, and takes pleasure
in his work. These are pious creeds, I grant,
touching symbols, but to speak the truth, pure
superstitions. Now, when we come to supersti-
tions, the simplest are the best, and you by your
refinements, only despoil popular superstitions of
their fascination and their poetry, by trying in vain
to clothe them in the severe forms of science.
I'he uni- " Look at what has been passing in the world for
verse is ^.vjo ceutuHes. Scieuce has destroyed for ever the
distinction between God and the universe. God
is the universe united to its eternal first principle,
the universe is the living God, the infinite evolu-
tion of divine life. This is what science tells us,
all the rest is imagination and sentiment."
Pantheistic " Let US discuss the matter seriously. I propose
dilemma, ^o you this alternative ; — your God is conceived
as either creating the universe out of Himself, and
this hypothesis is big with a thousand contradic-
tions ; or your God creates the universe in Himself,
and therefore the universe is Himself, is His life,
and so far you agree with us.
Or to view it in another light — If you conceive
God as living in Himself, and wholly sufficient to
Himself, you are driven to admit that the work
of creation is an accident, or a thoughtless caprice ;
or, if you acknowledge that such a manner of
conceiving things is puerile and absurd, you must
unite the creation again to the Creator, you must
confess that God conceives and loves the world
eternally, therefore the creation is eternal, there-
GOD THE CREATOR. 89
fore it is part of God, being His necessary mani-
festation ; and here again you agree with us. You
must take your choice, for between the God of
superstition and the God of science there is no
medium.
''We need not argue formally to prove that creation
your idea of a personal God, coming out of the^^^lj^^
sphere of His being to manifest Himself beyond finite,
it, creating for any reason a world that He need ^ Transit-
not have created, is an anti-scientific idea; for if ive action.'
there is anything evident in the world it is that a
being who acts out of Himself is a finite being,
for if He were really infinite there would be
nothing real or possible beyond Him. Action ex-
ercised out of oneself, or, as the schools say, trans-
itive action, is the effect of a cause that oversteps
the boundaries of its own being to act upon an
exterior term, as a sculptor hews a block of marble.
You would not make of your God an artist fashion-
ing chaotic matter at His will. You are too much
of a philosopher not to leave chaos to mythology.
But take care. The Nous of Anaxagoras lend-
ing regular motion to the inert mass of similar
parts ; the Demiurgos of Plato setting on the
bosom of matter the luminous impression of the
ideas of the good and the beautiful; even the
profounder and more scientific doctrine of Aris-
totle, I mean that of an eternal world which
moves by virtue of its secret aspirations toward
a solitary happy God, who attracts all beings
and knows them not; — all these things are
as much behind the age as the theogony of
Hesiod.
"But you will say, God has no need of matter
90 FOURTH MEDITATION,
to form the world ; that ideal matter, which is
only the world conceived eternally in His thought,
is sufficient. Granted; but you only put off the
difficulty, you do not destroy it. You set it
aside for a while to fall on you again with all its
weight. God, you say, thinks the world eter-
nally; but what is the world.? Is it anything
beside God.f* This is just the difficulty; your
fatal stumbling-block. It is no more possible
for God to think than to do anything out of
Himself, for out of Himself there is nothing.
Theistic " You must in honesty acknowledge that your
Id^aii^^-d^^" personal God is a determined separate being, more
The indi- po^erful and more intelligent than man, but of the
viduaiised Same species; in fact, an idealised man. He has
infinite """^ consciousness; He says I; and these things attest
a separate existence, which is distinct from that
which it is not, which is concentrated in itself,
and possesses its own individuality. Your God
is an individual. He is some one, or some thing.
He is not the Being, the infinite, universal, abso-
lute Being, He who is. He in whom we all
have being, life, and motion. You make to your-
self a superb idol which inhabits the heights of
heaven, but by that very idea you limit Him to a
place. In vain you load Him with brilliant gifts
and magnificent attributes. He is but a poor
child's toy beside the Infinite Being who has no
place but immensity, no duration but eternity;
who, far from being contained, contains in Him-
self space and time, who is comparable to nothing,
resembles nothing, is distinct from nothing; for
He holds and envelopes all. This is God ; the
GOD THE CREATOR. 91
God of manly reason, and of free enlarged
science."
''■ We are willing to say that He is a Creator, a God im-
cause: not a transitive, but an absolute and imma- "'^"^"^' .
1 11'1'TT" ^c ^ transi-
nent cause. He creates the world withm Himselr, tive cause.
and thenceforth there is no separation of the Crea-
tor and the creature; for the creature is still the
Creator considered in His eternal and necessary
action. Take away the world there only remains
an abstraction, the being in itself, the potential
being. But as it is, the potential passes into actual
being, the universal Being becomes successively
all particular beings, which are only the momenta of
His life, the inexhaustible forms of His essence.
Nothing is separated, all beings are the acts of
one and the same principle, and compose one
and the same harmonious tissue which is Divine
life."
''But how will you pass from your idea of acodrnfi-
personal God to that of the universe ? Will you^iteand
be satisfied with the infantine thought that God
bethought Himself one day that He would create
the world ? But if God is complete without the
world, if He lives in Himself a perfect happy life,
needing nothing beyond Himself, why should He
go out of Himself ? You will have to acknow-
ledge that the creative act in God is something
fortuitous and miraculous. If you do not say
that God is indifferent to the creation, that the
being or non-being of creatures is identical to
Him, that creation adds nothing to His happiness
or to His perfection; if you do not say this, if,
pressed by the laws of science, you try to join
effect to cause by some intelligible •relation, you
92 FOURTH MEDITATION.
must say that God creates from love or from duty.
Now, without noticing what is palpably human in
these images, cannot you see that if God loves
He cannot be without what He loves ; if to
create is better than not to create, God cannot
but obey His wisdom which shows Him the best,
His holiness which forbids the wrong ? And thus
the world is necessary to God either as an object
of love or duty, and thus God without the world is
an incomplete God, a God to whom something
essential is wanting, a power without effect, a cause
without activity, a wisdom without object, a love
without effusion; and thus the world is as necessary
to God as God is to the world. Without God no
world, without the world no God. God and the
world are mutually complementary, and realize
each other. Let us hear no more of a personal
God, living in Himself, distinct from the universe.
Instead of this phantom let us recognize the true
God, the God who is neither a thing nor a person,
but the impersonal and universal principle of every
person and every thing, the God who inhabits not
the heavens, but whom the earth and the heavens
inhabit — the Immense, the Eternal, the Infinite,
the Absolute, the Being of beings."
Who are they that speak thus ^ not only one or
two Hegelians of my acquaintance; to-day it is one
of my friends, to-morrow another; for these opin-
ions are too common. Issuing from the German
Prevalence schools, they have made their way to France,
vLws!"^ England, Italy, through all Europe. I find them
alike in serious books and frivolous ones, with
learned men and critics, with poets and romancers,
even in after-dinner talk. Rejected under this
GOD THE CREATOR. 93
or that particular form, they still make their way,
as a general tendency, seeking to substitute a
vague religiosity for the little dogmatic faith that
still exists.
Of this flood of Pantheistic ideas I can only
say, that it is as impossible for me to deny their
existence, as to share in their attraction. I grant
to my friends the Spinozists and Hegelians, that
they excel in bringing out the difficulty of a God
distinct from the world. I will go further ; I
will acknowledge that Pantheism is a seductive
conception, and, as it were, an eternal temptation
to the metaphysical mind. In fact, it satisfies
that need of finding unity which is felt by specu-
lative reason. It charms our reason to find a
first principle, from which all things are deduced
as a necessary consequence. But the search of
truth is no intellectual play, no mere satisfaction
in the regular movement of ideas, but an earnest
seeking for the truth with all the powers of our
being.
The more I think over the problem of creation Pantheism
and the Pantheistic idea, the more I am satisfied seductive
to SD6CU *
that the difficulties about the creation only arise ktive
from the diversity and defectiveness of our means '"^^°"'
of knowledge, while the Pantheistic idea contains j^^ ^.^,^^. .
in itself such absolute contradictions that no logical dilemma.
mind could hold it. The/cr/ of Pantheists, the
grand argument on which they build their thesis
of immanence, so popular beyond the Rhine, is
reduced to this : To be the cause of the universe,
God must be the transitive or immanent cause of
it. There is no middle course, for to say that God
does not form the universe out of Himself is to say
94 FOURTH MEDITATION.
that He forms it within Himself. Now, God does
not form the universe out of Himself, for out of
God, out of the Absolute and Infinite, nothing can
exist, or be conceived to exist : the very words
out of God are a contradiction. God then forms
the world within Himself; He produces it of His
own substance; He animates it with His own life;
in a word. He is its cause, eternally and necessarily
acting — a cause not separated from its effect —
but realizing itself by its effects, the immanent
cause : Deus o?nnium rerum causa immanens non
vero transiens.
Pantheism This is their decisive, victorious, triumphant
mor^phk ' reasoning. Yet, I tell those who are satisfied
also. with it that they are the dupes of a strange illu-
sion. What do they do? They consider the
things of this world, the things of time and space,
and amongst the different modes of action that
they find, they choose out one and want to impose
it on the Creator of the universe. As if absolute
activity could be subject to the conditions of finite
activity — as if the relations of finite things, one
with the other, could be compared to the relation
of the finite with the infinite. Strange to say,
these Pantheists who accuse their adversaries of
humanizing God, fall themselves into anthropo-
morphism, and the philosophers of the absolute
are caught in the very act of superstition.
Transitive To prove this, it is sufficient to show how the
cause— spectacle of the imperfection of relative causes
must have J^. i • i r i i i j
matter. raises US to the idea of the absolute and creative
cause. Chained by our senses to this material
world, reason at first only grasps causes in their
grossest and most common action — the action of a
GOD THE CREATOR. 95
power on an external object. The river flows; it
bears away my load with it. The branch of a tree
crosses my path ; I break it or turn it aside. I can
do more. Here is a piece of clay ; I mould it and
give it the form that I choose. All human industry
is in this. James Watt, with some coal and some
water, produces a new and inexhaustible source of
motion. Michael Angelo draws his Moses from a
block of granite ; here is the transitive cause.
But a cause of this kind, however powerful it
be, can only act with the help of matter foreign to
itself. Without marble and without chisel where
were Michael Angelo? But there are causes whose
energy has something more intimate and more
profound. They are productive without coming immanent
out of themselves. A grain of corn germinates ; *^^"=^'
an oak spreads out its roots ; a flower unfolds.
This is a beautiful sight, yet these are but a gross
and material development. I can conceive evolu-
tions of a much higher order ; the thought of
genius geraiinates and expands in a superior intel-
lect : Newton conceives the system of the world.
Here is the immanent cause ; and unquestion-
ably this spiritual fecundity of an intellect that
seems to owe all to itself is the sublimest type
of activity that man and the universe can produce.
Does it follow that we have exhausted all pos- Both im-
sible fonns of activity, and that we must attribute needTng'^''
one of these to the Infinite Being.'' Evidently not. materiaLs
Immanent activity, producing its work within itselr, exhaust
is certainly superior to transitive activity, and I^^^uses.
admit that to conceive God as a power reduced
to impress movement on independent and eternal
corpuscles, is to go back to the days of Anaxagoras;
96 FOURTH MEDITATION.
also, to represent God as a skilful architect, as a
great artist embellishing matter by the imprint of
His ideas, is a symbol infinitely defective. But
even the forms of immanent activity, though of a
higher order, are imperfect forms which cannot be
transported into the absolute, eternal Being. A
grain of corn is a marvel — granted ; but it needs
light, and air, and water. It developes itself —
true ; but in virtue of a power which is not its own,
and on condition of finding around it conditions
favourable to its development. Newton himself
is subject to a thousand external conditions ; he
must have the world to contemplate, and an instru-
ment to make his calculations with. Imagine even
a pure spirit, an angel, speculating on abstract ideas,
his ideas must come from a higher source; without
them he can do nothing.
To assimi- Immanent activity, then, such as we find it in
^^n^..^^'^ ^^ the universe, is not independent of external condi-
manent tious. Let US look at the thing closer. There is
^^^^^^jj^ ^° nothing more opposed to the idea of perfection
Him. than the idea of a being who developes himself, a
germ that struggles for expansion. This is where
the Pantheists deceive themselves ; they cannot
see that to assimilate God to the immanent acti-
vities of the universe is to make of Him a be-
ing who developes himself, consequently an im-
perfect being, — is to fall infinitely below God. To
act within oneself or without oneself are forms of
finite activity. The language here is singularly
expressive. Without — within ; these words sup-
pose finite beings, limited in space and time, much
more in the radical conditions of their existence.
But God is the Infinite, Eternal, Perfect, Complete
GOD THE CREATOR. 97
Being. Nothing finite is then properly without
or within God ; the imperfect being and the Per-
fect Being cannot bear any relation of this kind to
each other. God is the complete Being ; the
world is being in the way of development ;
God is in eternity, the world is in time. Can one
conceive that time is without or within eternity ?
it w^ere a manifest absurdity. Such a century is
outside such another century, precedes or continues
it ; such a day contains within itself a certain
number of hours, which compose its total duration;
but time is not a sequel to eternity ; the moments
of time do not make up eternity. Time is, then,
neither within nor without eternity, and yet there
is a reason for its existence.
In the same way, the imperfect being, the being imperfect
who developes himself, is properly neither without p^J.^^ '^^^'
nor within the perfect being eternally developed, neither
He does not continue him, nor is his eternal de- nor'^-wkh-
velopment, and yet he has his reason for his exist- ^^t" per-
ence — a most mysterious and incomparable, but, at
the same time, certain and demonstrable relation.
Here the Pantheists meet me. Explain this illustration
relation, they say; "you call it mysterious that a^nd"spa?e!
you may not be driven to confess that it is unin-
telligible and contradictory." I deny the contra-
diction — the unintelligibility is another question.
Where, I ask, is the contradiction '^. It consists,
according to you, in setting down God as a Per-
fect Being, embracing all the powers of existence,
and admitting that there can be anything beside
God. I reply that there would be a contradiction
if the imperfect being was set down as a prolonga-
tion of the Perfect Being. But this is not the
98 FOURTH MEDITATION.
case ; time is not a prolongation of eternity, nor
space of immensity. The finite thought which
developes itself is not a prolongation of the infinite
thought eternally developed.
This will help us, if not to understand, at least
to perceive, the relation of these two terms, for I
can clearly conceive that time manifests and ex-
presses eternity. Plato has said that time is the
mobile image of eternity, and this profound thought,
passing from philosophy to poetry, has become
accessible to common sense. And this is not to be
wondered at; for if nothing is more sublime, no-
thing at the same time is more familiar, than this
opposition, and this harmony of time and eternity.
It is the opposition and the harmony of heaven
and earth — of things human and things divine.
Every one perceives that time is a different thing
from eternity, and that time is not, and cannot be,
a prolongation of infinite eternity, nor a develop-
ment of motionless eternity. And yet time exists
outside of eternity. Time has the reason of its
being in eternity, and eternity has its image in
time. In the same manner, extension, with its
infinite variety of forms and movements, expresses
the immensity of the motionless and invisible
Creator. In general, the life of nature and that
of man — I mean the endeavour of being to feel,
to think, to enjoy, to rise incessantly towards
a larger and purer form of existence — expresses
and manifests the divine life — I mean the full pos-
session of being in the bosom of thought, of love,
of joy, and of felicity.
''You are the dupe of a metaphor," say the
Pantheists ; you substitute for the unintelligible
GOD THE CREATOR.
99
word creation the words expression and manifesta-
tion, which seem to you clearer, but they are only
clear as applied to man. Man expresses his thought
— he speaks ; he speaks to make himself under-
stood. Speech, then, supposes two persons at
least conversing, and between them a material
means of expression. I reply that there is, be-
sides material and sensible speech, an internal
speech, of which we find some trace in our thoughts.
It is this spiritual language that I imagine in
God. Eternally He sees time and space and the
universe. He sees in time the expression of His
eternity; in space, the expression of His immen-
sity ; in the universe, the expression of all the
communicable forms of His Infinite Being, and He
takes pleasure in this image, and He realises it by
an act of love, enlightened by wisdom and wrought
out by almighty power. He realises it ; how,
pray ? I humbly confess that I do not know, and,
to speak the truth, I have no difficulty in confess-
ing my ignorance on the how of creation, when I
think that so many other, so much nearer to me,
hows — the how of the union of soul and body, the
how of the communication of the simplest motion,
leave me in invincible ignorance.
Here, then, is a fresh mystery, a new blank to
fill up in the human science of things divine; to the
mystery of the inaccessible essence of God, to the
mystery of the eternal possibility of imperfect
being, is added the mystery of the how of creation.
Three mysteries bound the one to the other, three ^ph-^^
mysteries as impenetrable the one as the other : mysteries,
three mysteries, I say, but not one contradiction.
loo FOURTH MEDITATION.
After this honest discussion on the capital point
of the question, I shall not stop long at a secon-
dary difficulty. "Is your creator God," ask the
Pantheists, '' a creator by accident, or by nature,
by caprice, or by necessity?" You reject a fortui-
tous and accidental creation ; you deny that free-
dom of indifference which makes of the divine
will, the capricious arbiter of good and evil, of
beauty and deformity, and which is forced to
deify chance under the name of divine liberty.
That is well enough, but then the creative act has
its reason in the nature of God ; it is as necessary
as God Himself; one cannot conceive activity with-
out the creative act, nor the creative act without
its effect, the creature. Creative activity — the
creative act, creation — these form an indivisible
whole, and you must come to the conclusion that
there is no real distinction between God and the
universe, between the infinite and the finite — the
universe being only God considered in his life, as
God is only the universe considered in its unity.
Theuni- My reply shall be very simple: If even the
verse IS the universe were the natural and necessary manifes-
manifeita- . r r^ ^ ^ ii - -r i -
tion, not tation or God, that would not signity that it was
^ment7f°^' "^^^ dcvelopmeut. Superficial eyes will only see a
God. shade between the two words, but the difference of
the two conceptions is immeasurable. On one side,
a perfect, complete, personal God who is sufficient
to Himself, who does but express His perfection
by creating the world, but who without the world
would be equally perfect. On the other side, a
God who is altogether in power, and nothing in
act ; a germ which develop es itself, and which is
only realised by development ; a God who, minus
GOD THE CREATOR, loi
the world, is reduced to a pure potentiality and
an abstract possibility. This is the first capital
distinction between the true God and the chimera
of the Pantheist. More than that, when I say
that the creative act is a natural and necessary
expression of the divine life, I do not speak of a
blind necessity, of an absolute necessity, of that
Pantheistic necessity which insists that the primi-
tive germ of things must develope itself without
will or knowledge to be realised in nature and
humanity ; I speak of a suitable moral necessity,
a necessity based upon wisdom and love, the holy
necessity of an Infallible Impeccable Being, who
cannot do wrong, and who moreover does neces-
sarily all that He does.
And now, he were no philosopher who should
deny that there must be a difficulty in understand-
ing how, in the bosom of the creative act, there
exists love without want, and liberty without the
moral possibility of doing otherwise. But this
granted, I turn again upon the Pantheists, and
tell them that I am about to show in their system
not only difficulties, confusion, and defects, but
impossibilities, absurdities, and contradictions.
I shall state in the first place plainly, the lead- True view
ing idea of Pantheism. Pantheism has been ^j^^^^^^JJ" ^^
sometimes understood as the absorption of thedistin-
infinite into the finite, at other times, on the con- ^^l^ ^^^e-
trary, as the absorption of the finite into the in- ism and
finite ; both these ideas are false. The absorption y'^"^''""'
of the infinite into the finite, of God into nature,
is an attempt to deny the infinite, to reduce every-
thing to the universe, it is Atheism. The absorp-
tion of the finite into the infinite is an effi^rt to
102 FOURTH MEDITATION,
deny the finite, to reduce everything to God ; it is
Mysticism. Pantheism is a more profound sys-
tem, it is an attempt to keep at an equal distance
from mysticism and atheism.
That this attempt should be in vain, that Pan-
theism should necessarily fall into one of these
alternatives is, in my mind, its condition, its neces-
sary law, and its condemnation. But if Pantheism
ends there, it does not begin there. It begins by
wanting to bring God and nature, the finite and
the Infinite, to the unity of one single, identical
existence.
According to Pantheism, nature without God
is but an effect without a cause, a mode without
substance, a shadow without reality; and God with-
out nature is but a cause without effect, a sub-
stance without mode, a power without life ; from
the bosom of motionless eternity, of infinite im-
mensity, of the almighty cause, of the being with-
out limits, there break unceasingly an infinite
variety of contingent and imperfect beings, which
succeed either in time, which are in juxtaposition
in space, ever coming from God, ever aspiring to
return to Him. God and nature are not two
beings, but the single being under a double aspect.
Here unity multiplied, there multiplicity which
unites itself again to unity. On the one side is
the natura naturans^ on the other, the natura
naturata. The true being is not in the finite or
the infinite, he is their eternal, necessary, and
Various indivisible co-existence.
formula of 'Y\{\^ is Pantheism. You may vary the formulas
Pantheism, , . ^ . i i -^ r "^ i -r-
with an ad infinitum^ as you take them 1-rom the Last, or
iXntky."^ from Greece, or from modern Europe. You may
GOD THE CREATOR. 103
say with one philosopher, that nature is an
overflow of the absolute unity ; with another,
that God is the eternal coincidence of contraries ;
with a third, that nature is a collection of modes
of which God is the substance; or, again, that
the finite and the infinite, and contradictories, in
general, are identical ; but under every variety
of formula, through all the changes and progres-
sions of Pantheism, analysis finds one single con-
ception always the same, and that conception is,
the necessary and eternal co-existence of the finite
and the infinite.
History teaches us what is the necessary Pantheism
development and the inevitable result of this idea ; '" ^'^^^'i'-
and she only declares, in strong characters, the
laws of the human mind, and the real nature of
things. History shows that everywhere, and at
all times, in the East, and in Greece, at Athens,
as at Alexandria, in the modern world, and in the
ancient. Pantheism has always been led either to
deny the proper reality and individuality of finite
beings, and to concentre all life and existence in
God, which is the mysticism of the Oriental reli-
gions, and of Plotinus and Jacob Boehme ; or
to give their individuality to the world and to
man, and to reduce God to an abstraction, which
is the atheism of Epicurus, of Hobbes, and of their
contemporaneous disciples. There is nothing in
this which does not find its reason in the consti-
tution of the human mind. In fact, a metaphysical
system only exists on one condition, that is, to
give a reason for the nature of beings, for their
most essential conditions, for their most intimate
relations. You have hardly done anything when
104 FOURTH MEDITATION,
you have set down, in a general way, God, nature,
and humanity. You must determine all these
conceptions. You must say what God is, whether
or not He has attributes, what is His manner of
being. You must explain yourself on finite things,
on the precise degree of their existence. It is
useless to view^ with complacency the logical
arrangement of notions, you must pay your tax
to experience, you must give a reason for the
realities of this world. Not only the visible uni-
verse strikes our senses, but the human conscious-
ness, always present, makes its imperious language
heard. The mind has its laws, the heart has its
needs ; the soul has its inspirations, its impulses,
its mysterious presentiments. Every system of
philosophy must collect these facts, and make
allow^ance for them.
Radical Here Pantheism meets with insurmountable
vice of difficulties. It recognises the existence of the
'finite and the infinite, and so far it is in harmony
with the laws of the human mind and the aspira-
tions of universal consciousness. But the human
race is not satisfied with asserting nature and God;
it believes in a nature which is not peopled with
phantoms but with effective things, with living
powers ; it believes in a God w^ho is not an ab-
straction or a sign in algebra, but a living, active,
productive God. Such is the faith of the human
race, and, w^hether it will or no. Pantheism must
account for it. All its most celebrated partisans
have tried to do so. But if Pantheism is obliged
to come into contact with real life, it is not less
imperiously obliged to remain faithful to the con-
ditions of its essence. Now, the essence of Pan-
GOD THE CREATOR. 105
theism is the reduction of the Unite and the infinite,
of nature and God, into one absolute unity. Ac-
cording to us the difficulty is insoluble, or rather
the contradiction is radical. On the one hand, the
human mind and universal consciousness demand
a real God and a real nature ; on the other, Pan-
theism requires the reduction of all beings to unity.
If God is not to be merely abstract and indetermi-
nate, He must have attributes, and these attributes
must have motion and life ; but then these modes,
these attributes, these determinations of God, be-
ing only God himself, nature is absorbed in Him;
there is no longer any nature, there is nothing but
the life of God. On the other side, if nature is
to have its proper reality, and it be admitted that
the beings of this world have a certain consistency
and a certain individuality, what becomes, then, of
the reality of God? God is henceforth only a
name, a sign. He disappears — he vanishes. In
one word, Pantheism is condemned to this alter-
native, to diminish and impoverish the divine exist-
ence in order to give reality to the universe, or to
annihilate the existence of visible things in order
to concentrate all actual existence in God.
I insist on this fundamental point, and, to show Fundamen-
it in a stronger light, I shall choose narrower ground ^^^^^^^'
and concentrate the difficulty on a precise problem.
Among the attributes which the human race recog- Reality of
nises in God, there is none more striking or more
august than intelligence; among the beings which
people this universe, there is no existence more
certain or better known than that of intellectual
beings. There is then an infinite intelligence, and
there are imperfect limited intelligences which
io6 FOURTH MEDITATION.
conceive and adore in God the plenitude and the
perfection of intellect. Pantheism is obliged to
recognise these two sorts of intellect, and at first
it does not seek to deny them. But it is not
enough to recognise them, we must conceive their
co-existence and determine their relation. The
problem is difficult and formidable to any system,
but Pantheism finds in it a special difficulty. In
fact, while laying down as real the infinite intelli-
gence and the variety of finite minds, it must bring
these two species of intellect to an absolute unity.
Some Pan- This is the shoal on which the Pantheistic sys-
schemes ^^"^^ make shipwreck; so far they have gone on
absorb all vigorously iu a straight and simple path, but
fnteUi-^^' stumbling at this difficulty, they divide and di-
gences into verge in two contrary directions. A philosopher
theabso- Penetrated with a profound sentiment of the
lute inteiii- Diviuity, with that perfect and finished thought
Which knows no bound, in Whom are concentrated
all the rays of absolute truth. Who embraces with
a single and eternal glance the plenitude of being,
the real and the possible, the past and the future :
such a philosopher will never be satisfied to make
an undetermined thought of the Divine intelli-
gence — a thought void of ideas, without conscious-
ness; in a word, the abstraction of thought in-
stead of real living thought. He will admit then
a rich and fertile intelligence, full of life, contain-
ing in itself all the forms of thought. But then,
what will he make of our finite intellects ? Are
they to be outside of the absolute intelligence ?
Are their ideas to be distinct from His ideas,
their life from His life? Thus we deny at once
the fundamental principle of pantheism — the law
gence.
GOD THE CREATOR. 107
of absolute unity ; and we must either renounce
all logic and desert our principles, or else submit
to this consequence — that what we call a finite
intelligence is but a part of infinite Intelligence, a
fugitive moment of His eternal life, that our feeble
intellects lose all distinct reality, all individual
consistence, and are resolved into pure modes into
particular ideas of the absolute intelligence.
But there are minds which cannot renounce the Q^^ier^
consciousness of their own reality. There are make finite
robust idiosyncracies, determined not to sacrifice ^"f^i^^f^'^'i
themselves, not to be absorbed into the bosom of real ones.
an extraneous existence. Spirits of this kind,
strongly attached to the data of consciousness,
undertake to reconcile them with their fundamental
principle, which is the absolute unity of beings.
There is only one way to do that, that is to refuse
all distinct life to the Infinite intelligence, to
reduce Him to a pure thought, to an indetermi-
nate thought — to the bond of all thought, and of
all finite intelligences. Then, in the place of a
sole intelligence, who alone lives, who alone thinks,
who alone is real, you have an infinite variety of
distinct and determinate intelligences, joined by a
general character and a common sign. In the
first case God alone is real, and creatures are but
the series of His actions ; in the second, creatures
only have reality, and God is the sign that unites
them.
Such is the inevitable law imposed upon Panthe-
ism by logic, and by the nature of things. It sees
before it two realities, which no reasonable mind
can deny, and it undertakes to reduce them to the
absolute unity of a single existence. And it finds
To8 FOURTH MEDITATION.
itself reduced, if it wants a real and living God, to
absorb in Him all creatures, and so to fall into mys-
ticism; or if it wants a real and effective universe,
to make of God a pure abstraction, a mere name,
and so to be in danger of Atheism.
Of two This terrible alternative weighs upon the Pan-
t^nd^des theism of the present day, as it weighed upon
ofPanthe- Malebrauclie and Spinoza, and before them on
towards the schools of Athens and Alexandria. Which
^rlvaur ^^^^ ^^'^^^ ^^^ Pantheists take ? There is in a cer-
tain number of the schools of our time, chiefly
among the disciples of Schelling, some tendency
towards mysticism, but it is quite evident that the
strength and the danger are not on that side.
These germs are abortions, and they must perish
in an age like ours, when the sentiment of things
celestial is weakened, when the love of life, the
ardour of enjoyment, the exaggerated notions of
the power of man, form a torrent which carries
away the firmest characters and the noblest intel-
lects. What follows .f" That the mystic Pan-
theism of Baader and Goerres, which sacrifices
man to God, has vanished, and that the opposite
tendency of Pantheism universally prevails. The
Hegelian school has decided resolutely to sacrifice
the Divine personality, and to know no other God
but that which it calls the impersonal God.
God is nothing more to the Pantheists of our
day than the abstraction of being. He only arrives
at consciousness after having passed through all
the degrees of life, and it is man who is at last
the really perfect being. There is in the idea of
being a necessary dialectic, which urges it to deve-
lope itself, and from progress to progress, from
GOD THE CREATOR. 109
evolution to evolution, the idea becomes man.
Then only God has consciousness of Himself. In
other terms, God instead of being the first prin-
ciple and the Creator, is but the last consequence.
We must examine more closely this concep- The Abso-
tion, which is given us as the last effort of a new "^^"
science, of some unheard of dialectic, armed with
its theses and its antitheses, and which, setting
out from the abstraction of being, fancies that it
arrives at the complete being, by passing through
all possible forms of existence. The common aim
of French and German Hegelians, when they set
out from the principle which they call the Absolute,
and which in their system plays the part of God,
is to take their stand on the highest idea of rea-
son. I ask what they mean by the Absolute.
The difference of definitions and formulae is of very
little consequence here, for they all agree in ac-
knowledging that this Absolute, taken in itself, is
not a living and determinate principle. As soon
as it is determined, as soon as it lives, it is no
longer the pure absolute, it is no longer itself,
it becomes another, it becomes nature and
humanity.
Now, so far from such an Absolute beine^ thej^"^^'!^
1 . T • • 1 r • . . . 9 , highest
highest prmciple or reason, m my opmion it is de- principle of
nying reason altogether to give it this rank and '"*^''^^^"*
character ; for properly speaking it is confounding
reason, intuitive reason, with those secondary
faculties of analysis and abstraction, which preside
over the operations of discursive reason; or, in
other words, it is substituting for the idea of the
perfect Being — that primitive, natural, spontaneous
idea full of reality and life — the abstract and dead
I TO FOURTH MEDITATION.
conception of the indeterminate being. Certainly,
to conceive the Perfect and Absolute Being, is
the proper function of reason; and there is not a
thought of the mind, an emotion of the heart, an
impulse of the imagination, not even a perception
of the senses, which does not contain this notion.
But what is its real character ? Far from being an
abstract idea representing an indeterminate object,
it is of all ideas the most determinate and the most
concrete. I cannot contemplate being and life
under their changeable and imperfect forms ; I
cannot see some gleams of intelligence shine around
me and in me ; I cannot catch some impressions of
strength, of beauty, of justice, of joy, of happiness,
without conceiving beyond the beings of visible
nature, a First Existence, where plenitude of in-
telligence, perfect beauty, and the possession of
Almighty Power, compose in their harmonious
unity the eternity of a perfect life.
The idea of Collect thcse partial acts of a sole and identical
the Perfect intellectual function, these divided members of
cret? ^°"" an idea always present in the depths of thought.
Dissensions ^ud you have the idea of the Perfect Being. And
of the Pan- {^^^s is not au abstract idea, nor an idea which re-
schooi. presents an indeterminate object; it is emphatically
the concrete idea, since it represents the most real
being, not potential, but actual being, the pleni-
tude of perfection, the accomplishment of all the
forms of being, and of all the attributes of life.
Here is the real Absolute, here is true perfection,
but a determinate living perfection. It is easy to
conceive that such an Absolute should be a true
principle, really first and really productive, for it
is an evident fact that the imperfect has its reason
GOD THE CREATOR. iii
in the perfect, the finite in the infinite, the relative
in the absolute. But what follows from the Pan-
theistic system ? They take for their principle a
false Absolute, an indeterminate being, a being in
potentiality. I say that this principle is radically
sterile. In fact, it is inconceivable that this inde-
terminate being should become determinate, that
this being in potentiality should pass into actuality.
It is absolutely impossilDle, and we must here ex-
hibit the spectacle of the internal discord of the
Pantheistic school, in face of the impossibility
of making one step beyond their sterile absolute,
which is common to all its masters.
