CHAPTER III.

THEISM.

REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESES WHICH WILL REPLACE DOGMA.

I. Introduction—Progress of metaphysical hypothesis—Metaphysical hypotheses destined to increasing diversity in details, and increasing agreement on essential points—Importance of the moral element in metaphysical hypotheses—The part played by conscience in human morality will not diminish, as Mr. Spencer says—Sympathetic groups under which divers systems of metaphysics will be ranged.

II. Theism—1. Probable fate of the creation hypothesis—The author of the world conceived as a prime mover—Eternity of movement—The author of the world conceived as a creator properly so called—Illusion involved in the conception of nothing—Criticism of the creation hypothesis from the point of view of morals: the problem of evil and of the responsibility of the creator—Attempts to save optimism—Hypothesis of a God creating free agents, “workmen” and not “work”—Reciprocal determinism and the illusion of spontaneity—Immorality of the temptation—Hypothesis of the fall, its impossibility—God the tempter—Lucifer and God—2. Probable fate of the notion of Providence—Hypotheses to explain a special Providence and miracles thus insufficient—Hypothesis of a non-omnipotent God proposed by John Stuart Mill—The God of Comtism—Religion should be not solely human but cosmic—The fate of the philosophical idea of God—Rational religion proposed by the neo-Kantians—Ultimate transformation of the notion of Divinity and of Providence—Human Providence and progressive Divinity in the world.

_I. Introduction—Progress of metaphysical hypothesis._

[Sidenote: Trend visible in metaphysical speculation.]

To say that humanity, in its search for a plausible explanation of the world, finds itself in the presence of a great number of hypotheses among which it must choose does not mean that these hypotheses should be regarded with a benevolent neutrality, that they are equivalent in the eyes of reason. Far from it: we believe that metaphysical hypotheses already are following a certain general direction and will continue to do so in the future. Our conception of the unknown will become precise as our knowledge of the knowable becomes complete. Even morals, which vary so markedly from country to country, tend to approach a single type and to become identical among all civilized peoples. The same may be said of the practical part of all religions. Rites become every day simpler, and dogmas do the same, and metaphysical hypotheses will do the same. By the progress of human thought, the avenues that lead to truth will be better known. We regard it as certain, for example, that all effort will be abandoned, if it has not been abandoned already, to conceive mankind’s ideal as embodied in the jealous and evil God of the Bible.

[Sidenote: Number of metaphysical hypotheses not destined to decrease.]

The angle at which different human beings look out upon the ideal will continually diminish; and as the angle diminishes, the power of vision will increase, and this unexpected result will follow: that metaphysical hypotheses concerning the world, and its destiny will never be less numerous nor less varied, in spite of the increasing convergence. Human thought may even become more personal, more original, fuller of delicate distinctions, and at the same time less inconsistent as one passes from mind to mind. As mankind approximates the truth its details will become more various, and the beauty of the whole more marked. An approach to certitude augments the dignity and probability of the possible hypotheses without diminishing their number. Astronomy, for example, has increased the sum of the known truths about celestial bodies and at the same time multiplied the number of possible hypotheses concerning them; the most definite knowledge may thus be the most fertile in views of every sort, even of obscure ones. As the human mind progresses it will see the aspects of nature diversify and the laws of nature unify. This evening from Sermione, the peninsula dear to Catullus, I saw on the surface of Lago di Garda the reflection of as many stars as I could have seen had I lifted my eyes to heaven. Each star reflected in the lake was in reality nothing but a brilliant drop of water, close to my hand; each of the stars in heaven is a world separate from me by an infinite reach of space; the stars of heaven and of the lake were, however, to me the same. The real distance of things and the depth of the universe escape the human eye. But science corrects the eye, measures distances at their just worth, probes ever deeper into the vault of heaven, distinguishing objects from their reflections. Science takes account at once of the place of the ray in the water and of its origin in the sky. It will perhaps one day discover, in an infinitely magnified expanse of thought, the primitive and central spring of light which as yet communicates with us only by reflection and broken rays and flying scintillations from some unstable mirror.

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[Sidenote: Moralism.]

Since the Stoics and Kant, metaphysical hypotheses have come to be regarded from a new point of view. What to-day has come to be the great charm of such hypotheses is that they endeavour to lend a moral significance to the world, to impress upon the course of universal evolution a direction conformable to that of our conscience as affectionate and sociable beings. The future history of religion may be summed up in this law: that religious dogmas, transformed at first into simple metaphysical conjectures, reduced later to a certain number of definite hypotheses, among which the individual made his choice on increasingly rational grounds, ultimately came to bear principally on the problem of morals. Religious metaphysics, in effect, will result in a transcendental theory of universality, an ideal sociology embracing in its sweep all the beings that constitute the universe; and this sociology will be founded, not upon physical inductions, like that of the earliest religions, nor upon ontological inductions like that of the first system of metaphysics, but upon the moral conscience of mankind. Animism, theism, pantheism, are destined to fall under the domination of what may be called moralism.

[Sidenote: Increasing interest in moralism.]

Such diverse solutions as may be given of the moral problem thus understood will always interest mankind, but they will occupy a smaller and smaller place in its practical life; they will lose the extraordinary influence that religions have often possessed over the conduct of men. As society progresses the moral agent will find less and less need to appeal for support in the conduct of life to metaphysical hypotheses and systematic uncertainty. Positive morality will more and more completely suffice for the ordinary exigencies of life. Generosity of heart will be less dependent on the intelligence for its adventurous impulses; it will produce them unassisted. Metaphysical speculations will tend to become, like the highest æsthetic products, a luxury; they will be sought for their own sakes, and for the general elevation of mind that they bestow, rather than for guidance in particular matters of conduct. The destiny of the world will interest us quite apart from any question of our own destiny, and our voyages into the unknown will be prompted not by selfishness but by disinterested curiosity.

[Sidenote: And in reflective rectitude.]

