Thus, on all sides, on that of metaphysics, on that of æsthetics, especially on that of ethics, we elevate ourselves to the same principle, the common centre, the last foundation, of all truth, all beauty, all goodness. The true, the beautiful, and the good, are only different revelations of the same being. Human intelligence, interrogated in regard to all these ideas which are incontestably in it, always makes us the same response; it sends us back to the same explanation,—at the foundation of all, above all, God, always God.
We have arrived, then, from degree to degree, at religion. We are in fellowship with the great philosophies which all proclaim a God, and, at the same time, with the religions that cover the earth, with the Christian religion, incomparably the most perfect and the most holy. As long as philosophy has not reached natural religion,—and by this we mean, not the religion at which man arrives in that hypothetical state that is called the state of nature, but the religion which is revealed to us by the natural light accorded to all men,—it remains beneath all worship, even the most imperfect, which at least gives to man a father, a witness, a consoler, a judge. A true theodicea borrows in some sort from all religious beliefs their common principle, and returns it to them surrounded with light, elevated above all uncertainty, guarded against all attack. Philosophy may present itself in its turn to mankind; it also has a right to man's confidence, for it speaks to him of God in the name of all his needs and all his faculties, in the name of reason and sentiment.
Observe that we have arrived at these high conclusions without any hypothesis, by the aid of processes at once very simple and perfectly rigorous. Truths of different orders being given, truths which have not been made by us, and are not sufficient for themselves, we have ascended from these truths to their author, as one goes from the effect to the cause, from the sign to the thing signified, from phenomenon to being, from quality to subject. These two principles—that every effect supposes a cause, and every quality a subject—are universal and necessary principles. They have been put by us in their full light, and demonstrated in the manner in which principles undemonstrable, because they are primitive, can be demonstrated. Moreover, to what are these necessary principles applied? To metaphysical and moral truths, which are also necessary. It was therefore necessary to conclude in the existence of a cause and a necessary being, or, indeed, it was necessary to deny either the necessity of the principle of cause and the principle of substance, or the necessity of the truths to which we applied them, that is to say, to renounce all notions of common sense; for these very principles and these truths, with their character of universality and necessity, compose common sense.
Not only is it certain that every effect supposes a cause, and every quality a being, but it is equally certain that an effect of such a nature supposes a cause of the same nature, and that a quality or an attribute marked with such or such essential characters supposes a being in which these same characters are again found in an eminent degree. Whence it follows, that we have very legitimately concluded from truth in an intelligent cause and substance, from beauty in a being supremely beautiful, and from a moral law composed at once of justice and charity in a legislator supremely just and supremely good.
And we have not made a geometrical and algebraical theodicea, after the example of many philosophers, and the most illustrious. We have not deduced the attributes of God from each other, as the different terms of an equation are converted, or as from one property of a triangle the other properties are deduced, thus ending at a God wholly abstract, good perhaps for the schools, but not sufficient for the human race. We have given to theodicea a surer foundation—psychology. Our God is doubtless also the author of the world, but he is especially the father of humanity; his intelligence is ours, with the necessity of essence and infinite power added. So our justice and our charity, related to their immortal exemplar, give us an idea of the divine justice and charity. Therein we see a real God, with whom we can sustain a relation also real, whom we can comprehend and feel, and who in his turn can comprehend and feel our efforts, our sufferings, our virtues, our miseries. Made in his image, conducted to him by a ray of his own being, there is between him and us a living and sacred tie.