It is well-known that Schelling lays down as the ^^^^{\^"f^j
origin of things a principle w^hich he calls the iden-
tical absolute, or the subject-object. This prin-
ciple determines itself, makes itself, objective by
its nature, and thus gives to itself a primary form,
which it immediately destroys to take up another
till it has exhausted its power of objectivity, and
has come into full possession of its being. Here
Hegel stops his master, and says. You are unfaith-
ful to the conditions of science. Science must
explain and demonstrate everything. Now you
set out with an hypothesis and enigma. You say
the absolute can divide itself, the identical can
differentiate itself. What is the absolute ? What
is the identical ? Why and how should it divide
itself or differentiate itself.? The first principle of
the system should be particularly clear, since it is
to give light to the whole. Your first principle is
unintelligible, and it dims the rest of the system
with its darkness. Then how will you describe
the evolution of the absolute in nature and in man ?
1 1 2 FOURTH MEDITATION.
You do not define the essence of the Absolute and
the internal laws of its development. How can
you see the Absolute in other things, if you cannot
see it in itself? You must have recourse to experi-
ence, you leave the region of absolute science.
We really cannot see what Schelling has to
answer to these objections. It is impossible to put
him more effectually at variance with his own prin-
ciples, and to point out the two things in his system
which ought never to be found in a philosophy a
priori — unexplained mysteries, and helps drawn
from experience.
But if Hegel triumphs over Schelling, the
master is equally strong against the disciple. It
is amusing to hear Schelling following up with his
lively dialectic the boastful theories, whose greatest
fault is, that they have eclipsed his own. "It has
been said," he exclaims, "that in metaphysics one
must not suppose anything. I am blamed for making
hypotheses : how does my opponent begin ? With
a hypothesis, the strangest of all, that of the logi-
cal notion, or the idea to which he attributes the
faculty of transforming itself by its nature into its
contrary, and then of turning back and becoming
itself again, a thing that may be imagined of a
living real being, but that cannot be said of the
simple logical notion, without the most absurd of
fictions."
Here, according to Schelling, is a perfectly
gratuitous first supposition. Nevertheless the
system maintains itself well enough, as long as we
remain in the sphere of pure logic, which has to
do with the combination of abstractions ; but how
to pass from the idea to the being is both incon-
ceivable and impossible ; and then follows neces-
GOD THE CREATOR. 113
sarily a new hypothesis, and a new absurdity,
which Schelling shows up with the sharpest irony.
" The idea," says he, "Hegel's idea, one cannot tell
why, but probably tired of its purely logical exist-
ence, takes it into its head to resolve itself into
its momenta, in order to explain creation." It could
not have been better said, and Schelling revenges
himself admirably on his proud and faithless pupil.
But what must every disinterested friend of truth
think, listening to these two adversaries, who are
so clever in attack, so weak in defence ? He will
say that the passage so much desired from the
abstract to the real is manifestly not to be found
by the Pantheists.
And I ask them if this passage from power to The /re-
act, from indifference to difference, from the inde-^^''^" ^ ^^
terminate to the determinate, is to the Absolute a absolute.
progress or a decadence. They may hesitate
between these two alternatives, but they must
choose. All the Pantheists of Germany, celebrate
with one voice the idea of the necessary and in-
ternal progress of being (prozess) as the most
original idea of modern metaphysics. On the
other side, Schelling has often appeared to lean
towards the idea of a primitive decadence ; borrow-
ing from the latter Pantheists of the Athenian
school, particularly from Proclus, their strange
doctrine, he has said that the production of the
world was a fall of the Absolute.
We must confess that the choice is rather
dangerous between tv/o such strange alternatives.
What ! the perfect being degenerates ! its essence
is perfection, and it ceases to be perfect ! The
contradiction is palpable. But on the other side,
H
1 14 FOURTH MEDITATION.
how shall we conceive that the perfect being should
grow more perfect; that the complete being should
receive an increase of reality ? There is but one
idea equal in absurdity to the idea of the decad-
ence of God, and that is the idea of His progress.
Absurdities It may be thought that I reason from settled
Absolute, prejudices, and that I am substituting the old
notion of God, the all Perfect Being, for the trans-
cendental new idea of the Absolute. Not at all.
I demand whether the Absolute of the Pantheist
is in itself perfect or imperfect. If it is perfect in
itself, it is evident that its perfection can neither
be added to nor diminished. They must then ac-
knowledge that their absolute is imperfect ; and
then they fall into an abyss of absurdities. Ac-
cording to this hypothesis, the last which has been
put out by the Pantheists of the present day, every-
thing begins with imperfection, and perfection is
at the term. But if the Absolute be imperfect in
itself, it has not its reason of existence in itself, it
has no reason for its existence. Supposing it to
exist, why should it develope itself .^^ — this is also
inexplicable and impossible.
The expedient of the Pantheists is to say that
it developes itself necessarily; but this is no answer.
For whence this necessity ? They will tell us that
as a fact the world exists. But this fact is only
a fact, which cannot establish an absolute necessity,
so that the necessity is purely gratuitous. Not
only one cannot conceive that the absolute should
be developed, but one can conceive very clearly
that it should not be developed, because it is im-
possible that imperfection should be a first principle,
that the perfect should proceed from the imperfect.
We are forced then to say with Hegel, that it is
GOD THE CREATOR. 115
necessai-y that the contradictory should take place,
that nothing should become being, and zero should
become the origin of the unit and of numbers.
Nothing producing everything, that which is absurd
in itself become necessary, and entrusted with the
task of explaining and throwing light upon all the
mysteries of existence — such is the last limit that
Pantheism has been destined to reach.
I think I have proved, by placing myself with Refutation
the Pantheists in the region of speculative reason, P^ Pamhe-
^^ , 11 1 1 • *^"^ from
that their Absolute is a false Absolute, that their the Pmcti-
impersonal God is a false God, a sterile chimera of ''^^ Reason,
abstraction. Can the Pantheists defend themselves
better upon the platform of practical reason and
experimental facts ? Have they compensated them-
selves for having sacrificed divine personality by
establishing human personality in the plenitude
of its rights ? On this point one would sometimes
say that the Pantheists deceive themselves less
than on all the rest. They feel so strongly that
the authority of experience is not on their side,
that they hasten at once to reject it. Hear the
Pantheists of all ages. Parmenides, Plotinus,
Bruno, Spinoza, Hegel, will tell you that the
senses are deceitful, that the vulgar, taking them
for guides, feed their intellect with pure delusions,
that it belongs to true philosophy to get rid of the
senses, and to regard everything with the eye of
reason. Has not experience always deceived us,
they cry, and after all what does she give us?
Phenomena and not causes, existences and not
essences, what happens, what is, and not what
ought to be, what cannot fail to be. But philosophy
is essentially the knowledge of causes and of
essences, the science of the how and the why ot
ii6 FOURTH MEDITATION.
every thing, the contemplation of the necessary
and the absolute. Let pure reason then be a
torch to lead the philosopher through the pro-
found mystery of the origin of things far from the
vulgar crowds and the commerce of the senses.
Pantheists Such is the haughty language of the Pantheists,
despise ^j^j [^ is natural enough that they should despise
vS^mTsr' experience, but whether they will or not, a moment
Tiv^^^^f ^" comes when the proudest will have to reckon with
her. I only know one man who has held for an
instant this kind of wager against impossibility, that
man is Parmenides. This daring genius alone
dared to maintain to the end that philosophy must
confine itself to pure reason, to the idea of being,
and hold all the rest for nothing.^ The rigorous
consequence is, that motion and nature are not,
and that there is only the Absolute being, without
attributes, without difference, without life. Had
they been strictly true to their principles, Plotinus,
Spinoza, and Hegel, should have ended in the
same result, at once logical and absurd. I defy
Plotinus to get out of his absolute unity, Spinoza
to make one step beyond the affirmation of sub-
stance, Hegel to break the narrow circle of the
absolutely indeterminate idea, if they do not bor-
row one of her data from experience, if they
do not bow to consciousness and the senses.
Plotinus sees in his unity the principle of an eter-
nal emanation ; Spinoza deduces from substance
attribute, and from attribute mode; Hegel explains
all the developments of the idea, by a certain
internal processus, by a necessary motion obedient
to a very simple and uniform law. This is all
' Oi'Se ttot' €K tov iovTos i(f)r,crcL iria-Tios iVx^'S • • yiyi-ea-Oai ti trap
mVu — Parmenidis Fragmenta, Ed. Karsten, vers. 67, 68.
GOD THE CREATOR. 117
very good; but where did these philosophers find
the ideas of emanation, of attribute, of mode, of
progress, of motion ? Was it not really experi-
ence that furnished them with the type of these
notions ? And what advantage can it be to any
sincere and serious philosopher, after having made
use of these indispensable notions, to conceal their
origin ? Pantheism, then, must take its choice ;
not more than other systems can it dispense with
experience, and it does not, in fact, dispense with
it. Pantheism cannot be accepted as repudiating
the data of the senses. To deny facts from the
vantage-ground of an a priori principle, would be
not only to attempt the impossible, and to convict
oneself of extravagance, it would be to contradict
oneself miserably, to make use of experience when
she is useful and necessary, and to proscribe her
as soon as she becomes troublesome. Such a posi-
tion is not tenable, and I consider it as demon-
strated that to reason against Pantheism in the
name of experience, is to make use of a right in-
contestable in itself, and, what is more, incontest-
able to every honest Pantheist.
Also, the acknowledged aim of the Hegelians what
is to give a satisfactory explanation of human ^^'j^^j^^'^^"
personality, and even to be in close communion The moral
with the moral and religious traditions of humanity. ^^^ "
Now let us see what constitutes human person-
ality. How it is that man is not a thing but a
person — that he takes a place apart from the
other beings of creation — that he pursues an in-
finite ideal, and aspires to immortality ? It is be-
cause man feels himself a free agent, and respon-
sible for his destiny. He bows before order, as
before a sacred law; he acknowledges absolute
1 18 FOURTH MEDITATION.
obligations and inviolable rights. Whilst the
other beings of the universe develope themselves,
fatally following laws which they know not and
cannot modify, man beholds universal order, and
puts himself freely in harmony or in strife with
it. Fact rules nature, man inhabits a higher
world where right reigns. Responsible for his
destiny, man beholds his judge in God. Subject
to the trial of labour and of pain, he seeks a con-
soler and a support. Filled with an immense
love for truth, beauty, and perfection of every
kind, and unable to satisfy it perfectly in his
earthly condition, he looks towards heaven —
he desires, he hopes for a life to come. His
thought flies from earth, flings itself into the infi-
nite, and enjoys there a foretaste of celestial feli-
city. It is thus that man raises himself from the
region of fatality to that of liberty and justice,
and that morality leads him to religion.
Pantheistic There are no truths more simple, none more
profession closclv bouud tos^cther. If there be no liberty,
of religion J . o ,, ^' r
not perhaps there IS uo Hght, no justice, no future lite, no
insincere. }^Qpg \^ Qod, UO religion.
Let us do justice to the Pantheists. They do not
carelessly repudiate these holy truths ; they make
sincere eflbrts to bring them into their system. But
if thereby they deserve our respect, they lay them-
selves open to that pitiless logic which does not
give credit for intentions. First let us hear what
they say. Spinoza subscribes on his book
the sacred name — morality; the final end of his
philosophy is, he assures us, the liberty of man.
He aflSrms, or I should say, he demonstrates
geometrically, the immortality of the soul, and
finishes his system with a theory of divine love.
GOD THE CREATOR. 119
Hegel's intentions are not less exalted, nor his
language less specious. Thus he speaks of reli-
gion: "It is the region where the enigmas of
life, and all the contradictions of thought, find
their solution, where all the pains of sentiment
are appeased : the region of eternal truth and
eternal peace. There flows the stream of Lethe,
there the soul drinks oblivion of all its ills ;
there all the clouds of time are dissipated in the
brightness of the infinite."^
Hegel flatters himself that he has explained the But most
true sense of Christianity, and reconciled for ever ^"^°"^*''"
religion and philosophy. In fact, according to
him, the common foundation of all philosophy and
of all religion is the idea of the Word made flesh,
of the man God; in other words, it is the iden-
tity of the human mind and the universal mind ;
or again, it is the universal mind taking conscious-
ness of itself in the human mind. This is, according
to Hegel, the real title of human personality; this
is the living source of morality and religion. I
doubt not of the sincerity and high-mindedness of
Hegel, any more than of his genius ; but I have
a right to tell him, that these words, liberty, re-
sponsibility, duty, right, immortality, adoration,
religion, have no sense in his system, and that to
give them any meaning he must employ miraculous
subtilty and prodigious refinement.
The leading idea of Pantheism is the idea of
an indeterminate principle, which determines it-
self after a necessary law, to become successively
everything. Absolute necessity is at the beginning,
the middle, and the end of it. Brute nature, living
1 Hegel, Lessons on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. xi.
120 FOURTH MEDITATION.
Necessity nature, intellectual nature, individuals, and society,
^■J^Jj^^j J"^"" laws, creeds, manners, and institutions, are ruled
scheme, and swayed by her. With Spinoza this neces-
sity is clothed in a geometrical form. He believes
that the bending of a blade of grass, or the fall
of an empire, is as necessary as the proposition,
that the three angles of a triangle are equal to
two right angles. Hegel has imagined another
necessity, which he calls dialectical. Everything is
subject, according to him, to the law of the abso-
lute identity of contradictories. Being and nothing,
the infinite and the finite, beauty and deformity,
good and evil, life and death, are at first wrapped
confusedly together in a primary term, they sepa-
rate in the second, to come together again in the
third. This is the uniform rhythm of the idea,
the sovereign law of creation,
inconsis- It matters little whether this theory is more or
JeiigiTi!^ less original. It is enough to know that for
Hegel, as for Spinoza, the evolution of man is
subject, as well as that of the stone, to an abso-
lute necessity; and certainly he must possess a
rare power of self-deception who does not see
that such a system strikes at the root of the moral
and religious life. What, the actions of my life
are to be unrolled like the rings of an iron chain,
and I am to think myself responsible ! What is
called God is nothing but the dialectic law, and I
am to adore that law even when it crushes and
destroys me ! I am only a necessary form of
being destined to be replaced by another, and I
am to hope for a life to come ! And then they
tell me that God is myself, and that I should find
my happiness in feeling myself to be God. What!
con-
sciousness
in man.
GOD THE CREATOR. 121
I feel pain, I must die, and I am God — a strange
sort of God ! Shall I not cry out with Pascal,
ridicolosisnmo eroe 1
But let us treat this theory seriously, if possi- Position
ble. God, you say, takes consciousness of Him- ^^^^ ^"^^
'J J I assumes
self in man. So God in Himself has no con-seif-
sciousness of Himself, but He takes consciousness
of Himself in another. This is strange, espe-
cially when this other is not one individual, but
millions of individuals, some dead, some living,
others to be born, who do not know each other,
and are separated by spaces and ages. Where is
the unity of such a consciousness 1 What is the
meaning of a consciousness which divides itself, and
breaks itself into a thousand pieces ? What is
the meaning of a consciousness which is made in
time, and which is never made — which is always
seeking for itself, and never finds itself .f* Then I
who speak am not God, I am only a fragment of
that indefinite existence. This is to tell me, in a
strange dark language, a very simple thing, most
easily knowni, namely, that man is but a necessary
form of being, like that tree, or that pebble, or
that stream; with this small difference, that man
believes himself to be a free agent, without being
so in reality; that he sees before him death, with
the full certainty of dying, and that in this excess
of misery, he has only to persuade himself for a
moment that he is God to be consoled for all.
The great Pantheists have intellects which are Hegel's and
too acute not to have perceived these contradictions. ^ fj"e n^^!
So what do they do ? they take away with one hand cessity."
what they have given with the other. Spinoza
recognises liberty, but he calls it a free necessity;
122 FOURTH MEDITATION.
and this is also the sentiment of Hegel. "The
moral man," says he, "has consciousness of his
action, as of something necessary, and thereby
only is he truly free."^
Ultimate There is the same strange agreement between
PanthersL ^P^^^^^ ^^"^^ Hegel ou the distinction of good and
* evil; they begin by acknowledging it, and a short
time after they deny it. Both of them tell us
that the soul is immortal, and then they proceed
to reduce this immortality to the consciousness
that we have, of being an eternally necessary
form of the absolute being. Liberty without re-
sponsibility, morality without duties, immortality
without consciousness, mad idolatry of self — these
are the practical conclusions of Pantheism, this is
what it makes of human personality.
In a word, contemporary Pantheism, forced to
choose between an extravagant mysticism which
is rejected by all the instincts good and bad of
our day, and the contrary tendency, decides for
the latter, and sacrifices resolutely the personality
of God, in hopes of making more of man.
What is the result ? It destroys human person-
ality. So true is this profound saying of a con-
temporary spiritualist:^ "There are two poles of
all human science — the personal I, with whom all
' begins, and the personal God, in whom all ends."
Yes, man without God is an enigma. — I know
not what, — an inexplicable monster. He has no
mission upon earth, and no hope in heaven.
Losing his divine ideal, trying to take himself for
his ideal, he falls below himself, and his punish-
ment for desiring to be God is, that he ceases
to be man.
' Hegel, Encyclopedic^ add. an. § 35, 2 Maine de Biran.
fiftft iHeisitation.
// the World Eternal and Infinite ?
There is no more room for hesitation, since I
have declared open war against Pantheism; nor is
my adversary a phantom; assuredly not; for I
have long meditated on those high thoughts with
which Hegel and Spinoza have allowed themselves
to be intoxicated — those ideas of absolute unity,
and of the eternal evolution of beings. I know
their seductiveness; I would not willingly v/eaken
them; nor would I conceal the terrible difficul-
ties which rise against the idea of a God distinct
from the universe. Yet they have been overcome.
Yes ! the God of science, as well as the God of our
hearts and of common sense, is a God distinct from
the world, a God living by His own life, an adorable
God, God the Creator. He was before the world,
He was fully sufficient to Himself; not from ne-
cessity, but from love. He became the Creator ;
the universe is the work of His goodness. But
what am I saying ^. God, the eternal Being, was
before His creatures; God, the immutable Being,
became a Creator. Is not that a difficulty which I
have not resolved, and which the very laws of Ian-
124 FIFTH MEDITATION,
guage make palpable — Misery of human speech,
or rather, of human reason ! I have mastered
a truth of inestimable value ; and when I want
to confess it, when a word of adoration would
exliale from my lips, my language seems to im-
peach my thought; I impose on the Eternal the
condition of time, I lend Him the vicissitudes of
change.
How should God be before creatures if He has
not a relation with them ? If time, and if time
only, exists as a relation between creatures, what
sense is there in the words before creatures ?
For what is the meaning of an empty time which
neither measures the life of God, since it is supe-
rior to time, nor the life of creatures, since it does
not yet exist ? And then, how can God become
the Creator ? He must change His condition ;
He must pass from fecundity in potentiality to
fecundity in action ; He must come out of rest to
set Himself to work, and He must return again
to rest; and all this apparently through caprice,
or from being tired of His long inaction.
Is the world Away from me, vain phantoms of the imagina-
eternai? ^j^j^ j QqJ jg eternally all that He is. If He is
the Creator, He creates eternally; if He creates
the world, it is not from chance or from caprice,
but for reasons worthy of Himself; and these
reasons are eternal. Nothing new, nothing for-
tuitous can arise in the counsels of eternity. If the
world be a work where wisdom and love concur
with Almighty power, all that is eternal, and the
creative act, is equally so. What more simple
and more luminous than these principles ? But
here is the difficulty. If the creative act be eter-
IS THE WORLD ETERNAL'^ 125
nal, why is not the effect of that act also eternal ?
and then we have the world, without beginning
or end, partaking of an essential attribute of the
Creator.
It may be said that this difficulty is not serious
— that we are played upon here by the laws of
human language, which, using its means of ex-
pression in sensible things, transports, by a neces-
sary and innocent artifice, the forms of time and
space into the things of eternity. In God nothing
begins; all is eternal, the creative act as well as
the motives of creation; but in the creature every-
thing is subject to time, everything must begin to
have being — this is the solution of the difficulty.
God did not begin to create, but the creature
began to exist, and with the creature, time,
which is but the relation and the measure of its
changes.
But does this solve the difficulty.'' I could
wish it, but reason is not so easily satisfied ; and
I understand too well with what perplexities the
Christian soul of St. Augustine was agitated
when he raised this question : Has God always
been the Lord ? or again — Has God always been
adored? It would be very easy to reduce all
metaphysical questions to questions of words.
Some one even pointed out to St. Augustine a
still more expeditious mode of cutting short the
difficulty; namely, to reply to those who ask
what God was doing before He created the
world, that He was preparing punishment for
people who asked indiscreet questions. I know
not if the question be indiscreet, but I know that
the difficulty is inevitable.
126 FIFTH MEDITATION.
Nor does it resolve the difficulty to say — God
alone is without beginning or end ; the world had
a beginning, and time with the world, since the
world and time are inseparable. But to speak in
this way is to overlook the fact that even if a com-
mencement of the world be conceivable and pos-
sible, yet as soon as our mind proceeds to assign
to the world a definite origin, however remote, it
necessarily conceives the possibility of a more re-
mote origin, and so on, ad injinitum. In the same
way I may possibly assign limits to the extension
of the world ; but scarcely has my mind fixed these
limits before it displaces them, and conceives be-
yond them the possibility of a vaster world, and
this without end and cessation. But, if these ages,
extensions, and worlds, are not necessary, they
are at least possible. So far is certain. But if
it be once granted to me that they are possible,
must I not, when I consider them in reference to
There is no God, couccive them as necessarily realized by His
betweST will ? Admit an universe which began to exist
finite crea- some ages ago — say a hundred ages or a million;
the Creator, admit that this same universe is limited to a certain
extent — it matters not whether great or little in re-
lation to man — admit all this if you can — I ask you
what relation, what proportion, is there between
such a creation and the Creator 'i The universe is
the image of God, the expression of His all-perfect
being ; it is by this right that the universe exists;
it is the reason of its being ; and can I picture to
myself a finite universe — that is to say, an universe
like an atom made to last an instant.'' Could such
as that be the image of the eternal and the im-
mense? Could God be eternally recognised in
uni-
verse, in a
certain
IS THE WORLD INFINITE? 127
this phantom of His thought, and would He will
to see as existent, not I will say this image, but this
irony on His omnipotence ? Is God, then, a master
grudging existence and life ? else why these empty
ages before the world ; why these empty spaces be-
yond the universe ? I am told that empty ages
are not ages, that empty spaces are not spaces,
that all this has no effectual existence, since without
bodies and without changing realities it is all re-
duced to abstraction. Be it so; but these ages are
possible, these spaces can be realised, and, to go to
the bottom of the matter, there are millions of
possible beings to fill all spaces and all ages.
Any number of beings, however large, any The
number of years, any number of spaces, is not a
true expression of the infinity of the Creator, sense, in-
We must, then, whether we will or no, come to "^^^
the conclusion that the work of the creation is not
only an eternal, immutable, infinite act, as regards
the Creator, but that even as regards the creature
if we would not make it an accidental and capricious
effort of infinite omnipotence, but a work worthy of
the Creator, fit to express His eternity. His im-
mensity. His fecundity, all His infinite perfections
— the universe must extend indefinitely in time, in
space, in the infinite greatness, and in the infinite
littleness of its parts, in the infinite variety of its
species, of its forms, and of its degrees of exist-
ence. The finite cannot express the infinite, but
by being multiplied infinitely. The finite, so far
as it is finite, is not in a reasonable relation or an
intelligible proportion to the infinite. But the
finite multiplied infinitely, ages upon ages, spaces
beyond spaces, stars beyond stars, worlds beyond
128 FIFTH MEDITATION.
worlds, is a true expression of the Infinite
Being.
This view How sublime is this thought of the infinity of
"rriivTan- woHds ! I could yield myself to it without the
theistic. least scruple, if I did not happen to remember
that it was introduced into the modern world by
a Pantheist, the bold and unfortunate Bruno.
Must I then fall again into the clutches of Pan-
theism, at the very moment when I thought I had
escaped from it for ever ? Does it follow, because
Relative the uuiverse has no limits, either in time or space,
lute infi°" or in the number and kind and degree of its parts,
^'^^y- that the universe must therefore be eternal, im-
mense, infinite, as God Himself? No ; that is but
a vain scruple, which springs from the imagination,
and not from the reason. The imagination is al-
ways confounding what reason should ever distin-
guish, eternity and time, immensity and space, rela-
tive infinity and absolute infinity. The Creator
alone is eternal, immense, absolutely infinite. The
creation is scattered over space and time, subject to
division and to limits. Time, in the inexhaustible flux
of its moments, endeavours, so to speak, to imitate
eternity, as much as its nature will permit. Space,
by the infinite development of its extension, tries
also to express immensity. In general, the in-
exhaustible evolution of finite things represents,
as far as the nature of the finite allows, the inter-
nal evolution of the divine life. And yet there
remains always between the model and the image,
between the cause and the effect, together with a
certain proportion, an infinite difference, not only
in the degree of perfection but in the essence.
Ages, spaces, stars, plants, intellectual beings,
earth and heaven, each is variable, incomplete,
IS THE WORLD INFINITE? 129
contingent, incapable of being or of subsisting in
itself. Each is then contained in an ineffable
manner in the depths of the self-existent being,
who wraps round ages with His eternity, space
with His immensity, changeable beings with His
immutable being, who alone is really infinite,
alone complete, alone in full possession of absolute
existence.
So I consider myself saved at once from Pan-
theism and superstition. I feared the abstract
God of Spinoza and Hegel, but I feared also a
humanised God, and an accidental, arbitrar)^, or
capricious creation. My fears are dispersed. I
conceive a God who is not potential being, a
sterile germ, but being in action, the perfect being,
possessing perfect life, the life of thought and love;
and then as the expression of this God, a universe
which imitates, as far as may be, infinity, which
is not the ephemeral production of caprice, or
chance, but the work of an infinite omnipotence,
directed by wisdom and inspired by goodness.
I am, then, in possession of an idea which can
stand the test of reflection and doubt, and which
at the same time answers to the deepest and sub-
limest instincts of the human heart. The God
that my reason and my heart adore is at once a
complete ideal of perfection, and an inexhaustible
source of life. From His bosom, eternally fertile,
across innumerable ages, and immeasurable spaces,
life gushes forth and expands in forms ever new ;
and He the absolute being. He remains com-
plete in Himself, in His incommunicable essence,
in His blessed personality and His consciousness.
IT. I
130 FIFTH MEDITATION.
DISCUSSION OF AN ANTINOMY.
I should desire to go on and make fresh pro-
gress in the knowledge of divine things, but in
vain I try to proceed ; a scruple stops me ; I turn
back on one of the antinomies of Kant, that which
has for its object the infinity of the universe. If
Kant is right, if the human intellect is so framed
that the ideas of a finite world and an infinite
world are perpetually at war within it, so that
the thesis and the anti-thesis can, in turn, be de-
monstrated and refuted with equal rigour, what
have I done by representing to myself a universe
whose illimitable greatness expresses, as I think,
the infinity of the Creator ? I have but taken up
an old claim of pure reason, without showing the
least regard to insoluble objections, and as if the
dialectic of Kant did not exist.
Famous ^ must then look this famous antinomy in the
Antinomy, face — what docs it say? It lays down first a world
which has a beginning in time and limits in space.
Here is the thesis, and this is how Kant proves it.
To suppose that the world had no beginning, is
to admit that at any given moment, say the mo-
ment in which I speak, an infinite series of suc-
cessive states of the world h'ave passed away.
Now, that is absurd, for the property of an
infinite series is, that in enumerating successively
the terms that compose it you can never find an
end. An eternity actually past away is then a
contradiction. Similarly, if you suppose a world
which has no limits in space, you admit an infinite
whole, which is contradictory, for in order that a
AN JN TINOMT, 1 3 1
whole actually given should be composed of an
infinite number of parts, you must be able to
count them successively; an impossible operation,
since it would require an eternity. Therefore
the world is not infinite, therefore it must have a
beginning in time, and limits in space.
But on the other side, if you suppose a world
which did begin, the very idea supposes a time an-
terior to the world, an empty time. Now in an
empty time nothing can begin, for why should it
begin at such a moment, rather than at another ?
And in the same way, if you suppose a world limited
in space, you suppose a space beyond the world,
an infinite empty space. But then you admit a
necessary relation between the world and some-
thing which yet is nothing. This relation is absurd.
Therefore the world is not more limited in space
than in time, and therefore it is infinite. This is
the anti-thesis.
What conclusion does Kant draw from this
antinomy .f' Does he pretend that human reason
is here taken in the fact of necessary self-contra-
diction ^. This consequence would be very serious,
for evidently it would bring in its train absolute
scepticism.
Kant recoils from this extreme, which goes very
far beyond the end that he had proposed to him-
self. He did not intend to make war with human
reason, but with the dogmatism of the schools.
He certainly wanted to kill metaphysics, but with-
out hurting reason. What does he do in this
perplexity.^ After having stated the antinomy,
he refutes it, but in a very siup-ular way.
ri^i . ' . , -' o J , Kant s
Inere is one pomt, he says, common to the solution
132 FIFTH MFDITJTION.
thesis and the anti-thesis. When we reason on the
dimensions of the universe, whether we hold a
finite world, or an infinite world, in both cases
we consider the universe as a real thing, we
attribute to it an absolute existence independent
of our senses. We believe then that the universe
is something more than a collection of phenomena,
we make of it a mumenon — a being in itself. In the
same w^ay we look upon time and space as objec-
tive and absolute realities, and when all this is pos-
tulated, the thesis and the anti-thesis come into
collision and produce an antinomy. Should human
reason be moved at this and despair of herself .^^
Not at all, for this antinomy only warns her that
she was about to take the wrong road, and fall into
an abyss of illusions. Instead of giving to the
universe, to space, and to time, an objective and
absolute reality, to which they have not reasonable
right, let her conceive the universe as a collection
of phenomena, let her reduce space and time to
simple forms of thought — to purely subjective
conditions of experience, then the thesis and the
anti-thesis fall together, and w ith them the anti-
nomy.
We need not inquire any further, if the world
be finite or infinite. For the world is nothing but
the series of our sensations. Consequently it is not
infinite because we are finite beings, neither is it
finite because as we go on living, new impressions
are added to the old, and that indefinitely.
Not satis- This is Kant's ingenious system, but he weaves
factor)'. -^ jj^ M■^CLXi. If tliis world, in the bosom of which
I am plunged, if these extensions, these motions,
these colours, this universal life, if all this is nothing
AN ANTINOMT. 133
beyond my own sensations, my reason deceives
me, I can no longer trust her, and absolute doubt
is inevitable. In vain Kant and his disciples
would make a stand against scepticism ; and after
having sacrificed to it the objective, would main-
tain, as they say, the subjective. From the moment
that the universe, God, and the soul itself, are
resolved into pure forms of thought, I ask where
is the link of these empty forms deprived of all
real contents, where is their centre, their unity,
their support ? Evidently they have none ; they
are all separated, disconcerted, scattered like
smoke, and thought after having denied its ob-
jects destroys itself.
Let us leave this artificial world where the
mind is consumed in mortal subtleties. The dif-
ficulties which disturbed the strong spirit of Kant
are such as speculative reason must meet at every
step. He took these difficulties for contradictions,
and applying to them his subtle dialectic, com-
posed the specious and regular system of his anti-
nomies. Only to speak of the one which we have
mentioned, I venture to say that the thesis and the
anti-thesis are very weakly established. It would
have been 'easy for Kant to invoke in favour of
his idea of an infinite world, twenty arguments
stronger than the only one which it suited him to
borrow from Leibnitz. But what ought espe-
cially to be remarked is, that the thesis of a finite
world, which ought to be rigorously proved, is
based upon very insufiicient proofs. If the world
had not a beginning, says Kant, an eternity would
have flowed away at the moment when I speak.
This language is not correct. Eternity is a dif-
134 FIFTH MEDITATION.
ferent thing from time, it does not flow away, it does
not become, it is. Time only becomes and flows as
the world changes and is modified. I admit that it
is difficult to conceive the infinite flow of time, but
this difficulty only exists in the imagination. Reason
conceives distinctly that all duration supposes a be-
fore and an after. It may be great or little, millions
of ages, or a quarter of a minute, still whoever
speaks of duration speaks of past, present, and
future. We must then give up the idea of time
altogether, or else acknowledge that every moment
that flows away, supposes, before it, an infinite
series of moments past, and after it an infinite
series of moments to come. All duration is com-
prised between these two series. Added one to
another, they form, not eternity, but time. To
man assuredly the difference is great. He sees one
of these series, and he is willing to believe it in-
finite. The other is behind him, and he can hardly
conceive it at all. But for God, who has neither
past nor future, who exists outside and above
time, the two series exist by the same name, and
He surrounds them both with his immutable
eternity. This astonishes the imagination, but
reason conceives it with clear geometrical precision.
In the same way, all finite extension supposes a
larger extension. If you pass a line through any
point of space, this line divides space into two
halves, which are each in its way infinite. Taken
together, they constitute unlimited space. Here
is no serious difficulty to reason. Kant says, that
if the world had not limits in space it would be
an infinite whole ; and that a whole must have
parts that can be counted. Yes, the totals that
AN ANTINOMY. 135
man can master ; but the world is only an infinite
whole in the eyes of God. To count the parts of
an infinite world, you must have, says Kant, an
infinite time. Granted : and man is incapable of
embracing the world; he can only conceive it,
and he conceives it, not as a real, eternal, absolute,
immutable infinite, but as an expression of the
infinite, that is to say, as unlimited in space, in
time, and in every order of existence.