We do not believe, however, with Mr. Spencer that the part to be played by the reflective conscience in human life is destined to diminish, nor that man will come to do what is right in obedience to a blind instinct—to rush into the fire or throw himself into the water to save the life of a fellow-creature almost as irreflectively as he would lift his hat to a friend in the street. On the contrary, man will become more and more reflective and philosophical in all things, and among others, in regard to the directing principles of his conduct. And there is no room in all this for the belief that the dissolving influence exercised by reflection upon primitive instincts will seriously hinder the growth of the social instinct. Intelligence paralyzes instincts only when it is obliged to oppose them, when it does not justify them, when it aims really at displacing them.[129] But speculative thought will always justify social instinct, even considered purely from the scientific and positive point of view. As we have shown, the most extraordinary manifestation of the social instinct, devotion, belongs to the general law of life, and does not in the least possess the abnormal character that has sometimes been attributed to it; to run a risk for someone else is not to be purely unselfish, for one is attracted by the sublimity of danger and of risk, and a capacity for this attraction has been developed and rendered powerful by natural selection in the higher species of the animal kingdom; the desire to expose one’s self is almost normal in a morally well-constituted individual. In morals as in æsthetics sublimity is allied to beauty.[130] The speculative instinct will, therefore, not counteract the social instinct; it will rather fortify it, and human disinterestedness generally, for speculation itself is the most disinterested act of the mental life. Generally speaking, reflective conscience is always more disinterested than irreflective action, which is typified in reflex action; it is less directly useful to life on its simplest terms. Parallel to the development of conscience and of speculative intelligence there goes always a development of our moral activity. The more truly intelligent a human being is the more active he is; and the more active he is, the less self-sufficing he becomes, the greater his need to live for someone else. Antisocial beings are almost always mentally and physically dawdlers, who are incapable of continuous mental or physical labour. Activity of mind must inevitably, therefore, indirectly fortify the moral instincts. Sociality is developed by thought.

[129] See upon this point the author’s _Problèmes d’esthétique_, p. 139 (_De l’antagonisme entre l’esprit scientifique et l’instinct_.)

[130] _Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation_, p. 215.

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[Sidenote: Possible to classify the diverse systems of future.]

Although by the progress of analysis the complication of the great mental and moral hypotheses must increase, it is possible, even at the present day, to foresee the main synthetic groups under which the several systems will be classifiable.

[Sidenote: Present interest in such systems.]

This book is not a treatise on metaphysics: an exposition and criticism of these systems will not, therefore, here be expected; but their characteristic spirit, which has also been the spirit of the great religions, is of interest to us here, and, for us, constitutes their value. It is this spirit which is at once speculative and religious, in the true sense of the word, that it is important, accordingly, to elicit, and that wholly without dogmatical or polemical aim of any kind. Absolute sincerity, impersonal and passionate sincerity, is the first duty of the philosopher. To arrange the world according to one’s personal preferences, to be on the lookout, not for the most probable, but for the most consoling hypotheses, is to resemble a merchant who should count his credits only when he is making up his books and should indulge in none but consoling additions. The strictest probity is demanded of him who balances the great book of life; the philosopher should hide nothing either from others or from himself. We shall endeavour, therefore, to set forth, what are in our judgment the diverse aspects under which the knowable as a whole, and therefore also the unknowable, or if you prefer, the great unknown, present themselves to-day. We shall endeavour to interpret the great metaphysical systems sympathetically, without, however, any illusions in regard to their incompleteness and their errors. In a certain church in Verona sacred texts are inscribed on the marble slabs of which the floor is composed; they interpret and complete each other, and, however obscure at first, gradually become plain as one advances under the high arched roof; thus it is in life: the religious and philosophical beliefs in the midst of which we live seem to us at first enigmatical and mysterious, we trample them under foot without understanding them; but, as we advance, we discover their hidden meaning, their naïveté, and their profoundity. At every step in life a new perspective into the heart of humanity is thrown open to us; to live is to understand, and to understand is not only to tolerate but to love. Such love, however, is not incompatible with clearness of vision, nor with an effort to transform and ameliorate the beloved object; on the contrary, a really active love ought to be, more than all else, a desire for transformation and for progress. To love a being or a belief is to seek to make it better.

_II. Theism._

[Sidenote: Theism and religion distinct.]

The majority of people scarcely see any possible alternative to such and such a determinate religion except atheism. The fact is, of course, quite otherwise. Religious thought manifests itself in a hundred forms; why should free-thought be restricted to a single conception of the universe? I have known a multitude of free-thinkers who believed more sincerely in the existence of God, in the immortality of the soul, and, in general, in spiritual principles than a great many professed worshippers. Were they right to do so? Was Voltaire, for example, who based his affirmation of the existence of God upon the splendour of a sunrise, somewhat naïve, and inclined to mistake an emotion for a bit of proof? It makes little difference; what we wish to set in relief is that faith in a priest is not necessarily part and parcel of faith in a God, and that the disappearance of the former may lend an increase of power and of refinement to the latter. No single philosophic doctrine is to be regarded as standing alone in opposition to the whole body of religions; religions and philosophies together are all philosophic doctrines, all hypotheses, and none of them above discussion. We say to the individual: “Weigh and choose.” And among these hypotheses we include that of which modern religions constitute the symbolic expression, theism. If the religious anomy which we regard as the ideal implies the suppression of everything in the nature of an external revelation, it does not on that account exclude a subjective and personal intuition of divinity. Even mystics may find their account in the religious individualism of the future. Intuition, however, in metaphysics as in morals, is every day losing ground. The progress of ideas will result in the gradual triumph of scientific induction over alleged natural intuition, of probability over faith. Subjective revelation will disappear as objective revelation is doing, and give place by degrees to reasoning. Dogmatic theism, like all dogma, is doomed; but what is purest in the theistic spirit may survive.

[Sidenote: God conceived as prime mover a superfluity according to modern physics.]

