III.
Thus the two systems of motions and of forces, brought before the metaphysical world, for they call themselves syntheses, fall short of the mark and do not reach the true principle. The one assigns no cause for the elements and phenomena which it represents. The other attributes to these same elements and phenomena, a word and a name which cannot be a cause. The former does not give, and does not pretend to give, a real explanation. The latter formulates an explanation, but presents nothing satisfactory.
It appears, however, that all the tendencies of modern science are toward the idea of unity in the universal system, toward a simplification and spiritualization in the plan; and the belief of some goes so far as to admit that this plan offers parallel lines more or less similar in both the material and the spiritual world. But here again the rock rises and the danger appears. In making bodies so like spirits, we run the risk of making the spiritual too much like the material, and, in both cases, by such confusion we almost touch on pantheism, the theory of which, consisting in the admission of but one substance, is equally dangerous whether this one substance be material or spiritual. We will allow matter, therefore, to raise itself toward unity, purify itself more and more, and disentangle its essence from its innumerable and marvellous combinations, provided that it be admitted that it possesses a real existence, that it is really matter, that it can never become spirit or thought, and that it is not its own force or cause or reason of being. What would be gained for it from a spiritualist point of view, to admit in matter an immediate power, to clothe it with intrinsic qualities which nothing either in ideas or facts manifests or demonstrates? No problem would be solved thereby, no mystery cleared up; it would be necessary to establish why and how the same substance, at the same time and alternately, feels and does not feel, wills and is inert, thinks and is devoid of intelligence, is immovable in the stone, awakes in the plant, and is organic in the animal, and finally creates and vivifies the genius of man.
There must be logic in the assertion that the essence of matter is found in an atom or in a force, that it is inactive or endowed with movement, that there is in bodies unity or variety of substance, that the different kingdoms are united by greater affinities or separated by more marked distinctions; these properties, comparisons, and differences must have their logic and their reason of being, and do not derive the laws which govern them from a spontaneous or fortuitous formation.
Nothing, consequently, in the secondary explanations which are given to us, can satisfy our metaphysical wants. The mind of man will never stop at the mere properties of things or their effects. Its instinct of causality does not accept incomplete theories and theses which do not sound the depths. Casting aside all idea of confusion and of inexact comparison, the human mind wishes to rise higher; it wishes, in its admiration for order and the harmony of phenomena, to ascend to the very summit of being. Yes, it admits and recognizes the fact that every thing which exists has a single and sovereign cause, and this cause is itself the most spiritual of spiritual substances—God the creator and ordainer of worlds. Author of all things, God causes with the qualities which belong to him the different manifestations of nature; he acts on matter, possesses it, causes it to subsist, gives it the power of producing its phenomena, is its force, its order, its law; and thus, if we may say so, he animates the world, not indeed in the same manner as the human soul animates the body, because we cannot compare essences and actions so unlike each other, but with a certain superior and divine power of animation which produces the being, motion, and life of all that exists in the universe, moves or breathes, as the soul is the source and focus of the life of the body.
To destroy this supreme cause is to degrade at the same time the material and the intellectual world; it is to renounce the notion of perfection and of the absolute; it is to condemn, together with one of the mother-ideas, one of the axioms of the human mind, that logic which can never see aught complete or satisfactory in mere effects or phenomena; it is to attack one of the most beautiful faculties of the intelligence, of that intelligence which the contingent cannot content, which will not allow itself to be restrained by the mere limits of time and space, which, from the present which it studies, from facts which it investigates, and peculiarities which it admires, ascends to the infinite, to the all-powerful, to the Eternal.
Thus we consider that the most recent discoveries of science, in their rational and superior interpretation, lead us naturally to God, and we have at the same time the belief and the hope that materialism will be involuntarily stricken down, and will perish perhaps by the very hands of those who study and search after matter alone.
No doubt the considerations which might be actually drawn from the results obtained do not lead to definite theories nor do they offer any thing but premature conclusions. The majority of the savants, moreover, properly refuse to touch on the domain of the supernatural and metaphysical; they confine themselves to facts; some so veil their opinions and philosophical doctrines as even to cause us to doubt whether they follow the standard of spiritualism or of materialism. They do not arrogate to themselves either the right or the power of drawing conclusions; and the synthesis which results from their experiments can only be a premature conjecture, more or less plausible.
But since their researches already give occasion to perceptions so simple and so grand, since they open horizons in the distance where light certainly exists, since there is from the stand-point of truth a serene and unalterable confidence in the final and definite results of modern discoveries, we may be permitted even now to describe them for the elevation and the encouragement of the mind, for the justification and the honor of human science, for the revindication of the grandeur and of the glory of God.