Meditations and Moral Sketches

by François Guizot

It would not be worth while to live if we gathered from a long life, no other fruit than a little experience and prudence in the affairs of this world, against the moment of leaving it. The prospect of human affairs, and the inward trials of the soul, afford brighter gleams, which spread themselves over the mysteries of nature and the destiny of man, and of this universe in the midst of which man is placed. I have received from practical life, deeper insight into these formidable questions, than meditation and science have ever given me.

The first and most important is this. The world and mankind do not explain themselves naturally and simply by themselves, by the sole virtue of the fixed laws which preside over them, or of the passing determinations which display themselves. Neither nature and her power, nor man and his acts, suffice to explain the prospect which human intellect contemplates or catches a glimpse of.

Then, as nature and man are insufficient to explain themselves, it follows that they are equally so to govern themselves. The government of the universe and of the human race differs from that aggregate of natural laws and facts which human reason observes there, as much as from the accidental laws and facts which human liberty introduces.

That is to say, that beyond the natural and human order which falls under our notice, is the supernatural and superhuman order which God directs and developes beyond the reach of our researches.

And when man ceases to believe this to be the case, ceases to believe in this supernatural order, and to live under the influence of this belief, then disorder intrudes among men and societies of men, and there commits ravages which would infallibly lead to their destruction, did not the wise goodness of God restrain them in their faults, and render them incapable of absolutely withdrawing themselves from the empire of truth, much as they may misunderstand it.

That the religious question is now fairly raised between those who, more or less explicitly and from a variety of motives, do not admit this supernatural order of things, that is, the greater number of philosophers whatever their denomination; and those who really admit it, that is, all Christians; is what no serious mind can deny.

Do I mean then to put on a level and confound all who disallow supernatural order, whether unbelievers or sceptics, atheists or rationalists?

God forbid I should imagine, far less express, anything so absurdly and heinously wicked! I know the happy inconsistencies of the mind of man, and the clouds which, to the eyes of the most learned, cover the paths they are treading. Surely, between the impious man who denies God, and the rationalist who is satisfied that, without going further than nature leads, and taking for granted I know not what transformation, he has found and established a God,—the interval is immense; immense, doubtless, in the eye of divine justice, as well as of human equity. And such is our levity and intellectual depravity, that in this vast space eminent minds and ingenuous hearts may, and, alas! probably always will be met, at every step between gross materialism and pure deism. The variety and forms of error are infinite and infinitely varied; and man, when falling into it, makes infinite efforts to retain some fragments of truth; and God permits him to succeed or honestly persuade himself he has done so, which will one day prove his excuse or else be to him a plank of safety.

I admit all distinctions, all inequalities, all sincerity. I only affirm two things; one, that all the philosophic schools of our day, different as may be their systems and merits, have this in common, that they deny this supernatural order, and strive to explain and govern man and the world without its aid; the other, that where faith in this order does not exist, the bases of moral and social order are deeply and increasingly shaken, man having ceased to live in presence of the only power which really surpasses him, and which is able at once to satisfy and direct him.