Man is a moral person, that is to say, he is endowed with reason and liberty. He is capable of virtue, and virtue has in him two principal forms, respect of others, and love of others, justice and charity.
Can there be among the attributes possessed by the creature something essential not possessed by the Creator? Whence does the effect draw its reality and its being, except from its cause? What it possesses, it borrows and receives. The cause at least contains all that is essential in the effect. What particularly belongs to the effect, is inferiority, is a lack, is imperfection: from the fact alone that it is dependent and derived, it bears in itself the signs and the conditions of dependence. If, then, we cannot legitimately conclude from the imperfection of the effect in that of the cause, we can and must conclude from the excellence of the effect in the perfection of the cause, otherwise there would be something prominent in the effect which would be without cause.
Such is the principle of our theodicea. It is neither new nor subtle; but it has not yet been thoroughly disengaged and elucidated, and it is, to our eyes, firm against every test. It is by the aid of this principle that we can, up to a certain point, penetrate into the true nature of God.
God is not a being of logic, whose nature can be explained by way of deduction, and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out from a first attribute, we have deduced the attributes of God from each other, after the manner of geometricians and the schoolmen, what do we possess,[246] I pray you, but abstractions? It is necessary to leave these vain dialectics in order to arrive at a real and living God.
The first notion that we have of God, to wit, the notion of an infinite being, is itself given to us independently of all experience. It is the consciousness of ourselves, as being at once, and as being limited, that elevates us directly to the conception of a being who is the principle of our being, and is himself without bounds. This solid and single argument, which is at bottom that of Descartes,[247] opens to us a way that must be followed, in which Descartes too quickly stopped. If the being that we possess forces us to recur to a cause which possesses being in an infinite degree, all that we have of being, that is to say, of substantial attributes, equally requires an infinite cause. Then, God will no longer be merely the infinite, abstract, or at least indeterminate being in which reason and the heart know not where to betake themselves,[248] he will be a real and determined being, a moral person like ours and psychology conducts us without hypothesis to a theodicea at once sublime and related to us.[249]
Before all, if man is free, can it be that God is not free? No one contends that he who is cause of all causes, who has no cause but himself, can be dependent on any thing whatever. But in freeing God from all external constraint, Spinoza subjects him to an internal and mathematical necessity, wherein he finds the perfection of being. Yes, of being which is not a person; but the essential character of personal being is precisely liberty. If, then, God were not free, God would be beneath man. Would it not be strange that the creature should have the marvellous power of disposing of himself, and of freely willing, and that the being who has made him should be subjected to a necessary development, whose cause is only in himself, without doubt, but, in fine, is a sort of abstract power, mechanical or metaphysical, but very inferior to the personal and voluntary cause that we are, and of which we have the clearest consciousness? God is therefore free, since we are free. But he is not free as we are free; for God is at once all that we are, and nothing that we are. He possesses the same attributes that we possess, but elevated to infinity. He possesses an infinite liberty, joined to an infinite intelligence; and, as his intelligence is infallible, excepted from the uncertainties of deliberation, and perceiving at a glance where the good is, so his liberty spontaneously, and without effort, fulfils it.[250]
In the same manner as we transfer to God the liberty that is the foundation of our being, we also transfer to him justice and charity. In man, justice and charity are virtues; in God, they are attributes. What is in us the laborious conquest of liberty, is in him his very nature. If respect of rights is in us the very essence of justice and the sign of the dignity of our being, it is impossible that the perfect being should not know and respect the rights of the lowest beings, since it is he, moreover, who has imparted to them those rights. In God resides a sovereign justice, which renders to each one his due, not according to deceptive appearances, but according to the truth of things. Finally, if man, that limited being, has the power of going out of himself, of forgetting his person, of loving another than himself, of devoting himself to another's happiness, or, what is better, to the perfecting of another, should not the perfect being have, in an infinite degree, this disinterested tenderness, this charity, the supreme virtue of the human person? Yes, there is in God an infinite tenderness for his creatures: he at first manifested it in giving us the being that he might have withheld, and at all times it appears in the innumerable signs of his divine providence. Plato knew this love of God well, and expressed it in those great words, "Let us say that the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose this universe is, that he was good; and he who is good has no species of envy. Exempt from envy, he willed that all things should be, as much as possible, like himself."[251] Christianity went farther: according to the divine doctrine, God so loved men that he gave them his only Son. God is inexhaustible in his charity, as he is inexhaustible in his essence. It is impossible to give more to the creature; he gives him every thing that he can receive without ceasing to be a creature; he gives him every thing, even himself, so far as the creature is in him and he in the creature. At the same time nothing can be lost; for being absolute being, he eternally expands and gives himself without being diminished. Infinite in power, infinite in charity, he bestows his love in exhaustless abundance upon the world, to teach us that the more we give the more we possess. It is egoism, whose root is at the bottom of every heart, even by the side of the sincerest charity, that inculcates in us the error that we lose by self-devotion: it is egoism that makes us call devotion a sacrifice.
If God is wholly just and wholly good, he can will nothing but what is good and just; and, as he is all-powerful, every thing that he wills he can do, and consequently does do. The world is the work of God; it is therefore perfectly made, perfectly adapted to its end.
And nevertheless, there is in the world a disorder that seems to accuse the justice and goodness of God.