Moreover, is there really any opposition be- There is no
tween the senses which explore the world, and ^pp°^'^*°"
T-i 11' • \ ... between
reason which would impose upon it, a priori^ its the real
conditions and its laws : between the real world, ^?^^^ ^^ .
' science, and
such as science represents it, and the ideal world, the ideal
such as Metaphysics dares to alErm it ? None ; Metfphy.
this opposition is only apparent. It belongs tosics.
the weakness of our senses, and the progress of
science dispels it every day.
See what a revolution has been wrought in the The world
mind of man since the great discoveries of the sciSce.^*^"
three last centuries. When the system of Co-
pernicus appeared, it was like the passage from a
dream to the awaking. Man had gone to sleep
with the idea of a little world made to his own
measure ; the earth was its centre, and around it
revolved a circumscribed heaven. All at once, at
the voice of Copernicus, the human mind awoke.
Earth is but one planet, the sun is the centre of
one little world; but in space, millions of suns form
so many luminous centres, round which move
other planets, and other satellites. This idea
appeared a vision. But when the discoveries of
Galileo, and the laws of Kepler, came to be widely
known and to be beheved, prejudice felt itself
136 FIFTH MEDITATION.
conquered, and prepared to withdraw. In the
meantime, a new philosophy had set aside the
philosophy of the schools. Its founder, Descartes,
an able physical philosopher, and as great a
geometer as he was a metaphysician, got
possession of the idea of the infinity of the uni-
verse, and communicated it to his numerous dis-
ciples. One only, Malebranche, hesitates at the
boldness of this conception ; and soon the strength
of his own mind, and the logic of his own system,
led him to an idea infinitely more audacious, that
of a necessary incarnation of God in the universe.
Descartes Malebrauche, who adores a wise and good God —
holds in- a God who never could do anything but accord-
Universe, ing to that which He is ; Malebranche wants to
so Male- j^g^yg ^ uuivcrse w^orthy of God, and this imper-
brancne ^
after some fect uuivcrse would ucver express the infinite per-
scrupies. fectiou of its Author, if God Himself were not
joined to it, to give it a supernatural value, and an
infinite preciousness. Thus the modern idea of
the infinity of the world is set side by side with
the faith of Jesus Christ in the soul of the pious
Cartesian of the Oratory. We see in another
eminent Christian, the same compromise between
science and faith.
So Pascal. "Let mau, then," says Pascal, ''contemplate
entire nature in her high and full majesty. Let
him put out of sight the low objects which sur-
round him. Let him behold this shining light,
set like an eternal lamp to enlighten the universe*
Let earth appear to him as a point in comparison
of the vast circle that this orb describes ; and let
him be further amazed that this vast circle itself
is but a very delicate point compared with that
AN ANTINOMY. 137
embraced by the stars which roll in fhe firmament.
But if our sight must stop here, let imagination
pass on, it will sooner be weary of conceiving,
than nature of furnishing. All the visible world
is but an imperceptible line in the ample bosom
of nature. No idea can approach it. We may
inflate our conceptions beyond imaginable spaces,
we only produce atoms, compared to the reality of
things. It is an infinite sphere, of which the
centre is everywhere, and the circumference no
where. "^
Here is the infinity of the universe, conceived as
to the extent of its dimensions. Here it is again
as to the infinite number of its parts : —
'^ What is man in the infinite ? Let him search
into what he knows of the minutest things, to
find a prodigy as startling. Let him see in the
littleness of the maggot's body parts incom-
parably smaller, legs with joints, veins in these
legs, blood in these veins, humours in this blood,
drops in these humours, vapours in these drops.
Let him, dividing again these last, exhaust his
strength in these conceptions, and let the last
object that he reaches be the subject of our
discourse ; he will think perhaps that this must
be the extreme littleness of nature. But I can
show him within it a new abyss. I can show him
not only the visible universe, but all that can be
conceived of immensity in nature, contained in this
small atom. Let him see in it an infinity of uni-
verses of which each has its firmament, its planets,
its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible
world, in this earth, animals, even maggots, in
1 Pascal. Pensecs, p. I. M. Havet's edition.
138 FIFTH MEDITATION.
which he finds all that the first have given, and
finding still in others the same thing without end
and without rest, let him be lost in these marvels,
as astonishing in their littleness as the others in
their extension. For is it not worthy of admira-
tion that our body, which lately was not percep-
tible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the
bosom of the whole, should be now a colossus, a
world, or rather a whole, with respect to the
nothing which cannot be reached."^
Pascal's Pascal was not a man to ignore the objections
answer to ^^^ ^^^ ]3g raiscd agaiust an infinite world, either
of the re- ou the side of an imagination disturbed by all that
mTnd"^ is beyond it, or of a jealous religion, which scru-
ples at giving infinity to aught but God. But far
from recoiling from these difficulties, he resolves
them as a Christian philosopher and a geometrician.
He asks himself if the world, from the moment it
ceases to have limits in space or time, does not
form a kind of infinite and eternal. ''No," he
answers, " nothing of that kind can be infinite and
eternal ; but these finite beings are multiplied in-
finitely." Thus, it appears, it is only the number
that multiplies them that is infinite.
To the ob- Then there is another objection ; an infinite
in^^i'nfinitf ^^^^^^^^ is Something incomprehensible to man.
universe is True, replies Pascal, but this incomprehensibility
hemThfr' ^^^ '^^^ reason. For what is man in nature? a
nothing with regard to Infinity, a whole with re-
gard to nothing, a medium between a nothing
and all. Infinitely far from comprehending ex-
tremes, the end of things and their beginning are
* Pascal. Pensees, Art. XXV., p. 9. M. Havet's edition. This
pensee is one of those which were not published before 1843.
AN ANTINOMY. 139
to him invincibly hidden in an impenetrable secrecy.
He is equally incapable of discerning the nothing
from whence he is taken, and the infinite where
he is swallowed up. What must he do, then, but
observe some shadow of the middle of things in an
eternal despair of knowing either their beginning
or their end ? All things have come out of nothing,
and are carried on to infinity. Who shall follow
this astounding progress ? The Author of these
marvels understands them; none other can." Ob-
jectors will perhaps insist that the idea of in-
finite number implies a contradiction. By no
means. ''It is false," says Pascal, ''that numbers
are finite ; then it is true that there is an infinite
in numbers ; but we know not what it is. It is
false that it is even, it is false that it is odd ; yet
it is a number, and every number must be either
odd or even. It is true that that is understood of
every finite number.'-^
But here is the leading idea which, in Pascal's ^^^"^^Mch
eyes, overrules all objections more or less subtle and sokes all
embarrassing — namely, that nature being the im- objections,
age of God, must bear the impress of the Infinity
of the Creator in the greatness as well as in the
number of its parts. "^ " A thoughtful man under-
stands that nature, having graven its image and
that of its Creator on all things, they almost all
partake of its double infinity. Thus we perceive
that all sciences are infinite in the extension of
their researches ; for who doubts that geometry,
for example, has an infinitely infinite order of pro-
portions to propose. They are equally infinite in
1 Pensees, Art. X., p. i,
2 Pensees, Art. i., p. 9. M. Havet's edition.
140 FIFTH MEDITATION.
the multitude and the dehcacy of their principles;
for who does not see that those which are con-
sidered the last do not sustain themselves, but
that they are supported upon others, which, hav-
ing others for their support, never allow of a last.
But we do with those which appear to our reason
to be final, as we do in material things, where we
consider that an indivisible point, beyond which our
senses can perceive nothing, although it be infinitely
divisible by its nature. Of these two infinites of
science, that of greatness is much the most sensible.
We think ourselves naturally much more capable of
reaching the centre of things than of embracing
their circumference. The visible extension of
the world visibly surpasses us ; but as it is our-
selves who surpass little things, we believe our-
selves more capable of possessing them ; and yet
it requires as great a capacity to reach the nothing
as to reach the whole. Infinity is needed for the
one as for the other ; and it seems to me that he
who understands the last principle of things,
might go on to know the Infinite. One depends
upon the other, and one leads to the other. The
extremities touch each other, and are joined by
their very distance, and are found again in God
and in God only."
Newton One only philosopher, Newton, in the seven-
thnnfilik teenth century, wrote against the infinity of the
of the uni- uuivcrse. Carried away by his reactionary move-
^''''''''^' ment against the philosophy of Descartes, he re-
serves for God infinity in space and duration, and
conceives the universe as formed of a number of
particles, vast but finite, which the Divine hand
has collected for a time in various masses in the
AN ANTINOMT. 141
bosom of an infinite void. In vain he tries later
to correct the vice of this conception, by the
hypothesis of an infinite and imponderable ether,
destined to explain the communication of motion
across celestial spaces. Leibnitz raises his voice
and denounces the Newtonian metaphysics to all
Europe, as lowering at once the idea of the Cosmos
and the idea of God. What ! would you say that
space is unlimited, and that in these immense exten-
sions filled by the ever present being of God, float
some inert molecules out of all proportion with
the infinite void which surrounds them '^. And even
this union of lifeless atoms is only transitory, and
the laws of nature are not sufficient to guard
them against inevitable perturbations; so that the
Divinity, Hke a clumsy artist, must retouch His
work. That cannot be ; the world is well made ;
it is made to last, and God will not change its
laws, because that would be to change His own
designs. He has commanded once — He obeys
always ; or, to speak better, His command is
immutable, because it is perfect and eternal.
But whilst he is making this protest against a Leibnitz,
finite and perishable world, which the researches contrary,
of Lagrange and Laplace will one day confirm, ^n^.'^'j^^j'''^
Leibnitz praises the discoveries of Swammerdam, ture "va a
of Leuwenhoeck, and of Malpighi, and preludes I'lnfi^^i-"
the great hypotheses of modem geology. He
knows that a law of gradation links all the beings
of the universe, that nature does not go by leaps
and bounds, but by an insensible succession of
progress.^ Wherever a link of the chain is want-
ing, Leibnitz affirms that science will discover it,
• [•' Coiitiniio. non Xitro per sa/ti/m."1
142 FIFTH MEDITATION.
and the fine discoveries of polypes by Tremblay
bear him out. He insists that every thing in the
universe tends to the Infinite, the succession of
years, the number of species, the series of their
metamorphoses, the progress of their evolution.
He is told that the actual Infinite cannot be found
in nature. He replies, "I am so much in favour
of an actual Infinite, that instead of admitting that
nature abhors it, as is vulgarly said, I hold that
she affects it everywhere, the better to mark the
perfections of her author."^ The eighteenth cen-
tury and our own have received these great views
of Leibnitz as the vivifying principles of science.
Astronomy, armed with its gigantic telescopes,
conspires with physiology and its powerful micro-
scopes to show forth the infinite greatness of the
Cosmos. Herschell counts twenty millions of
stars in the milky way. Ehrenberg forty millions
of animalcule in a cubic inch of Tripoli. The
sun is no longer motionless ; Argelander proves
that it has a translative motion, and actually
directs itself towards a point in the constellation
of Hercules. Bessel calculates the swiftness of
this progressive motion, and reckons it at more
than six hundred thousand myriametres a day.
We know twenty-eight thousand stars which
have planets circulating round a common centre
of gravity in elliptic orbits, and according to the
laws of universal gravitation ; and surely Pascal
was right to say that our imagination would sooner
be tired of conceiving than nature of furnishing.
How can imagination represent to itself the dis-
tance of a star, whose light requires two millions
of years to reach us !
1 Ldtre a PAble Foucher. Erdmann, p. 1 1 8.
AN ANTINOMT. 143
All limits recede, those of time as well as those Modem
of space. Comparative anatomy finds out and^"^'^^^^^""
recomposes organic systems which have preceded nitz.
the actual system, and which themselves have had
ancestors. The face of the earth has changed
more than once, and geology has discovered in
its entrails the certain trace of vanished ages.
Heaven itself has its epochs, and every star its
story and its life. Before being what it is, it has
passed through a thousand metamorphoses. An
ingenious astronomer observes, that ''as we remark
in our forests trees of the same species that have
reached all possible degrees of growth, so we may
observe in the immensity of the celestial plains
the different phases of the gradual formation of
stars." A particular form of existence may be
recent, a certain manifestation of life may have
its date, but the world itself has none, at least its
first origin flies before the eyes of man when he
observes it best, and so do the barriers of exten-
sion and the hidden principles of life.
Thus for three centuries, experience and pure Thus Me-
reason, each beholding the universe from its own ^^P^^.^'ff^
V • r r T • 11 speculation
pomt or view, rar rrom contradictmg each other, as and science:
Kant says, have always inclined to agree. The'"^^^-
ideal speculations of the metaphysician, the posi-
tive researches of the observer, the calculations of
the geometrician, the conjectures of the historian,
all form an irresistible current which undermines
every day the old prejudice of a fnite world, and
substitutes for it the modern idea of the infinity
of the universe. And think not that there is any- ^^^j^ ^,j^^^
thing in this to discourage philosophical observers, encourages
Nothing, on the contrary, excites and spurs on
science.
144 FIFTH MEDITATION.
scientific curiosity like the idea of the infinite
greatness of worlds. I appeal to that illustrious
and venerable man, who so grandly united in one
magnificent whole the discoveries of modern
science. I appeal to the author of the Cosmos, to
M. de Humboldt. " In the midst of the riches of
nature, and of obser^^ations ever increasing, man
becomes penetrated with a profound conviction,
that on the surface and in the bowels of the
earth, in the depths of the seas and in those of
the skies, even after millions of years, space will
never be wanting to the scientific conqueror.
The regret of Alexander can never be addressed
to the progress of observation and of intellect."^
1 [The view maintained by M, Saisset in this chapter is, that the
universe expresses the absolute infinity of God by its relative infinity,
that is, by illimitable extension in time and space. M. Henri Martin
has accused M. Saisset's thesis, or rather his arguments: — (i) of a
Pantheistic tendency; and (2) of associating two contradictory ideas,
created matter and the Infinite. T have said something on this question
at the close of this volume. For my own part, though M. Saisset has
elsewhere declared his conviction of the accordance of this theory with
the Bible doctrine of the creation, and though he cites St. Augustine
and Aquinas as partially, and Descartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz, as alto-
gether agreeing with him, I cannot but regret that he should have
given such prominence to a speculation based chiefly upon a hypothe-
tical view of the Divine character.]
^ixt1i) jHetiitation.
Providence in the Universe.
I CONTEMPLATE With joy the idea of a universe
without limits, unfolding itself through space and
time, and expressing, by an inexhaustible multi-
tude of created beings, the omnipotence of the
immense and eternal Creator. But hitherto I
have proceeded in company with Pantheism, and
its nearness affrights me. Spinoza and Bruno
have each of them a most profound sentiment of
the infinity of worlds, and yet their universe can-
not be mine, because their God is not my God.
They only see in nature and man various forms
with which an impersonal activity successively
clothes himself beneath the law of a blind destiny.
To my eyes, on the contrary, according to the
idea that I have formed of the All-perfect Being,
this world, which is His image, must everywhere
show traces of an intelligent will, on the side of
the good and the beautiful, who has freely chosen,
formed, and disposed all things for the best end.
It must be referred to the universe itself, and to
man's observation, whether my idea of it or the
Pantheist's is the most right and true.
But the problem which overwhelms and makes
146 SIXTH MEDITATION.
Three Hie feel most strongly the extent of my ignorance
worlds of jg ^]^jg^ Qj^g mwst be a Humboldt to embrace the
Gravita- . , .
tion, Life, Cosmos J nor IS this enough ; for not only must
— 'iJhkhYs °"^ know the heaven and the earth, the world of
their law, gravity, and the world of life, but also that invisi-
OTNeces"'^^ ble world, more changeable and unapproachable
sity ? than the two others — the world of humanity. Thus
we must question these three universes, and ask
of each if its last word be necessity, or Providence.
When I begin to contemplate nature in sim-
The first plicity and truth, I find her beautiful, and full of
gives the harmonies. The sight of the starry heavens
idea of or- throws me into a sort of ecstasy. These stars,
Thought these worlds without number, the splendour of
in the starry ^l^gjj. £j.gg^ ^]^g prodigy of their greatness and of
their distances, that infinite multitude of luminous
globes, in their constant and varied groups,
ordered in space to accomplish with the same
motion their majestic revolution, like an immense
concert, where one feels that a superior harmony
runs through the different notes of the instru-
ments and the voices — in presence of these beau-
tiful objects, beneath the charm of their grand
impressions, I feel my whole mind penetrated and
subdued by the idea of an ordaining thought.
And when my thought leaves the vault of heaven
So does the ^^ enter into itself, if it find within a soul at peace
inner with itself and with its equals, whose every feel-
^°'^ ' ing, insensibly softened by contemplation, has
borrowed from the beautiful night something
of its serenity, 1 begin to understand that har-
mony of visible nature and of internal conscious-
ness which made a philosopher^ say, ''Two ob-
1 fKant.]
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. 147
jects fill my soul with an ever-increasing admira-
tion and respect — above us the starry heaven,
within us the moral law." At such moments 1
believe in God, King of Heaven and Ruler of
man. 1 believe in Him with a faith without
reserve, with that spontaneous faith, which is
prompter and sweeter than the faith which reflects.
But soon reflection has its way, and I ask myself
if I am not the dupe of an illusion.
I have just admired the vault of heaven, and I
have seen in it worlds without number gravitating
through space under the same law of equilibrium
and of harmony.
Am I sure that my eyes have seen it, or was it Does thi.^
perchance my reason, delivered from its native [jj^^j|j '^^'"^
ignorance, that guessed by a miracle of intuition, Modem
the order and the structure of the Heavens.? i^^'^'^"'^^-
was modern science that fed me with such thoughts
as immense globes, infinite worlds, gravitation,
eternal equilibrium. If I had been born among
the aborigines of Australia, or if I had lived three
thousand years ago, I should have seen in the
starry Heaven, only a dark vault, sprinkled with
some brilliant vapours. Do what I can, 1 cannot
seize again the first simple impressions of nature.
On all sides acquired prejudices enwrap me; and
the echoes, more or less distant, of modern science,
resound in my spirit in spite of myself.
What is to be done in this impossibility of hear- Reference
ing clearly the voice of nature ? Let us try to find ^^ ^oper-
,1 . 1.1X1 nicus, Ken-
out exactly what science says or thmks. In the ler, and
first place let us refer to those extraordinary men, Newton.
who are considered to have discovered the laws of
nicus.
148 SIXTH MEDITATION.
creation — Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton. One,
say the learned, has marked the true place of our
earth and our sky in the vast economy of the
celestial globes. The other has defined the pre-
cise curve that the earth and the other planets
describe around their luminous centre. And the
last, drawing from the laws of Kepler the con-
sequences that they contain, has succeeded, by the
matchless power of his calculation, in determining
the certain number which subjects all the stars of
our world, and moreover all stars and all bodies,
in all spaces, and in all time, to one and the same
law.
Theism of There is a marvellous succession in this series
Coper- q£ discoveries, but it is hard to be understood. I
am incapable of reading the book of Copernicus,
De revolutionibus orbhini ccelestiuni^ or the Har-
monice mundi of Kepler. The calculations,
the numbers, the figures, the algebra are all
beyond me and perplex me. But after all, what I
want is to know what these great observers have
thought of the plan of the universe, and having
reduced it to this single point, I think I may find
an end to my labours. If it were true that an
eternal and blind necessity presides over the
movements of the universe, surely the inventors
of astronomy must have known it better than any
one. But, on the contrary, I find that the more
these great minds succeeded in laying bare the
general economy of the world, they recognised in
more glowing characters the free and wise hand
of the Creator. Copernicus had deeply studied,
not only the systems of Ptolemy, but those of
Philolaus, of Ecphante, of Hicetas, of Heraclides.
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. 149
The first doubts that came into his mind as to
the truth of the old systems, arose from his observ-
ing one common fauh in all, that of imposing on
the universe a plan destitute of simplicity and of
symmetry : and he was led to the first idea of his
own system, by seeking out the simplest and the
most beautiful plan, that which is most conform-
able to the idea of a wise and foreseeing Ordainer.
It was not necessary in itself that the earth should
turn round the sun, but reason told Copernicus
that this arrangement was the best, because it was
the most simple, and experience and calcula-
tion confirmed the inspiration of his reason.
Let us hear his own words. '^ By no other com-
bination," he exclaims, "have I been able to find
so admirable a symmetry in the diverse parts of
this great whole, as by placing the torch of the
world, the sun which governs the whole family of
stars, upon a royal throne, in the centre of Na-
ture's temple."
This earth forms a part of a collection of planets Kepk
which revolve round the sun. Each of these has its
own proper orbit, one a circle, another an ellipsis,
a third a different curve, or rather we may pre-
sume that they describe similar curves ruled by
the same laws.
Kepler employed more than twenty years in
observations, in calculations, in unwearied re-
searches, to verify this sublime presentiment. He
reached the goal, at last ; he discovered the three
laws which immortalize his name, and he ex-
claimed — "Now what is it to me that my book be
read by the present age, or by a future age ! my
book can wait for readers. Has not God waited
150 SIXTH MEDITATION.
six thousand years contemplating His work?" I
cannot exactly tell by what means Kepler reached
these three laws. I know not how much we are
to attribute to experiment, how much to calcula-
tion, how much again to all sorts of strange
mystical, symbolical, Pythagorean ideas ; but that
which is the dominant idea of all his calculations,
all his observations, all his hypotheses, all his
reveries, is his profound conviction that the
world is beautiful, that it has been made on an
ideal model by an Artist of infinite skill and
knowledge.
Newton. But there is one yAvo has penetrated further
than Copernicus and Kepler ; further than any
man before him, into the secrets of celestial things;
one who bringing back the laws of Kepler to
their generative principle, has demonstrated mathe-
matically the system that Copernicus had merely
discovered, and made likely : and has fixed finally
the sole and supreme condition, whence results
the eternal equilibrium of worlds. What would
Newton have said if he had been told that the
law of universal gravitation, and the magnificent
system that it governs, are but a necessary con-
sequence of the nature of bodies, that they
contain neither order, nor wisdom, nor suitable-
ness, nor beauty, nor harmony, but pure and
simple necessity ? He would surely have answered,
" I know not how you have made yourselves
acquainted with the essence of matter and the
movements and laws which necessarily result from
it. I do not pretend to be so skilful, I profess
my ignorance of the essence of bodies. I only
know matter by its sensible properties. I have
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE, 151
made some experiments, and some new calcula-
tions, which have taught me that all the motions
of the universe may be referred to a single law,
which I have called, for want of a better name,
the law of attraction. Now as a fact and a law
I can take hold of this attraction and demonstrate
it ; as a cause I know nothing about it ; I cannot
even tell its mode of action, whether it acts from
a distance, or by the intermediary of an invisible
fluid called ether, or otherwise. Upon this point
I dare not pronounce, for want of observations,
and sufficient proofs ; but what I do know is,
that all these regular movements] suppose a first
cause which is not a mechanical cause (£/ bi omnes
motus regulares originem non hahent ex causis me-
chanicis): that this admirable arrangement of the sun,
the planets, and the comets cannot be explained but
by the design and government of an intelligent and
powerful Cause. {Elegantissima hacce so/is, planet-
arum et cometarum^ compages non nisi consilio et
dominio entis intelligentis et potentis oriri potuit?)
That a blind necessity does not explain anything,
for that necessity being the same at all times and
in all places, a variety of things cannot proceed
from it. {A azcd necessitate metaphysicd qucd iitique
eadem est semper et iibique^ nulla oritur rerum var-
iatio.) And consequently, the universe, with the
order of its parts appropriated to a variety of times
and places, can only have originated from a Primi-
tive Being, having ideas and a will. (Tota rerum
conditarum pro locis ac temporihus diversitas ah ideis
et voluntate entis necessario existentis solum modo
oriri potuit?)
" God must neither be represented as a soul of
152 SIXTH MEDITATION.
the world, dispersed in the variety of things, nor
as a Being, dead and abstract. He is the Creator,
distinct from the world and acting upon it. It is
not enough to contemplate Him as an eternal, in-
finite, absolute Being, not even enough to admire
Him as the infinitely wise Architect of the universe.
He must be venerated as our Lord and Sovereign.
We do not say, my Eternal, my Infinite ; we say,
my God, that is, my Master. God is no longer
God, He is but nature and fate, without a Provi-
dence. {Deus sine dominio^ providentid et causis
finalibus nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura.)
The true God is then an intelligent living God,
who moves, orders, and governs the universe.
Thus natural philosophy teaches us the origin of
things, for it belongs to that science, supported
by the observation of phenomena, to raise us up
to God. {Et hoc de Deo de quo utique ex phceno-
minis disserere ad philosophiam naturaleni perti-
net.y
Objection We cannot fail to be touched with a faith so
Tel^men ^^^^^g? exhaling from the lips of Newton in
were pre- such grand and simple words. I know it will be
judiced." g^-j ^1^^^ Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton speak
like Christians rather than philosophers, that
Laerancre Slaving breathed from infancy the air of Christi-
ana La- anity, and fed upon her milk, they beheld the
Thdstic! universe with prejudiced eyes. It will be re-
marked how much astronomers must have changed
their point of sight, when an age of doubt and
negation has succeeded to an age of faith. Na-
ture, in the days of Copernicus, apparently was
just the same as in the days of d'Alembert. The
laws of Kepler, and the attraction of Newton, far
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. 153
from having received the sUghtest refutation from
the progress of observation and calculation, on the
contrary, have shone out with an ever- increasing
splendour. Yet in the eighteenth century, new
astronomers, new geometricians, those even who
have verified, extended, and completed the New-
tonian system — a Lagrange, the inventor of the
calculus of variations, a Laplace, author of the
" Celestial Mechanism," have not found in the
heavens a trace of God. The only divinity be-
fore which astronomy will henceforth bow, is
mathematical science ; the ideas of propriety,
of beauty, of free choice, and arrangement have
neither sense nor meaning since numbers must
govern the universe ; for in geometry and me-
chanics everything must be demonstrated rigor-
ously, everything is in a chain, and must be
deduced by immutable relations, every thing is
what it needs must be — it is the empire of neces-
sity.
I confess these arguments m.ake no impression
upon me ; I can see without difficulty that the
essential character of mathematical truths is to be
absolutely necessary; but this necessity, be it
understood, is purely ideal, for this simple reason
— that the object of mathematics is also ideal.
Numbers, circles, and curves are not real and
effective things ; by no means, they only express
abstract possibilities which may have an eternally
real basis in the intellect of the eternal geome-
trician ; but which, taken in themselves, have no
force and no virtue, and cannot explain the exis-
tence of a grain of sand.
You say that it is absolutely necessary that the
154 SIXTH MEDITATION.
Necessity radii of a circle should be equal ; that may be,
solvl the ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^ necessary that there should be a cer-
phenowenasoX.2m circukr body, say the sun. Granted a uni-
tlmo-ence." ^erse with stars and worlds, governed by the
mathematical law of attraction, undoubtedly several
things must necessarily follow : for instance, it will
be necessary that planets should describe elliptic
curves round the sun ; but it is evident that of
itself there is nothing necessary in this motion.
If the ellipsis were the curve necessary for stars
which have a translative motion other stars would
not describe different curves. If you tell me that
all celestial motions are the necessary consequences
of the law of attraction, which is necessary in
itself, I ask how you prove it 1 Is the necessity
of this law evident 1 Then it would not have
needed the labour of ages and the genius of a
Newton to discover it. Do you call it a con-
sequence of the essence of bodies ? then you
must have the kindness to explain what the essence
of bodies is, and what attraction is in itself, and
what is its mode of action ; and, further, you will
have to prove that bodies themselves exist neces-
sarily. Away with these childish speculations !
Let us only reason on what modern science has estab-
lished — with the help of observation, analogy, and
calculation. One thing only is established, that
there is a grand, universal, sole, sovereign law, which
gives an incomparable beauty, solidity, and har-
mony to the universe. Everywhere in the
heavens there is order, simplicity, and arrange-
ment ; therefore everywhere intelligence and
choice ; therefore no where blind necessity.
Leaving those immense worlds which human
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIFERSE. 155
science only perceives afar, and in the aggregate The world
of their masses and their movements, I turn to^^^?^^^^
the things of earth, which can be taken up and Purpose
handled. Here the absolute empire of mathe-^^^^^-
matics ceases. There succeeds to the inflexible
regularity of the heavenly bodies a harmony more
varied, more delicate, more simple. I see around
me life. Here I find a flower hidden in the grass ;
it rears bravely its frail and flexible stem to seek
the sunbeam, which helps it to expand, to tint its
leaves with thin, delicate hues, to exhale its sweet
perfumiC. Close beside it I see a little insect,
which spreads its wings, flutters from flower
to flower, sucks out their odorous sweets, and,
laden with its spoil, bears it to the hive, where
tribes of winged reapers follow. If some one
should come and tell me that that flower and that
bee are the work of an absolute necessity, without
any thought of suitableness, or free and harmo-
nious arrangement, I should find it difficult to
understand him, and unpleasant to listen to him.
I understand and appreciate much more that ob-
server (Leibnitz, I think) who, having one day
taken a grub from a bush to admire it more
closely, was suddenly seized with an involuntary
emotion, and hastened to replace the insect on its
leaf with a sort of respect, fearing to profane or
tarnish one of those living mirrors where the wis-
dom of the Creator is reflected.
Before allowing myself to mistrust the inspira- Naturalists.
tions of nature, or those acquired prejudices which
may unconsciously influence me, I will consult
again those naturalists, those learned men of
genius, Harvey, Linneus, or better still, those last
156 SIXTH MEDITATION.
great creators, Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
and those whom they have initiated into their
researches. I am told, indeed, that these eminent
men could not agree — that if the ideas of Cuvier
are conformable to a Providential system, those
of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire favour that of neces-
sity. I am not prepared to enter into the infinite
complications of this illustrious controversy, but I
may succeed in seizing its great features and their
most certain results.
Cuvier and Cuvicr was couviuccd that the innumerable
Saint Hii- niultitude of individuals which compose the organ-
ized world, may be referred to a certain number
of essentially different plans and types. In the
animal kingdom especially, whatever may be the
analogies which are found between different
groups, anatomy lays down four plans of organis-
ation which it is impossible to confound, and which
divide animals for ever into four orders. Geoffroy
Saint Hilaire only beheld a factitious work in this
great classification, which has overthrown that of
Linneus, and which has been succeeded by no
other. According to him nature works on a
single type. The differences which seem to
divide living beings, are purely exterior ; and the
philosophical observer finds everywhere the same
essential organs.
A learner, like myself, cannot decide between
Cuvier and his antagonist ; but I ask both, and
Cuvier first, what the principles are that have
presided over their respective labours. Cuvier
answers thus : —
" Every organized being forms a whole; a
single united system, the parts of which mutually
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. iS7
correspond, and concur to the same definitive
action, by a reciprocal reaction. None of these
parts can change, without the others changing
also ; and consequently each of them taken separ-
ately indicates and gives all the others. If the
intestines of an animal are so organized that they
will only digest flesh, and that newly killed ; it
follows that his jaws will be constructed todevourhis
prey, his claws to lay hold of and tear it, his teeth
to cut and divide it, the whole system of his organs
of motion to follow and to seize it, his organs
of sense to perceive it afar; nature even must have
placed in his brain the necessary instinct to know
how to hide himself and lay snares for his victims.
Such are the general conditions of the carnivorous
species. An animal intended to be of this species
must infallibly unite them all, for his race could
not exist without them." ^
Had Cuvier been told that there has beenCuvier's
found, on some old Eg)^ptian monument, the correiTtion
figure of an animal, whose strange organisation of organs,
would confute the principle of the correlation of
organs, how boldly his reserved and positive
spirit would have repulsed a priori the authenticity
of such a testimony. He would say, you have
mistaken the pictures of fantastic animals for de-
scriptions of real animals. "In some such design
on one of these monuments, Agatharchides must
have seen his carnivorous bull, whose jaws reach-
ing from ear to ear spared no other animal, but
which assuredly would be disowned by natural-
ists, since nature never combines cloven feet and
horns with sharp teeth." And mixing gracefully
^ Cuvier, Discours sur les Revolutions du Globe^ p. 96.
1 58 SIXTH MED IT AT ION.
the serious playfulness of the man of wit with the
higher views of the Philosopher, Cuvier thus
goes on, — Now- a- days any one who only sees the
trace of a cloven foot may conclude that the
animal who made it was a ruminating animal ;
and this conclusion is as certain as any other
in physics or in moral science. This single track,
then, gives to him who observes it, both the form
of the teeth, and the form of the jaws, and the
form of the vertebra, and the form of all the bones
of the leg, of the thighs, of the shoulders, and of
the stomach of the animal that has just passed by.
It is a surer mark than all those of Zadig.^
These great principles of the subordination
and correlation of organs, in the hands of Cuvier,
have reconstituted, with the help of a few fossil
bones, whole races of extinct animals, and have
recalled to existence worlds that seemed lost for
ever in oblivion. And any one may see that all
these labours, all these discoveries, all these mir-
aculous resurrections, are inspired by the thought
that nature, in her operations, obeys, not blind
mathematics, but laws of convenience, harmony,
and proportion.
Saint Hii- I next inquire of the disciples of Geoffroy Saint-
cipUoT^' Hilaire if they have a principle. They have one,
analogy, and they call it analogy. To distinguish and to
classify animals, to divide them again into species,
genera, orders, classes, ramifications ; all this is
but the beginning of their science. They must
still analyze each of these groups, and grasp
analogy under difference, and unity under variety.
