There is, in man's heart or soul, impressed in indelible characters, a tendency after the infinite, a craving almost infinite in its energy, such is the violence with which it impels the soul to seek and yearn after its object. To prove such a tendency were useless. That void, that feeling of satiety and sadness, which overwhelms the soul, even after the enjoyment of the most exquisite pleasure, either sensible or sentimental; the phenomenon of solitaries in all times and countries; the very fact of the existence of religion in all ages and among all peoples; the enthusiasm, the recklessness and barbarity which characterize the wars undertaken for religion's sake; the love of the marvellous and the mysterious exhibited by the multitude; that sense of terror and reverence, that feeling of our own nothingness, which steals into our souls in contemplating the wide ocean in a still or stormy night, or in contemplating a wilderness, a mountain, or a mighty chasm, all are evident proofs of that imperious, delicious, violent craving of our souls after the infinite. How otherwise explain all this? Why do we feel a void, a sadness, a kind of pain, after having enjoyed the most stirring delights? Because the infinite is the weight of the soul—the centre of gravity of the heart—because created pleasures, however delightful or exquisite, being finite, can never quiet that craving, can never fill up that chasm placed between us and God.
The pretended sages of mankind have never been able to exterminate religion, because they could never root out of the soul of man that tendency. I say pretended sages, because all real geniuses have, with very few exceptions, been religious; for in them that tendency is more keenly and more imperiously felt.
This is the second reason of the prevalence of Pantheism. To promise the actual and immediate possession of the infinite, nay, the transformation into the infinite, is to entice the very best of human aspirations, is to touch the deepest and most sensitive chord of the human heart.
Both these reasons we have drawn a priori; we might now prove, a posteriori, from history, how every particular error has either fallen into Pantheism or disappeared altogether. But since this would carry us too far, we will exemplify it by one error—Protestantism.
The essence of Protestantism lies in emancipating human reason from dependence on the reason of God. It is true that at its dawn it was not proclaimed in this naked form, nor is it thus announced at the present time; but its very essence lies in that. For if human reason be made to judge objects which God's reason alone can comprehend, man is literally emancipated from the reason of God.
What does this supreme principle of Protestantism mean, that every individual must, by reading the Bible, find for himself what he has to believe?
Are the truths written in the Bible intelligible or superintelligible; that is, endowed with evidence immediate or mediate, or are they mysteries?
If they be purely intelligible, endowed with evidence mediate or immediate, there is no possible need of the Bible, for, in that case, reason could find them by itself. If they be mysteries, how can reason, unaided by any higher power, find them out? It will not do to say, They are written in the Bible, and reason has merely to apprehend them. Suppose a dispute should arise as to the right meaning of the Bible; who is to decide the dispute? Reason? Then reason must grasp and comprehend mysteries in order to decide the dispute. For none can be judge unless he is qualified thoroughly to understand the matter of the dispute. From this it is evident that to make reason judge of the faith is to make it judge of the mysteries of the infinite, and, therefore, is to emancipate the reason of man from subjection to the reason of God. Hence, Protestantism was rightly called a masked rationalism.