7
“These are but vain speculations,” it will be said. “What matters, after all, the idea which we form of those things which belong to the unknowable, seeing that the unknowable, were we a thousand times as intelligent as we are, is closed to us for ever and that the idea which we form of it will never have any value?”
That is true; but there are degrees in our ignorance of the unknowable; and each of those degrees marks a triumph of the intelligence. To estimate more and more completely the extent of what it does not know is all that man’s knowledge can hope for. Our idea of the unknowable was and always will be valueless, I admit; but it nevertheless is and will remain the most important idea of mankind. All our morality, all that is in the highest degree noble and profound in our existence has always been based on this idea devoid of real value. To-day, as yesterday, even though it be possible to recognize more clearly that it is too incomplete and relative ever to have any actual value, it is necessary to carry it as high and as far as we can. It alone creates the only atmosphere wherein the best part of ourselves can live. Yes, it is the unknowable into which we shall not enter; but that is no reason for saying to ourselves:
“I am closing all the doors and all the windows; henceforth, I shall interest myself only in things which my everyday intelligence can compass. Those things alone have the right to influence my actions and my thoughts.”
Where should we arrive at that rate? What things can my intelligence compass? Is there a thing in this world that can be separated from the inconceivable? Since there is no means of eliminating that inconceivable, it is reasonable and salutary to make the best of it and therefore to imagine it as stupendously vast as we are able. The gravest reproach that can be brought against the positive religions and notably against Christianity is that they have too often, if not in theory, at least in practice, encouraged such a narrowing of the mystery of the universe. By broadening it, we broaden the space wherein our mind will move. It is for us what we make it: let us then form it of all that we can reach on the horizon of ourselves. As for the mystery itself, we shall, of course, never reach it; but we have a much greater chance of approaching it by facing it and going whither it draws us than by turning our backs upon it and returning to that place where we well know that it no longer is. Not by diminishing our thoughts shall we diminish the distance that separates us from the ultimate truths; but by enlarging them as much as possible we are sure of deceiving ourselves as little as possible. And the loftier our idea of the infinite, the more buoyant and the purer becomes the spiritual atmosphere wherein we live and the wider and deeper the horizon against which our thoughts and feelings stand out, the horizon which is all their life and which they inspire.
“Perpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our faculties,” wrote Herbert Spencer, “and perpetually to find that such ideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations, may realize to us more fully than any other course, the greatness of that which we vainly strive to grasp.... By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as the Unknowable.”