Part 5 (1/2)

Two views, therefore, essentially diverse, govern the labors of the renovators of society. The one cla.s.s desire to realize, in an ever larger measure, justice and love; religious convictions are the strongest support of their work. The other cla.s.s would uproot from men's minds every principle of faith, in order the more readily to obtain the realization of their theories. These two cla.s.ses of men seem at times to be fighting all together in the _melee_ of opinions. They meet, as, in the doubtful glimmer of the dawn, might meet together laborious workmen who are antic.i.p.ating the daylight, and evil-doers who are fleeing from the sun.

In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools, it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of Europe, the negation of G.o.d discovers itself in this order of ideas. It discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a materialistic enthusiasm for corporeal indulgences. Disregarding the sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn our attention elsewhere.

M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred pages destined to maintain the thesis that G.o.d does not exist.[44] Man conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception of a real and perfect being: such is the usual process of metaphysical reasoning. For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one another; this is one of his fundamental theses. This thesis does but interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to raise ourselves higher. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect; therefore--say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes--the perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to the world. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect, therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the absolute rule of truth. To say therefore of G.o.d that He is perfect, is to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never realized. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd and violent. If G.o.d is perfect, He does not exist. If G.o.d exists, He is not perfect. The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His perfection. The author of this theory renders a wors.h.i.+p to that ideal which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the world is gravitating by the law of progress. This wors.h.i.+p is of too abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular by taking another shape, and it does so in this way: We conceive of that perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our thought. Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human mind. The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is it that we must adore. We are here out of the region of pure abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.

The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with chimeras, was founded in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte. M.

Littre is at present one of its princ.i.p.al representatives. This writer, says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring ”to set humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions, from deceitful idols and powers.”[45] Let us say the same thing in simpler terms: M. Littre professes the doctrines of a school which ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history. To ascertain phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such, say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge. As for the origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual fancy. ”Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future.”[46]

”In spite of some appearances to the contrary,” says M. Littre, ”the positive philosophy does not accept atheism.”[47] Why? Because atheism pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and that after a fas.h.i.+on is still theology. Minds ”veritably emanc.i.p.ated” profess to know nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience. They do not deny G.o.d, they eliminate Him from the thoughts. The attempt is a bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emanc.i.p.ating themselves from the laws of reason. The very writer whom I have just quoted is himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the ”_eternal_ motive powers of a _boundless_ universe.”[48] Boundless!

eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the instincts of the reason coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing! Adoration is withdrawn from G.o.d, and it is given to the universe at large. What is it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct object of wors.h.i.+p? Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in a work reviewed by Auguste Comte: ”Man,” he says, ”has always adored humanity.” Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and the brief summary of their history. This humanity-G.o.d has been long adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its wors.h.i.+ppers; but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his wors.h.i.+p and give it its true name.[49]

The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard to whatever is not included in the domain of experience. But its foot slips, and it falls into the negation of G.o.d, from which it rises again by means of a humanitarian atheism. All these marks are met with again in the works of the critical school.

The critics group themselves about M. Renan. The praises which they lavished a while ago on a bad book by that author seem at least to allow us to point him out as their chief. They derive their name from studies in history and archaeology, with which we here have nothing to do. They are regarded as forming a philosophical and religious school, and it is in that connection that they claim our attention. Their influence is incontestable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and of philosophy; but this interest is purely historical. Nothing is more curious than the successive forms of human beliefs; but the period of beliefs is over. Religious faith no longer subsists except in minds which are behind the age; and philosophy, upheld in a final swoon by Hegel and Hamilton, has just yielded its last breath in the arms of M.