From one species to another species, from one
2 Cuvier. D'ucours tur Us Revolutions du Globe, p, 103.
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. 159
kind to another kind, philosophical anatomy dis-
covers or fancies the same elements of organisa-
tion. One species, the fish for example, has a
skull composed of twenty-six bones ; another,
such as the bird, has but eight or ten. Here,
then, is a marked diiference, a line of demarcation.
So you think, because you have only examined
the bird in its adult state. Examine it in its foetal
state, and you will find in it all the primitive bones,
which, later, will melt together and deceive the
artificial observers. At other times you let
yourself be deceived by the numerous metamor-
phoses that an organ is subject to, when you
observe it in the whole course of the animal
series. Its visible forms vary, its dimensions
change, its structure becomes complicated or
simplified, its functions, even may diiFer; for
different organs serve sometimes for the same
function, as the lungs and the branchiae, and it
happens too that the same organ sometimes
fulfils different functions, as the organ of loco-
motion, and the organ of respiration ; but the
relative position and the mutual dependence of
organs never vary. Hence that principle which
is the torch of anatomical philosophy ; An organ
may be maimed or destroyed, it can never be
transposed.
Nor is it only in one of the ramifications of the
animal kingdom that this law is verified. Verte-
brated or unvertebrated, whatever artificial bar-
riers are raised between animal and animal, still
the unity of their organic composition prevails; and
thus science verifies every day, that sublime con-
ception of the Timeus which Buffon has expressed
i6o SIXTH MEDITATION.
in language worthy of Plato ; "It seems as if the
Supreme Being would make use but of one idea,
and at the same time vary it in every possible
manner, in order that man might equally admire
the magnificence of the execution and the sim-
plicity of the design,"
Monsters. But we have still to explain an immense series
of phenomena which have remained till the present
time an enigma and a scandal, I allude to the ex-
istence of monsters. But that which is called by
this name is not a denial given to the general laws
of nature. It may all be explained by an arrest of
development, ruled by two very simple laws,
that of the balance of organs, and that of the
attraction of similar parts. Every time that you
meet with an organ developed in an exorbitant
fashion, instead of believing it a miracle, try if
you cannot find in a corresponding organ a defect
of its normal development. If on the one side
there is hypertrophy, there is atrophy on the other
side. As Goethe has ingeniously remarked, Na-
ture has a fixed budget, and too great an expen-
diture in one department exacts economy in
another.
Really go- Thus the law of the balance of organs accounts
twolaws^ for simple monstrosities — those which are called
under the double are explained by the attraction of similar
The"- alresf parts, which so act that if two germs, if two
of develop- foetuses, sliould happen to join, it is always the
"'''"^' heart which will be joined to the heart, the brain
to the brain, and so on. We must not then speak
of the freaks of nature, of disorder, or of chance.^
' [rd yap Trapa <pvaLv ovd^p del 'aKpi^oKoye'icrdat irdrepop Kara <pvaiv
TLva, ri d\\7)v aiirdv yi-yverai. — Arist. Rhetor. I., c. xi. 13. Modem
philosophy proves that monstrosities are /card ^v<nv Trtvd.]
PROVIDENCE IN THE UNIVERSE. i6i
Monsters are not a disorder, but an accident sub-
ject to laws — a transient deflection, always con-
tained, corrected, and ruled by the superior laws
of order, which are above all.
These are the great discoveries which give to These two
Geoflroy Saint-Hilaire an immortal place beside ^fj^Jg^^^^^r
Cuvier. Where is now the necessary contradic- bring out
tion between these two men of genius ? — From the°"^ ^'^"^ '
point of sight of religious philosophy, it does not
exist at all. To Geoflroy, as to Cuvier, the world
has a plan, it is governed by laws — not laws of
necessity, but laws of convenience and harmony.
One, led by the stern genius of analysis, sees best
the differences of beings ; the other, carried away
by the audacious inspirations of synthesis, can only
see their analogies. Both make me understand
that faith in Providence is independent of the
diversity and the contradiction of systems. Sys-
tems change and clash, because they represent
the unequal efforts of man to grasp the often
mysterious economy of the divine plan; but in pro-
portion as some of the great lines of this plan are
more clearly discovered, the world appears to us
more harmonious, vaster, more simple, and more
beautiful, and the eye of man beholds in more
visible characters the free and intelligent Principle
which it reflects.
^ebent]^ ittetJitatiott.
Providence in Man,
The other I HASTEN to retum to the internal world, and to
iHdel Grl^!;- ^^^^ myself from that torrent of sensible pheno-
tation and mena, where I am always in fear of making ship-
;^^]~^''" wreck of my ignorance. There is one being in
the universe that I not only see without, but
whom T can observe within, and that being is
myself. Little as I am, I form a part of the uni-
verse, I am mingled in its motion, and I have my
part to play in the drama of universal life. Now
the question is, to know if 1 am but a wheel
bound by destiny to a blind inflexible mechanical
power, or if I find in myself the sure signs of a
plan, of order, of a law of fitness and love.
There is no further conjecture here. Were
being and life absolutely unknown to me every-
where else, I grasp them at least in my own con-
sciousness; and my view of them must be true,
for this fragment of universal existence is myself.
I may be ignorant of everything, but I must know
him who is ignorant and who confesses his ignor-
ance. Life and being are there; I can question
them at leisure.
Make answer, my soul ! Art thou a predes-
PROVIDENCE IN MAN 163
tined force, which is developed by necessary acts, Liberty,
at the will of an irresistible destiny? All the ".^^ "f '^^'-
powers of my soul protest against such an idea, law!
I feel myself free — I know that my destiny is in
my own hands. Not that I can always develop e
my faculties according to my desires, but I can
always make an effort to do so, and I succeed in
a certain measure, more or less. Whether my
intellect be sterile or fertile, whether my organs,
supple or rebellious, serve me with more or less
docility, my will remains always master of itself.
Load my body with chains, place a seal upon my
lips, you can hinder me from speaking, from
writing, from exercising my material rights, you
cannot hinder me from affirming them in my con-
science, and from protesting against violence with
all the energy of that moral liberty which is inac-
cessible to your blows. These are simple facts, im-
mediate, and not depending upon systems or conjec-
tures upon the unknown. Let us now put these
facts face to face with systems. If the universe
is the necessary development of a sole principle
which, under all its forms, in such a time and
place, or under such relations, is always what it
can be, and can never be anything but what it is,
it is clear that a free being is the most chimerical
and impossible thing in the world. For how can
I feel myself free, how can I have even the idea
of liberty, if I am only a necessary form of life ?
Pantheists tell me that I do not see all the Pantheistic-
secret springs which make me act, and that feel- '^l^^^
ing my action, and only feeling the causes of it
partly, I cover this ignorance with the flattering
chimera of an unlimited independence. But this
ion
Answered.
1 64 SEVENTH MEDITATION.
cannot be the case; for if it were, the less I
knew of myself, the more frivolously I lived, the
more I should see this phantom of liberty increase.
But quite the contrary happens. When the
stream of my being seems to flow by chance, when
I give myself up to the current of external things,
I feel the consciousness of my personality grow
weaker, I feel that my moral liberty is departing,
and that I am falling under the yoke of passing
objects. I become like a drunken man or a som-
nambulist, who acts with his eyes shut, without
directing himself, or knowing what he is about.
But on the other hand, when I tear myself by a
manly effort from the empire of external objects,
when I enter into myself to grasp my life, to
seize with a firm hand the government of my sen-
sations and my ideas, then I feel in the strongest
manner my personality and my independence ; I
feel them with a marvellous lucidity, strength, and
vivacity; I see then that I can lose everything
except this self-government, and that I can resist
all the powers allied against me, when I am pro-
tected by that impenetrable intrenchment, liberty
of the heart.
Liberty— I am then a free agent, but that does not mean
yet law. ^^^ ^^ activity is subject to no law; far from
it, — while I feel my liberty, I feel it made to be
conformable to a law. An absolute liberty, that
is, a liberty which should find in itself no prin-
ciple of determination, no motive for doing this
thing, rather than that, would not be liberty, but
caprice — nor even caprice, for to act by caprice is
still to act with an intention and an end : it would
be chance, that is to say, an effect without a
PROVIDENCE IN MAN. 163
cause, or rather a pure phantom, and an impossi-
bility. Then again, if my liberty allows itself to be
subject to law, this law of a free agent cannot
evidently be a law of necessity, excluding the
possibility of any infraction, but a law of order
and fitness, the law of duty.
As liberty supposes an overruling duty, so Duty,
duty supposes liberty. The two ideas imply
each other, and both are the basis of the idea
of right. If I did not feel that I myself have
liberty, I should not recognise it in my equals;
and believing them subject to the law of necessity,
I should not impose upon them a law of order
and of fitness, the law of duty. And if it
were true that my equals have no duties, either
towards themselves or towards me, what would
avail the right that I claim of developing my
faculties without hindrance, of expressing my
thoughts freely, of preserving my field and my
house ? As soon as that necessity which governs
man should impel irresistibly some individual to
take possession of what I call mine, I may oppose
him with force, but not with right.
In the system of necessity there are beings. Right,
some of them more intelligent, more acute, more
violent, more timid, more to be feared than others,
but a free being submitting to duty, a society of
moral beings governed by a law of order and
fitness, on which rests a system of duties and of
rights, must be a chimera, a contradiction, and ati
absurdity. Thus all my moral nature, all the
principles of sociability that are naturally engraven
in my soul, in a word, all the humanity in me,
protests against the system of necessity. Therefore
l66 SEVENTH MEDITATION.
there is a Providence. Being free, I must eman-
ate from a free Creator. It is from Him that I
hold this law of duty, which I recognise as inviol-
able and holy, and He imposes it upon me
because Himself has made it the eternal rule of
His will. And this law has nothing in it peculiar
to man ; it is the law of order, and by this title it
is universal, and absolute, and obligatory upon
every being capable of understanding and fiilfilling
it. God, who has engraven this law in me, is
conformed to it Himself. God, who has willed
that justice, and order, and good should be things
sacred and respected of every intelligent being,
cannot be indifferent to justice, to order, and to
right. From the idea of the lowest of my duties
reason rises to a supreme law, which governs the
whole creation, and the creative will itself. Is
it too daring to endeavour to comprehend
this law.f*
I feel myself obliged to do right, and to avoid
the contrary. Now, what is right ? I set aside
for a moment the universe and my equals. I con-
sider myself alone, and what right is in that which
concerns myself. I conceive it is this, to develope
my faculties harmoniously, that is to develope each
of them according to the degree of excellence that
belongs to it, due regard had to all the others. I
find in my mind a certain number of natural powers,
which lead me each in its way to the knowledge
of truth. I have senses to explore material things,
memory to recall the past, induction to conjecture
the future, imagination to represent absent things,
to lend a body to invisible objects, to embellish
real objects ; judgment interweaves idea, reason-
PROVIDENCE IN MAN 167
ing orders judgment, reason goes back to first
principles, triumphs over extension and duration,
beholds eternal truths.
Evidently all these powers are good, their
natural object is what is or may be, in a word
truth. They only fail in their object when they
exceed their own limits, if one is substituted for
the others, lives at their expense, changes or de-
stroys them. Thus, memory may extinguish
judgment, reasoning may contradict the senses,
imagination may deceive us, and reason itself
like imagination may become the " fool of the
house."
In the heart of man there is the same need for f-^P^^ ^^
subordination, for measure, and for harmony. I hindered
have within me the germ of all the loves, and jf^^'^j°p_^
there is not one that does not respond to somement.
perfection, and does not lead to some good.
Naturally I love order, proportion, grace, beauty,
and intelligence. The love that I have for myself
is not an ill-regulated aifection, for I love in my-
self existence and life, strength, health, and all
good things belonging to the body ; thought,
liberty, and all good things belonging to the soul ;
and that inferior love which makes me seek my
own well-being for itself, without regard to any
other good, is a perfectly legitimate principle of
preservation which only becomes evil by growing
beyond bounds, and compressing or extinguishing
better feelings. All the powers of my heart and
mind, such as God has made them, are then legi-
timate and good. Evil only begins when I inter-
pose to modify the divine work, when, instead of
developing it in the sense of equilibrium and har-
i68 SEVENTH MEDITATION.
mony, I Introduce into it disproportion, excess,
disorder, and wrong. And if I go out of myself
to consult my equals, I find that good and evil are
to them what they are to me ; and my duty being
to develope my faculties with harmony, their duty
is the same. They have then, in relation to me,
the right of being respected in the development
of their faculties, and I have the same right in
regard to them.
Sympathy. Yet surely to be good it is not enough to do
no injury to others ; that solitary and negative
virtue would leave man very incomplete. I find
in my heart a whole treasury of sympathetic
yearnings. I have need of men as men have need
of me. In them as in me the object of love is
first existence and life in their harmonious beauty,
but especially the human person. I cannot re-
main imprisoned in my solitary self. I must enter
into the souls of others, live in them, draw them
towards me, and feel them live with my life. A
sweet and irresistible sympathy makes me feel
what they feel, makes me sad with their sadness.
happy in their happiness, doubly joyful when they
are associated in my joy — almost insensible to
sorrow when I feel it is shared, wanting to extend
to them all the good that I have, to give them my
strength, my thought, my whole soul : feeling
myself richer, freer, stronger, and completer the
more I strip myself and impoverish myself for
them. This sympathy for man extends itself to
everything in nature more or less resembling
humanity. I love in animals the faint lines of
human personality, I look for signs of will, of
intelligence, of love, even in the most infinitessimal
PROVIDENCE IN MAN i6p
created beings, and when I cannot find them,
imagination comes to my aid, gives a soul to the
flower, and something to be respected and loved
to all that lives.
This, then, is my law, to love right and order,
to love the harmonious development of beings.
And it is also the universal law of creation, the
law of order and fitness which God proposes
to free agents, and which He maintains among
the beings which are not free. This world, then,
has a plan, a plan of incomparable beauty, where
every part is joined, sometimes by visible knots,
sometimes by mysterious bonds, to a simple, uni-
versal, eternal law of development and harmony.
All beings concur to the Divine designs, some
according to inflexible, mathematical, uniform, abso-
lute laws, which govern them without their seem-
ing to know it, sonorous but insensible echoes of
the Divine harmonies : others, according to laws
of another character, more diverse, more supple,
giving freer play to life which begins to feel and
to master itself: others, finally, and they are
beings like myself, participate in the accomplish-
ment of the views of Providence, in virtue of a
free and intelligent activity.
And my place in the bosom of the vast universe
is this : Lost in a corner of its spaces, made to
stay there but one swift moment, a drop of water
in that river of human generations which flows on
engulphing individuals and bearing the whole
race through a thousand storms to unknown
destinies, I know not the particular designs of the
Divinity for myself, or for any other; but during
my short pilgrimage I need only cast a glance
170 SEVENTH AfEDITJTION.
upon the world to perceive in it the certain trace
of a Divine government. I see Providence shine
amid the marvels of Heaven ; I feel Him in the
secret depths of myself, and, delighted with that
radiant intuition, I proceed on my journey with a
calmed spirit and a strengthened heart.
The Mystery of Suffering,
Internal observation has led me further into the
secrets of universal order than my senses could
have done. The sight of this immense moving
universe had confounded my thought. In the
human soul I have seen more clearly ; I have felt
God to be nearer there; yet how wretched is the
condition of my intellect. In proportion as I dis-
cover new horizons new mysteries appear, and if
the lights are brighter the clouds, too, seem to
darken. I am free ; I acknowledge a law of
fitness and harmony, to which I must be con-
formable. This is a certain fact, but even from
it there springs up a formidable objection against
Divine Providence, for how can the consequences
of human actions enter into the plan of His govern-
ment ? If that which I shall will to-morrow, with
all its consequences, great and little, depends on
my free determination, it follows that before existing
in act it is absolutely undetermined, and therefore
escapes from all prevision.^ Whether divine pre-
1 [A full and interesting discussion on God's prescience of man's free
actions will be found in St. August. De Civit.: Dei. lib. v. c. ix. x.,
where he criticises Cicero De Divin., lib. H., c. v. vi. vii. Cicero denied
172 EIGHTH MEDITATION.
vision or human prevision, whether perfect or im-
perfect, finite or infinite, it is all the same — it is
of the essence of that which is free that it cannot
be foreseen. I should form a strange idea of the
sovereign being, if I were to suppose that God
knew beforehand what I should do to-morrow, and
that He had arranged in consequence the general
conduct of His designs, for God then would be
subordinating His designs to my will, or caprices,
or folly. Perhaps these difiS^culties only spring
from an excess of presumption and curiosity. I
try to enter into the counsels of God, and I form
a human idea of His foreseeing wisdom, forgetting
that Divine thought is not subject to the condition
this prescience. If all things were the objects of this prescience, they
would come in the order in which they were foreseen : if there is a cer-
tain order of things, there is a certain order of causes ; if there is a cer-
tain order of causes, all things are done by fate. But if all things are
done by fate, there is no such thing as free-will, and our moral nature
is a delusion. Upon these grounds Cicero (like Socinus after him), de-
nied the prescience of free actions. I'he alternative presented it to him-
self in this shape — either postulate God's prescience, and take away
free-will, or postulate free-will, and take away God's prescience — and
he chose the latter. But to Augustine God's prescience and man's free-
will form an antino7ny, both capable of proof, both to be believed. He
denies that the process from a certain order of causes to the impotence
of the human will is valid. The human will is the effective cause of
human works. Our wills, therefore, are in that order of causes, which
is certain to God and comprised by His prescience. But if God fore-
knew all causes, among those He knew our wills, which He foreknew
as the causes of our works. His conclusion is admirable: "Nullo mode
cogimur, aut retenta prsescientia Dei toUere voluntatis arbitrium, aut
retento voluntatis arbitrio Deum (quod nefas est) negare prxscium
futurorum : sed utrumque amplectimur, utrumque confitemur.
Illud ut bene credamus ; hoc, ut bene vivamus." Cardinal Cajetan
concludes a passage, of which Sir W. Hamilton has said that is ''the
ablest and truest criticism" on the subject, with these words: " Optimum
autem est in hac re inchoare ab his qux certo scimus et experimur in
nobis, scilicet quod omnia quae sub arbitrio nostro continentur, evita-
bilia a nobis sunt quomodo autem, hoc salvo, divina salvetur
Providentia ac praedestinatio credere quod ecclesia credit ; Scriptum est
enim, Altiora te ne qujesieris." — Summa T. D. T. Aquinatis cum Com-
■mentariis Caietani, Art. I. quaest. xxiii., vol. I., p. 93.]
THE MTSTERT OF SUFFERING. 173
of time, ^ that it has consequently no relation before Suffering a
or after with events of the world, and that it em- exTsteLe.
braces everything in its eternal act in an incom-
prehensible and ineffable manner. Be it so ; I
will be silent and prostrate before the difficulty ;
but there is another mystery that I cannot pierce
which is terrible in a different manner. My condi-
tion in this world is one of suffering ; it is the
condition of all men ; nay, more, of all sentient
beings. Pain is not an accident, it is law of universal
life. O mystery which disconcerts and troubles
me ! The other enigmas of nature only tormented
my intellect — this oppresses my whole being. I
cannot understand how, under the government of
a God of justice and of love, a kind of curse
reigns upon the noblest beings in the universe.
Nature is a field of battle and slaughter, where
the law of the strongest reigns in all its brutal
ferocity.^ I cannot advance a step without crush-
ing living beings. I am preserved at their ex-
pense. That I may live they must die. Nor is the
empire that I claim over other beings of much use
1 [''The transference of the idea of time to the Divine intuition is
anthropopathic," says Kant. Scaliger says, with that matchless happi-
ness of style which was not always employed so well : — " Ne verbum
quidem illut prcmidere Dei convenit omnipotentise, nisi quoad nostra
mutila intellectione metimur infinitatem. Nobis quidem, quibus est
futurum, pra-visio ilia est : Deus, cui nihil futurum est, non proevidet,
sedvidet simplicissime quod est proesens." — De Subtil: Exerc. ccclxv. 8.
So Boethius : " Itaque si prsescientiam pensare velis, qua cuncta
dignoscit, non esse prsescientiam, quasi futuri, sed scientiam nunquam
deficientis instantise, rectius sestimabis." — De Comol., Phil. v. 6. These
authorities will be satisfactory or not, according as we consider Time
merely a psychological condition of thought or otherwise.]
2 [This "law of destruction " is constantly referred to by Tennyson.
Joseph de Maistre views it as part of a great law of expiation by blood,
of which war is an instance. See Soirees de Saint Petersbourg^ ii., 2-39,
especially the sections, "Comment s'accomplit la destruction violente
des etres vivants," and " La Guenes est Divine, une loi du Monde."]
ameliora
tion
174 EIGHTH MEDITJTION.
to mc. Of all living creatures it is I that suffer the
most. The animal at least knows not its own sad-
ness. Its needs are limited. Feed it and it is
calm — it appears happy. But man, to all the ills
that he endures, adds those that he dreads — dis-
tress, sickness, loneliness, old age, and death.
Dreams of Some sages will tell me, all these evils are acci-
dental and transitory ; they arise from imperfec-
tions in science or in the social condition. Study
the history of man's condition, especially for the
last half century. Every discovery in physics has
given an impulse to industry, and every advance
in industry has been a relief to man. In the same
way, in proportion as lights increase manners are
softened and laws improved. Every day some
prejudice disappears, some natural injustice is re-
paired, some inequality is rubbed off. Human
society is approaching rapidly to a state of univer-
sal justice, of reciprocal benevolence, and of peace.
Mere Whcu I was youuger I listened to words like
these, but the experience of life soon taught me
that there is no chimera in the world more absurd
than that of the abolition of suffering. No
science, no industry, no political combination can
free my body from its miseries, or my soul from
its weakness and its passions ; and then what is
the end ? However amusing the play, the last act
is always bloody ; two or three shovelfuUs of
earth will be thrown over me, and all is over.
Shall I here bow my head and say that pain,
having its indestructible root in the nature of
things, that proves that the nature of things is
neither good nor bad, just nor unjust, and that,
consequently, pleasure and pain, joy and sadness,
dreams.
THE MTSTERT OF SUFFERING. 175
life and death, spring equally from a blind and
indiiFerent necessity? I confess this is a thought
which has crossed my mind at times of bitter pain
and extreme dejection; but when the spring of
my soul, suspended for an instant by some violent
blow, resumes its natural strength, when I escape
from the blind impression of the present moment,
and contemplate with the eye of my reason, once
more ascendant, my condition on earth and that of
my equals, and the laws of universal life, then other
thoughts come to soften and strengthen my soul,
and it is restored by degrees to the sentiment of
order, to serenity and peace.
I must have strength to detach myself for a
while from my individual being to consider things
collectively. On the lowest steps of this im-
mense ladder, I find beings who seem plunged
in a complete inertia. Yet they have motion ; for
even in the repose of equilibrium, there is a strife
of forces — a life ; but it is a diffuse, external life,
which is not concentrated. In the midst of these
insensible masses, I meet with other beings whose
life is evident ; I see organs more and more di-
verse, rich, and complicated, which all conspire to
one common end. But life does not seem to me
complete till the organised being is aware that his
activity, instead of displaying itself with ease, has
met with an obstacle, for then it reacts, it sets
aside this, it attracts that ; it interferes in its own
destiny, it shows discernment and choice, and a
beginning of reason and of will.
Now, it is pain that warns the animal that his
short life is in danger of being shortened ; pain,
then, is nothing but the feeling of an alteration of
176 EIGHTH MEDITATION,
life, of a diminution of being, in the same way that
pleasure is the animal's feeling of an increase oper-
ating within us. If it be so, pain appears to me
under a new light. It is no longer an arbitrary-
state, it is the natural condition of a being who
has limits, and who feels himself live. Besides
being a useful warning to him, and hindering him
from falling asleep in deceitful security, it also
spurs him on, and urges him to defend himself
from death, and to extend continually the sphere
of his activity. Would it be better to feel no-
thing ? Should the animal regret that it is not a
plant, the plant that it is not a stone, the stone
that it has any existence whatever ?
Man has Man forming a part of animal nature, for that
^uTsIteloys reason is subject to the general law of pain.
and keener Now, it is Certain that I suffer more evils than
than other Other auimals, but the reason of this is plain. I
creatures, ^^q x^iSte a thousaud blessiugs and enjoyments
that they have not. In proportion as the life of
a being is more complex and ample ; so, the more
obstacles it meets, the more favourable opportu-
nities of development it will meet also. It has
more room for pleasure and pain, it has joys
more varied and more exquisite,^ it has also more
1 [Even in pleasures, vulgarly considered as merely animal, man's
complex and subtle associations give him a vast superiority in gratifi-
cation. This is, perhaps, more evident in the sense of smell than in
any other. Beasts have a delicacy in that sense wonderfully superior to
ours. Yet, as Aristotle has remarked, they only experience gratifica-
tion from odours accidentally. The dog is not pleased Avith the smell of
the hare, but with eating it, of which the scent brings a perception
before him (Ethica Nic. III. 13). " Hunc sensum valde imperfectum
habemus; ideoque vocabulis utimur saporum ad explicandes nonnullas
odorum differentia*, dicimusque odorem suavem, etc. Duo sunt odorum
genera, quorum alterum per se alimentum sequitur, ut nidor qui fame~
licis gratissimus est, saturis ingratus. Alteiiim genus per se non se-
quitur alimentum, ut odor ex floribus. Utrumque genus percipiunt tarn
THE MTSTERT OF SUFFERING. 177
and deeper sufferings. But this is not all. There Capable of
is in me something better than an animal, com- ^^rvirtue •
pleter and more perfect than aught else : there is but these
man, the free and reasonable person. I conceive effort, and
truth, justice, beauty, order, and right. I am effort is
capable of science and virtue; but science and^^^'^'
virtue have one common condition, namely, effort,^
and the consequence of effort is pain.
I sometimes imagine that my condition would
be infinitely better if all my natural faculties, in-
stead of being discordant and at strife, could
attain their object spontaneously, and enjoy them
without obstacle in the bosom of a perfect har-
mony and a sweet felicity. Chiefly in the hard
labour of some difficult quest, or in the painfril
bestisE quam homines ; sed bestias tamen ex hoc posteriori genere nee
1 uptatem nee dolorem eapiunt, sieut homines. Hi odores habent
materiam subtiliorem, magisque aereamT — Bmgersdyk Coll. Phys. Disp.
XVIII. Sealiger investigates the question whether other animals be-
sides men delight in seents, and rakes together eurious instances of
aversion and attraction. Most brutes like the scent of the panther.
Serpents hate galbanum, and mice burnt mule's hoof. Bees are at-
tracted by some flowers and hate others. I have heard that a cat is
fond of mint. Of this superiority of pleasure even in the sensual enjoy-
ment of a creature like man, Young finely says : —
" Our senses as our reason are divine ;
Objects are but the occasion, ours the exploit :
Ours is the cloth, the pencil, and the paint
Which nature's admirable picture draws,
i\nd beautifies creation's ample dome.
Like Milton's Eve, when gazing on the lake,
Man makes the matchless image man admires.
Our senses which inherit earth and heaven,
Enjoy the various riches nature yields —
Far nobler ! give the riches they enjoy"
Night, VI. 420.
Of these riches given by the senses, the rarest come from analogies.,
sometimes very subtle. The quivering of moonlight upon the waters
perhaps affects us with more exquisite pleasure from an analogy with
the palpitating flutter of dying music]
1 [To 7a/o x^-^f TTOi' opiseraL rj Xvirri t]' TrXrjdei xpofov. Arist. Rhetor. I.
VII. 27.]
IJ. M
178 EIGHTH MEDITATION.
strife of passions one against the other, and all
against reason, in these moments of anguish I
find myself exclaiming, O how sweet it would be
to know truth without an effort, and to do right
without a struggle ! but this is a vain wish, a
chimerical desire, the dream of a we'<ik heart that
knows not virtue or science, nor what it is that
gives to human life its real greatness. Knowest
thou, O my soul, what must happen if thy pro-
pensions were naturally harmonious and attained
their objects without obstacle? Thou wouldest
remain eternally in infancy, or rather not even
that, for there are already in the infant struggle
and effort, the noble seeds of manhood : thou
wouldest have nothing of personality, thou would-
est be a thing ! That which awakens personality
in us is just the jar and strife of discordant pro-
pensions, the necessity for intervention in the
government of our powers and for substituting
rule, measure, and subordination in place of their
natural anarchy and insubordination. The con-
dition and the dignity of thy moral being is to
cause harmony to reign in thy inclinations, thy
loves, thy actions, in all the parts of thy nature.
True, thou must purchase knowledge and virtue
at the cost of pain, but when thou hast learned
their divine charm thou wilt never complain of
having bought them at too high a price.
Death. '^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ beyoud this visible world. Among
the evils which weigh most upon man is the idea
of death ; and doubtless death is an object of
terror to the imagination, but is imagination or
reason to be the rule of our life .? What are life
and death to reason ^. They are accidents which
THE MYSTERT OF SUFFERING. 179
do but touch the surface of existence. Beings Annihiia
are transformed ; none perishes. And if death ^e^" ^'°"
is only a transformation for the plant and the miracle,
beast, how shall it scathe man ^ Nature loses
none of its individuals ; shall God lose one of his
persons ^ Try to conceive the absolute annihila-
tion of a grain of sand ; you cannot attain to it.
As well might you try to understand that the
smallest atom, if it did not exist a minute before,
should begin to exist all of a sudden. It is not
impossible to conceive that invisible parcels of
matter should conglomerate, and form a palpable
body; nor that they should separate again, and
be scattered in dust ; but it is impossible to con-
ceive that they should cease to exist, at least
unless we suppose the intervention of Infinite
Omnipotence. Unquestionably the God who is
capable of creating can also annihilate all. But
let us reflect upon it ; as soon as we ascend to
the creative cause, we pass from one order of
facts and ideas to an order entirely different.
We leave the things of time and nature, to trans-
port ourselves into the realm of the supernatural
and the eternal. When we suppose that creative
power interferes at a given moment to annihilate
a being, we are supposing a supernatural event —
a miracle — who shall measure the absurdity of
such a supposition, especially when it concerns
not merely a mass of matter, but a person, a
moral being. Is there anything in the world
whose value does not fade away when compared
with the priceless value of a being capable of
virtue, devotion, and sacrifice ^ In the eyes of
God the humblest of moral creatures is worth
i8o EIGHTH MEDITATION.
more than all the stars of the firmament. It was
not for no end that, after having united in man
all the marvels scattered through the worlds, God
added above all the purest ray of His divine
essence, a moral nature. Thereby He has raised
us infinitely above sensible nature. We only
belong to earth by the roots of our being ; by
our moral life we are raised to the celestial
regions. The great care of the animal is to seek
pleasure, to avoid pain, above all to put off death.
This fear of death is not even reasoned out ; it is
but an instinct, a blind but beneficent counsellor
who prolongs for the animal the joy of living while
spai'ing it the painful care of death. But what
my soul fears above all things in its moments of
recollection is not suffering but doing evil. Man
only in the universe thinks of death, because it is
his honour to brave it, and his destiny to conquer
it. No, we cannot perish, for it is not possible
for any natural power to prevail over what is
better than it and comes from the Most High.
The God who has made alone can annihilate.
But to do so, we must suppose Him to will some-
thing that is not just, and wise, and good.
Would it be just if He were to engulph all souls
together, the pure as well as the impure, in the
same nothing ? Would it be wise and good if,
after having brought us into communication
through reason and liberty with things divine,
He were to shut against us the gates of futurity,
half open to our hopes and our wishes ? Away
with these fearful thoughts. To want faith in
God is to fail in reverence to ourselves. All in
us is allied to infinity : our pain like our pleasure,
THE MTSTERT OF SUFFERING. i8i
our ignorance like our knowledge, our virtue and
beauty like our vice and deformity. Our suffer-
ings upon earth have no limit. But let us not
complain. This means that our power of know-
ing, of willing, of feeling, and loving has for its
career the course of illimitable ages, and for its
object the Infinite God.
as such
good
^int\) iHetiitation.
ReIigio/2,
Thus convinced in the depths of my conscious-
ness, and all my doubts slowly overcome by a
determined and persevering reflection, when I con-
sider all these great truths I understand what
religion is, I can explain to myself why it is uni-
versal and imperishable. I recognise it as legiti-
mate and holy under every form that it has ever
worn, and I feel myself united with my whole
soul to every human creature who has ever raised
to God a word of faith, an impulse of love, a sigh
Religion, of hope, or a hymn of adoration. For the diver-
sity of symbols does not matter so much here.
Religion consists not in the formulas pronounced
by our lips, but in the feelings of our hearts : it
is not by external practices, but by internal and
effective acts that it proclaims its power. Who-
soever adores and prays is my brother in God.
There is a Does this mcau that all religions have the same
^^^^- sense and the same moral value ? Certainly not.
The religious symbols that have surrounded and
guarded my infancy, have impressed my soul too
deeply with their singular purity, and their incom-
parable sublimity, to permit me for one moment to
compare them with those of any other time or
RELIGION. 183
country. But since every religion expresses the
idea that some people, race, or family of nations
has made to itself of the origin and the sum total
of things, it must be, that the symbols which
make this idea sensible to the imagination and the
heart, will change with time and place, with laws,
with the manners and minds of men ; it must be
that the revolutions of empires, the exchange of
ideas between different people, the insensible trans-
formation of souls, the discoveries of science will
leave their impress on it. But amid these differ-
ences and variations, above those religious forms
which are produced and organised, and mixed,
which degenerate and die, there are a certain
number of truths which never die. I find them
scattered every where, at least their germs, even
in the least spiritual creeds. They go on increas-
ing, growing purer and stronger from age to
age, ever young, ever living, and in their pro-
gressive evolution they maintain and consecrate
the religious fraternity of nations. And the first
of all these truths, that which contains all the
others, is that there exists beyond the visible world,
a first principle altogether distinct from what is
transitory ; a divine and celestial city, wherein is
the origin, the model, and the end of the city
here below.
