I know how much there is of the frivolous and superficial in the return of our time to religious hopes and beliefs. I know how much even serious minds are doubtful and agitated upon this subject, the evils that are still at work, the problems that await solution, and that perhaps a tardy one. Nevertheless, we have got back to the right track. Man does not increase his distance from God; he has turned towards the East; he seeks the light. Here we still yield rather to the force of facts than of ideas; and experience is credited rather than conviction. Still we believe in experience rather than in our own talent, and submit to facts though we hardly render a free and enlightened homage to the truths of which they witness.
It is not yet adoration, but it is the fear of God, that beginning of wisdom.
Had we already reached the point of adoration—were the wisdom for which we have so dearly paid really established amongst us, in the affairs of this world and in those of eternity, in questions political, moral, and religious, in short, in everything; and were we fully satisfied as to the rational lawfulness and practical utility of her counsels, if she enlightened our understandings as she rules our conduct—we should be far other than we are; more tranquil, more confiding, more firm, more worthy, more exalted. We should distinguish further; we should advance higher and faster in the paths of new and amending progress, in which we now walk slowly and with bended head, as if constrained and humbled.
But, I repeat, it is needful, for this salutary transformation of our ideas to be accomplished, that our experience may become our reason. We have more good sense than enlightenment; we act better than we think. Inwardly and deeply we are imbued with prejudices which fetter although they do not rule us; we are still doubtful about the very truths by which we test our deeds; only doubt has changed its form and language. With our fathers it was infatuated and bold; with us it is detracting and useless. Pride has turned it into contempt; and because we do not experience for human nature the unbounded ambition and chimerical hopes which formerly prevailed, we no longer love men tenderly, nor think well of their nature, nor take an interest in their destiny. We imagine that wisdom binds us to indifference and immobility.
Many, too, of the ills of the eighteenth century, which sprung from the maxims then prevalent, and which, to all appearance, ought to have expired with them, still exist. We no longer have the same tenderness for man, nor do we show greater aversion to evil. Indifference has not made us more strict. For though human nature is no longer judged with the same blind partiality, we are still full of indulgence towards it, and cowardly in our treatment of it; we exhibit towards it the same complaisance, without feeling the former esteem and love. Materialist and impious doctrines are on the decline, but we are more than ever tormented by an eager thirst for immediate material happiness.
Is it true then, as is said, that we are in a state of moral decay? Is our age destined to continue the evil of its precursor, and while losing its virtues add to it its own evils?
I confidently answer in the negative. Nothing would tempt me to flatter the age I live in, but I love it. I am struck by its evil; I think a remedy urgently called for, an immediate struggle necessary; I also see in it much good, a good deep and fruitful and sufficient with the help of God to resist and conquer the evil.
I said just now that the great mistakes, the serious maladies of any period are those of the good. On the other side, it is in the sound ideas and good dispositions of the same class that the moral force of an epoch and its means of safety are to be found. Now the general and ruling disposition of the good at the present day is the spirit of order, the deep desire for order after so much trouble and contest.
This is said to be merely the result of prudence, of a clear idea of interest, not of morality.