I. Let us first consider the probable fate of the dogma of the Creator, which belongs to the great Jewish, Christian, and Islamite religions. Science follows the law of parsimony; nature economizes force, science economizes ideas. The first economy to be undertaken might well relate precisely to the idea of the creation. The author of the world may be conceived as the universal motor. But the conception of cause as a source of movement, or as a prime motor, is full of contradictions and is becoming more and more foreign to modern philosophy. For the conception of a first cause implies a pre-existing state of repose, and repose is no more primitive and absolute than nothingness. Nothing is in repose, nothing has ever been in repose. The most motionless atom in the atmosphere describes in its vibration, according to Clausius, four hundred and forty-seven metres a second in a space of ninety-five millionths of a millimetre; it receives during this time four billion seven hundred million shocks. The vibrating atom of hydrogen describes one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four metres in a second. Repose is an illusion of the human mind, and the conception of a divine first mover is a second illusion based on the first. The eternal movement that stirred the molecules of the primitive substance, later grouped them into spheres, and the spheres began whirling of their own accord in the ether without need of a preliminary push from the sacred beetle (as the Egyptian legend has it) that rolls his sacred ball, which is the image of the universe. Where, as Strauss remarked, Newton felt called upon to assume a “divine first impulse,” and Buffon was obliged to resort to the hypothesis of a comet colliding with the primitive sphere and breaking it up into the fragments which now constitute the earth and the planets, we need invoke nothing but the fixity of natural laws. Since Kant, Descartes, and Laplace, we possess an approximate explanation of the formation of the stars, which are alternately produced and dissolved by the concentration and resolution of material masses—are born to be “devoured,” as Kant said, in the abyss of eternity. One and the same cause, resistance of the ether, explains the agglomeration of nebulous matter into nucleï, and the slowing down of the motion of the spheres thus formed, and the ultimate fall of these spheres upon some neighbouring centre of attraction and the resulting dispersion into nebulæ.

[Sidenote: And with physiology.]

More than that, by the progress of physiology and natural history, the organic and the inorganic worlds have come to be conceived as so closely related that a true explanation of the first would probably include a true explanation of the second. The chasm that once existed between life and what sustains life has been closed. If our laboratories do not enable us to catch spontaneous generation in the act, the reason is simply that their resources are not equal to those of nature, that they have not the same means at their disposal, that the so-called primitive beings that we endeavour to produce in the laboratory are really not primitive. Men of science who have attempted such experiments resemble the followers of Darwin who have tried to transform an anthropoid ape into a human being. Nature permits of an infinite convergence of forces upon a determinate point, that cannot be realized in a laboratory. More than that, time, which we are always inclined to neglect, is a necessary factor in the evolution of things; what is natural is slow. To find the earliest stages of organic life, as to find the early stages in the formation of a star, we must go far back into the remote past.

[Sidenote: God conceived as a Creator worse than superfluous.]

If there is no necessity for the conception of God as a prime mover, is there any necessity for the conception of God as the Creator of the universe? A creative cause seems to the modern mind less and less needed for the explanation of the world, for the fact of existence stands in no need of explanation; what rather needs explanation is non-existence. Death, repose, are all relative and derived. Death implies life, and is itself only a provisional stage, an interval between two metamorphoses. There exists no _punctum mortuum_, no one really dead point in the universe. It is by a pure artifice of thought that religions have conceived the universe as beginning in annihilation, in death (which is a remote consequence of life), in order to afford an opportunity for the intervention of a creative power: creation is a resurrection following on a fictitious death.

[Sidenote: Nothingness an aspect of existence.]

The real state of the case is not that existence springs from non-existence, but that non-existence is a simple aspect of existence, or rather an illusion of thought. The notion of creation will be more and more widely displaced by that of evolution and variation. Different worlds are eternal variations on the same theme, the _tat tvam asi_ of the Hindus tends to become a scientific variety. A substantial unity of the world and the solidarity of all the beings in the world will, undoubtedly, be more and more clearly demonstrated.

[Sidenote: God responsible for evil.]

The creation may be considered, since Kant’s time, as a demonstrably indemonstrable and even inconceivable hypothesis; but Kant did not stay to inquire whether the Biblical dogma of the creation will not tend to appear to us increasingly immoral; a tendency which, according to Kant’s principles, would suffice to cause it to be rejected in the future. A doubt, which some thinkers of antiquity felt keenly, has come to be widely diffused in our days; a Creator is a being in whom all things find their reason and their cause, and who, consequently, is ultimately responsible for everything. He is responsible for all the evil in the universe. As the idea of infinite power, of supreme liberty of action became inseparable from the conception of God, God was deprived of every excuse, for the Absolute is dependent upon nothing. Everything, on the contrary, depends on Him and finds its reason in Him. In the last resort He alone is culpable; His work, in the manifold series of its effects, presents itself to modern thought as one sole action, and this action, like any other, is capable of being sat upon in moral judgment; the author is to be judged by his work, the world passes judgment on God. Well, as evil and immorality in the universe, with the progress of the moral sense, become more shocking, it seems that to admit the creation hypothesis is to centralize, to concentrate, all the immorality of the world in one being, and to justify the paradox: “God is evil.” To admit the doctrine of a Creator is, in a word, to banish evil from the world to God, its primordial source; to absolve men and the universe and accuse the author of both.

[Sidenote: Evil of denying the existence of evil to exculpate God.]

There is something still worse than referring the source of all evil thus to a creative will, and that is, for the purpose of exculpating the Creator, to deny the evil itself, and to declare that this world is the best of all possible worlds. Such is the choice that Leibnitz and the theologians made. Religions are obliged to apologize for the universe, to profess an admiration for the divine plan; they hold in reserve excuses for the existence of injustice, and labour unconsciously to falsify the moral sense, in order to relieve God of his responsibility.

[Sidenote: Doctrine that physical or intellectual evil are conditions of well-being.]

Many hypotheses have been devised in the service of optimism to excuse the Creator, without compromising the moral sense, and mankind’s instinct for progress. Physical evil (suffering), intellectual evil (error and doubt), have been declared to be a condition _sine qua non_ of moral good; which would justify them. Moral evil would thus remain the sole verifiable evil in the universe, and as moral evil consists simply in evil intentions on the part of men, men alone, on this hypothesis, would be responsible. The universe itself, that is to say, would contain no evil except in the person of the man who is purposely evil by his own free choice, and the possibility of moral evil might be considered as a supreme condition of moral goodness, the latter presupposing freedom of choice, a selection by the will, and an alternative to be refused. The evil in the universe would thus be compensated for by morality, suffering would be compensated for by virtue, mistakes by good will. The world itself would be simply a means of producing morality and, in its apparent imperfection, it would be the best world possible, because its apparent imperfection would be necessary to produce what is best in it.