Here is the essence of religion, herein lies its
strength and its immortal truth, that it tears us
from the thoughts of earth, and gives us the sen-
timent of the things of heaven. Through it,
man triumphs over the tyranny of selfish thoughts,
and the miserable cares of his daily needs and
interests. He conceives a universal order, a har-
184 NINTH MEDITATION
mony, a perfection, a stainless beauty that nothing
Universal can change or tarnish. This is why religion is to
of religion, simple souls both poetry and philosophy. It does
Existence niore than show them, on high, the incorruptible
ofpnn- r 1 V • 1 i 1 i i ^
cipiesdis- Judge or the livmg and the dead, the supreme
aurbSi'd^s ^^^^E^ against oppression and violence, the unfail-
thisreiigion iug support of the Weak, the witness to their secret
and'pSry. ^^^^s, and the consoler of their griefs. It makes them
forget their very griefs, by pouring into their hearts
a disinterested joy, and initiating them into purer
contemplations. Strengthened, consoled, over-
joyed, the religious soul becomes aware that it is
worth more than all the fragile gifts of earth, and
that its destiny calls it to enjoy eternal blessings.
Now, if the essence of religion is to conceive
God as anterior and superior to the world, as the
first principle, the perfect model and last end of
existence here below, I conclude that religion is
essentially reasonable and true. Have I not de-
scended to the depths of my consciousness, and
there amid the silence of passions and senses, seek-
ing truth and seeking only her, have I not con-
sulted reason, have I not listened to the voice of
the Master within, and what has it said ?
EssentiaUy It has told me that before the imperfect change-
reasonabie. ^^j^ {[nke being, there is the eternal unchangeable
Beauty of In^i^ite Being — God. It has told me that God
God. is the complete being, not an abstract, unde-
termined being, a dark germ of existence, but the
most real of all beings, the being in whom all the
powers of life are expanded and displayed. It has
told me that the Perfect Being, living in Himself
a perfect life, is fully sufficient to Himself, and
that if He has made the world, it is not from a
RELIGION. 185
necessity inherent in His nature, but by a free act
of His omnipotence, by a counsel of His wisdom,
by an effusion of His goodness ; and thenceforth
this" world, the work of liberty, of intelligence,
and of love, becomes the living expression of its
first principle. Through all the immensity of
space and time there rules a law of fitness and
harmony, a divine law, a sovereign law, which
rules the relations of all beings, conquers all re-
sistance, effaces all accidental discord, and leads
every being through its appropriate transformation
to all the beauty, perfection, and happiness which
are conformable to its particular nature and to
universal order.
And must not the heart beat and the soul be
moved when they glance over and embrace this
solid succession of sublime thoughts ? Can I think
of the Perfect Being without adoration ? I, who
seek eagerly in thebeings which surround me for the
v/eakest rays of intelligence and beauty, who ask
of every scene of nature and every work of art its
invisible thought and its poetry ; I who am en-
chanted by proportion, by measure, by the har-
mony of colours and of sound, and, better still, by
those holy harmonies which are called wisdom, jus-
tice, and truth ; when I say to myself that all these
perfections which delight, and these harmonies
which charm me, these truths, whose sweet light
rejoices my heart and mind, are but the reflections
of divine truth and beauty, the eternal concord of
all the powers of being, shall I not fall down and
worship ?
And as I taste more and more of the sweets of
this worship, I feel all the powers of my soul in-
1 86 NINTH MEDITATION
Duty erase, and there runs through my veins a new
ouTneleh- curreut of youth, and sap, and energy. I feel an
bouio. insatiable need of union with God. How ? God is
good, productive, creative good. He has produced
the world His eternal work ; and wherefore ? be-
cause the world is good, because it expresses truth,
beauty, harmony, and divine happiness. I would
then imitate God; I would love truth, beauty,
order, and harmony ; I would tend to the highest
happiness ; I would love all the creatures of God,
and I would love them more the better they ex-
pressed His perfections. What is sweeter than
love, and how easy for man to love other men !
I would love them as my brothers, as the trial
companions that God has given me in my earthly
voyage ; I would respect them as privileged beings
on whom God has laid the sacred sign of personality.
Fanction ^ marvellous gift, but an awful trust of which
I shall have to give account. Who can think on
Divine justice without an inward shudder ? God
has given me liberty- — how have I used it ? I
who could even in my lowly condition do so much
good, and who have done so little, mjngling with
it oftentimes so much ill, how humbled I feel when
I think that I shall have to give account of all the
ill that I have done, and of all the good that I
might have done. Do I rebel against suffering
which has often been my own work, often too my
punishment, and which, perhaps, has purified me
and lightened part of my burden, by expiating
beforehand a part of my sin?^ Do I say that I
have not deserved it, that were no reason to rebel,
• [I must protest against this view, as unsanctioned alike by natural
and revealed religion, however prevalent in many Christian lands.]
of power.
or
senti-
ment.
RELIGION. 187
tor every limited being must pay his tax to suffer-
ing, the inseparable companion of pleasure ; and if
my portion of the trial appears too lai-ge, reason
tells me that it is not I butGodwho must regulate it.
I am humiliated at the feeling of my own igno- Religion
ranee, I confess it ; and overcoming pain, misery, thought ^
murmurs, doubts, despair, I cast myself on the a
good and adorable God, and all my sentiments of
humility and resignation, of hope and fear, are
found, and met, and harmonised in one supreme
act of confidence and love. This is the religious
sentiment.
Religion, then, is true as a thought and as a sen- Principle
timent. It remains to be proved that religion is^f^^^'O"-
also true as a proper principle of action. To be
religious, to perform an act of religion, is not only
to conceive God or to love God, it is also to pray to
God. But to pray to God is to ask Him for some
benefit, some help, some favour. Here all my
perplexities begin again. Just as I thought my-
self at the end of them, a new abyss yawns at my
feet. Does not prayer like revelation, grace, a
miracle, suppose a particular local temporary inter-
vention of the Divinity in terrestrial matters and
the things of time ^. God is im.mutable, eternal,
immense ; there is no succession in Him ; all that
He does He does by a single act, which embraces
all times, and spaces, and beings. If, then, I con-
ceive God as acting in such a place or time by
such a particular act, I assimilate God to a secon-
dary cause ; I submit Him to the conditions of
space and time ; I degrade Him, I make of Him
an idol or a Jupiter.
Can it be, then, that prayer as a request is Prayer does
1 88 NINTH MEDITATION.
"radf God ^^^^^^^7 irreconcileable with the immutability of the
nor is it ' Divine laws ? This difficulty did not stop great
ineconcii- mathematicians, such as Malebranche and Leibnitz,
the immu- vrod, Say they, does not act by particular will. It is
the 'Shine ^"^^^ \ ^^ ^^^^ ^7 ^ general will ; but consider all
law. that is comprehended in that will. God, from all
Solution of eternity, has embraced the course of ages ; all is
Male- bound together in His desio-ns. He knows all
branche i n i • rr tt -i
and Leib- causes and all their eftects. He has co-ordained
"'^^- them in His plan. God knows that such a crea-
ture, at such a minute on such a globe, will seek
a help necessary to his weakness. He has pre-
pared it for him beforehand. Our prayers, our
wants, our sighs, and our tears are eternally be-
fore His eyes, and He takes note of them as He
deems best.
Their proof ^^^^ ^^ Certainly a deep and subtle metaphysical
does not theory. Yet it does not persua.de me, it leaves me
LdSy!'^ still in uncertainty. When I feel an ardent desire
of seeing some event accomplished which does not
depend on my will, an irresistible impulse impels
me to raise my hands to God, and to cry, " Lord !
help me ; " but at such moments, God is to me
the Sovereign arbiter of all things. I suppress the
thought of every secondary cause, I forget that
nature has laws according to which life and death,
health and sickness, joy and sorrow, are distri-
buted to all beings. Losing sight of all this, I
only think of the power of God. This is the
impulse of the heart, this is prayer in itssublime
spontaneousness and familiarity. All is carried
on between the soul and God, between the ser-
vant and the master, the subject and the sove-
reign, between the subordinate and suppliant, and
RELIGION. 189
the omnipotent and infinite will. But when reason
resumes its empire, I say to myself that my prayer
is vain and indiscreet, that there is a divine plan
in the universe, and at that thought of the immu-
table laws of nature, my heart freezes, and prayer
dies upon my lips.
Shall I suffer my soul to be overcome by this seek the
difficulty .f^ Is it evident that if it responds in^'^'^^^^^
P -^ ... , .. . . K prayer as a
tact to a particular mternal condition, it is a con- solution of
dition of weakness and languor, not of moralJljJ'^'^^*"
strength and health. Let me examine better Two de-
what prayer is, and amid the imperfect forms jj^^^j/
which it wears in hearts of men, let me seek its i- First,
real essence, its sacred ideal. There are twotismf *^^°"
degrees in prayer — the first has no value but as
a means to reach the second. He who stops at
the first step of prayer knows not its greatness or
its value. At its outset prayer is born of want.
Like its parent it is egotistical, and self-inte-
rested, it asks a favour. It is the prayer of the
imagination, the prayer of the child, and there is
always something childish in the most manly
being. It asks a miracle, nothing less, but it
asks it ignorantly. For the idea of a miracle
supposes the laws of nature, and the soul which
prays on the spur of an imperious necessity knows
not whether nature has any laws. It only knows
one thing, that it wants a certain assistance, and
it asks it of the omnipotent will.
2. But the religious soul does not stop there. 2. second
It knows that the events of the world are not ^"^jj'jsj^^^.jj
given over to caprice or chance; that the hairs of be done."
our head are all numbered ; that everything in the
universe is ruled by universal eternal laws, full
190 NINTH MEDITATION
of wisdom, of foresight, of mercy, and love.
Thus disappear selfish wishes and indiscreet
claims. The soul, raised above itself, above its
restless wishes and its transitory ills, cries out,
My Father, thy will be done. It is no longer an
arbitrary, capricious, tyrannical will. It is a will
inspired by love, and regulated by wisdom. Why
ask this or that from Him who knows better
than we, what is our real good ? Prayer far from
perishing when it is disentangled from all particular
solicitation, is raised and transformed. There is
no local presence of the Divinity, no egotistical
coming back upon ourselves,^ nothing but a lively
sentiment of the universal presence of God, an
overpowering impression of His infallible wisdom
and His helpful omnipotence, an intimate adhesion
to His will, an unreserved submission to His
designs, heart, will, intellect, soul, given up
wholly to Him. The human person concentrat-
ing all its powers into one act of love, is asso-
ciated and subordinated to the Divine Person.
The great mystery of existence, the distinction
and union of the two personalities — this mystery
where pure reason is lost, where reasoning so
often goes astray — this mystery does not exist to
the soul that has prayed.
1 [I must here confess myself dissatisfied, more, perhaps, with the
language than with the meaning of M. Saisset, who seems to me to have
been unconsciously influenced in this passage by his recollections of
Malebranche. The '•'■frst degree " of prayer is a revealed condition of all
prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread,"/o//o'U'j- "Thy will be done."
What is that but a particular solicitation ? The Deist, Chubb, asserted
that " God's end in requiring prayer is ivholhj and solely that it may be
a means to work in the petitioner a suitable frame of mind." Isaac
Barrow had well said before: "It is both a means by impetration ac-
quiring, and an effectual instrument, working all true good in us."
See this question discussed in King's Origin of E-jil, Chapter V., Sub-
ject IV., Concerning th eefficacy of Prayer; in Leland's Deistical fVriiert,
I^etter XIII., p. 160; and in Woollaston's Religion of Nature Delineated,
pp. 125, 126]
(B$$av br t^^ Cvanislator.
tma^: 13V tl^t Cranslator*
-o-
Most educated men have for some time been
aware of the presence, in our contemporary litera-
ture, of a certain Pantheistic element, which per-
haps they have felt rather than been able to
analyse. Twenty years ago, a learned and pious
divine of the Church of England wrote these
warning words: "We hear much of laudable
efforts to bring the saving truths of Christianity
within the reach of the votaries of Brahmanism ;
but few amongst us are aware that the very
esoteric doctrine of Brahmanism, and of all Pagan
theology, is now in the course of propagation
to cultivated minds from the centre of Christian
Europe."^ The warning has been fulfilled. The
snow has melted in Germany, and we have had
a flood in England.
The selection of the subject of Mr. Mansel's
Bampton Lectures may be taken as a proof that
the ambitious constructions of German Pantheism
are viewed with admiration by too many thinkers
among ourselves. The strong and subtle author
of the Limits of Religious Thought Examined, would
never have woven his strait-waistcoat of the Con-
» Dr. IVIill on the Mythical Interpretation of the GospeU p. 6.
II. N
194 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
ditioned for speculators in delirium, had he not
known that such patients existed.
Pantheism is pre-eminently the metaphysical
heresy. Few men are metaphysicians : many
men have an interest in the refutation of Pan-
theism. Hence the need of something in the
shape of a philosophical manual to modern Pan-
theism. Such a manual I had not been able to
find until I met with M. Saisset's Essai de Pbilo-
sophie Religieuse.
The volume, whose translation I have finished
in the midst of many interruptions, appears to
me to supply this desideratum. M. Saisset is an
athletic thinker, who possesses that indescribable
air of nobility, which tells us that he has kept
the best company which the human intellect can
afford. On Pantheism he has a right to be
heard which cannot be urged by any other living
philosopher. The claims of modern Pantheism
to originality are loud and exultant. Philosophy,
according to it, has had two epochs, the Greek
and the Germanic. The genealogy, in truth, is
longer, less august, and less heaven-bora than
such assertions would imply. It runs something in
this way: Hegel, which was the son of Schelling,
which was the son of Fichte, which was the son of
Kant. As we trace up the older names on the
tree, we find that the German has a dash of Leib-
nitz, his countryman, a good deal more of Plo-
tinus, the Alexandrian, but most of Spinoza, the
Jew. Convinced of this fact, M. Saisset spent
several years in the study of Spinoza, tracing out
the lines of filiation between him and modern
Germany downward, between him and Descartes
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 195
upward. Most volumes ofphilosophy are but meagre
analyses of jarring systems. In thepresentbook every
line tends to one centre. In an exquisite passage
of his poem, Lucretius observes, that confused as
a battle may seem with its glare and noise, there
is yet an elevation upon the mountains, from
which the contest seems to come to a stand, and
all the glitter of the war to remain stationary
upon the field. ^ Such a superior point of view
M. Saisset has attained. His work, in its first
and most important portion, is not an analysis of
modern philosophy, but of modern philosophy in
relation to Pantheism. How are we to account
for the scepticism of Kant and the Pantheism of
Hegel, after Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz ?
In presence of the hideous phenomenon of Pan-
theism, the weakness and the strength of the
great schools of Theistic philosophy should be
rigorously tested. The task is performed in the
first or critical portion of the preceding work, with
a learning and acuteness which leave nothing to
desire. The constructive is seldom equal to the
critical portion of metaphysical performances.
Every able metaphysician seems to dwell for a
while in a shrine, of which he is
" The priest who slays the slayer,
And must himself be slain."
With all the beauty and eloquence of the
second part, it seems to me less completely satisfac-
tory to a Christian than its predecessor, for reasons
which I shall presently endeavour to state.
» " Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde
Stare videntur, et in campis consistere fiilg^r,"
Lucrd. ii. 33 1.
T96 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
The First Part of this work has been translated
by myself — the Second by a friendly hand under
my supervision. I have placed on the margin a
running analysis, which may facilitate the progress
of younger students, and have added some notes.
The original draft of the Essay obtained the
prize offered by the Academy of Moral and Poli-
tical Sciences on the following subject : Examen
critique^ des Principaux Systhnes Modernes de Theo-
dicee. The second edition carried off the first of
the great Monthyon Prizes of the French Aca-
demy. A third edition succeeded while the
sheets of this translation were passing through the
press, with an Appendix, containing three impor-
tant '-'• Eclair cissements^'' — the first, a historical
sketch of the various proofs of the existence of
God ; the second, a defence of the author's gene-
ral view of Pantheism ; the third, in support of
the peculiar (and rather questionable) view of the
infinity of creation, which he has inherited from
Descartes, Pascal, and Leibnitz. These additions
reached me too late for translation, but the sub-
stance of the two first is incorporated in the pre-
sent Essay, and the sheets have been corrected by
the third edition.
To traverse, however rapidly, the critical por-
tion of M. Saisset's work, would be to write a
book vastly inferior to its original. I shall, how-
ever, make some remarks upon the second, or what
I have called the constructive portion of M.
Saisset's argument. I shall place together, as
clearly as I can, those general features of the book
which are most worthy of observation, and I shall,
finally, venture to interpose with a few words, which
ESS AT: By THE TRANSLATOR. 197
may be taken as the cante legendum placed by the
caution of an inferior thinker upon the page that
has been wTitten by a master's hand.
I. I proceed with a rapid sketch of the second
or constructive portion of M. Saisset's work.
In answer to the question, "Is there a God?"
M. Saisset prefers to the Anselmian, Cartesian, and
Leibnitian forms of proof, that argument for the
affirmative which makes the existence of the Perfect
Being a direct intuition of consciousness, and not
the conclusion of a syllogism.
Is the God thus revealed to me accessible to my
reason ? To know perfectly what God is I must
of course be God. But if God is inconceivable in
His essence, He is not absolutely incommunicable. ^
The Hamiltonian scepticism is represented in lan-
guage which occasionally reads like a translation of
Mr. Mansel. The true portion of this memorable
philosophy is that Theology has its mysteries.
Beyond God's attributes there is a somewhat in-
eifable as their foundation, which offers an eternal
barrier against the construction a priori of a proof of
the Divine existence. But the true conclusion from
man's incapacity of conceiving God is not, that
we are to turn for ever from the object to the
ethics of theology, that wt are to annihilate theo-
logy in every form, from the Nicene Creed to the
Savoyard vicar's Confession of Faith. Theology
presents neither unclouded brightness nor undi-
1 The conclusions of profound scholarship on the plural name of God,
Eloh'im, in relation to Jehovah — the former expressing infinite fulness in
its manifestation, the latter unity and infinite Personality — are in per-
fect accordance with this result of abstract thought. — See Hengstenberg
Genuindness of the Pentateuch, vol. I, pp. 213, 393, especially 273. Art:
Names of God in the Pentateuch.
198 ESS AT : BT THE TRANSLATOR.
luted obscurity. God is incommunicable in His
essence, communicable in His manifestations.
After answering the interrogations, '' Can
there be anything but God?" " Can God be the
Creator?" M. Saisset grapples with the question
of the infinity of the universe. He maintains
that in a certain sense it is immense and infinite,
though with a relative not an absolute infinity,
and he labours to prove that this conclusion is
supported by the discoveries of modem science —
by the telescope of Herschell and the microscope
of Ehrenberg — while it is in accordance with the
character and attributes of God, actually accepted by
such Christians as Leibnitz and Pascal, and though
not received, yet not rejected as absurd or impi-
ous by Augustine and Aquinas.
I willingly leave this perilous and insoluble
question, in which a resolution of the doubt
would involve a process of discovery which is
rendered impossible by the very conception of
the infinite, and pass on to the more profitable
discussion of Providence in the universe and
in man. There are three worlds — the worlds
of gravitation, life, and human personality. The
solemn and awful question ai^ises, Is their law
Providence, or blind Necessity ? The first simple
look gives the idea of order and harmony from the
worm to the stars. So does the moral law. Coper-
nicus, Kepler, and Newton, were profoundly
Theistic. It may be said that Lagrange and
Laplace thought otherwise, but beyond all ques-
tion, necessity does not solve the phenomena so
well as the choice which has adapted means to
ESSAT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 199
end, and the order which has blended a rich
variety into perfect harmony; and what are choice
and purposed order, but intelligence? From the
great lines of the architecture of the heavens, we
may descend to the bee humming upon the
flower, and draw the same conclusion. I may
add one other authority to those cited by M.
Saisset. If Newton, looking up to the infinite
spaces whose silence terrified the spirit of Pascal,
perceived the traces of the great Geometer,
Linnaeus saw His footsteps in the world of
animated creatures. He veils his eyes, and
exclaims, "I have seen God, the back parts of
the Eternal, the Omniscient, the Omnipotent,
passing by, and I am mute with amazement/ In
the works of creation, I have been able to dis-
cover some traces of His steps; and in these
works, even the smallest, even those which seem
as nothing, what power is there, what wisdom,
what inconceivable perfection!" Here again it
may be urged, that if Cuvier and Linnaeus are
for Providence, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire is for ne-
cessity. But M. Saisset admirably shows how
Saint-Hilaire's principle of analogy leads to the
conclusion of Providence even more irresistibly
than Cuvier s theory of the correlation of organs.
"Monsters," also, are no play of chance; they
are really governed by two simple laws, and exist
by a "certain kind of nature."^ Still more is
order to be traced in the third world — that of
humanity. The irrecusable moral law, the ideas
1 "Deum sempiternum, omniscium, omnipotentem a tergo transeun-
tem, vidi, et obstupul," &c. — Car. Linn. Sj/st. Natur. Regn. Anim, 1 0th
edition, p. 9.
2 Kara (pvcriv riva. — Arist. Jiket, i. xi. 13.
200 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
of duty and right, are there, and point to a moral
Governor. In the exquisite chapter on '-'• The
Mystery of Suffering," M. Saisset does indeed
" Study the philosophy of tears."
He shows that suffering is an unavoidable law of our
nature; that theories of the indefinite amelioration
of society are but idle and not innocent dreams.
Man has joys which are more exquisite, and suf-
ferings which ai-e much profounder than those of
other creatures. He is capable of knowledge
and of virtue. But knowledge can only come by
effort, and effort is pain. Virtue, too, is a plant
which must be watered by tears, and rooted by
storms.^ We have indeed instincts which make
us shrink fi-om suffering, but without suffering
we should lose the sublimest attributes of person-
ality. " Our grief," is " but our grandeur in
disguise." As for death, annihilation would be
a miracle, and is not to be hoped or feared. Re-
ligion, then, is presented to us as an essentially
reasonable thing. It is the deepest fountain of
truth and beauty as well as poetry. It is a joy
as well as an awe, a consolation no less than a
check. It is a principle of social action also ; for
from the love of God necessarily flows our duty to
our neighbour. But this view necessarily leads
to prayer. Is prayer not a degradation to God,
and irreconcileable with the Divine laws which
govern the universe ? M. Saisset's answer, I am
afraid, is rather unsatisfactory, as it only includes the
1 " Laissez pleuvoir . • . .
Sous I'orage qui passe, il renait tant de choses,
Le soleil sans la ptuie ouvrirait-il Us roses. ^^
J\dme. Desbmdes Valmore.
ESSAT: BY THE TRANSLATOR. 201
prayer of resignation^ not the prayer of expectation.
But it closes with words whose depth and grandeur
are in every way worthy of a Christian philosopher.
11. I shall now attempt to indicate the strong
as well as the weak points of the work which I
have so imperfectly analysed.
I. I . The capital merit of the preceding Essay
is, that it draws out in bold and vigorous lines
the real character of Pantheism, which appears
to be so much misapprehended. Pantheism is
constantly falling over into Atheism, as with
Hegel and Spinoza, or becoming sublimated into
an immoderate Theism, as with Malebranche and
Plotinus. Like Scadder, in Mr. Dickens' novel,
it has a bright side and a bad side to its face,
and he who looks exclusively at one or the other
will draw an imperfect representation. Pantheism
is as like Atheism as sleep is to death ; it re-
sembles mysticism as closely as a drunkard's dream
resembles delirium tremens. But sleep is not
death, though there is a sleep which is soon frozen
into death; and a drunken dream is not delirium
tremens.^ though such dreams are often its fore-
runners. Let us trace the origin of this essentially
metaphysical heresy, and we shall find light thrown
upon this apparently subtle distinction.
There are two ideas which, in one shape or
other, are common to us all — the idea of the
finite and that of the infinite. It matters not
about the order and genesis^ whether with Des-
cartes we hold the finite to be the negation of
the infinite, or with Hobbes, consider the infinite
to be the negation of the finite. These two ideas,
202 ESS AT : BT THE TRANSLATOR.,
however acquired, give rise to the earliest and
latest problem of metaphysics — to account for the
co-existence of the finite and the infinite.
The earliest solution of this problem on which
we can rely was in the Eleatic school; and it
amounted to this, that there is noth'mg but the in-
finite. Thales and Heraclitus, on the contrary,
taught that there is nothing but the finite. All is
fleeting and transitory, in continual flux and end-
less becoming. We cannot bathe twice in the
same stream. But it needs few words to show
that neither of these opposite systems satisfies the
human mind. To teach that there is nothing
but the infinite is the sublime of folly. The
witness of personality is too consistent and power-
ful to be overlooked. All the incantations of
mysticism cannot lay the mighty ghost of person-
ality. To assert, on the other hand, that there
is nothing but the finite, is as absurd, and more
degrading. Are these gleams of the infinite
nothing but the flashing of the candle of the Ego
upon the petty window-pane of my consciousness,
which I mistake for the lightning shining along
the heavens ? Do not those mysterious sounds
announce to me the infinite as surely as the voices
of the sea behind the sand-hills announce to me
the existence of its waters, though I cannot catch
their glimmerings behind the barrier over which
which they murmur ? Are my loftiest thoughts
a delusion, and my purest sentiments a mockery?
We must take up this problem again. Account
for the co-existence of the finite and the infinite.
You must not absorb the finite into the infinite, nor
shatter the infinite into the finite.
ESSJT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 203
Shall we maintain their opposition ? The result
of this will be a system which is called in religion
Manicheism, in philosophy Dualism.
But unity is the most imperious need of our
mind. And here is precisely the point at which
Pantheism meets our thought. Try the problem
again. You must not absorb the finite into the
infinite : you must not shatter the infinite into
the finite : you must not rigidly oppose the one
to the other. What course remains ?
The finite and infinite are but two aspects of
one and the same existence, called Substance or
what you will. They are but one and the same
principle, from two different points of view.
Nature viewed as attached to its immanent prin-
ciple is God ; God viewed in the course of His
evolutions is Nature. This is Pantheism, the system
which teaches the eternal and necessary consub-
stantiality of God and nature, of the infinite and
finite.
Such is the luminous account of Pantheism
which M. Saisset exhibits. And he proves his
account of it by an immense voyage over every
sea of human thought. The following /cr;;2z//<^,
I apprehend, represent his view : —
Finite and Infinite.
Infimite — Finite = Mysticism.
Finite — Infinite = Atheism.
Infinite -f Finite = Manicheism.
Finito-infinite, or -n i, •
T r . r ' = Pantheism.
Intimto-nnite
Pantheism is ever sliding into the first and
204 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
second formulcc. This is a subject of importance
to the Christian Missionary. In the systems of
India, he will find a general Pantheism, in the
Vedanta burning into Mysticism, in the Sankhya
freezing into Atheism. So in Greece, Heraclitus
represents absolute Naturalism, Parmenides exclu-
sive Theism. The Stoic philosophy, divinizing
man with a sort of ^'heroic materialism," carries
on the Heraclitan solution. The Alexandrian
school exaggerates the mysticism of Parmenides.
Modern philosophy awoke with a dualism in
Descartes — res cogitans and res extensa. Thought
would reduce these terms to a unity. Hence, on
the one hand, the system of Malebranche. God
is the sole agent. Bodies are extension without
power of motion. Souls are thinking automata.
God's incessant, irresistible motion is the only life.
This is mysticism. We have seen the meaning
of Spinoza's Substance, Attribute, and Mode. It
is Atheism.
Philosophy took a fresh start with Kant. But
the result is just the same. The Kantian school
had its Malebranche in Schelling, and its Spinoza
in Hegel. From Schelling sprang Gcerres and
Baader, the mystic school of Munich. And the
results of Schelling's philosophy, the " intellectual
intuition" in v/hich the soul becomes unified with
the Divine Thought, is startlingly like Plotinus
and the Alexandrians. From Hegel, on the other
hand, issued the fearful Atheism of Oken and
Feuerbach, and the still more dreadful anti-
Theism of Schopenhauer.
Thus modern Europe and the ancient East,
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 205
Alexandria and Athens, France and Germany,
point to the same conclusion/
II. 1.2. Another admirable feature in the pre-
sent work is the weight which it gives to every
vaHd argument for the Person aUty and Government
of God. - In a truth which has passed under so
many hands, the philosopher finds an almost irre-
sistible temptation to look after new arguments.
But new arguments are not to be found, and those
which are thought to be so, are but antiquated
theories long since weighed and found wanting.
Thus, the Cartesian proof was but Anselm's spe-
culation, which had been confuted by Thomas
Aquinas. ^
M. Saisset's view of the whole argument, as
stated in the new edition of the present work, is
as follows : —
There are truths of intuition (voiJc), and of rea-
soning (bia'^oia). The existence of God is a truth
of intuition^ like the existence of matter, or the fact
of free-will. But as against Berkeley's idealism,
or against irreligious fatalism, so against Atheism,
reasoning is most useful refutatively.
M. Saisset conceives the existence of God to
be a truth of intuition. Fichte's principle, when
rightly understood, is perfectly valid. '' The Ego
assumes itself in opposing to itself the Non-Ego.''
The finite supposes the infinite. Extension sup-
poses first space, then immensity : duration sup-
poses first time, then eternity. A sudden and
irresistible judgment refers this to the necessary,
nave Cxosely followed M. Saisset. Edaircissement deuxieme. Tome
IL, Ph. 316-368.
2 Waterland — Dissertation upon tJi£ Argument a priori. Chapter 3.
2o6 ESSAY : BY THE TRANSLATOR.
infinite, perfect Being. We may formulate the
proof in this proposition, "The imperfect being
has its reason in the perfect Being." This is the
proper and irrefragable Theistic proof. But the
use of reasoning is to refute the Atheist, and
bring him to a reductio ad ahsurdum ; and in this
point of view, the finest exertions of the human
intellect have their own proper functions.
To the usual philosophical classifications of the
Theistic proofs, M. Saisset prefers the historical
order, which he arranges as follows : —
I. T/je Socratic proof from Final causes. —
Anaxagoras would seem to have been the first
among the Greeks who used it. Socrates, in the
Phaedo of Plato, says to Cebes — "When I was
young, Cebes, it is surprising how earnestly I
desired that species of science, which they call
physical. For it appeared to me pre-eminently
excellent in bringing us to know the causes of
each, through what each is produced and destroyed,
and exists. But happening to hear some one read
in a book, which he said was of Anaxagoras, that
it is Intelligence which is the parent of order and
cause of all things, I was pleased with this cause,
and it seemed to me to be well that Intelligence
was the cause of all, and I considered that, were
it so, the ordering Intelligence ordered all things,
and placed each thing there where it was best."^
In the Memorabilia., Xenophon developes this
proof at greater length, in a conversation of So-
crates with Aristodemus upon the Divinity. The
tone of this passage, in speaking of the corre-
1 Plato, Pha:Jo, CXLV. XL VI.
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR, 207
spondence between our organs and the external
world, and of the instances of design in the human
frame, reads like part of a chapter of Derham or
Paley.^ In Aristotle, God is the Final Cause {rd
oZ hsza), of all things.^ In the Middle Ages the
argument was abused. Hence Bacon exclaims —
" Causarum finalium inquisitio sterilis est, et tan-
quam virgo Deo consecrata nihil parit." But this
condemnation is altogether from a scientific point
of view, and does not the least reflect upon the
proof from Final causes as a religious argument.
De Maistre wastes much indignant eloquence upon
the Baconian philosophy from oblivion of this
obvious distinction.^ Descartes went much fur-
ther, and thought little of the ai-gument as a
Theistic proof, most probably from a desire, as
Locke said : "to cashier every other argument,"
out of " overfondness for one darling invention."
Leibnitz considers it useful in metaphysics, in
Theodicea, in morality, and even in physics. M.
Saisset puts the argument into shape in the follow-
ing syllogism : —
Every eflect where we see a choice of means
appropriate to an end, supposes an intelligent
cause.
But in the universe we see such a choice of
means.
Therefore, the universe is the effect of an Intel-
ligent Cause.
1 Xenophon Memor, i. 19,
2 Mr. Jowett, with his usual vagueness, asserts that " Aristotle was
probably the first author" of this argument. St. Paul's Epistles ; Na~
tural Religion, Vol. II. 4.
3 Fhiiosophie De Bacon^ Tom. ii. p. 6 cf. Bacon De Augm. Lib. iv. c. 3,
2o8 ESSAY : BT THE TRANSLATOR.
The major, which is only a statement of the
principle of causality, will hardly be denied. The
minor may be harder to prove from our ignorance.
But Harvey's discovery arose from the contempla-
tion of Final Causes. The profound thought of
Cuvier and Humboldt is in unison with the in-
stinctive feelings of the human race. Kant attacks
the conclusion. He asserts that, taken in its utmost
latitude, it would prove Manicheism, as attributing
deformities and irregularities to God. Besides, it
would not prove an infinite, and infinitely intelli-
gent Cause. A finite cause, a Jupiter, not a
Jehovah, would suffice. Even supposing the
cosmos to be infinite, we might argue from it, not
to God the Creator, but to NoDg or Demiurgus,
an intelligent ordainer. Still this argument stirs
deep chords in the human heart in every age.