Our theodicea is therefore free at once from hypothesis and abstraction. By preserving ourselves from the one, we have preserved ourselves from the other. Consenting to recognize God only in his signs visible to the eyes and intelligible to the mind, it is on infallible evidence that we have elevated ourselves to God. By a necessary consequence, setting out from real effects and real attributes, we have arrived at a real cause and a real substance, at a cause having in power all its essential effects, at a substance rich in attributes. I wonder at the folly of those who, in order to know God better, consider him, they say, in his pure and absolute essence, disengaged from all limitative determination. I believe that I have forever removed the root of such an extravagance.[282] No; it is not true that the diversity of determinations, and, consequently, of qualities and attributes, destroys the absolute unity of a being; the infallible proof of it is that my unity is not the least in the world altered by the diversity of my faculties. It is not true that unity excludes multiplicity, and multiplicity unity; for unity and multiplicity are united in me. Why then should they not be in God? Moreover, far from altering unity in me, multiplicity develops it and makes its productiveness appear. So the richness of the determinations and the attributes of God is exactly the sign of the plenitude of his being. To neglect his attributes, is therefore to impoverish him; we do not say enough, it is to annihilate him,—for a being without attributes exists not; and the abstraction of being, human or divine, finite or infinite, relative or absolute, is nonentity.
Theodicea has two rocks,—one, which we have just signalized to you, is abstraction, the abuse of dialectics; it is the vice of the schools and metaphysics. If we are forced to shun this rock, we run the risk of being dashed against the opposite rock, I mean that fear of reasoning that extends to reason, that excessive predominance of sentiment, which developing in us the loving and affectionate faculties at the expense of all the others, throws us into anthropomorphism without criticism, and makes us institute with God an intimate and familiar intercourse in which we are somewhat too forgetful of the august and fearful majesty of the divine being. The tender and contemplative soul can neither love nor contemplate in God the necessity, the eternity, the infinity, that do not come within the sphere of imagination and the heart, that are only conceived. It therefore neglects them. Neither does it study God in truth of every kind, in physics, metaphysics, and ethics, which manifest him; it considers in him particularly the characters to which affection is attached. In adoration, Fenelon retrenches all fear that nothing but love may subsist, and Mme. Guyon ends by loving God as a lover.
We escape these opposite excesses of a refined sentimentality and a chimerical abstraction, by always keeping in mind both the nature of God, by which he escapes all relation with us,—necessity, eternity, infinity, and at the same time those of his attributes which are our own attributes transferred to him, for the very simple reason that they came from him.
I am able to conceive God only in his manifestations and by the signs which he gives of his existence, as I am able to conceive any being only by the attributes of that being, a cause only by its effects, as I am able to conceive myself only by the exercise of my faculties. Take away my faculties and the consciousness that attests them to me, and I am not for myself. It is the same with God,—take away nature and the soul, and every sign of God disappears. It is therefore in nature and the soul that he must be sought and found.
The universe, which comprises nature and man, manifests God. Is this saying that it exhausts God? By no means. Let us always consult psychology. I know myself only by my acts; that is certain; and what is not less certain is, that all my acts do not exhaust, do not equal my power and my substance; for my power, at least that of my will, can always add an act to all those which it has already produced, and it has the consciousness, at the same time that it is exercised, of containing in itself something to be exercised still. Of God and the world must be said two things in appearance contrary,—we know God only by the world, and God is essentially distinct and different from the world. The first cause, like all secondary causes, manifests itself only by its effects; it can even be conceived only by them, and it surpasses them by all of the difference between the Creator and the created, the perfect and the imperfect. The world is indefinite; it is not infinite; for, whatever may be its quantity, thought can always add to it. To the myriads of worlds that compose the totality of the world, may be added new worlds. But God is infinite, absolutely infinite in his essence, and an indefinite series cannot equal the infinite; for the indefinite is nothing else than the finite more or less multiplied and capable of continuous multiplication. The world is a whole which has its harmony; for a God could make only a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of the world corresponds to the unity of God, as indefinite quantity is a defective sign of the infinity of God. To say that the world is God, is to admit only the world and deny God. Give to this whatever name you please, it is at bottom atheism. On the one hand, to suppose that the world is void of God, and that God is separate from the world, is an insupportable and almost impossible abstraction. To distinguish is not to separate. I distinguish myself, but do not separate myself from my qualities and my acts. So God is not the world, although he is in it everywhere present in spirit and in truth.[283]