[Sidenote: Doctrine that the dignity of the world lies in its spontaneity.]

The world, it has been said, cannot be in every respect absolute, for it would then be God; it must always be in the position of a recipient; the less it receives—the more it acts in independence of external aid, the more it develops from within, and the more it approaches the Absolute, insomuch that the very poverty of the earth constitutes its grandeur, since it is the condition of its real wealth, a wealth not borrowed from another but acquired by its own effort. Everything, therefore, becomes transfigured according to this hypothesis, every suffering becomes a merit; God wished to create the most spontaneous world possible, that is to say at bottom to create as little as possible, to leave as large an initiative as possible to his creatures. _Laissez faire_ is God’s device, as it is the device of all good government. A small result, but obtained by spontaneity, is superior to a greater result obtained by mechanical artifice. “Divine art,” says a philosopher, in commenting on some doctrines of Plato, “is infinitely superior to human art; it creates individuals who are ends unto themselves and self-evolved. These individuals are not, as Leibnitz believed, automata ... true perfection is autonomous. If God is only a demiurge, he may be accused, and ought to be accused, of being a bad workman. Is the world not full of unsuccessful attempts, of unfortunate combinations, of ends either missed altogether or ill achieved? The critics of Providence will always have enough to say, but these unfinished sketches are the work not of God but of his creatures, of the forces and individual souls that he has set in operation. In a word God is not a workman who produces works, but a workman who creates workmen.”[131] This formula sums up in a striking manner what may be called transfigured optimism. The new hypothesis does not deny evil, but, on the contrary, hastens to admit it; but by converting evil into a consequence of spontaneity, it subordinates it to good itself, makes it labour in the service of its opposite; the most fragmentary sketch becomes respectable when it is a step, and a necessary step, toward a masterpiece.

[131] A. Fouillée, _Philosophie de Platon_, t. ii. p. 639. See also M. Secrétan, _Philosophie de la liberté_, and Vallier, _L’Intention morale_.

[Sidenote: Criticised.]

The hypothesis in question is certainly one which, within the realm of theism, may well continue to be long the most plausible. It gives rise, however, to a great many difficulties. In the first place it assumes the superiority of what is spontaneous to what is not; of what, so to speak, does itself, as compared with what is done. Be it so, but in what respect can beings in this world be said to lead a spontaneous existence; in what respect can I be said to lead a spontaneous existence? Am I not the result of a multitude of causes? I was born and am maintained by the consilience of a multitude of little cellular or atomic volitions. Should I be less than I am if I were the result of a single volition, and that a divine volition? Over and above myself there always exist my antecedents, the causes of me; my true cause does not lie within the limits of myself: what difference does it make to me, therefore, whether those causes lie within the universe or beyond? Whether the world is the more or less harmonious work of a multitude of blind spontaneities or the work of a single intelligent will, neither diminishes nor increases the value of any given individual that is the product of the world. My ancestors are indifferent to me the instant I become dependent upon ancestors at all. Should the statue of Pygmalion reproach the sculptor with having made it beautiful, and having made it with his own hands, and definitively fashioned it for life? Providing it lives and is happy, it matters little whence its life comes. Obscurity lies behind, light and life lie before, and it is forward that one’s face is set.

[Sidenote: Results in determinism.]

In the new Platonic hypothesis, transfigured as above, the organization of the individual always becomes, in the last resort, the work of a reciprocal determinism. According to the ordinary hypothesis, it is the work of a single, absolute, determining will; but the absolute or relative character of the determining principle in nowise affects the nature of what is determined. The actual world is no more passive, if it is produced directly by the operation of the first cause, than if it is produced indirectly by the intermediation of a multitude of derivative causes, even if these causes present individually the character of spontaneity. After all, since the individual must always be solidary, solidarity between it and divine perfection is preferable to solidarity with derivative imperfection.

[Sidenote: And contradicts itself.]

There is, however, in the Platonic and Aristotelian notion of spontaneity an element of profundity and of verisimilitude, but it leads precisely to the refutation of the doctrine of creation: once carry the hypothesis of the spontaneity of existence to its ultimate conclusion, and the original fund of existence must be impoverished until nothing but nude unqualifiable substance be left; but that is to say, one must go back to Aristotle’s pure force, to Hegel’s pure being, which is identical with not being; the masterpiece of spontaneity would be self-creation. The instant such a spontaneity is possible God is a superfluity; it is easier to say that becoming arose out of the identity of being and not being, or rather that becoming is eternal on its own account. Becoming thus becomes God and theism becomes atheism or pantheism.

[Sidenote: Summary.]

To sum up, the Creator unable to create bare, virtual substance, must have created beings endowed with some real quality; but, if so, they are once for all his works and not simply independent workmen. More than that, such a substance with such qualities once created, such and such effects necessarily follow; qualities are determinations which determine subsequent determinations in their turn. Behold therefore the present, big with the future. The world becomes a determined succession of “works” which develop fatally from their earliest stage.

[Sidenote: Doctrine that God has created beings free to choose criticized.]

M. Secrétan will tell us that God simply created free wills but not substances; but it must be confessed that these free wills have been immersed in a deterministic universe which leaves them little liberty of action. Why, therefore, did He not create us freer and still freer and as free as Himself? But we should have been gods, it is objected:—so much the better, might be replied; there could not be too many gods; we do not see why God should have reduced himself to a unity, “as if the laws of number constituted a limitation of His power.”[132] It does not appear why the Creator should be unable to create a double of Himself; why He should be obliged to hand on the divine life, that He wishes to share, on lower terms only; we do not see why God’s productivity should involve a certain degeneration.