The Psalmist exclaims, "the heavens declare the
glory of God." St. Paul speaks of " the invisible
things that are made known by the things that
are made."-^ Each successive age has moulded the
argument in its own shape, and steeped it in its
own colours. St. Augustine does not speak of
teleological and cosmological argmnents. But he
can thrill the heart by reasoning of One who has
not left the minutest feather of the birds, or the
smallest bud upon the herb, or the lightest leaf
upon the tree, without a purpose in its parts, and
a certain inexpressible peace. He can paint in
hues which seem to anticipate the finest touches
' Romans ., 19, 20, may be looked upon as recognising the ntui-
tional Theistic proof, and that from Final Causes (i.) v. 19. There
is a something knowable of God ivit/iin them, ev avToh. (2.) Ever since
the creation, God's invisible attributes, especially of power and wisdom,
have been read by men's intellects in His world.
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 209
of modern poetry, and which are worthy of Ruskin,
the sea clothed in its vesture of many colours, with
its green of every tint, sometimes deepening into
purple, sometimes lightening into blue,-^ as a wit-
ness of the Divine goodness to the unthankful and
the evil. Barrow's manly style rises into solemn
eloquence, as he asserts the goodness of God from
^'the rude winds whistling in a tune not unplea-
sant, and the tossing seas yielding a kind of solemn
and graver melody. " ^ Paley's ' ' cloud of shrimps, "
'^ maggot revelling in carrion," and ''prolixity of
gut," appeal to common sense; and Chalmers'
Astronomical Discourses elevate and delight.
Professor Jowett has written a strange paper on
" Natural Religion," in which he deals with the
argument from Final Causes, as Dr. Newman in a
certain notorious Tract dealt with anti-Papal argu-
ments — showing up their weakness, because "we
are in no danger of becoming Romanists." Of
an argument, which seemed powerful to the
Psalmist and to the Apostle — which was solid
enough to satisfy Socrates, Plato, Aquinas,
Leibnitz, Bossuet, Sir Isaac Newton, Cuvier,
Linnaeus, Butler, Paley, aad Harvey, Professor
Jowett writes with pity, that "it is suited to the
faculties of children, rather than of those of full
age."^ M. Saisset appears to me to state the
matter accurately in the following passage : —
"These objections are solid^ this dialectical
process is incapable of refutation, but it does not
1 De Chit. Dei. Lib. v. c. II. xxii. c. 24.
2 Barrow, Sermon VI. The Being of God proved from the Frame oj the
WcrlL
3 St. Faufs Epistles^ Volume ii., p. 407.
210 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR,
prove that the argument from Final causes is false,
but that it is insufficient; not that it should be
despised, or rejected, but that it must be re-
strained to its proper bearing. It does not de-
monstrate the existence of the Creator, nor even
the existence of an Infinite Intelligence, but it
helps powerfully to confirm these truths. Hear the
last conclusion of Kant. This argument, says he,
deseiTes ever to be remembered with respect.
It is the oldest, the clearest, and, at the same
time, that which is best adapted to the reason of
most men. It vivifies the study of nature, while
it draws from her continually new strength. It
leads to ends that observation of herself could not
have discovered, and it extends our actual know-
ledge. Therefore, to pretend to take av/ay any-
thing from the authority of this proof, would be
not only to deprive ourselves of a consolation, but
to attempt an impossibility. Reason, incessantly
elevated by such powerful and ever-increasing
arguments, cannot be so debased by the uncer-
tainty of a subtle and abstract speculation, that
she may not be torn as from a dream, from her
irresolute sophistries, at the sight of the mai'vels
of nature, and the majestic structure of the world,
so as to rise from greatness to greatness, even to the
supreme greatness."
2. There is -Sl Platonic argument from necessary
and universal truths. The ideas of Plato form a
proof for those great thinkers who may be con-
sidered as forming his immediate family — for
Augustine, Anselm, Malebranche, Fenelon, and
Bossuet.^ This argument has perhaps been
' The argument is thus stated by Bossuet : "The understanding has
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR, 211
given most fully by Fenelon, in his Treatise on
the Existence of God. It may be thrown into the
following syllogism: —
Absolute modes necessarily belong to an abso-
lute subject.
Universal and necessary truths are absolute
modes.
Therefore, universal and necessary truths are re-
ferable to an absolute subject (God).
The minor of this syllogism is doubtful, and
therefore a proportionate doubt is thrown upon
the conclusion. But on the other hand, this
proof in its own way, in the world of ideas, is as
valid as the proof from final causes, in the world
of fact. Universal and necessary truths are
inconceivable and impossible in a world where all
is contingent and finite. And thus the Platonic
proof is most valuable as a reductio ad absurdum
of Atheism.
3. The special Peripatetic proof is that from
eternal truths for its object. The rules of proportion by which we
measure all things are eternal and invariable. Ever)i;hing demon-
strative in mathematics, and in every other science, is eternal and im-
mutable, since the effect of demonstration is to make us see that it can-
not be otherwise. AU such truths subsist independently of all times.
In whatever time I place a human intellect, it will know them ; in
knowing them, it will^fW them, not make them true; for it is not our
knowledge which makes its objects, it supposes them. Thus all these
truths subsist before all ages, and before the existence of a human under-
standing. Were all that I see in nature destroyed, except myself, these
rules would be preserved in my thought; and \ can see that they would
be always true, ^vere I annihilated. If I now enquire where, and in
what subject, these eternal and immutable truths subsist, I am obliged
to admit a Being where truth is eternally subsisting: it is from Him
that truth is derived in all which is, and is understood out of Him. It
is in Him, in some manner incomprehensible by me, that I see these
eternal verities ; and to see them is to turn myself to Him who is im-
mutably all truth, and to receive His lights. This eternal object is
God, eternally subsisting, eternally true, eternally the very truth." —
Bossuet, Traitc de la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi mcme, chap, iv., § 5, 6, 7.
Cf. Fenelon, Traite de P Existence de Dieu, Part i. chap. iv. § 3.
212 ESSAT'.BT THE TRANSLATOR.,
the primum mobile^ and amounts to this — that all
movement and change supposes an author/ It
is strongly and clearly put by Aquinas.^ The
Newtonian form of the argument has been given
by Rousseau.
" Descartes formed heaven and earth of dice,
but he could not give them their first shake, nor
put his centrifugal force in play but with the
help of a rotatory movement. Newton discovered
the law of attraction. But attraction alone would
soon reduce the universe to an imm.oveable mass.
To this law he must join a projectile force to
cause the heavenly bodies to describe curves.
Let Descartes tell us what physical law makes
his vortices turn: let Newton show us the hand
which launched the planets upon the tangent of
their orbits."^
This argument has a real, but limited use, in
reducing Atheism to an infinite retrogression,
which is inexplicable, and explains nothing.
4. The argument of St. Anselm, or ontological
^ Arist. Physica, vii, viii., Metaph. xii.
2 I cite his words, as the Summa is not to be found in ever)' librar)-.
" Respondeo Deum esse quinque viis probari potest. Prima autem et
manifesta via est, quse sumitur ex parte motus. Certum est et sensu
constat, aUqua moveri in hoc mundo : omne autem quod movetur, ab
alio movetur. Nihil enim movetur, nisi secundum quod est in potentia
ad illud ad quod movetur: movet autem aliquid solum quod est actu.
Movere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in actum.
De potentia autem non potest aliquid reduci in actum, nisi per aliquod
ens in actu. Non autem est possibile ut idem sit simul in actu. et
potentia secundum idem, Omne ergo quod movetur oportet ab alio
moveri. Si ergo id a quo movetur moveatur, oportet et ipsum ab alio
moveri, k. t. X. Hie autem non est procedere in infinitum ; quia sic
non esset aliquod primum mo-vens, per consequens nee aliquod aliud
movens, quia moventia secunda, non movent nisi per hoc quod sunt
mota a primo movente . . . necesse est devenire ad aliquod primum
movens, quod a nuUo movetur: esse et hoc omnes intelligunt Deum," —
mma Theol.^ Quaest. ii. Art. iii,]
Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. — Emik^ torn. iii.
ESS AT: Br THE TRANSLATOR. 213
proof, founded upon the supposed necessity that
the idea of the perfect Being should imply exist-
ence, has already been considered incidentally.
Its various fortunes, as revived by Descartes,
amended by Leibnitz, and criticised by Kant,
would require a separate treatise. — Of all proofs
which have been advanced, it seems to be the
least satisfactory.
5. The Cartesian proof, derived from the per-
fect Being, is criticised in the First Treatise of
the previous Essay.
6. The Newtonian proof, drawn from the no-
tions of immensity and eternity, and metaphysic-
ally elaborated by Clarke, is also amply discussed in
the preceding pages. The proof of Clarke is drawn
from Nev/ton, and reposes on a fallacious theory
of space and time. Space and time are not attri-
butes of God. Leibnitz has shown the insuperable
absurdities involved in this. But there are solid
points in the Newtonian proof. "The idea of
eternal and limitless existence, which is incessantly
opposed in our minds to the perception of beings
developed and co-ordinated in space and time —
our impotence to assign limits to time and space,
to reckon time equal to eternity, and space to
immensity — would be inexplicable and inconceiv-
able, without admitting the existence of God."
7. The Leibnitian proof, founded upon the
principle of "the sufficient reason," had best be
given in the words of Leibnitz.^
1 " God is the first reason of things, for those which are limited,
like all that we see and of which we have experience, are contingent.
We must then seek for the reason of the existence of the world (which
is the entire assemblage of contingent things), and that in the sub-
stance which carries the reason of its own existence in itself, and which
214 ESSAT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
Here, then, is one of the admirable points in
this volume. All the chief proofs are carefully
examined.^ None is contemptuously treated;
and while the proof from immediate intuition is
most relied upon, the others are regarded as form-
ing a multiple and concordant body of refutative
argument.
II. I. 3. M. Saisset's work is also valuable,
as affording at least a counterpoise, I will not
say to Mr. Mansel's philosophy, but to possible
abuses or exaggerations of it. Perhaps there
are some disciples of the philosophy of the
Conditioned who would cure the fever-fit of Pan-
theistic pride by superinducing the palsy of
scepticism. Let us thank M. Saisset, because
after the Zama of the Kantian criticism, he has
not despaired of the human reason. Mr. Mansel's
book leaves on my mind a certain impression ad-
verse to the Nicene and Athanasian creeds. He
is therefore necessary and eternal. It is also necessary' that this cause
should be intelligent; for this world which exists being contingent,
and an infinity of other worlds being equally possible, and having (so
to say) equal pretensions to existence, the cause of the world must
have had regard or relation to all these possible worlds to determine
any one. And this regard or relation of an existing substance to sim-
ple possibilities can be nothing but the understana'imy that has the ideas
of it, and to determine upon one can only be the act of tlie ivUl which
chooses, and it is \\\ii potvcr of the substance which renders the will effi-
cacious. Power tends to being, wisdom, or understanding, to tioith,
and will to good. And this intelligent cause must be infinite in every
way, and absolutely perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness, since it
tends to all that is possible; and as all is linked together, there is no
room for admitting any but one. His understanding is the source of
essences, and his will is the origin of existences. Here, in few words,
is the proof of one God with His perfections, and by Him of the origin
of things." — Essa'is de TheoJicec, ad init.
J I should except the argument from '-'■ uni-jenal consent" which M.
Saisset has completely omitted. This argoiment was at onetime much
relied upon. In a paper in the Spectator, written by Budgell, which
speaks with alarm of the growth of atheism, this proof, and that from
the theism of such men as Newton, are alone advanced. For a modern
form of this argument, see note. — Volume I., Pages 33-34.
ESS AT : BT THE TRANSLATOR. 215
cites with approbation a gi^eat living thinker, who
says : — ^' We should point out to objectors that
what is revealed is practical and not speculative ;
that what the Scriptures are concerned with is,
not the philosophy of the human mind in itself,
nor yet the philosophy of the divine nature in
itself, but (that which is properly i-eligiori) the re-
lation and connection of the two Beings ; what God
is to us; what He has done and will do for us ;
and what we are to be and to do in regard to
Him." Now it is very noticeable that the argu-
ment implied in the word religion falls to the
gi-ound, so far as Scripture is concerned, the word
being scarcely used in our translation except in a
somewhat unfavourable sense, and the Greek
term^ being expressive of a very different shade
of meaning. It may be true that what is revealed
in the Bible is practical. But are there not truths
which we ai"e called upon to believe as speculati-ve^
not 2& practical? Carry out the principle to the
utmost, and Christianity had better burn her books
of theolog}^, and confine herself to religious psycho-
logy and religious ethics. It seems to me that
some judicious thinker, using M. Saisset as Mr.
Mansel has used Hamilton and Kant, may esta-
blish a stronger Theodicea^ and one more in accord-
ance with the conclusions of the Faith.
11. I. 4. I should also dwell upon M. Saisset's
constant recurrence to experience^ as the best
answer to the Pantheistic systems. These star-
gazers at the heaven of the Infinite are constantly
stumbling over the straw of experience. Thus,
Spinoza constructs a hierarchy of knowledge which
' dp-qciKela. St. James, i. 27.
2i6 ESSAY : BT THE TRANSLATOR.
spurns the data supplied by empirical sources.
He begins with Substance, and that his system may
not come to a dead-lock, gives it the two attributes
of thought and extension. But thought and ex-
tension both come from experience. Sense first
reveals particular concrete objects as extended ;
the fact of our inward consciousness gives us the
experience of thought.
II. I. 5. Not less admirable is the calm strength
with which he retorts the charge of anthropomor-
phism and "superstition" upon the Pantheistic
schools. It is sport to see ''the engineer hoist with
his own petard," and hardly less to see a Spinozist
or Hegelian caught in flagrante delicto of supersti-
tion. Let me expand a little one noticeable illus-
tration.
A perpetual formula of the Pantheistic philo-
sophers is that God is a cause, no doubt; but then,
say they, He is immanent, and not transitive cause
{causa transiens^ non vero immanens.) Let us prick
this bladder of ??iGts d'enflure^ and see how soon
it bursts. The phrases transitive and immanent
cause are easily defined. The transitive cause
must be joined with, and yet is dissimilar to, its
effect. I push a boat into the stream, and am
the transitive cause of that effect. To con-
sider God, ex. gr. as the Creator, is, accord-
ing to Pantheism, to degrade Him, to make
Him a transitive cause. God, they urge, is im-
manent cause ; but what is the immanent cause ?
That which produces the effect within itself. Thus
Newton's mind is the immanent cause of the New-
tonian system of the world, and Milton's mind of
'-^Paradise Lost.'' The highest type of the transi-
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 217
tive cause is a Michael Angelo shaping out the
marble-block into a Moses. The most striking
type of the immanent cause is the plant pushing
out the flower. But look at the illustration and
at the instances. The aloe pushes out its blue
and crimson blossoms in a single day. But how?
Altogether from external sources ; it has stored
up a quantity of materials by a lengthened process
of assimilation, and, under favourable conditions of
moisture and temperature, developes them out-
wardly. It does not create ; it only assimilates,
moulds, and colours. -^ Take the poem : we call
it a creation. Let us consider. A glance at
Johnson's '' Life of Milton" will show us certain
"very imperfect rudiments" and seminal principles
of Paradise Lost, pregnant, no doubt, with
'' latent possibilities of excellence," but rude and
almost chaotic. And these very seeds, in all pro-
bability, were derived from the withered branches
of some old Latin poems. How with those glori-
ous comparisons, that wealth of illustration, that
solemn and stately march of musical language?
No comparison, no illustration, no word, is the
work of an i7n?nanent cause. " Copious imagery
discreetly ordered, and perfectly registered in the
memory;"^ learning sublimated by genius, and
thrown off in a spirit unmingled with any grosser
particles ; materials acquired by sensation, reading,
and other sources ; these, and the like, are the
conditions of Paradise Lost. Perhaps, when
Shakespeare described so gloriously the bees :
" Those singing masons, building roofs of gold,"
See Dr. Daubeny on the Study of Chemistry.
Hobbes' " Letter concerning Sir JVilliam Davenanfs Preface.'
2i8 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
the thought was suggested by watching the hive
some summer-day in Anne Hathaway's garden.
At all events, neither Milton nor Shakespeare could
create a thought any more than Watt could create
the material from which steam is engendered.
The immanent cause is therefore as unworthy of
God as the tra?isitive cause.
IV. I desire, with all deference, to suggest some
cautions in the study of this volume.
The theory of the infinity of creation is at best
a very questionable one. M. Saisset's theory of
prayer, in his ninth Meditation, is equally un-
satisfactory to the philosopher and to the Christian.
The philosopher will perceive that it solves the
problem of prayer, by quietly eviscerating it of its
difficulty. The Christian will have more serious
objections. M. Saisset makes two kinds of prayer,
a higher and a lower — the lower of impetration,
the higher of resignation ; and he appears to
merge the lower absolutely in the higher. The
lower is a pardonable weakness — the higher is the
heritage of maturity. I suspect that M. Saisset
has been influenced here by his admiration of
Malebranche. The Oratorian is bold enough to
say that ^'prayer is only good for Christians who
have preserved the Jewish spirit;" "that to seek
for eternal goods, and to annihilate the soul in
presence of the holiness and greatness of God, is
that in which true piety consists," while the ima-
gination of a particular Providence savours of pride.
These views are too sublimated to be altogether
just. The Lord's Prayer at least contains the
lower petition: "Give us this day our daily bread,"
ESS AT: By THE TRANSLATOR.
219
as well as the higher, '' Thy will be done." With-
out the former, the "sublime familiai-ity of prayer,"'
as M. Saisset calls it in a phrase which is itself
sublime, will cease to exist, and the very idea of
Providence be lost.
It is also possible that, against M. Saisset's
wish, his work may leave an impression that is
unfair to the Gospel Revelation. I suppose most
thinkers agree with Aquinas, that "the exist-
ence of God can be known by natural reason, as
is said in the first of Romans, and that this and
other truths of the same kind are not properly so
much articles of faith as preambles to those ar-
ticles, our faith presupposing natural knowledge,
as grace presupposes nature." ^ The Christian
has reason to thank those who strengthen the pre-
amble. Philosophy is incidentally useful to him,
negatively and positively. Negatively, she takes
Pantheistic and other systems, and shows that they
are not invulnerable. Positively, she shows that
theistic conclusions are most in accordance with
reason as well as feeling. But she is too apt to
create a system of natural religion with Kant,
Rousseau, and Reid. I need not cite those pal-
mary texts so much "blown upon" (as Addison
says), which prove that Plato and Socrates could
ascend to the notion of God. I have no reason
for supposing — and much for the contrary hypo-
thesis — that M. Saisset would deny the conclu-
sions of Butler and Clarke. He knows much
better than I do that, besides many doctrines un-
known to reason, Christianity republished authori-
' Sutnma Theod., quxst. TI., Art. III.
2 20 ESSJT : Br THE TRANSLATOR.
tatively, in a simple and accessible form, without
any intermixture of error, those truths, discoverable
indeed and discovered by a few, but unknown
generally, which before led a precarious existence,
in a scattered and dissipated condition, and were
first reduced by the Gospel into one solid sy
stem of verity. Joined with each portion of
the Revelation, old and new, is a truth of na-
tural religion (so called) which experimentalists
are always cutting off, to see it writhe and
twist, and to mistake its merely nervous and
muscular action for that vitality which it can
only permanently have in connection with the
head. Take the Commandments. The first
teaches the existence and unity of God ; the
second implies that He is spiritual; the third is
based upon His Providence and moral government;
the fourth contains a permanent record of God
the Creator, and is a standing protest against Pan-
theism. So God's attribute of Goodness is bound
up with the mission and death of Christ. Moral
responsibility underlies the article, " from whence
He shall come to judge the quick and the dead,"
and immortality, "the resurrection of the body."
What, asks Rousseau, is the soul of religion but
to worship God in spirit and in truth .? What,
indeed ! It only needed about four thousand
years — the dispensation of the law, the teaching
of the Prophets, and the death of the Son of God
— to establish this simiple and obvious truth —
simple and obvious as the fifth proposition of the
first book of Euclid is, i.e.^ to those who have been
taught it ; and when a reasoner against the neces-
sity of revelation parades this principle as an
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR, ii'i-
argument, he gives it life, by transfusing into the
withered veins of his natural religion drops that
have been drawn from the very heart's blood of
the revelation which he depreciates. Diderot said
that all religions, and Christianity among the rest,
were but sects of natural religion : it would be
more just to invert the proposition, and to say that
all schemes of natural religion are but wretched
sects of Christianity.
Reveal'd religion first inform'd thy sight,
And Reason saw not till Faith sprung the light.
Once miore, I must repeat my hope and convic-
viction that M. Saisset would agree with these
sentiments. I am but speaking of the general
impression left by the second portion of his work.
He seems to present it to us as the method by
which he has learned to possess his own soul in
peace, and by which he hopes others may attain
the same blessing. What is this but to dispense
with revelation by a stroke of Occam's razor ?
Yet surely one significant, I hope and think in-
tentional omission, on the part of this great intel-
lect, may warn minds inferior to his own of the
failure of the method. I read this book. I per-
ceive one great hiatus. I take it up, and turn it
over and over again. I hear much of metaphy-
sical, little of moral, difficulties ; much of the
agony of the doubting intellect, nothing of the
deeper agony of the questioning conscience ; much
to show truly and powerfully, that God is distinct
from His creatures — that they are not absorbed
into Him — that I have a right to stand in presence
of God, and of the universe, and of other spirits,
and to say / in presence of each — nothing to indi-
2 22 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
cate how, as one of God's banished ones, I am
to be brought back to Him. For, indeed, the
delirium of philosophy may teach a handful of
dreamers to mutter, " I am God," but the deeper
instincts of our misery and sinfulness rather make
us shiver on the verge of the black chasm, which
yawns between our guilt and God's awful purity.
I agi-ee with M. Saisset that philosophy can de-
monstrate to us the existence of God from the
constitution of our own minds and hearts, and from
the irrefragable proofs of design in the constitu-
tion of the universe. The question has been
settled by Socrates and Plato. I admit that he
has proved that the arguments against an incon-
ceivable Infinite Personality advanced by Strauss,
Schelling, and Fichte, are light indeed compared
with the arguments against an absurd infinite
non-personality. His pleas for a moral design in
suffering, for Providence in the three worlds of
gravitation, animal life, and human personality,
are strong and convincing. I believe, then, that
in some sense Philosophy can find God. I be-
lieve that in some sense she can justify me in
praying. But M. Saisset has a vast knowledge
of philosophic systems. Will he find for us in
any record previous to Christianity, or extraneous
to its influence, a single instance of any child of
man so conscious of his being a child of God as to
say, not vaguely, "Father Zeus," but, " God, my
Father ! " The Psalms themselves can afford us
no such instance. M. Saisset's last section leaves
the impression that reason can find the Father.
I conceive the juster conclusion to be, that reason
ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 223
can find God, but not the Father.^ I apprehend
the truth to be, that M. Saisset, like many other
great writers in France, has been driven by ultra-
montane exaggeration into an opposite exaggera-
tion of the strength and of the sphere of reason
in Divine things. To heai* it preached, as it has
been by Dr. Newman, that to believe in God is
just as hard or just as easy as to believe in the
Roman Church: to see a man like M. Bautain
exulting in the Kantian categories as the ship-
wreck of all Theism, short of accepting the creed
of Pope Pius, is to make Philosophy feel that she
has a vested interest in conquering every possible
inch of ground for human reason. Hence M.
Saisset's injustice to the '^ Theological school."
Wiiy the eminent philosopher whom I criticise
so freely allow me to go further? I seem to
recognise in France a whole school of thinkers,
who are eloquent about the beauty of Christianity
as a theory, silent upon the incorrigible stub-
bornness of Christianity as a fact; eloquent
upon the Divine eclecticism which has fused all
the scattered elements of truth into one mass,
silent upon that delicately-balanced evidence, of
which it may be said, that if it were more the Gos-
pel would cease to be a faith, and that if it were
less the Gospel might become a superstition : that
if it were more there would be no probation for the
heart, and if less no grappling-point for the reason.
1 [I owe this thought to a v/riter who is as ivitty as he is wise,
taking the former word in that sense which imphes an exquisite
sagacity in perceiving delicate lines of resemblance between things ap-
parently dissimilar. It will be found in an original paper on Butler's
Analogy, in the Irish Churchman, by the author of Ne-w IVine in Old
Bottle:, the Rev, J. B. Heard, M.A., of Percy Chapel.]
2 24 ESS AT: BT THE TRANSLATOR.
Reason, on Roman Catholic ground, is like an army
stretched along a line with weak points as well as
strong points, all of which must be defended.
Thus it is that philosophers, who wish to be
Christians, refine away many Roman peculiarities
into profound symbols, and extending this habit
further, the members of the most dogmatic Church
in the world become undogmatic to the verge of
Socinianism. Rome has a majestic theory of
unity; she expresses it in a lath-and-plaster imita-
tion of the heavenly Jerusalem. She has a belief
in the dignity of every portion of the corporeal
organization of the saints that sleep, as destined
to belong to the spiritual body which shall grow
in the germ of the flesh; she expresses it in a
miserable relic-worship, or disguises it in an enor-
mous hagiology. As she delineates the beautiful
ideal of the resurrection of the body in the clay
of relic-worship, so she carves out the primitive
truth of the redemption of the body in the cherry--
stones of fanciful myths. The presence of our
Lord in the sacrament is concentrated into the
materialism of transubstantiation. Repentance,
with its deep sighs and burning tears, is frozen
into the sacrament of penance. Thus, the edu-
cated mind, which wishes to retain its belief, is
perpetually volatilizing into metaphor what its
» M. Bautain, in one of the most elegant as well as powerful pas-
sages in his writings, is forced to acknowledge how well Pantheism
also can find a home in the Roman Catholic ritual: "This religion is
made symbolical; if Catholicism is the sublimest of religions, it is
chiefly by its form. Its cathedrals, with their ogives, lancet>. and rose-
windows; its worship with its ceremonial, its music and chanting, ren-
der it so deeply interesting, and it suits marvellously with that vague
religiosity which admits all symbols." — Philosophie du Chriitiamxme^ ^
Supplement a la 29. Lettrc du Pantheism:^ vcl. ii. p. 163.
ESSAT: BT THE TRANSLATOR. 225
Church has been congealing into symbols and
dogmas. And this habit of mind, once acquired,
is exercised at last not only upon the symbol, but
upon the dogmatic truth which the symbol en-
cases. Thus the sacrament becomes a mere beau-
tiful expression of the soul's sustenance, and the
Resurrection of our immortality, and the holy
Trinity of God's attributes, and the Incarnation of
the meeting of the finite and infinite. Thus the
Gospel narrative becomes, not indeed absolutely dis-
believed, but thin and shadowy under these subtle
touches, and the Mosaic account of the creation
is rather a majestic symbol of the distinctness of
God from the universe than the history of a fact,
I am not sure that M. Saisset may not have im-
bibed something of this spirit.
III. And, now, let me sum up the whole impres-
sion which I have attempted to convey in this
essay.
I have translated M. Saisset's book with an
admiration of his intellectual power, of his learn-
ing, and of his masculine eloquence, which makes
me wish that my flattery were worth his accept-
ance. I thank him for a noble testimony of reason
to the Personality of God. He has drawn out
clearly the central idea of Pantheism. He has
analyzed its metaphysics from Spinoza to Hegel,
gliding subtilly along its finest threads. He has
shown that Pantheism is founded upon deduc-
tions from that experience which it condemns ;
that its vaunted premisses are word-jugglings,
false to the verge of madness ; that it promises
the soul an ocean of light to lead it into an abyss
226 ESSAY : BT THE TRANSLATOR.
of darkness, without morality, immortality, or
God — for its morality is a fancy, its immortality
is death, and its God is the negation of God.
He has done this not merely by demonstrating
the impotence of human reason, which might
lead us down another abyss, but with metaphy-
sical good sense as well as subtlety, showing that
God is light as well as darkness, and that reason
has its strength as well as its weakness. Nor
have his services ended there. He has displayed
to us all the great proofs for the existence of God,
not isolated as in Descartes or Paley, not sneered
down with offensive contempt as only suitable for
childhood, but ringed together like adamant. The
eye that has been bloodshot from gazing upon the
blindiag snows of Scepticism, or filmed over with
looking upon the hot iron of Pantheism, is soothed
as by the softness of green fields. I have to thank
him too for many lights, thrown upon nature, and
upon the mind and condition of man. Even after
that matchless sentence in which Paley joins
together '' at one end of our discoveries, an intelli-
gent pow^er constructing a ring of two hundred
thousand miles diameter to surround Saturn's body,
and be suspended like a magnificent arch over the
heads of his inhabitants — at the other, bending a
hooked tooth, concerting and providing an appro-
priate mechanism, for the clasping and reclasping
of the filaments of the feather of the humming
birds, "-^ I can turn with pleasure to the Medita-
tion in which M. Saisset l3inds together the eigh-
teen millions of stars in the Milky Way, and the
> Natural Theology, Chap. XXVII.
ESSAY : Br THE TRANSLATOR. 227
bee upon the flower. Never have I more clearly
seen that,
" Our grief is but our grandeur in disguise."
Never has the prayer of resignation seemed to me
more reasonable or more beautiful. Never has
my own personality more irresistibly led me to the
Personality of God.
These great services have some qualifications.
If man, "repelled by intellect, impelled by faith"
— as has been so superbly said by Professor
Fraser — will spring towards the Infinite, it is
well that the bars of his cage should be more
securely padded than by mere philosophy. I
would ask the author of this Essay — Shall I, or
any one in a million, ever find peace as you have
done ? The mer-de-glace of the Infinite is covered
with myriads of philosophic insects that have been
carried up there and lost. Jacob wrestled one
night, and found a blessing at break of day. I
must wrestle twenty years, if I am to follow you,
and perhaps never say Peniel at the end. I mul-
tiply figures because I am in earnest. You have
stretched a rope over the river. With mighty
muscles and unfailing feet, you have come to shore.
But your hair is wet, and your garment saturated
with spray, and your face is pale as with the agony
of death. I had rather pass over the old bridge
by which the Church treads, than on your strong
shoulders — and after all your rope is fastened to
the bridge !
You show me the Personal, Infinite, God,
Creator of earth and heaven. But there rises
before me the thought of One, without Whom I
suspect you would never have told me even that,
228 ESSAT: BY THE TRANSIATOR.
and He says what draws me towards God. as all
the metaphysics on earth, and all the stars in
heaven never could. " No man cometh unto the
Father but by Me."
The last sentence of your book is a noble one.
Let me add five words to it. "The great mystery
of existence, the distinction and union of two
personalities, that mystery where pure reason is
confounded, where reasoning has so often gone
astray, is no more a mystery for the soul which
has prayed." The grand and simple music of the
old Collects is echoing in my heart — and I add,
"through Jesus Christ our Lord."
2[ppenti()c.
1.
On Natural and Revealed Religion}
The celebrated saying of Diderot, that "all the
religions in the world are merely sects of natural
religion/' characterises with singular exactitude
the prevalent opinion of the eighteenth century,
upon the nature and value of religious institutions.
If we believe the philosophers of that epoch, re-
ligions have not been a necessary and fruitful in-
strument of civilization, but an obstacle. They
have corrupted, instead of perfecting natural reli-
gion. They have but added to it a mass of errors
and superstitions, the product of the credulity of
the weak and the policy of the strong.
The history of religions presents us with the
\\Tetched spectacle of the aberrations of our ever-
credulous and ever-deceived humanity. Religions
have no ultimate and solid foundation in the na-
ture of man. They are artificial institutions,
which have no intimate connection with the moral
destiny of our race. All religions are equally
false, if not equally malevolent. Moses and Or-
pheus, Zoroaster and Confucius, Mahomet and
our Lord, are impostors or enthusiasts !
1 pTranslated from M. Saisset's Essais sur la Philoiophie et la Rdigicn,
au XIX. Sucle^ pp. 287-304.]
232 APPENDIX.
Such Is the philosophy of religions conceived
by the eighteenth century. Pass from Voltaire
and David Hume to Boulanger and Dupuis; sink
fi-om the brilliant Essais sur les Mceiirs^ and the
ingenious sketch of the Natural History of Reli-
gions^ to the undigested compilation of the Origine
des Cultes^ and the declamatory^ rhetoric of Chris-
tianisme Devoile, and you will find the same ideas
everywhere. Montesquieu and Rousseau perhaps
form the only exception to this general law ; yet
it would not be difficult to find traces of it in the
celebrated dialogue, Le Raissoneur et V Inspire., as
well as in more than one piquant passage of the
Lettres Persanes. But what an advance there is
from this witty irreverence to the depth and
majesty of the Spirit of Laws I In that immortal
work, the finest monument which the eighteenth
century has bequeathed to us, the eminently be-
nevolent and civilizing effect of religions, and
above all of Christianity, has been marked in
strong and brilliant colours. One feels in each
page the genius of a philosophy which rises above
the horizon of the eighteenth century, and makes
of Montesquieu almost our own contemporary.-^
At the present time, it is clear enough to every
1 ["It is bad reasoning against religion to cram together in a great
book a long list of the t-oiU which it has produced, if we will not do
the same by the benefits which it has brought with it. Were I to re-
count all the evils which have been wrought in the world by civil laws,
monarchy, republican government, I could say frightful things." —
Esprit des Loit, xxiv. 2.
