Man is not a simple product of nature; in vain does he labor to degrade himself by desiring to find the explanation of his spiritual being in matter brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the summit and principle of the universe; in vain does he labor to deify himself. He is great only by reason of the divine rays which inform his heart, his conscience, and his reason. From the moment that he believes himself to be the source of light, he passes into night. When thought has risen from nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its impetus be not strong enough to carry it on to God. These assertions do but translate the great facts of man's intellectual history. "There is no nation so barbarous," said Cicero,[160] "there are no men so savage as not to have some tincture of religion. Many there are who form false notions of the gods; ... but all admit the existence of a divine power and nature.... Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all nations is to be reckoned a law of nature." No discovery has diminished the value of these words of the Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of human society, there remains always some vestige of the religious sentiment. The knowledge of the Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition; but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world is found wherever there are men.
Cicero brings forward this universal consent as a very strong proof of the existence of the gods. The supporters of atheism dispute the value of this argument. They say: "General opinion proves nothing. How many fabulous legends have been set up by the common belief into historic verities! All mankind believed for a long time that the sun revolved about the earth. Truth makes way in the world only by contradicting opinions generally received. The faith of the greater number is rather a mark of error than a sign of truth." This objection rests upon a confusion of ideas. Humanity has no testimony to render upon scientific questions, the solution of which is reserved for patient study; but humanity bears witness to its own nature. The universality of religion proves that the search after the divine is, as said the Roman orator, a law of nature. When therefore we rise from matter to man, and from man to God, we are not going in an arbitrary road, but are advancing according to the law of nature ascertained by the testimony of humanity. It needs a mind at once very daring and very frivolous not to feel the importance of this consideration.
In our days atheism is being revived. In going over in your memory the symptoms of this revival, as we have pointed them out to you, you will perceive that the direct and primitive negation of God is comparatively rare; but that what is frequently attempted is, if I may venture so to speak, to effect the subtraction of God. Any religious theory whatever is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such remarks as these: "How is it that real sciences are formed? By observation on the one hand, and by reasoning on the other. By observation, and reasoning applied to observation, we obtain the science of nature and the science of humanity. But do we wish to rise above nature and humanity? We fail of all basis of observation; and reason works in a vacuum. There is therefore no possible way of reaching to God. Is God an object of experience? No. Can God be demonstrated à priori by syllogisms? No. The idea of God therefore cannot be established, as answering to a reality, either by the way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it is a mere hypothesis. We do not, however, it is added, in our view of the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid!) to exclude the sentiment of the Divine from the soul, nor the word God from fine poetry. We accept religious thoughts as dreams full of charm. But is it a question of reality? then God is an hypothesis, and hypothesis has no admission into the science of realities."
These ideas place those who accept them in a position which is not without its advantages. When a man of practical mind says with a smile, "Do you happen to believe in God?" one may reply to him, smiling in turn, "Have I said that God is a real Being?" And if a religious man asks, "Are you falling then into atheism?" one may assume an indignant tone, and say: "We have never denied God: whoever says we have is a slanderer!" So God remains, for the necessities of poetry and art. But as we cannot know either what He is, or whether He is, real life goes on in complete and entire independence of Him. The taking up of this position with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a literary artifice. In other cases it is seriously done. There are certain natures of extreme delicacy, which, touched by the breath of modern scepticism, have lost all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in the absence of all belief, and they do not deny that which they believe no longer. Such a mind is in an exceptional position. Is it yours? and would you preserve it? Keep a solitary path, and do not seek to communicate your ideas to others. Contact with the public, and such an unfolding even of your own thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work of proselytism, would place you under the empire of those laws which govern the human mind in these matters. Now what are these laws? A poet has already answered for us this question:
En présence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.[161]
A famous writer expands the same thought as follows: "Doubt about things which it highly concerns us to know," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a condition which does too great violence to the human mind; nor does it long bear up against it, but in spite of itself comes to a decision one way or another, and likes better to be mistaken than to believe nothing."[162] Such is the law. We have met with the pretension to maintain the mind independent of God, without either denying or asserting His existence, and we have seen how completely this pretension fails in the presence of facts. The sceptic makes vain efforts to continue in a state of doubt, but the ground fails him, and he slips into negation: he affirms that humanity has been mistaken, and that God is not. But neither does this negation succeed any the more in keeping its ground; it strikes too violently against all the instincts of our nature. The human mind is under an imperious necessity to worship something; if God fails it, it sets itself to adore nature or humanity; atheism is transformed into idolatry. Recollect the destinies of the critical school and of the positive philosophy! Let us now examine, with serious attention, that attempt to eliminate God which is the starting-point in this course along which the mind is hurried so fatally.
God is not, I grant, an object of experience. I grant it at least in this sense, that God is not an object of sensible experience. The experience of God (if I may be allowed the expression), the feeling of His action upon the soul, is not a phenomenon open to the observation of all, and apart from determined spiritual conditions. In order to be sensible of the action of God, we must draw near to Him. In order to draw near to Him, we must, if not believe with firm faith in His existence, at least not deny Him. The captives of Plato's cavern can have no experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery on those who speak to them of the sun. I grant again that God cannot possibly be the object of a demonstration such as the science of geometry requires; I grant it fully, I have already said so. Every man who reasons, affirms God in one sense; and the foundation of all reasoning cannot be the conclusion of a demonstration. God therefore, in the view of science formed according to our ordinary methods, is, I grant, an hypothesis. And here, Gentlemen, allow me a passing word of explanation.
When I say that God is an hypothesis, I run the risk of exciting, in many of you, feelings of astonishment not unmixed with pain. But I must beg you to remember the nature of these lectures. We are here far from the calm retirement of the sanctuary, and from such words of solemn exhortation as flow from the lips of the religious teacher. I have introduced you to the ardent conflicts of contemporary thought, and into the midst of the clamors of the schools. The soul which is seeking to hold communion with God, and so from their fountain-head to be filled with strength and joy, has something better to do than to be listening to such discourses as these. Solitude, prayer, a calm activity pursued under the guidance of the conscience,—these are the best paths for such a soul, and the discussions in which we are now engaged are not perhaps altogether free from danger for one who has remained hitherto undisturbed in the first simplicity of his faith. But we are not masters of our own ways, and the circumstances of the present times impose upon us special duties. The barriers which separate the school and the world are everywhere thrown down. Everywhere shreds of philosophy, and very often of bad philosophy,—scattered fragments of theological science, and very often of a deplorable theological science,—are insinuating themselves into the current literature. There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a political journal, which does not speak on occasion, or without occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests. The most sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public opinion. At such a juncture, can men who preserve faith in their own soul remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow limits of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common ground, and fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For this purpose it is necessary to make use of terms which may alarm some consciences, and to state questions which run the risk of startling sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a passing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of their passage upon the Rock of Ages.
I now therefore resume my course of argument. God is neither an object of experience, nor yet of demonstration properly so called. In the view of science, as it is commonly understood, of science which follows out the chain of its deductions, without giving attention to the very foundations of all the work of the reason,—God, that chief of all realities for a believing heart, that experience of every hour, that evidence superior to all proof, God is an hypothesis. I grant it. Hence it is inferred that God has no place in science, for that hypothesis has no place in a science worthy of the name. But this I deny; and in support of this denial I proceed to show that the hypothesis which it is pretended to get quit of, is the generating principle of all human knowledge.
Whence does science proceed? Does it result from mere experience? No. What does experience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience, separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to demonstration,—a demonstration which constitutes his glory. It is easy, without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no thoughts, and will know nothing.