[132] M. Fouillée has effectively stated this in his _Systèmes de morale contemporains_, where he in some measure attacks the hypothesis that he had incidentally proposed in his commentary on Plato.

[Sidenote: A maximum of liberty.]

In any event, in default of other attributes, we ought to be given the maximum of possible liberty; admitting that we could not be created free and equal to God, our liberty should differ from His by a minimum. This minimum, being susceptible of infinite diminution, might become less than any conceivable difference; it might become, that is to say, infinitely little, practically zero; but we are far from any such exalted station, and if God gave us liberty He was very miserly about it.

[Sidenote: An abuse of language to call us free.]

To say the truth, it is only by an abuse of language that any such ideal liberty is ascribed to us as is attributed to God, and regarded as of infinite value. The freedom that religion ascribes to us is freedom of the will, power to do evil or good, a power the very consequence of which is irreconcilable with the notion of God. Without entering upon a consideration of what such a power would be and of its moral worth, why does our free-will exist in the midst of conditions so unfavourable to it, so calculated to render it ineffective? The sole response is the classic theory of the temptation. The temptation, as an explanation of the world, practically involves the hypothesis of a father exposing his children, as a means of testing their virtue, to temptations of vice and crime, and knowing beforehand that they will succumb. Morally, the conception is simply inadmissible; is worthy of the distant times when hearts were harder than they are to-day. More than that, the only beings that could in any proper sense be put to the proof are truly conscientious beings, for they alone are capable of entertaining a moral alternative. A reflective conscience is so rare in the world! By virtue of what temptation resisted are minerals and vegetables permitted to exist in unconsciousness and sleep, while animals are torn by the miseries of life and death without being able to convert their sufferings into a confirmation of the moral will or amelioration of their lot?

[Sidenote: Doctrine of the fall.]

The supreme resource of Christianity and of religions generally is the doctrine of the fall, but this explanation of evil as the result of a primitive imperfection is an explanation of evil by evil. The fall must have been preceded by some defect in the will itself, or the will would not have failed. Original sin is not an ultimate; one does not stumble if there is no obstacle in the way, and one’s legs are well made, and one is walking in the eye of the Lord. Sin involves temptation, and the doctrine of the temptation necessarily implies that God was the first tempter; morally, it was God himself who fell in the fall of His creatures by Him planned. To explain original sin, which is the root of all sin, the sin of Lucifer, theologians have resorted not to a temptation within the realm of sense, but to a temptation within the realm of intelligence. It was by pride that the angels fell. Their sin rose thus out of the very centre of their minds. But pride is incidental only to short-sightedness. Complete science is aware of its own limitations. Pride, therefore, results from insufficiency of knowledge. The pride of the angels was due to God. One may have reasons for wishing to do and for doing evil, but reasons do not hold in the face of reason itself. If, according to the partisans of free-will, human intelligence is capable by virtue of pride and inner perversity of creating out of nothing motives for evil-doing, it is at least incapable of so doing except in so far as its knowledge is limited, ambiguous and uncertain. Practically, nobody hesitates except in the absence of absolute knowledge. There is no such thing as rationally and consciously flying in the face of reason. Lucifer was, therefore, by his very nature impeccable. The will to do evil is borne of the opposition which an imperfect intelligence fancies it perceives, in a world hypothetically perfect, between its own advantage and the advantage of everybody else. But if God and his works are really perfect, such an antinomy between the good of the individual and the universal good, which even to the best human intelligences appears provisional only, would _a fortiori_ appear so to one of the archangels of the intelligence, to the Light-bearer of thought. To know is to participate in the supreme truth, in the divine conscience; to possess all knowledge would be to possess, among other things, the moral insight of God; and how out the midst of all that divinity should anything Satanic arise?

[Sidenote: God always responsible in the last resort.]

To-day, when a sin is committed among men and it cannot be traced to any fault of education, or of environment, or of overwhelming temptation, men of science look for the explanation among the ancestors of the guilty person, in the conviction that they must be in the presence of a case of atavism. No such explanation could exist in the case of God’s firstborn. When the world was young and beautiful and good, original sin was as wonderful as the first appearance of the world itself; it was a veritable creation of something out of nothing. Satan’s creation was superior to God’s. His moral _fiat nox_ was greater in genius and creative power than God’s _fiat lux_. In effect, every religious explanation of evil ultimately leads to the ascription of it to God himself or to a being more powerful than God, and in both cases equally the Creator is debased. That fact constitutes the principal reason that compromises the creation hypothesis, properly so called, for every philosophical mind.

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[Sidenote: Special Providence and miracles.]

II. The second notion of theism is that of Providence, which may be either general or special. Along with the notion of a special Providence governing the world from without, we have seen that the notion of miracle must be included. The sole means by which these two decrepit conceptions can be defended are the following: Conceive, with Pascal, two worlds, a physical world and above it the moral world enveloping it, and in places penetrating it. The points of intersection, so to speak, between the moral and physical world are miracles. They are not so much breaches in the laws of nature as affirmations of superior laws. Such is the argument; but we reply that the so-called superior laws are inevitably, in certain respects, contradictory to those of nature, in the very respects in reference to which the miracle has happened. One cannot, for example, suppose that a saint, precipitated from the height of a rock, resists the law of gravitation and floats up to heaven, without a manifest contradiction, so far as natural laws are concerned; without a destruction, indeed, of those laws. More than that, a moral law is such precisely in so far as it differs in the lines of its applicability from natural law; just in so far as a conflict between it and natural laws is inconceivable. Only a natural law can suspend (and that apparently only) the operation of a natural law.

[Sidenote: Attempt to limit its activity to the subjective side.]

It has been fancied that the difficulty about miracles may be done away with by conceiving that Providence acts, not upon the material universe, but upon human thought, by means of suggestion, inspirations from on high, providential ideas; but contemporary science has established so intimate a connection between motion and thought that it is impossible to distinguish between an influence exerted in the spiritual and an influence exerted in the material world. It is hopeless to attempt to immaterialize Providence in order to save it. The special intervention of Providence must be material or not at all.

[Sidenote: Universal Providence.]