" Plutarch tells us, in his life of Numa, that in the time of Saturn
there was neither master nor slave. In our lands, Christianity has
brought back that age." — Ibid, xv. 7.
"Wonderful fact I the Christian religion, which appears to have no
other object than felicity in another life, constitutes also our happiness
in this." — Ibid, xxiv. 3.]
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 233
mind of any width, that this theory of the eight-
eenth century upon religions is radically false. It
rests upon one of the strangest hypotheses which
have ever been conceived — that of a perfect reli-
gion^ supposed to exist at the cradle of societies,
and gradually degraded and obscured under the
influence of positive religions. This hypothesis
is on a par with that which Rousseau imagined
when he painted man in a state of nature, primi-
tively innocent and happy, but corrupted by civi-
lization — a hollow and fantastic theory, w^hich-
wrote its own condemnation when it formulated
the famous paradox, ''The man who thinks is a
depraved animal." Rousseau and Diderot, like
poets who sung an age of gold, imagined in the
past of the human race that perfection which is
really in its future destinies, thus substituting a
barren remembrance and empty regret for holy
and fruitful hopes/
The hypothesis of a perfect religion, anterior
to civilisation, will not bear close examination.
What are the dogmas of that religion? A God,
who is spiritual, one, intelligent, free, good,
who loves all men equally. But it is clear,
1 [The first germ of the philosophy of history, the first conception
of a true law of progress in human society, is not to be found in Taci-
tus or Thucydides, in Aristotle, or even in Plato, but in St. Augustine.
"Divine providence," says the great theologian, '' which conducts all
things mar\'ellously, rules the series of human generations from Adam
to the end of the world like one man, who, from his infancy to his old
age, furnishes forth his career in time in passing through all its ages."
— De Qmstionibtis Octoginto tribiis, quasi. 58. Again, " The right education
of the human race, so far as concerns the people of God, like that of a
single man, advanced through certain divisions of time, as that of the
individual does through the consecutive ages of human life." '' Sicut
autem unius hominis, ita humani generis, quod ad Dei populum perti-
net, recta eruditio per quondam articulos temporam tanquam cetatum
profecit accessibus." — De Civ. Dei, lib. x. c. 14. J Does not Bacon imi-
2 34 APPENDIX,
that before Christianity men knew not this God.
The Jehovah, worshipped under the Mosaic dis-
pensation itself, is in many respects a national and
local God.^ The idea of the one universal God
is essentially and exclusively Christian. Some
sages before Christ had spread it among a few
select minds; Humanity knew it not. At this
very moment, it is utterly unknown to the ma-
jority of men. Outside the people of Christen-
dom we shall look in vain for the idea of the one
universal God. ^
tate this in the celebrated aphorism? " The old age and increasing
years of the world should, in reality, be considered as antiquity: and
this is the character of our own times rather than of the less advanced
age of the world in those of the ancients. For the latter, with respect
to ourselves, are ancient and elder, with respect to the world, modem
and younger. And as we expect a greater knowledge of human affairs,
and mature more judgment, from an old man than from a youth, on
account of his experience, so we have reason to expect much greater
things of our own age than from antiquity, since the world has grown
older." (No\nim Organ, i. Aph. 24.) This doctrine of progress has
been denied by Vico, who would subject human affairs to an invariably
recurrent and universal rotation, corsi e ricconi. But more generally it
has been misunderstood. Herder compares mankind to one bud perpe-
tually expanding, and has thus prepared the way for a transcendental
Pantheism. Turgot and Condorcet dream of a constant perfectibility,
and an indefinite prolongation of our animal and terrestrial existence.
The doctrine of progress, without that of the Fall, is always a wild
dream. St Augustine's doctrine is —
1. That the human race is one, and needs restoration.
2. That this restoration is the object of the law of progress, in which
the preventing action of God and the free effort of his creatures are seen.
3. That this progress is not carried out by the immolation of indi-
viduals, but consists in the amelioration of individuals in the develop*-
ment of humanity. This moral progress, in comparison with which
material progress is nothing, commences in expiation and trial here, and
is^ completed in another existence.
The '' perfection" of which M. Saisset here speaks is not that of Her-
der or of Turgot, but of his favourite Augustine. J
' " I do not deny," says M. Saisset, '' that in the Old Testament, and
especially in the Psalms, many passages miy be found of quite a differ-
ent character; ex. gr.. Psalm cxlv. 18, 19, Amos ix. 7, contrasted with
Deut. iv. 7. [See also specially I. Kings viii. 41. 43,]
2 I do not here distinguish the Mahometan population from the
Christian nations, properly so called. Is not the Koran, in fact, as it
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION 235
I would say as much on the score of morality.
The idea of human fraternity is a Christian idea.
(See also in the Old Testament, Exodus xxiii. 9;
Deut. xxiv. 17; Levit. xix. 34.) It is true that
the Stoics had elevated themselves to it, just as
Plato, before our Lord, had attained to the un-
known God, the God who is a Spirit, of the
Gospel. But Christianity alone has made the
dogma of universal charity known to the human race.
Yet what can be more natural or reasonable
than to believe in the one God, who hath made
men all brethren ? Certainly, it is natural and
reasonable, that is to say, conformable to the
purest inspirations of nature and of reason. But
these sublime instincts would remain dormant
within us, without a regular and assiduous culti-
vation. This culture is given by civilisation, and
the two forces employed by civilisation in this
grand work, are religion and philosophy.
To speak at present only of religions, surely it is
incontestable that they have fulfilled, and are even
yet fulfilling in the world an eminently civiliznig
action. What but its religious institutions made
the greatness of the Jewish people? Where is
the source of the unconquerable vitality of that
race which neither Babylon, Greece, nor Rome
could destroy; but in the strong religion which
Moses collected at Sinai, under the dictation of
Jehovah ? On what monument is Jewish civiliza-
tion, with its poetry, its institutions, its history,
has been so well called, a defective edition of the Gospel ? [In days
of greater theological accuracy than ours, Mahometanism was always
reckoned among Christian heresies. See Lambert Danaus' Edition of
August. De Haresibus, Ixcvi.]
236 APPENDIX.
its manners, graven in lasting characters? It is
a religious monument, the Old Testament. What
gave Greece her arts, her literature, her liberty,
her philosophy, but the religion of Orpheus and
of Hesiod? Try to understand iEschylus and
Sophocles, Ictinus and Phidias without the Greek
religion. Plato himself would have no meaning
without it.
The philosophy of religion, received by the
eighteenth century, appears infinitely more false
and wretched when we come to speak of Chris-
tianity. Who, at this time of day, will venture
seriously to dispute that Christianity has civilized
the modern world? What was natural religion
in the days of Clovis and Charlemagne? Find,
if you can, its principles among the barbai-ous
hordes who thronged the soil of Europe. Who
then spoke to men of a spiritual, just, and holy
God, of a free and immortal soul, of love and-
charity? Was it Christianity, or the fantastic
religion of nature which was dreamed of by the
philosophy of the eighteenth century ?
The eighteenth century did not know itself. It
cursed Christianity, of vv^hich it was the legitimate
child. ... It is certain that natural religion, as
conceived by the eighteenth century, in the name
of which that age contended with Christianity and
philosophical systems, is the product of Christianity.
Let us explain this curious connection at sufficient
length.
Man is born with two needs, at once distinct
and inseparable, the ?noral and the religious instinct.
Free, he yet feels that there exists a law which
should regulate his will. Capable of intelligence
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION 237
and of love, his mind and his heart require an
infinite object. Every man possesses the instinct
of the Good, and the instinct of the Infinite, in a
word, the instinct of the Divine. Every one who
can live without faith in the Divine, or who has
smothered that sublime faith within him, does not
belong to humanity.
The moral and religious instinct, the instinct of
the Divine is primordial in man, anterior and supe-
rior to every religion and every philosophy, the
aliment and the foundation of every religious belief
and of every philosophical speculation. This alone
is common to all men, savage or civilized, ancient
or modern, of the Mongolian or Caucasian race.
This alone constitutes the unity of mankind. . . .
The com.mon foundation of every religion as of
every philosophy, is the invincible need which
pushes man on to develope the instinct of his
nature, the instinct of the Divine. ... A day
came, prepared by Divine Providence, when all
the religions of the world became acquainted, and
finding themselves diverse and opposed, engaged
in strife, and, so to speak, broke each other in
pieces, to give place to a religion which collected
and organized their fragments. We may mark
that day by a date which the human race will never
forget — the birth of our Lord.
. . . Why did all the religions of antiquity
bear in their very heart the germ of inevitable
death ? Because no religion before Christianity
had succeeded in determining the essential condi-
tions of the moral life of man. Because it solved
this problem, Christianity comprises all essential
truths. It is the heir of all religions and of all
238 APPENDIX.
philosophical systems. It has fused together all
these apparently discordant elements, Moses and
Plato, the wisdom of Memphis and Delphos, and
the wisdom of Athens and of Alexandria. It has
boiTowed from Greece its metaphysics, from Stoi-
cism its morality,^ from Judea its traditions, from the
East its mystic breath, from Rome her spirit of
government ; and it is thus^ that Christianity has
succeeded in uniting all the conditions of the moral
life of humanity in one body of durable doctrine.
. . . Those who speak of a new religion do
not perceive that Christianity is not a religion like
others. ... It has solved once for all the problem
of positive religions, . . .
The eighteenth century was wTong about the
nature of religions in general, and about the
Christian religion in particular. It believed that
religions were the work of credulity and impos-
ture, while they are the natural and regular pro-
duct of the moral and religious instincts of the
human race. It was deceived about Christianity,
because it believed that Christianity was a religion
like any other, and that it was radically contrary
to natural religion and to reason.
This is a capital mistake. What the eight-
eenth century called natural religion is the foun-
dation of Christianity. This position is suffi-
ciently proved by looking attentively at the three
chief attempts which were made in the eighteenth
1 [This statement requires much qualification. It was his intense
perception of the distinction between the haughty morality of stoicism
and the doctrines of grace, which finally won the great intellect of
Maine de Biran to the cross. J
- [M. 8aisset's mode of statement here is, I think, objectionable. If
Christianity collected all truths, it was not by an eclectic process, but
by a Divine uniJicationS\
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION 239
century to systematize natural religions. These
attempts are connected with the three chief philo-
sophical schools of the time — the schools of Kant,
Rousseau, and Reid. I put aside the Encyclo-
pede, the Materialists and Atheists, who, after
having collected natural religions and natural law,
end by telling us that morality consists in self-
preservation, and religion in believing in nature.
The three schools in question profess a great
contempt for philosophical systems, and much in-
dependence in respect to religious creeds — what,
however, with the Scottish thinkers is consistent
with the sincerest faith in Christ, with Kant goes
no further than respect, and with Rousseau some-
times proceeds to hostility.
But upon collecting the fundamental articles of
natural religion, in Kant's Critique of the Practical
Reason^ in Rousseau's Profession de foi du Vic aire
Savoyard^ and in Reid's Essays^ what do we find ?
The same truths that Christianity had for the
first time united in a system appropriate to the
human race, and which modern philosophy, the
genius of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibnitz,
had established upon the ground of reason.
Examine, in fact, the fundamental dogmas upon
which Christianity reposes. They may be re-
duced to three — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the
Atonement. We need not now enter into the
depths of these dogmas ; we shall say but little,
and that strictly confining ourselves within the
limits of our subject. But what is the most
evident meaning of these dogmas ?
The dogma of the Trinity establishes, in the
first place, the absolute unity of God, His spi-
240 APPENDIX.
rituality, His incommunicable and absolute perfec-
tion. This God, considered in Himself, is not,
however, an inert and lifeless being, an abstract
and undetermined power, which can only actualize
by developing itself, and become real by its works.
He is a God in whom perfection and personality
are inconceivably united. He knows and loves
Himself. He lives in Himself, with a life that is
free and independent, beyond time and space.
From personality. He excludes nothing but its
miseries ; He contains the principle of it, life with
intelligence and love. The unity, personality,
and independence of God, are implied in the
dogma of the Trinity.
This God does not remain in the mute depths
of His eternal existence. He is love. Love
counsels Him to expand His perfection without
Himself. He creates. He fills space and time
with the marvels of His power. He reflects
Himself in a free and intelligent being, made in
His likeness, capable of comprehending and ador-
ing the Eternal.
This supreme creation is finished by the filling
up of the chasm which separates the finite from
the infinite. God hides himself, so to speak, in
nature, under the fatality of its laws. He mani-
fests himself in man. He tabernacles in our
nature, and is well-pleased with it. More : He
wills to unite Himself to our nature by the closest
and most incomprehensible of ties. He is made
m.an, and is Incarnate.
Man separated from God is little but a more
perfect animal, the child of time, and made to be
devoured by it, ^a weak and wretched part of that
NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. 241
infinite circle of existences, which are incessantly
produced and destroyed. By the Incarnation, he
becomes a being of a different grade, capable of
understanding, loving, and possessing eternal
things. But his intellect is yet weak, and his
will is subject to failure. Man knows sin, and
he is separated from his first principle. To ran-
som and restore him, he wants infinite mercy to
give infinite value to his repentance. This is the
mystery of redemption.
God has taken the manhood into God. He
died for all. He wills that all should be saved,
because all are His children, — furnished with the
same gifts, submitted to one law of love. Hence
that sublime morality, which has surpassed the
purest conceptions of ancient wisdom, and regu-
lated for ever the relations and affections of man.
Reasonable love of one's self, as made in the image
of God : love of one's neighbours, as members of
Christ ; all our affections directed towards the
general love of God ; — such is the eternal code
of morality, founded upon the eternal code of re-
ligion.
We are not ignorant of many objections which
may be raised here, and we cannot discuss them
now. Suffice it to say that we have not written
a w^ord which is not conformable to the exactest
text of the most rigorous orthodoxy, and at the
same time to the most enlightened reason.
Such is the natural religion which Rousseau
developes so eloquently in the Savoyard vicar's
Profession de Foi^ whose principles Kant interlinks
with superior strength in his Critique of the Prac-
tical Reason^ which the Scotch school, in its turn,
II. Q
242 APPENDIX.
promulgated to the eighteenth century in a form
at once less severe and less eloquent, but with
admirable good sense and honest conviction. Some
have thought that in writing the Gospel of natural
religion, Rousseau destroyed that of Christianity.
By no means. He merely traced a fine commen-
tary upon it.
II.
Substantial agreement of Christianity and the Pla-
tonic Philosophy in reference to certain metaphy-
sical problems}
The first problem which metaphysics proposes
to itself is that of the existence of God.
St. Augustine solves it like a genuine disciple
of Plato. The Atheists may be confounded by
excellent processes of discursive reasoning. Plato
himself has perfectly succeeded in proving^ that
Atheism is the negation of the simplest and most
evident principle of reason — the principle of
causality. But in the estimation of a true philo-
sopher, the existence of God is a verity so self-
evident as to have no need of demonstration. In
truth, the mind does not attain to God as the last
consequence of anterior principles. It is raised to
• [Translated from M. Saisset's Introduction to St, Augustine, De Ci'vitate
Lei. Pp. 72-102.]
2 [De Leg. x.]
CHRISTIANITT AND PLATONISM. 243
*■
Him as the First Principle of all principles, by a
natural and irresistible movement.
There are, however, two degrees which may
be distinguished in this ascending movement of
reason.
Just as the sun of the visible world appears to
us first as the centre of light, so God is to us, in
the first place, the absolute Truth, the one Truth,
in which all truths are identified, the universal
reason which enlightens all intelligences. He is,
says Plato, the sun of the intelligible world. Here
is His first claim upon our adoration and rever-
ence.
But the material sun is not only the centre of
light ; it is also the source of heat and life. So
God is not only the principle of intelligence,
reason, and truth ; He is also the principle of be-
ing, the Idea of ideas, absolute unity. Good in
itself, in short the ultimate root of all that exists.
We have seen St. Augustine in his Confessions
elevating his mind to God as the eternal Truth
and the uncreated Word. In the De Civitate
Dei he places himself with Plato at a still loftier
elevation. He demonstrates God as the Being of
beings, infinitely above all bodies, above the soul,
above all sensible and intelligible forms ; in a
word, as the first and immutable form of all life
and of every existence. I cite the whole chap-
ter, one of the finest in the work, when judged
by that severe metaphysical beauty, whose noblest
attractions are force and precision.
" Those philosophers, therefore, whom we have
seen not undeservedly preferred to all others in
glory and renown [the Platonists] clearly perceived
244 APPENDIX.
that no body was God; and therefore, in their
search after God, transcended all bodies. They
perceived that whatever is mutable is not the
Most High God ; and, therefore, in seeking Him,
they transcended also every soul and ail mutable
spirits. They then perceived that every form in
any mutable thing, by which it is what it is, what-
soever its mode and nature may be, cannot be,
except from Him who truly exists, because He
exists immutably. And thus, whether they consi-
dered the body of the universe, its figures, quali-
ties, ordered motions, its elements, arranged from
heaven even to earth, and whatever bodies are in
them ; or, again, all life, whether that which nou-
rishes and sustains itself, as in trees, or that which
both does this and is sentient, as in beasts ; or
that which both has these properties and under-
stands, as is the case with man ; or, finally, that
which does not want nutritive sustenance, but only
maintains itself, is sentient, and intelligent, such as
is life in the angels ; they have seen that none of
these can be, save from Him who simply is. For
to Him existence is not one thing, life another, as
though He could exist without life ; nor is life one
thing to Him, intelligence another, as though He
could live without intelligence ; nor, again, is His
intelligence something different from His blessed-
ness, as though he could be intelligent, and not
blessed — but life, intelligence, blessedness, is with
Him the same as being. On account of this im-
mutability and simplicity, the Platonists understood
both that He made all things, and that He could
not have been made of any. For they considered
that whatever is, is either body or soul ; that soul
CHRISTIANITT AND PLATONISM. 245
is somewhat better than body ; that the form of
the body is sensible, and the form of the soul
intelligible. Hence they preferred the intelligible
to the sensible form. We call those things sen-
sible, which can be perceived by corporeal sight
and touch — those things intelligible, which can be
understood by the look of the soul. For there is
no outward beauty, whether in the posture of the
body, such as its shape, nor in miOtion, such as is
the modulation of music, of which the mind does
not judge. Which certainly could not be the
case, unless there were in it this better form, with-
out the swelling of bulk, without the clamour of
sound, without space of place or time. Here, too,
unless this form were mutable, no one man would
judge better than another of sensible form. In
this respect the ingenious would be no quicker
than the slow of wit, the experienced than the in-
experienced, the ignorant than the educated ; the
same person when he is making progress would
have no better judgment, in any way, after than
he had before. But that which is susceptible of
greater and less is unquestionably mutable. Whence
those who are gifted with genius and learned in
these points have readily come to the conclusion,
that the first form cannot be in those things, in
which the property of mutability is easily proved
to exist. Since, therefore, in their view, both the
mind and the body have forms that are more or
less fair, and if they had no form would have no
existence, they saw that there was something
where there is that prime, immutable, and there-
fore incomparable form ; and they most justly be-
lieved that the principle of things was there,
246 APPENDIX.
because it is not made, and all things are made by
it. Thus hath God showed unto them, that
which may be known of God,^ since the invisible
things of Him are clearly seen, being understood
by the things that are made, even His eternal
power and Godhead."^
God is then at once the principle of truth and
the principle of being, the primitive unity, rendered
visible to itself and to every intelligence by that
splendour of the eternal reason which is the char-
acteristic of its essence.
But why has this God manifested Himself out-
wardly, who manifests Himself eternally to Him-
self in the interior light of His word .'* Why has
this perfect and self-sufficing Being, gone forth
from Himself to produce the universe ? Is it by
caprice or chance ? is it by a necessity inherent in
His nature ? is it by an act of His will ? It will
readily be understood that Plato and St. Augustine
could not admit either chance and caprice on one
hand, or indigence and necessity on the other,
without giving themselves a direct contradiction^
and breaking their metaphysical systems to pieces
with their ovm hands. Chance and caprice may
be met with in wretched and imperfect beings
like men, and even they are subjected to secret
laws ; but applied to God, the immutable Being,
caprice and chance are unmeaning words. Can
God have need of His creatures, and in creating
can He be supposed to obey the necessity of com-
pleting His being and His life .'* But God is per-
fect. He possesses and knows Himself. He
enfolds in His being the elements of a blessed life,
J Romans i. 19, 20. * d^ Qv. Dei, Lib. viii. C. vi.
CHRISTIANITY AND PLATONISM. 247
and of a perfect felicity. If then God becomes
fruitful, if He wills to be the Father, if He wills
to communicate life and being — it is because God
is good. He is not only the Perfect Being and
Perfect Intelligence, — He is also Perfect Good-
ness. Let us listen alternately to Plato and St.
Augustine.
"Let us state the cause which has led the
Supreme Ordainer to produce and to compose
this universe. He was good, and he who is good
has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, He
willed that all things should, as far as possible, be
like Him. Whoever, instructed by wise men,
shall admit this as the principal reason of the
origin and formation of the world will be right." ^
St Augustine accepts unreservedly this explana-
tion of the wherefore of creation. He takes up
with sympathy, and interprets like a true philo-
sopher, the touching and sublime image of God,
which Plato presents to us, when he pictures the
Father of the universe as full of joy at the spec-
tacle of His work in life and motion. St Augus-
tine recognises in this trait the God of Genesis,
and expounds forcibly, in opposition to a false
theology, those much controverted words of the
Bible, "And God saw that it was good."
" What else are we to understand in the sen-
tence which is repeated through all the works of
the six days^ — and God saw that it was good — but
1 \Timaus, 29, 30. See the original passage quoted in the note, volume
I., p. 230. This passage contains the germ of the optimism of Leibnitz,
cf. Estais de Theodicee. — Part I. 8.]
[ws 5f KivT]Qhv ai/To Kal ^Qv evev6'r)cre 'o yevvyjcras rrar-qp ■fjydxTdri re Kal
ev<j)ppav6eh. k. t. X. — Timaus, 3 6. J
- [^Per omnia. — The statement is not made, however, of the second day
of the Demiurgic Kexaemeron. — Gen. i. 6-8.]
248 APPENDIX,
approbation of the work which was ^vrought after
that art, which is the wisdom of God? But God
was so far from learning that it was good when it
was made, that none of those things would have
been made at all had this been unknown to Him.
When, therefore, He sees that that is good, which
would not have been made at all had He not seen
it before its creation, He teaches^ and does not
learn, that it is good. And Plato, indeed, ven-
tures to say more — namely, that God was full of
joy when the universe was completed. Where
he was not so insensate as to suppose that God
was made m-ore blessed by the novelty of His
work, but wished to show that that which had
pleased his divine Artificer when it was purposed
to be created by His art, pleased Him when it
was actually produced; not that the knowledge
of God admits of any variation, so that the things
which are not yet, those which are, and those
which have been, are different in it. For God
does not, in our way, foresee the future, or see the
present, or look back to the past ; but in another
manner profoundly different from the way of our
thoughts. He does not pass by a change of
thought from one thing to another, but sees im-
mutably. Those things which are done in time,
both those which are not as being future, and
which are as now present, and which are not
as now past. He comprehends them all by His
abiding and eternal presence. He sees not
one way with His eyes, another with His mind,
for He is not compounded of soul and body. He
does not see one way now, another in the past,
yet another in the future, since His knowledge is
not changed like ours by the difference of the
CHRlSTIJNITr AND PLATONISM. 249
present, the past, and the future, with whom is
no variableness^ neither shadow of turning} For
He, to whose incorporeal contuition all which He
knows is present at once, does not pass with an
effort from thought to thought, since He knov/s
time with a knowledge unconditioned by time,
just as He moves temporal things without under-
going temporal motion. He. therefore, saw that
what He made was good, where He saw that it
was good to make it. Nor, in seeing it actually
m.ade, did He double, or in any way increase His
knowledge, as though he were of less knowledge,
before He made what He was to see, seeing that
He could not work so perfectly unless He
wrought with a knowledge so perfect that nothing
could be added to it from His works. Wherefore,
if it were only intended to teach us who made the
light, it would have been enough to say — and
God said^ Let there he light^ and there was light —
that we might have kno^\Ti not only that God
miade light, but that He did so by His word. But
as it was meet that three most important points of
knowledge about creation should be intimated to
us — who made it, by what agency, and why —
Scripture states: God said^ Let there be light, and
there was light. And God saw the light that it was
good. If, therefore, we ask who created, the
answer is God ; by what means '^. He said. Let
there be, and there was ; v/hy ? because /"/ was
good. No author can be more excellent than God;
no art more efficacious than God's word ; no cause
better than that that which is good should be created
by the God who is good. Plato also affirms that
1 St. James i. 17.
250 APPENDIX.
this is the most just cause of the creation of the
world, that works which are good should be wrought
by the God who is good ; whether he had read
these things in the Bible, ^ or happened to learn
them from those who had read them ; or
whether by his penetrating genius he beheld the
invisible things of God as understood by the thin'^s
which are made^ or whether he had learned from
those who had so beheld them."^
St. Augustine is so fully satisfied with the
Platonic explication of the wherefore of creation,
that he cannot comprehend how certain theologians,
especially Origen, ventured to repudiate it. He
refutes them with much warmth, and to finish the
task of reducing them to silence, he asks them
whether, in refusing to see the ultimate reason of
creation in the wisdom and goodness of God, they
do not fail to recognise the God of the Christian
Trinity in Unity, who necessarily acts according to
that which He is, that is, at once as being, intelli-
1 [Josephus, the Jewish historian ; among the Christian fathers and
apologists, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Clemens of
Alexandria, TertuUian, Minutius Felix, Origen, Lactantius, and Theo-
doret, have dwelt upon the unacknowledged obligations of the ancients
to divine revelation. The loth Book of Eusebius' E-vangcUcal Prepara-
tion is taken up with an attempt to prove that Plato and other philoso-
phers borrowed the best part of their theolog)' and ethics from Scripture:
the nth, 12th, and i3tli books specify the particulars in which Plato
may be supposed to agree with Holy Writ. — See Waterland's Charge,
The Wisdom of the Ancients Borroived from Divine Revelation, vol. v., I-29.
We may agree with Berkeley's beautiful saying, that " perhaps these
sublime hints, which dart forth like flashes of light in the midst of a
profound darkness, were not originally struck from the hard rock of
human reason, but rather derived, at least in part, by a divine tradition
from the author of all things" (.9/m, sec. 298-301-360); but we may
admire all the more St. Augustine's honesty, in confessing that it was
chronologically impossible for Plato to have been a pupil of the prophet
Jeremiah, or to have studied the Septuagint version of the Scriptures. —
De Civ. Dei, Lib. viii., c. xi.]
2 De Civ. Dei, Lib. xi., c. 21.
CHRISTIAN ITT AND PLATONISM, 251
gence, and love. And, in fact, he says : ''When
in the case of any created thing it is asked who
made it, by what means, and why, and the answer
is given, that God made it, by His word, because
it is good ; it might be proved, indeed, though
only by a voluminous investigation, that there is
nothing to hinder our understanding this part of
Scripture in such a way that, in the mystic depth
of this answer, the Trinity is intimiated to us, that
is. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."^
Here a new and perilous question, which had
often occupied the mind of St. Augustine, presents
itself to him — a question of which he has given a
very remarkable solution in the Confessions and
Be Civitate Dei^ that of the eternity of creation.
When St. Augustine explained so well how God
must necessarily have known His creatures before
producing them, he met a difficulty which he did
not solve. The difficulty is this : can it be con-
ceived that there is in God, the Eternal and Im-
mutable Being, a before and after ?^ St. Augustine
has powerfully proved that the intellect, like the
essence of God, is above the viscissitudes of time ;
that with Him foresight, sight, and retrospect (so-
called) are all one ; that He embraces the present,
the past, and the future, with one immutable re-
gard. But how is this consistent with the admis-
sion that creation had a beginning in time, that is
to say, that God passed at a given moment from
repose into action, to subside into repose again '^.
Is not this to conceive God as a being subject to
• De Civ. Dei. Lib. xi., c. 23.
- [See the passages from Scaliger, Boethius, and Kant, quoted in thi
volume. Page 173.]
252 APPENDIX.
change ? Is it not like assimilating His activity to
our laborious effort, and abasing to the level of
the creature the degraded majesty of the Eternal
Creator ?
There is no more difEcult problem in meta-
physics, there is none upon which St Augustine
has reflected more profoundly, and thus, without
completely withdrawing himself from Plato — his
usual guide, he has left here the living impression
of his ovvm peculiar genius.
Let us, with St Augustine, take in succession
the two alternatives which this problem presents
to our reason. On one side there is an eternal
and immutable God, who, at a definite moment,
enters upon a course of action to produce that
which did not previously exist. On the other
side, there is a world which always existed, a
chain of ages which has no first link, a creation
co-eternal with the Creator. The more we think
of it the more terrified the mind becomes at being
forced to choose between two conceptions, which
are equally full of insoluble difficulties. I will
venture to say, that there are few philosophers
who have not, at least at moments, believed that
which Emmanuel Kant systematically professed —
namely, that the problem of creation contains one
of these antinomies which will always be the rock
on which metaphysics must strike.
St Augustine was perfectly acquainted with the
difficulties and perils of each of these contrar)^
alternatives. It is sometimes asked, he says, what
God was doing before He created the heavens and
the earth? "Iwill not," he continues, "make
the answer which is said to have been jestingly
CHRISTUNITT AND PLATONISM. 253
made by one who eluded the serious difficulty of
the question in replying. He was preparing hell
fire for those who curiously pry into His deep things.""^
The saying is more or less pointed, but the ques-
tion remains. The more we meditate upon God,
the more we recognize that immiutability is one
of the most essential characteristics of His nature.
Perfect and fully self-sufficing, there is in His
being " no variableness, neither shadow of turn-
ing." To pass from rest into action, and from.
action into rest, is the peculiarity of an imperfect
nature, which tends with painful effort to a greater
perfection, is fatigued, and takes breath to begin
again. In God there is nothing of this kind.
His will, like His essence, must be immutable, and
instead of unfolding itself, like ours, in a series of
successive efforts, it is concentrated in one sole,
simple, eternal act.
Hence, continues the philosophical theologian,
when it is said that God rested the seventh day,
we must only see in it a human and symbolical
expression.^ In the same way, the days of crea-
tion mark the hierarchy of beings, and the suc-
cessive epochs of their appearance upon the face
of the earth. But the action of God cannot be
decomposed into epochs. It is one, hence it is
perfect. How then can we understand that God
did not act during an infinite series of ages?
i["Alta," inquit, " scmtantibus gehennas parabat." — Confess. Lib.
xi. C. 12.]
« [This expression is, I think, not quite accurate. St. Augustine's
words are worth quoting: — " Cum vero in die septimo requievit Deus —
nequaquam est accipiendum pueriliter, tanquam Deus laboraverit oper-
ando. Sed requies Dei requiem significat corum qui requiescunt in Deo,
sicut loetitia domus loetitiam significat eorum qui loetantur in dome.
Quanto magis, si eadem domus pulchritudin£e sua faciat loetos habitatores
254 APPENDIJC,
Here St. Augustine comes into collision with
the philosophers of the Alexandrian school,
Plotinus, Porphyry, and lamblichus, who were
deeply penetrated with the principle of the divine
immortality, and deduced from it the eternity of
creation. St. Augustine cannot consent to be
associated with such a doctrine, but he is too dis-
cerning and too honest to confound it with that
of the Epicurean materialists, who maintain that
only the forms of the world change, but that mat-
ter and atoms exist externally, and of themselves.
To these philosophers the world is uncreated;
there is no Creator; the question of creation
does not exist at all. The error of the Alexan-
drian philosophers is of a less gross order ; they
admit that the world does not sufEce to itself,
and that it is the work of God, only they
refuse to believe that the world ever began,
and see in it the eternal manifestation of eternal
activity.
'' Even apart from the witness of the prophets,"
he says, "the world itself, by its most regularly-
ordered mutations and revolutions, and by the
exquisite beauty of all visible things, proclaims in
a certain sense, in its Very silence, both that it
has been created, and that it could not have been
created but by a God ineffably and invisibly
beautiful." So far for the Materialists:^ but, adds
ut non solum, eo loquendi modo loeta dicatur, quo significamus per id
quod continet, id quod continetur, sicut theatra plaudunt. Sed etiam
illo quo significatur per efficientem id quod efficitur, sicut lasta epistola
dicitur, significans loetitiam corum, quos legentes efficit loetos. — De civ.
l)a., Lib. xi. c. 8-31., cf. ibid, c 7, and De Genesi ad Litteram, lib-
iii. iv.]
» [The sentence just quoted is the refutation of the Epicurean Mate-
rialists; that which follows, of the Alexandrian school.]
CHRISTIAJSUTT AND PL ATOMISM, 255'
St. Augustine, " Those who confess, indeed, that
the world was created by God, but who maintain
that it had not a beginning in time, but merely a
commencement of its creation, so that in some,
way, which can scarcely be construed by the in-
tellect, it was always created, have certainly some-
thing to say; whence they seem to themselves to
defend God as it were from the imputation of
chance and caprice, lest that which had never'
before occurred to him should be supposed to
have come into His mind (namely, to create the
world), and that a new will happened to Him
who is no respect mutable ; but I do not see how
this theory can stand in other respects.*'^ In
fact, follow the necessary chain of consequences.