Cousin: so M. Renan informs us.[50] To choose a side between the defenders of the idea of G.o.d and its opponents; to choose between Plato and Epicurus, between Origen and Celsus, between Descartes and Hobbes, between Leibnitz and Spinoza, would be to make one's self the Don Quixote of thought. An honest man may find amus.e.m.e.nt in reading the Amadis of Gaul; the Knight of _la Manche_ went mad through putting faith in the adventures of that hero. A like fate befalls those minds which are simple enough to believe still, in the midst of the nineteenth century, in the brave chimeras of former days. Let us study history, let us study nature; beyond that we do not know, and we never shall know, anything. Our fas.h.i.+onable men of letters develop their thesis with so much a.s.surance; they lavish upon believers so many expressions of amiable disdain; they appear so sure of being the interpreters of the mind of the age, that they seem ready to repeat to young people dazzled by their success, the lesson which Gilbert had expressed in these terms:

Between ourselves--you own a G.o.d, I fear!

Beware lest in your verse the fact appear: Dread the wits' laughter, friend, and know your betters: Our grandsires might have worn those old-world fetters; But in our days! Come, you must learn respect,-- Content _your age to follow_, not direct.[51]

To believe in G.o.d would be vulgar; to deny the existence of G.o.d would be a want of taste; the divine world must remain as a subject for poetry.

So our critics speak. Their direct affirmation is scepticism. But they follow the destinies of the positivist school; they do not succeed in maintaining their balance between the affirmation and negation of G.o.d.

Alfred de Musset has described this position of the soul, and its inevitable issue. Must I hope in G.o.d? Must I reject all faith and all hope?

Between these paths how difficult the choice!

Ah! might I find some smoother, easier way.

”None such exists,” whispers a secret voice, ”G.o.d _is_, or _is not_--own, or slight, His sway.”

In sooth, I think so: troubled souls in turn By each extreme are tossed and hara.s.sed sore: They are but atheists, who feel no concern; If once they doubted they would sleep no more.[52]

The indifference of the critical philosophers is in fact only a transparent veil to atheistical doctrines. Faith in G.o.d the Creator is in their eyes a superst.i.tion; this is their only settled dogma. In other respects they indulge in theses the most contradictory. Most generally they deify man, declaring that there is no other G.o.d than the idea of humanity, no other infinite than the indefinite character of the aspirations of our own soul. At other times they proclaim an undisguised materialism, and look for the explanation of all things in atoms and in the law which governs them. They make to themselves a two-faced idol, one of these faces being called nature, and the other humanity. What strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of G.o.d, of duty, of religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their G.o.d is not a Being, their religion is not a wors.h.i.+p, their duty is not a law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and captivated by success, is deluged with writings which have the same effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ever allowing it to form either a precise idea or a settled judgment.

Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are multiplying with the object of defending the existence of G.o.d, Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against the rising flood of atheism.[53] And here is a fact still more significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are pa.s.sing in review the worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of G.o.d, without having their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention directed to contemporary productions.[54]

I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing princ.i.p.ally as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed, doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the Rhine.

A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the following words: ”I have only had one disciple who has understood me--and he has misunderstood me.” A man distinguished in metaphysical research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect, devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secretan, writes with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian system: ”If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one has ever understood it.”[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor, in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.

The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to any mind. The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an inadmissible conception. They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the act of an intelligence. This idea-G.o.d we have already encountered in the writings of M. Vacherot. We shall find it again more than once as we go on. In Germany, as in France, the theory only becomes popular by undergoing a transformation. The eternal idea manifests itself in the mind of man, and exists nowhere else. Above this idea there is nothing.

Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored. And thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of 1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the _Gazette d'Augsbourg_: ”I begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago.” The deification of man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea.

Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of an ecstatic contemplation. ”Why, what are you doing there?” inquired the visitor. ”I am adoring myself,” replied the young adept in philosophy.

I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it occupies a large place and demands the most serious attention; I am tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.

This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of atheism. ”It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone,” says M.

Saint-Rene Taillandier, ”which has produced all the moral miseries of the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulae, it gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda.”[57]

It was through Feuerbach princ.i.p.ally that the evolution was to be brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in its commencement, to favor at length _the revolts of matter run mad_.

And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the moment that the flesh is emanc.i.p.ated, it aims at absolute empire, and ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us: the work of modern science is to set man free from G.o.d, for G.o.d is an idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to his species; ”the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really serviceable to humanity.”[58]