The old conception of miracles and of the supernatural and special Providence was therefore, in a certain sense, logical. Religions had not been mistaken; they had perceived that the day Providence became too exclusively universal religion would be absorbed in metaphysics, and this result, in effect, will be produced in the future. Religions have never supported the theory of a general Providence, and it is certain that if a general Providence sufficed for the abstract reason of a Malebranche, with his sense of order, symmetry, and law, it would not suffice for the human heart, with its sense of justice and its desire, if it is to sacrifice itself for God, to find in the God at least a defender and a benefactor. A benefit loses its value as such by being too indirect; humanity has little understanding of justice in general which treats the individual as a means of securing the good of the whole and sacrifices him at need—at least, for a time. Charity, like justice, it seems to him, should be individual and special. A universal Providence is so universal that no traces of it exist in the details of life, and in especial in the particular evils and sufferings which form so large a part of life. The God of Malebranche, who is incapable of showing His effective benevolence to any of us individually, is paralyzed, as Louis XIV. was, by His very greatness. He is the sole being who cannot move without breaking a natural law, and who consequently is condemned to eternal immobility. The least of His interventions being a miracle, He cannot employ the means that other beings employ without derogating from His dignity and His power; so that God is reduced, if He is to remain God, either to standing inert or to contradicting our intelligence. By that very fact He ceases to be lovable, unless one pretend to love Him precisely for what He cannot do, for the benevolence that He cannot show, as for the prayers He cannot grant. Pity is the sole sentiment that can be roused in us by a being who is so good that He cannot wish evil, and so powerless that He is obliged to see nothing but evil accomplished in the world. No human misery could be comparable to a divine misery like that. The very height of suffering must be experienced by a God who should at once be conscious of His own infinity and should feel the distance which separates Him from the world which He has created. Only the clear and profound vision of such a God could penetrate the abyss of evil to the bottom, and it is He of all beings in the world who would suffer from an eternal vertigo.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: God’s omnipotence.]

What is most unacceptable in the traditional notion of Providence is the attribute of omnipotence. In the first place, divine omnipotence is inconsistent with the existence of evil; in the second place, it leads logically to the possibility of supernatural intervention in this world, which, if it is to be of any service, must be special and not general. To avoid these implications of the conception of Providence, John Stuart Mill has conceived a superior and divine being who should not be all-powerful. This being would be the principle of good, acting in the universe according to natural laws, but hindered and retarded in his action by these laws themselves, which bring suffering and death. The existence of such a being once established, religion would be saved and morality confirmed. Virtue would consist in a sort of co-operation with this great unknown being, who is struggling against evil. The good man would feel that he was aiding God and that God was aiding him in so far as He found it possible.

[Sidenote: Non-omnipotent God.]

This amended conception of Providence is more admissible and more reconcilable with the real and imperfect world that we are familiar with. But it must be confessed that the amendment amounts to an almost complete cancellation. If Providence is to be reduced thus simply to one of the forces at work in nature, to the force that makes more or less partially and provisionally for goodness, there is nothing to distinguish it from the power that makes for evolution, from natural selection, or from any other beneficent natural law. To personify such laws is futile scientifically; and, practically, is it so very useful? Or conceive the being as existent side by side with these laws and watching their operation, but unable to contravene it; but so to do is to return to the conception of an ineffective, immobile God. The prime condition of existence for a God is to be good for something; a non-omnipotent God soon comes to be an impotent God. The actual world marks the extreme limits of the power of such a God, and at some stage in the course of evolution the unconscious forces of nature, leagued together against the principle of goodness, may succeed in paralyzing it entirely.

[Sidenote: Is such a God to be conceived as eternal?]

More than that, is a non-omnipotent God to be conceived as eternal? If not, He is in no very striking respect superior to man. His power is so slight that He has not even been able to make it very clearly manifest to mankind that it exists at all. Or if He is eternal, and eternally present in all things, then His lack of power is growing and becoming radical. One may in any event congratulate one’s self that a blind and indifferent universe has, among all possible combinations, fallen by chance into the one which constitutes our present world; but a God who has pursued goodness conscientiously through a whole eternity demonstrates His complete incapacity, if He has succeeded in producing nothing better than such a miscarriage of the ideal as this universe. The judgment that may fairly be passed upon the world is altogether dependent upon the question who made it and who created life; if the world is self-evolved, it may well appear to us as possessing a certain beauty, as giving an earnest of better things; but if it is the work of an intelligent will, present in all things, and persisting in its designs throughout the eternity of the past, it is inevitable that one should feel that this volition has not been possessed of great power, that the importance of the victory is not in proportion to the duration of the struggle, that such a God does not constitute a very solid support, and that His existence is a matter of indifference to the future of the universe. Is such a God more powerful than humanity, or even so powerful? His eternity is but a proof of voluntary or forced inaction; far from dignifying Him it debases Him. On the surface of the earth there are many species of insects which were probably in existence before the race of man. In the transparent amber that belongs to tertiary strata may be seen the little corselet of the melipones caught and held there these past five hundred thousand years. Are these distant predecessors of the human race on that account more venerable?

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The religion of humanity.]

John Stuart Mill, a disciple of Auguste Comte, put forth this theory of a non-omnipotent Providence, conceived on the model of the human will, with a certain mental reservation; his real meaning was that for many cultivated men such a being, labouring for goodness, according to the utmost of its limited power, would be confounded with humanity, taken as a whole. Humanity is, in effect, according to Comte, a great being of divine aspirations, to whom one might, with all one’s heart, render homage; in especial, if one leaves out of account the individuals who are, properly speaking, only parasites, and do not co-operate for the production of the common result, whom progress consists precisely in excluding from society. Religion, on this theory, is the state of spiritual unity resulting from the convergence of all our thoughts and all our actions toward the service of humanity. This, as Mill said, is a genuine religion, quite capable of resisting sceptical attack and of undertaking the labour of the older cults. According to this doctrine, Providence is simply humanity, looking after the interest of its individual members. Such a Providence, regarded as one with human volition, might assuredly be accepted by any philosopher; it marks, as we shall see later, the extreme limit of which the development of the notion of a Special Providence is susceptible, the point at which this notion and the conception of human morality become one. The precept to love mankind in God becomes transformed into the precept to love God in mankind. For a philosopher who identifies God with his ideal, both precepts are equally true and beautiful. We have ourselves shown how the religious sentiment in the course of its evolution tends to become one with the respect and love of humanity, and how religious faith tends to develop into a moral faith, and a simple and active hopefulness in the triumph of moral goodness.