If you admit that the world is infinite as to
duration, you must necessarily admit that it is
infinite as to extension. Otherwise it will be
asked, why God created nothing in these immense
spaces that the mind conceives beyond the whole
finite universe, as we have just now heard the
Alexandrian philosophers ask those who make the
w^orld finite as to duration, why God did nothing'
during that succession of ages that the mind con-^
ceives before all determinate duration. Here,
then, is a world infinite as to duration and exten-
sion. Is not that to make it independent of God ?
Is it not to make God useless, and the universe
divine.
Such are the difficulties which seem inseparable
from each of the two alternatives of the problem
of creation — reason cannot be satisfied either with
1 Be Ci-v. Dd, lib. xi. c. 4.
256 APPENDIX.
a world co-eternal with God, or with a God who
has created the world in time.
There is but one means to disentangle this in-
extricable knot ; that is, to deepen our apprehen-
sions of eternity and time. St. Augustine applies
himself to it with ardour, and we shall see him
display in this difficult research a very superior
acuteness and power of analysis. The notion
of time, says he, is one of the most familiar ; it
is met with in all that we say. There is no man,
however ignorant, who does not understand what
is meant by a longer or shorter period of dura-
tion, such as a century, a day, a minute. V/hat,
then, is time and duration? There is nothing
more difficult to define.
Time has three modes — the present, the past,
and the future. Now the past is that which
exists no longer; the future is that which has not
yet been; the present alone seems to have a posi-
tive existence. But what is the present ? Is it
an age, a year, a day, an hour ? But even an
hour is a space of time which can be decomposed
into parts ; some parts which exist no longer,
others future, which have yet to be. How shall
we grasp, how shall we define that indivisible por-
tion which constitutes the present ? The present
alone really exists; and it hardly is, before it is no
more. Enclosed between two nothings, the past
and the future, it has but a fugitive being, which
it is impossible to arrest.
But it may be said that time is the motion of
the celestial spheres. Doubtless this motion helps
us to divide and to measure time, but it does not
constitute time. Let the stars cease their revolu-
CHRISTIAN ITT AND PLATONISM. 257
tions; provided the potter's wheel continue to go
round, it will give me the idea of time. Then it
may be affirmed that time is in general the motion
of bodies. But the motion of bodies is made in
time; it does not constitute time, it supposes it.
It is with the assistance of time that I measure
the motion of bodies, that I call it quick or slow,
equal or unequal. Therefore I must have a mea-
sure for time independent of corporeal motion.
To understand time and its measure, we must
disengage ourselves from the confused impressions
of our senses. We must enter into the depths of
our consciousness. "It is in thee, O my soul,
that I measure time. Confuse me not by objec-
tions ; which means, confuse not thyself by the
thronging din of thy sensual prejudices. In thee,
I say, I measure time. It is the affection or im-
pression which things, as they pass, make in thee,
and which abides when they have passed away —
it is this which is present that I measure, not
those things which have passed away, that it
might remain. This I measure when I measure
time. Wherefore, either these things are time,
or, if not, I do not measure time."^
It is, then, if I understand St. Augustine aright,
in our own consciousness, and with the assistance
of memory, that we find the first notion of dura-
tion. The mind itself is the type and measure of
duration, and it is by adding to the consciousness
of our present life the recollection of our past
life, and the prevision of our future life, that we
form the idea of time. There are, says St.
1 Confess.: Lib. xi,, c. 27. [-'Ergo, aut ipsa sunt tempora, aut non
tempora metior."]
II. R
258 APPENDIX.
Augustine, three simultaneous acts of the mind —
expectation, attention, and recollection. The
mind expects the future, grasps the present, re-
collects the past. Et expectat^ et attendit^ et memi-
nit. By expectation the future becomes present
to the mind ; recollection renders present the
things that are past ; and by attention, the mind
gives, in some sort, extension and fixedness to a
present, that can never be grasped.^ The result
of this acute and ingenious analysis, in which St.
Augustine anticipates and equals the profoundest
investigations of modern psychology," is, that if
time is not the motion of bodies in general, or
more generally still, the change in created things,
yet time supposes that change. It is not by the
external senses that the notion of time is acquired,
but by the inward sense, and it is the mind, the
Ego, which is to us the primitive model of the
substance which endures ; but mind, superior as
it is to the body, is itself a created and change-
able substance. It flows on incessantly from the
present which passes, and is swallowed up in the
past. It goes toward a future which soon will be
effaced in its turn. It is thus with all being, even
with angels. St. Augustine, in the Confessions^ had
admitted that the angelical nature, although made
from nothing, is united to God in a manner so per-
fect that the simple act of this union escapes from
the, law of time.^ But later reflections modified
this thought, and in the Dc Civitate, which was
• Confessions, lib. xi. ch. 28.
* See the admirable fragments of M. Royer-CoUard on the Notion
of Duration, published by M. JoufTroy, in Vol. iv. of his translation of
the Works of Thomas Reid.
3 Confessions, Book xii. ch. 11-15.
CHRISTIANITT AND PLATONISM. 259
the work of his full maturity, he declares that the
angels themselves, in spite of the perfection of
their happy life in the bosom of God, remain sub-
ject to change, and to the vicissitudes of the
present, the past, and the future.^ God alone is
eternal, because God alone is immutable, because
God alone is uncreated, because God alone is
God. How should there be the flow of duration
in God, since His perfect and simple being exists
always identical with itself.
All thy years, O my God, are but a single day.
It is not a succession of several days, but a per-
petual to-day, which does not pass on to give
place to a to-morrow, which has not succeeded to
a yesterday ; and this to-day is eternity.^
Who does not recognise in these words the
perhaps somewhat feebler, but faithful echoes of
those grand passages of the Timosiis ?^
Here, then, according to Plato and St. Augus-
tine, are the real notions of time and eternity.
Eternity is the incommunicable attribute of God ;
time is the law of all creatures. Eternity is im-
mutable and simple ; time is moveable and di-
visible.
Let us now return to the problem of the crea-
tion, and perhaps we shall be able to see more
clearly by the light of these better defined
notions.
If time supposes change, and if change sup-
poses changeable beings, creatures whose successive
conditions give birth to the present, the past, and
the future, it follows, that when thought does away
1 De Civitate, lib. xii. ch. 25. - Confessions, lib. xi. ch. 4.
3 [See passage cited in note to page 239 vol. I. Timausf cxxxviii.]
26o APPENDIX.
with creatures, it destroys time with the same
blow. Therefore, to imagine a certain time
which has preceded the world, that is to say,
which has existed before the collection of crea-
tures, is a contradictory idea, and to ask what
God was doing before the creation of the world,
is a meaningless question, since the voids before
the world suppose a time anterior to the world,
that is to say, a time independent of every crea-
ture and of all change, which means a void time,
a time in which there is neither present, past,
nor future, which is a palpable contradiction. In
like manner, to say that the world and time are
co-eternal with God, is to make use of unintelli-
gible language ; for between the world and time,
which, by their nature, change and pass, and God,
who is an immutable being, there is a radical op-
position.^ Therefore we must say with Plato,
that the world and time were created together by
the eternal Architect. God precedes the world,
not by a priority of time, for that would make
Him analogous to time, but by a priority of
nature and of essence.^ Here St. Augustine ob-
jects to himself. How has God always been the
I^ord, that is to say, how has God always been
adored, if there were not always creatures ? St.
Augustine cannot consent to give up the principle
that God has always had the quality of Lord, and
that He has always been adored. If it were
otherwise, the quality of Lord would be a novelty
in God, it would begin at the moment when He
began to be adored. Nor on the other hand can
we lay down that the human race has always ex-
1 Confessions, lib. xi., ch. 13. - Confessions, lib. xii.. ch. 29.
cHRisrijNirr and platonism. 261
isted. Evidently no Christian could admit this ;
besides, setting aside authority, reason agrees
with the book of Genesis in overthrowing the
hypotheses of certain philosophers, who admit
untold revolutions of ages, perpetually reproduc-
ing and bringing back the same beings, the human
race included.^ Reason and faith, then, agree
that there must have been a first man, although
this apparition of a new being in time contains a
profound mystery, and is very difficult to reconcile
with the unity of the creative act and the immuta-
bility of the divine will.-
Now, if man is new upon the earth, how could
God be Lord before the formation of man ? He
was adored by angels, says St. Augustine, but
then returns this difficulty : Angels then have
always existed, and if this be so, how is it that
they are not co-eternal with God ?
"What shall we answer to this?" says St.
Augustine. " Shall we say, both that they always
existed — since they existed in all time, as they
were created together with time or time with
them — and yet that they were created ^ For we
shall not deny that in a parallel sense time was
created, though no one can doubt that time
existed during all time. For if time did not always
exist, there was a time when there was no time.
Who is foolish enough to affirm this ? We may
say rightly enough, there was a time when Rome,
Jerusalem, Abraham, man did not exist, and so
on. Finally, if the world was not made contem-
poraneously with the commencement of time, but
after the lapse of some time, we may use the pro-
1 Dt: CivHate, lib. xii., ch. 13. -De Civitate, lib. xii., ch. 12 24.
262 APPENDIX.
position, There was a time when the world did
not exist. But the assertion. There was a time
when there was no time, is just as incongruous as
the statement, Man existed when there was no
man, or. The world was when there was no world.
. . . As, therefore, we say that time was created,
while yet it is asserted that it always existed, be-
cause time was through all time : so it does not
follow, as a necessaiy consequence, that if there
were always angels, the angels were therefore un-
created ; so that they may be said to have always
existed, because they were through all time, and
they were through all time because time could
not have been without them. For where there
is no creature, by whose mutable motions time is
formed, there can be no time. Hence, though
they always existed, they were created, nor if
they always existed, are they consequently co-
eternal with their Creator. For He always existed
by His immutable eternity; they were made. They
are said always to have existed, because they were
in all time, and time could not have been without
them. But since time passes on by mutability, it
cannot be co-eternal with immutable eternity. And
hence, though the immortality of the angels does
not pass in time, nor is past as though it did not
now exist, nor future as though it were not yet,
yet their motions of which time is composed pass
from the future into the past ; and therefore they
cannot be co-eternal with the Creator, of whom it
may not be said, either that He has been what
He is not now, or that He will be what He is
not yet."
Here, then, is the conclusion of St. Augustine:
CHRISTUNITT AND PLATONISM. 263
"Wherefore, if God was always the Lord, He
always had creatures subject to His dominion —
creatures, not begotten of His substance, but made
by Him out of nothing — not co-eternal with Him,
for He was before them, though at no ti?ne with-
out them, preceding them not by a transitory
interval of time, but by an abiding eternity."^
It is thus that St. Augustine has resolved the
problem of the eternity of creation. Did he suc-
ceed in conciliating the eternity of creative action
with the dependence of things created ? Did he
disarm beforehand the dialectic of Kant ? We
dare not affirm so much; but what seems incontes-
table is, that he has touched with a bold and deli-
cate hand one of the deepest mysteries of the
human mind, and that to all his glorious titles he
has added another, that of an ingenious psycho-
logist and an eminent metaphysician.
To complete the exposition of his Theodicea, we
have now only to point out, in a general way, the
principle of his optimism. If God is essentially good,
if He creates the world through goodness after His
eternal wisdom has represented to Him the world
ideally as a faithful representation of His own per-
fection, it follows that the world is essentially good,
and that evil cannot have an absolute existence.
He who is perfect in goodness, says Plato, could
not, and cannot do anything that is not very good.
He found that among all visible things He could
absolutely make no work finer than an intelligent
> [^De CivH. Dei, Lib. xii. c, 15. This remarkable chapter illustrates
the train of thought by which Leibnitz seems to arrive at the conclu-
sion of a world infinite in duration. — See Volume I., P. 240, note.]
264 APPENDIX.
being, and that in no being could there be intelli -
gence without a soul. Therefore He placed in-
telligence in the soul, and the soul in the body ;
and He organised the universe so that it should
be by its constitution the finest and the most per-
fect of works.^ We find the same doctrine and the
same language in the i oth book DeLegibiis. "The
King of the world imagined, in the distribution of
of each part of it, the system which He judged
the best, so that the good should be uppermost
and the evil undermost in the universe. It is in
relation to this view of the whole that He makes
His general combination of the places which each
being ought to occupy, according to his distinctive
qualities."^
In this fine passage Plato does not speak of
effective and absolute, but of purely relative evil.
For it is his express doctrine that good alone is
positive, whilst evil exists merely negatively.
St. Augustine is here still full of Plato, and we
feel that he finds a pleasure in conciliating without
violence, the revered inspirations of the beloved phi-
losopher with the express doctrine of Christianity.
"In fact, there is no nature originally bad, and
this term only indicates the privation of goodness.
But from earthly to heavenly things, and from
things visible to those which are invisible, there
are some good things better than others, unequal
for this very reason that they might exist at all.
But God is in such sense the great Artificer in
great things that He is not less in small things ;
and these small things are not to be measured by
their greatness, which is nought, but by the wisdom
1 Plato Timxus. 2 d^ l,^ Hb x.
CHRISTIANITT AND PLATONISM. 265
of their Framer. As in the visible form of man,
if one eyebrow be shaved off almost nothing is
subtracted from the body, but much from that
beauty which does not consist in bulk, but in
similarity and proportion."
'^They (certain heretics) do not attentively
consider how these things (fire, cold, wild beasts,
&c.,) are excellent in their own places and natures,
and disposed with admirable order ; and how much
beauty they add to the sum-total of things, each
for their own part, as to their common country, or
how much use they are to us, if we are willing
to employ them wisely and well. So certain poisons
which are injurious when unfitly used, if properly
employed, are changed into wholesome medicines,
whilst, on the contrary, even those things by which
men are delighted, such as food and drink, and
even light, become hurtful by an immoderate and
improper use. Whence Divine Providence wai-ns
us not to find fault with things foolishly, but rather
to search diligently into their real use ; and where
our wit falls short, or our weakness fails, to believe
that that utility is hidden, just as some things
were which we were barely able to discover.
The very concealment of their utility is either an
exercise in humility, or a diminution of pride. "^
''It is ridiculous to condemn those defects in
animals and trees, and other things mutable and
mortal, which are destitute either of sense, or in-
tellect, or life, and by which they are subject to
dissolution and corruption ; these creatures have
De Civ. Dei, lib.
XI. c. 22.
266 APPENDIX.
received that mode of existence by the will of
their Creator, that by their failure and succession
they may make up that lower and temporal beauty
which is suitable in its kind to the parts of this
universe. Things earthly were not to be made
equal to things heavenly ; nor was the superiority
of the latter a reason why the former should be
wanting to the universe. When therefore in those
places where it was suitable that these should
exist, some spring up as others fail, and the less
yield to the greater ; and those which are van-
quished acquire the qualities of their conquerors :
all this is the order of passing things. The beauty
of this order does not please us, because, linked
as we are in virtue of our mortality to a portion of
it, we cannot take in that universe to which the
portions that offend us agree with sufficient fitness
and congruity."^
'^All natures, therefore, since they exist, and
consequently have their own mode, species, and
inner peace and harmony, are assuredly good ; and
since they are where they ought to be by the
order of nature, they keep what they have re-
ceived ; and those things which have not received
the gift of perpetual existence, are changed for
the better or the worse, according to the need and
motion of those things to which they are sub-
jected by their Creator's law, tending by Divine
Providence to that end, which the mode of the
government of the universe includes ; so that not
even such corruption as brings on our mortal and
mutable natures to dissolution, so makes that
which existed to be non-existent, that it does not
■•^ De Civ. Dei, lib. xii. c. 4.
PHILOSOPHT AND RELIGION. 267
become in succession what it ought to be. Whence
God, who exists in the highest sense, and by whom
for this reason all essences are created, which do
not exist in the highest sense (because that ought
not to be equal to Him which is made out of
nothing, and indeed it could not exist at all were
it not made by Him), God is not to be blamed
through offence at any defects in created objects,
and is to be glorified upon the due consideration
of all natures."
III.
Philosophy and Religion.
I HAVE said, in one place, that M. Saisset's work,
in its second part, leaves the impression upon my
mind, that he would have us to consider phi-
losophy as the 'TTpoaaycayn to God. Such access to
God ('/J '7po6ayo)yr\) is in ScHpture assigned to
Christ alone. ^ I am the more bound, in justice
to M. Saisset, to cite the following equally Chris-
tian and philosophical account of the passage of
Augustine from philosophy to Christianity: —
''The reason of Augustine began to gain
strength. Could he find repose in the noble doc-
trines of Platonism ? His soul was appeased, it
was not satisfied. Philosophy was insufficient for
him, religion alone could give him unbounded
1 Rom. V, 2; Eph, ii. 18; iii. 12; i Pet. iii. 18.
268 APPENDIX.
serenity. Augustine tells us the reason of the
insufficiency of spiritual philosophy. Philosophy
can enlighten the reason, but it only acts imper-
fectly upon the will. It teaches us speculative
truths, but it does not bestow upon us the
strength to transform them into practical verities.
It reveals to us, indeed, on one side, a soul
spiritual, free, yearning after virtue, perfection,
and happiness ; on the other, a God who is the
true God, since He is the principle of all truth,
holiness, and happiness. But how shall this
soul, at once so sublime and so miserable, attain
to this God? Here is what philosophy never
taught. Augustine brings out, with wonderful
depth and energy of thought, the enormous void
w^hich is left in the heart of man, and which reli-
gion alone can fill. He gives us his entire con-
ception in these strong words : ' Plato made me
know the true God, Jesus Christ showed me the
way to Him.' This way is Jesus Christ Himself,
the God-man, who unites and reconciles the two
natures which the voluntary fall of man had sepa-
rated. This is the idea which Augustine has
conquered for Christianity. Plato had revealed
to him the Logos, the Divine Word; but that
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,
Christianity alone could teach him." — Introduction
to De Civitate^ p. 30.
INDEX.
Absolute, The, li., 55 : Pyrrhonist
arguments of the Hamiltonian
school ; the Absolute inaccessible
to thought, 57 ; Religions so
many forms of imagining the
Absolute, 61 ; Error in Hamil-
tonian proof that the Absolute is
unthinkable, 69 ; Pantheistic
undetermined Absolute contra-
dicts the laws of thought, 74.
Anselm, St., on faith and reason,
i., 24 ; his ontological argument
for the existence of God criticised
by Kant, 295.
A priori: Existence of God has never
been rigorously proved a priori,
why, ii., 64, 65.
Aquinas: Distinguishes metaphysi-
cal evil from rnelum pcena and malum
culpa, i., 256, note.
Aristotle, quoted i., 136, 137; law
in Aristotelian and Baconian
systems, 169, 244, 273; ii., 17;
on scent in brutes, 176 ; God, the
rh vo €P€i(a in Aristotle, 207 ;
Aristotelian Theistic proof from
primum mobile, 211.
Atheism. : Oscillation between
Atheism and mysticism of Pan-
theistic systems, i., 3-14 ; ii.,
103-108 ; the ultimate result of
contemporary Pantheism, 122.
Augustine, St., Malebranche a
J passionate student of, i., 66 ;
saved from Pantheism by A . and
Plato, 89 ; seems to incline to a
world of infinite duration, 240,
note ; Christian contrasted with
Hegelian immortality, illustrated
from, ii., 36, 37; view of God's
prescience of man's free actions,
170, 171, note ; quoted ^a«/«z in
Appendix II.; "Christianity and
Platonic Philosophy in reference
to certain metaphysical pro-
blems," 242, 269 ; first error of
philosophy of history in, 233,
234-
Bacon, Lord, quoted to illustrate
Kant's "wakening from his dog-
matic slumber," i., 272, note ; a
famous aphorism derived from
St. Augustine, ii., 234, note,
Barrow, quoted i., 192, note.
Bossuet: Platonic argument forthe
existence of God from necessary
and universal truths, as stated by,
ii., 210, 211, note.
Butler, Bishop, i., 85, 139, 157,
161, 164; correspondence be-
tween and Clarke, note, i., 183.
Cartesianism : see Descartes.
Cause, transitive and immanent, ii.,
94 ; transitive cause requires
matter, ibid, 95 ; immanent cause,
95 ; both imperfect, ibid; to assi-
milate God to an immanent cause
is to degrade Him, 96 : see Trans-
lator's Essay, 216, 218.
Comte : quoted, i., 21, note.
Consent : argument from, for the
existence of God, i., 33, 34, note;
omitted by M. Saisset, ii., 214,
note.
Cuvier: his principle of correlation
of organs, ii., 157; opposed by
lyo
INDEX.
Saint-Hilaire's principle of ana-
log}"^, 158 ; yet both concur in
bringing out one truth of Provi-
dence, 161.
Descartes : his thorough - paced
doubt, i., 29 ; his demonstration
that the idea of God comes from
Him, 32 ; Cartesian proo{ a firiori,
34 ; God distinct from the uni-
verse according to Descartes, 38 ;
Descartes inclines to arbitrary
will as the cause of cieation, 39;
considers God the creator of truth,
41 : Cartesian law of the conser-
vation of the same quantity of
motion, 43 ; Cartesian theory of
an infinite (or indefinite) world,
based upon the doctrine of the co-
extensiveness of matter with ex-
sion, 44. 46 ; the will in some
sense infinite, 49 ; strong points
in Cartesian philosophy, 52, 54;
Pantheistic germs in, 54; abstract
and geometrical demonstration of
the existence of God, 55 ; danger
of theory of continuous creation,
57; reduces spiritual and corpo-
real substance to thought and
extension, 58-60; felicity of his
views on divine and human
liberty, 61; Summary', 63.
Determinatio : omnis determinatio ne-
gatio, Spinozist principle, i., 148;
falsity of, ii., 69 ; adopted by Sir
W. Hamilton, ibid; arises from
the confusion of the limits of a
being with its constitutive characte-
ristics, 70 ; determination radically
different from negation, 70-73.
Eternity, notion of, i., 187, 190:
see Time.
Evil: metaphysical, physical, and
moral, i., 256, 260.
Fichte : his idealism, ii., 2 ; his
primary law of identity, Me=
Me, 3 ; his Ego and Non-Ego, 4 ;
morality drawn from the Ego, 6.
Final Causes: The Socratic proof
for the existence of God, first
used by Anaxagoras, ii., 206 ; in
what sense rejected by Lord
Bacon, 207 ; syllogistic form of
the argument, ibid; Kant asserts
that, pressed too far, it would
prove Manicheism, 208 ; recog-
nised in Rom. i. 19, 20, ibid, note;
its practical power, 209, 210.
Finite and Infinite: Two ideas com-
mon to all, ii., 201 ; various solu-
tions of the problems of their co-
existence, 202-205.
German philosophy ; weakness
of ; the belief that absolute
science is attainable by the
human mind, ii., 27 ; traced as a
common point in Fichte, Schel-
ling, and Hegel, 29 ; greatest
ideas of, not original, borrowed
from Leibnitz and Spinoza, 32,
and Alexandria, 35.
God : God in the system of Newton.
i., 158, 195 ; God, according to
Plato, created because he is good,
230, note ; three arguments of
rational theology to prove the
existence of, 293 ; Kant's ex-
posure of defects in these argu-
ments does not affect a true
Theodicea, ibid; God, according
to Kant, one of the three postu-
lates of the practical reason, 297 ;
weakness of Kantian proof of,
309; exaggerated by Fichte, 310.
Is there a God ? ii., 41-45 ; God
inconceivable and incomprehen-
sible, 48 ; yet not absolutely in-
communicable, 53 ; God acces-
sible in His manifestation, in-
comprehensible in His essence,
66 ; thought In God is not a
contradiction, 72 ; can there be
anything but God? 77 ; God the
Creator, 83 ; a Personal God
accused of superstition by the
Pantheists, 87 ; the universe the
manifestation, not the develop-
ment of God, 100 ; His prescience
of men's free actions, 171, 172,
note.
INDEX,
271
Hegel: His Absolute Pantheism, ii.,
II ; his logic, 12 ; his "identity
of contradictories," and of
"thought and being," derived
from Kant, 1 3 ; the former anti-
cipated by Heracletus, 1 7, note.
Hegelian principles, 1 6, sqq. ;
three momenta of every idea, 12,
20 ; tripartite division of Hege-
lian philosophy, 20, 21 ; Hegelian
trichotomy carried out through
aU science, 23 ; developments of
principle of identity of contradic-
tories, 24 ; applied to the three
great religions, 25 ; Hegelian ism
inconsistent with Christianity, or
with a belief in personal immor-
tality, 36, 37, note.
Immensity, i., 187, 190: see Space.
Immanent : see Cause.
Infinite : see Finite.
Infinity of the creation : in what
sense taught by Leibnitz, i., 231,
241 ; in what sense by iVT. Saisset,
ii., 127; this view not neces-
sarily Pantheistic, 128; relative
and absolute infinity, 128, sqq.;
antinomy upon, 130-144 ; M.
Saisset's view not satisfactory,
1 44, note ; taught by the Alex-
andrian school, 254 ; St. Augus-
tine upon, 255 ; germ of M.
Saisset's view in St. Augustine,
262, 263.
Kant: The scepticism of, i., 268-
310: Kant, the representative of
scepticism, 271 ; his wakening
from his dogmatic slumber, 272;
first gleam of light supplied to,
by certainty of mathematical and
physical sciences, 273 ; logic as
the formal science of laws of
thought shares in that certainty,
274 ; the objective inaccessible,
ibid ; the laws which govern
human thought have a purely
subjective value, 275 ; two ele-
ments in the exercise of each of
the intellectual functions, 276 ;
analytic portion of his work, 277-
284 ; dialectic portion of his
work, 284 ; three ideas of pure
reason, 285 ; God, the Cosmos,
and the soul, have a purely sub-
jective value in his system, ibid ;
overthrows metaphysics, 286 :
answer to his scepticism, 286,
sqq. ; antinomies mathematical
and dynamic, 289 ; mathemati-
cal antinomies not insoluble, 291;
rational theology possible, proved
against Kant, 292 ; Kant, scep-
tical as a metaphysician, dogma-
tic as a moralist, 295 ; Kantian
idea of duty, 296 ; postulate of
the practical reason, 297 ; crite-
rion of morality, 298 ; concept of
duty, 298 ; of liberty, 299 ; re-
ligion attained through morality,
301; chief end of man, 301-303;
personal application of the moral
law insoluble by Kant, 308 ;
weakness of his Theodicea, 309 ;
discussion of his famous antinomy
on the infinity of the universe, ii.,
130-144.
Leibnitz : his intellectual career, i.,
197; polemics against Cartesian-
ism, 207, 208; monadologT/j 209 ;
force in the universe, 211; doc-
trine fcederis, a difficulty in his
system, ibid. ; solution by the
theory of pre-established har-
mony, 213 ; the " sufficient
reason" as a Theistic proof, i..
215, ii., 213, 214, note ; the
Cartesian proof substantially ac-
cepted by, i., 216 ; errs in being
too exclusive, 217; Spinoza's
causa immanens and natura naturens,
contrasted with the idea of God
the Creator as stated by, 221 ;
reality of nature asserted by,
against Malebranche, 224; the
lex unita, 226, 227 ; latent Pan-
theism of denial by Malebranche,
ii., 228 ; Plato's answer to the
question, " Why this creation
rather than another ? " moulded
by, into the theory of the "best
possible world," i., 230; ques-
72
INDEX.
tion why this imperfect world
was thought worthy of existence,
231 ; for answer of Malebranche,
Leibnitz substitutes that of inf-
nity (in a certain sense) of the
universe, 231-241 ; objections to
that theory, 241-249 ; civHationes
caca^ 251; weakness of theor)'
of pre-established harmony, 252:
the human soul a spiritual auto-
maton according to, 254 ; three
categories of evil, 256; on the
limitation of human knowledge.
261 ; natural immortality of all
beings, 261 ; moral personality
completes the proof of the im-
mortality of the soul, 263 ;
beautiful passages quoted from,
261-266; four greatest ideas of
Schelling come from, ii., 33.
Malebranche, like Spinoza, a pupil
of Descartes, i., 66 ; a man of
two books, Descartes and St.
Augustine, 66 ; how attracted
to Cartesianism, 66 ; holds that
extension with its modes is the
only reality in sensible objects,
68 ; that reason cannot assure us
of the existence of bodies, 69 ;
that the power of the will is
very limited, 72 ; that there is
no intermediary idea bejiween us
and God, 73 ; seeing all things
in God, 74 ; loving all things in
God, 75 ; principle of order re-
quires a world limited in extent
and duration, 78 ; the incarna-
tion renders Creation worthy of
God, 79 ; theological objection
to this view, 80 ; theory of
"God's ways" as a solution of
disorders in the universe, 81;
applied to the solution of theo-
logical mysteries, 84 ; rationale of
prayer, according to, ii., 188.
Newton : his Theism based upon
Final Causes, i., 159; difference
of Cartesian and Newtonian
methods, 161 ; Newtonian me-
thod, 162-166 ; definition of
law, 169; his Theistic proof,
171-175 ; peculiarities in his
Theistic system, 176; his con-
ception of infinite space, 177;
space according to, in some
sense as if God's sensorium, 178 ;
Clarke's commentary upon, 181,
183: objections to this, 183;
error in Clarke and Ne\^i;on, in
conceiving space and time as an
attribute of God, 1 94 ; three
errors of his Theodicea, 195.
Pantheism : Passim, especially, i, ,
14; ii., 87-122, 201-205.
Pascal, like Descartes and Male-
branche, holds infinity of uni-
verse, ii., 136; his answer to
objections of a religious mind,
138; leading idea which solves
them, 139.
Personality of God : Passim, especi-
ally arguments against, of Fichte,
i., 11; of Strauss, 12; person-
ality of man as a proof of his
immortality, 263.
Philosophy : insufficient without
revealed religion, ii., 267, 268.
Plato : quoted, i., 230 ; time, ac-
cording to, a created image of
eternity, 239 ; his argument for
existence of God from necessary
and universal truths, ii., 210;
Platonism and Christianity, 242.
266 ; showed St. Augustine the
true God, while Jesus Christ
alone showed him the way to
God, 267, 268.
Prayer: not irreconcileable with
Divine immutability, ii., 188 ;
two degrees of, 189.
Progress : first conception of law
of, in St. Augustine, ii., 233,
234, note.
Religion : on natural and revealed,
ii., 231, 242; exaggerated esti-
mate of natural religion in i8th
centur}', 231, 232; idea of one
universal God belongs to revealed
INDEX.
273
religion, 234 ; so dois the idea
of human fraternity, 235 ; fun-
damental articles of natural reli-
gion implied in fundamental
dogmas of Christianity, 239,
sqq. ; natural religion as taught
by Kant, Rousseau, and Reid,
borrowed from revelation, 241.
Saisset : general review of his essay,
ii.. 193, 228 ; peculiar merits of,
201, 218 ; his work may in some
respects leave an impression which
isunfairto the Gospel. 219; defects \
of school of thinkers to which he
belongs, 223; questionable view
of infinity of creation. 144, note ;
of prayer, 190, note.
Scaliger : quoted, ii., 177, and
passim in notes.
Space : notion of indefinite, i., 186;
notion of ideal not chimerical^ 1 90 ;
error of Ne\vtonian school in
conceiving as real as an attribute i
of God, and confusing with im- I
mensity, 194, 195.
Spinoza : violent reaction in favour
of> i-? 93 5 his life, 94, 99 ; his
Ethica, its mathematical form,
99 ; his De Intellect us Emendatione i
a treatise upon Method, 100 ;
four degrees in human know-
ledge, 100, ic6 ; banishes experi-
ence from knowledge, 106 ; his
philosophy starts from the idea
of "substance," 107; substance
in one sense unconditioned, in
another determined by attributes,
107 ; thought and extension re-
latively infinite, 108; modes of
attributes, 109; substance, attri-
bute, and mode, 1 1 1 ; no other
substance but God, according to,
112; Deus est res extensa, 114;
three degrees of the infinite, 116;
his conclusion that God is ex-
tended, and yet incorporeal, 117;
God is absolute thought, accord-
ing to, 118; human intellect
and Divine thought, 119; asserts
that Divine thought has nothing
in common with ours, 120; fi-ee
will a delusion, 121 ; triple con-
clusion on the Divine nature,
123 ; his natura naturens and na-
tura naturata, 126, 1 2 7 ; grand
total of Spinoza's theology or
Pantheism, 129: his anthropo-
log)', 130; definition of man,
131 ; of soul, 132; general re-
sult of this psychology', 133 ;
liberty and moral order denied
by, 134; good and evil practi-
cally overthrown by, 135; way
of putting the moral problem,
137 : his view of the faculties of
the soul excludes personal immor-
tality, 140, 141 ; theor)' that pas-
sive faculties perish with death,
but that reason remains, 142 ;
theory of future happiness and
miser}'-, 142, 143 ; erroneousness
of his method, 144 ; dilemma
addressed to Spinozists on sub-
stance, 145, 147 ; dilemma upon
Spinoza's notion of God, 147,
152; general conclusions, 152-
157-
Time : investigation of the notion
of, i., 185 ; finite and concrete
duration, 185, 186 (compare ii.,
257, 258, from which it appears
that St. Augustine contains the
germ of M. Saisset's doctrine) ;
notion of indefinite time, 186;
notion of ideal, not chimerical,
190.
Ultramontanism : position that be-
tween Pantheism and itself there
is no intermediate position, i., 2 ;
mental habits engendered by, in
those who are said to be both
Christian and philosopher, ii.,
224, 225.
Waterland: his writings and Bishop
Bull's, a safe-guard against Pan-
theism, i., II, note; quoted ii.,
250, note.
Edinburgh .
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