[Sidenote: Criticised.]

John Stuart Mill’s and Comte’s ideas are thus shielded against criticism so long as they are taken in a general and almost metaphorical sense; but if they are to be interpreted literally and made the basis of a cult and a religion of humanity, they are puerile simply. Precisely because Providence can be realized by humanity, the cult for Providence, with all its ceremonies, invocations, adorations, which are manifest and ridiculous paganism, must be suppressed. Every organism exemplifies a certain sort of Providence—even the social organism, which is the equilibrium of the laws of life. The totality of an organism is truly admirable, and one may readily understand how any individual member, if he is endowed with consciousness, might admire the whole to which he belongs; but how could he make it the object of a cult? The cellules which constitute me might well be interested in the preservation of what I call myself and help each other, and by that very fact help me to that end, but they could not adore me. Love of humanity is one thing, and idolatry of humanity, or sociolatry, according to Comte’s term, is another. A really sincere and enlightened love of humanity is the very opposite of such idolatry; would be by it compromised and corrupted. The cult for humanity reminds one of the antique, naïve cult for the family, for the lares, for the hearth, for the sacred fire kept alive beneath the ashes. To preserve respect and love to-day does not require a resuscitation of all these superstitions; respect and love pass from heart to heart without need of ceremonial as a medium. The Positivist religion, far from being a step in advance, is a step backward toward the superstitious beliefs which have been banished because they were useless, and consequently harmful.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Religion must be cosmic.]

Religion ought to be not only human but cosmic, and such it will be by the very nature of the case as the result of reflection. Theism will be obliged, if it is to subsist at all, to confine itself to the vaguest possible affirmation of a principle analogous to the soul as the mysterious origin of the world and of its development. The essential character of this principle must be that it is not really separate from the world nor opposed to its determinism. Beliefs in the creation and in a special Providence will give place more and more to belief in some spontaneous action, which is essential to beings generally, and in especial to those who are endowed with consciousness. Religion has gradually come to be a metaphysics of immanent finality, consisting in the single general proposition: the world possesses a significance, and is making toward an end and aim of its own;[133] the world is a society of beings who may come to discover in themselves an identity of moral impulse.[134] God is the term by which we designate what renders the movement of the world toward a state of peace, concord, and harmony _possible_. And since for human intelligence the possible and the real[135] are confused, a belief in the possibility of a better world becomes the belief in something divine which is immanent in this world.

[133] Kant’s _Kritik der Urtheils-Kraft_.

[134] See M. A. Fouillée, _Les systèmes de morale contemporains_.

[135] See Aristotle, _Metaphysica_, and Hegel’s _Logik_.

[Sidenote: Theism and atheism insensibly pass into each other.]

Between idealistic theism and atheism the distance may be diminished _ad infinitum_. Many atheists, language to the contrary notwithstanding, are already at one with theists, intoxicated with God. If the actual existence of God be called in question, at least His progressive existence, the progressive realization of an ideal, the gradual descent of Christ from heaven to earth, may be admitted. The presentiment of progress thus becomes merged in a sense of the actual presence of the divine. The ideal seems to live and palpitate in the world about one; it is as if an artist’s vision of his work should be so intense that it should seem to float out of his brain and take its place upon the untouched canvass before him.

[Sidenote: Theism must be furnished with a new vocabulary.]

The power of words is limited; there are shades and subtleties of thought that cannot be expressed in language. What possible verbal reply can be given to questions like those that Marguerite asks of Faust? “It is a long time since thou wert at mass ... dost thou believe in God?” “My beloved,” replies Faust, “who would dare to say I believe in God?” ... “So thou dost not believe in Him?... Who would dare to say that he does not believe when he listens to the voice of his heart, when a sense of tenderness and happiness fills his soul? Pronounce the first words that occur to thee. What difference what thou callest it: happiness, heart, love, God? The feeling is everything, the word is vain.” The deist philosopher who holds words cheap seems to the superficial multitude to be simply a hypocritical sceptic; whereas the rigid atheist displays the narrowness of a sectary. What is certain is that the name of God has sometimes been associated with the greatest of human conceptions, sometimes with the most barbarous. The theistic hypothesis cannot continue to subsist unless it be freed once for all from puerile and gross associations.

[Sidenote: Rational religion.]

It is toward this consummation that theism, at its best, and in particular what Kant calls religion, within the limits presented by reason, is tending. It merits a special examination.

[Sidenote: Neo-Kantianism.]

The neo-Kantian religion ascribes the supreme place to moral goodness as the directing principle of every reasonable will. From that premise the neo-Kantians deduce “moral liberty” as the condition of goodness. For goodness, in their judgment, is simply freedom conceived as appearing to itself in its intellectual purity, and dominating the phenomenal self. Freedom thus conceived occupies a place above phenomena, which belong essentially to necessity and to determinism. Kantians found also implied in the notion of absolute liberty, subject to the condition of time, the attribute of eternity. They say, with Spinoza: “I feel, and I know that I am eternal; eternity is one with divinity.” Is it not the eternal that all the nations of men have adored? I feel God therefore present in myself. He reveals himself to me in the moral ideal. But is this God that my conscience reveals to me really myself? Is he each of us, and must one believe that the universe in the last resort is, as has been said, a republic of free-wills—that there are thus as many Gods as individuals, and that we are all Gods? Or does this multiplicity of individuals and of personalities exist only in appearance, and is the universe at bottom the expression of a single will? Theism may choose between these two hypotheses—between a sort of metaphysical and moral polytheism and a sort of monotheism, and may subsequently arrange to its liking the relations which it may suppose to exist between the absolute will and the world of phenomenon. But a belief in a moral ideal does not in the least involve anything more than a belief in something eternal and divine, as shaping the universal course of things. One cannot bend it to the service of any one determinate religion, rather than of any other. Within certain limits, however, it may lend some support to the moral and religious sentiments. The most acceptable form of theistic doctrine in the future will, no doubt, be some moral philosophy analagous to that of Kant. Kantianism itself, however, is too closely bound up with the notion of duty, properly so called, and with the categorical imperative. It, like Judaism, is a religion of law. Instead of the law, one will content one’s self, in all probability, in the future, with an ideal conceived as supreme above all things, and as exercising upon our thought and will the highest attraction that can be exercised by what has been called the power of an ideal.[136]

[136] See the criticism of Kantianism in the _Systèmes de morale contemporains_, by M. Alfred Fouillée.

[Sidenote: Belief consists not in worship, but in action.]

A belief in the divine will then no longer consist in passive adoration, but in action. A belief in Providence will no longer consist in a justification of the existing world and of its evils in the name of the divine intention, but in an effort to introduce by human intervention a greater amount of justice and of goodness into the world. We have seen that the notion of Providence was based among ancient peoples on the conception of an exterior finality, forcibly imposed upon things, of a secret and transcendent aim, which the universe was warped to serve by force of some unknown will. With such a theory of things, man was incessantly checked in his activity, since he conceived it to be impossible to prevent the course of the world from achieving its aim. The world seemed to him to be organized definitively; he had no hope, except in prayer and miracle; everything about him seemed to him to be sacred; the inviolability of nature was both a principle and a consequence of the notion of Providence thus understood. And, as we have seen, science was long regarded as sacrilegious. It created both surprise and scandal to see science intervene in the affairs of this world, disturbing everything, changing the direction of natural forces, transforming the divine rulers of the world into humble ministrants to human wants. In our days, however, science is coming to be more and more held in honour. For the past century nature has been, to the best of human ability, turned upside down. Humanity’s long quietism has been succeeded by a feverish activity. Everybody wishes to lend a hand in the universal mechanism, and to contribute his part in the modification of the direction of the whole; everybody wishes to bend things to his own views, and to become, so far as in him lies, a minor Providence.

[Sidenote: Increasing power of mankind in the universe.]

Just as the individual is coming to feel himself more and more a citizen of the state, so he is coming to feel himself more and more a citizen of the universe, inseparably bound by relations of cause and effect with the universal sum of phenomena. He recognizes that there is nothing in the world that does not concern him, and that on every side he can exert an influence, great or small, and leave his mark on the great world. He perceives with astonishment the extent of the power of his will and intelligence. Just in so far as his rational faculties establish a connection between phenomena, they establish by that very fact a connection between phenomena and himself, and he no longer feels himself alone in the universe. Since, according to a celebrated theory, the centre of the world is in each and every distinct being, it follows that if this centre were exhaustively self-conscious it would see all the rays in infinite space focussing in it, and all the chains of phenomenal causation meeting in it, and the effects of its volition stretching out into infinity, and its every action possessing an influence upon the totality of things. It would perceive itself to be a sort of universal Providence.

[Sidenote: A consequence of liberty of thought.]

If human beings are not so exhaustively self-conscious as all that, the progress of science is carrying them forward in that direction. A portion of the government of nature is in our hands, some part of the responsibility for what takes place in the universe is on our heads. At the beginning man conceived himself as living in a state of dependence on the world, in a state which ancient religions symbolize; at present he perceives that the world is equally dependent upon him. The substitution of a human providence for the omnipresent influence of a divine providence might be given as being, from this point of view, the formula of progress; the increasing independence of mankind, in the face of the natural universe, will thus result in an increasing inner independence, in a growing independence of mind and thought.

[Sidenote: Mankind to be its own special providence.]

The vulgar conception of a special and exterior providence which, as we have seen, is so closely bound up with the conception of man’s place in the universe as one of subjection—nay, even the most refined conception of providence as transcendent and distant and as assigning to each being its determinate place in the totality of things—may thus, without ground of regret, be displaced in the mind of humanity. We shall some day perceive that we are stronger when we stand on our feet, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, than when we kneel with bowed heads and implore the unfeeling sky. Among the ancient Germans, when one of the faithful was about to enter a sacred forest he had his hands bound together as a symbol of his subjection to the gods; if he had the misfortune to fall as he was making his way into the forest, he did not dare to get up again; so to do would have been an affront to the gods; he was reduced to squirming and rolling like a reptile out of the immense temple. To this primitive conception of religious servitude, the modern conception of mankind as free in the presence of its God, of its beloved ideal, of its conceived work in the world, of its dream of progress, is more and more opposed. Even at the present day a true sense of the divine may be recognized by its giving man a consciousness of his liberty and his dignity rather than his subjection; the true gods are those who make us lift our heads higher in the struggle for existence; adoration no longer consists in prostration but in standing upright.

[Sidenote: Story of the anchorite.]

To borrow once more from the classic land of symbolism, from India, whence our German or Gallic ancestors came, the great epic of Ramayana tells us of a sainted and sage anchorite who exemplified in his own person the whole sum of human virtue and piety. One day, confiding in the justice of heaven, he was invoking Indra and the whole chorus of the gods, and the gods were capricious and did not listen to him; his prayer fell back from the heavens unheard. The man, perceiving the indifference of the gods, was moved with indignation; and gathering together the power that he had hoarded, by his sacrifices and renunciation, and, feeling himself more powerful than his gods, more powerful than Indra himself, began to issue forth commands to the high heavens. And at his voice new stars rose and shone in the crystal sphere; he said, “Let there be light!” and there was light; he refashioned the world; his goodness became a creative providence. Nor was this all: he conceived the notion of creating new and better gods; and Indra himself was trembling toward his fall, for not even he that commands the air and the skies shall prevail against sanctity. Indra, the powerful, therefore hastened to yield and cried out to the saint, “Thy will be done!” and he left a place in the heavens for the new stars, and their light bears eternal witness to the omnipotence of goodness, which is the supreme God and object of adoration among men.