PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUES AND FRAGMENTS.exposition, at once clear and attractive, of the Hegelian philosophy, and as such, perhaps, the only book of the ... Page 82, footnote 2,

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIALOGUES AND FRAGMENTS.

'Saflanigne -prssje?B A L L A N T Y N E , H A N S O N A N D C O .

E D I N B U R G H A N D L O N D O N

PHILOSOPHICAL

DIALOGUES AND FRAGMENTS.

fro m tbe freitcb

OP

E R N E S T R E N A N ,it

MEMBER OP THE INSTITUTE.

TRANSLATED, WITH THE SANCTION OF THE AUTHOR,

B Y

R A S B I H lR l M U K H A R Jl.

> iV : 'f/TI’ :V V ;;*• :■ - ...... Yi\ J : - - - A !:

L O N D O N :

T R U B N E R & C O ., L U D G A T E H I L L .1883.

[All rights reserved.]

TO

M. E R N E S T R E N A N ,MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE,

THE MOST W IDELY-READ AND THE MOST PHILOSOPHICAL THINKER

OF MODERN FRANCE,

WHOSE ADMIRABLE GENIUS, RIPE SCHOLARSHIP, AND VAST ERUDITION

ARE FAM ILIAR TO ALL EUROPE, WHOSE VERSATILE MIND HAS

TRAVERSED OLD PHOENICIA, NINEVEH, BABYLON, JUDAEA,

CHALDEA, EGYPT, THE PLATEAU OF PAMIR, ARABIA,

PERSIA, ROME, IND IA, AND CHINA,

U M s Uolum e

(HIS OWN LOVELY CHILD CLAD IN POOR GARMENTS)

\ IS, •

WITH H IS KIND PERMISSION,

IR espectfu llB Be&icateD,

FROM A FAR-DISTANT LAND, BY HIS MOST OBLIGED AND

GRATEFUL SERVANT AND WARM ADMIRER,

THE TRANSLATOR.1883.

T R A N S L A T O R 'S P R E FA C E .

T h a t such a remarkable work as the “ Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques ” of M. Eenan should he translated

into English, and appear in an English dress, calls in my

mind for no apology. It is remarkable, first, as a popular

exposition, at once clear and attractive, of the Hegelian philosophy, and as such, perhaps, the only book of the

kind in any language ; and, secondly, because it exhibits,

and that in a chaste and graceful style, the fermentation

of thought now going on in the spiritual atmosphere of

Western Europe. Nor are the subjects it treats of in

themselves uninteresting. Metaphysic may seem to

many an unprofitable pursuit, but certainly he knows

little of the thought of the age who does not know something of Hegel, and, as a necessary step to him, also

of Kant. These two are, with the notable exceptions of

Plato and Aristotle, the greatest philosophers that have

ever meditated profoundly on the nature of God, the

freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the

vocation of man, and the destiny of humanity. And

these are problems than which, for a rational being, there

can be none higher or more important. Such studies

form the very breath of man's inner being. And we

X T R A N S L A T O R ' S P R E F A C E .

may be permitted to opine, that if ever we arrive at a clear and final solution of them, it will be by a path not

very far from that which these two eminent thinkers

have followed.

Unfortunately, such a haze of mystery hangs about the writings, nay even about the names, of K ant and of Hegel, that one almost despairs of mastering them. “ How many

men,” asks Professor Mahaffy, “ are there now in England

who thoroughly understand the Critical Philosophy ? ”

Luckily, Dr. Stirling’s epoch-making “ Secret of Hegel,”

— a colossal work, with which no student of philosophy

who would know it in its latest phases can in any way

dispense— comes to our re lie f; it offers a more complete

and satisfactory exposition, in a language at once racy,

lucid, eloquent, forcible, and masterly, of Hegel than any

other writer on the post-Kantian philosophy of Germany.

I confess that to it, more than to the expositions of other

interpreters of German Metaphysics, I owe what know

ledge I possess of Hegel and his system, although it

must be allowed the tough and dry nature of the task,

and of that profound philosophy itself, makes the “ Secret

of Hegel ” less inviting to the student than were to be

wished. To such as do not choose to gnaw the dry

bones of the Hegelian philosophy, and to coerce its

rocky fountain to yield up the pure and refreshing

water it conceals, or even to read Dr. Stirling’s admir

able work, and yet desire to know what that mystic professor of Berlin thought about man, his Maker, and

his destiny, M. Eenan’s book will not, I hope, prove

unwelcome. For such, and if I am not mistaken, they

are not a few, it is that the attempt is here made to

submit a translation of “ Dialogues et Fragments philoso-

T R A N S L A T O R ' S P R E F A C E . x i

phiques” of that illustrious thinker in an English garb.

It can only be matter of regret, that the too exclusive

attention paid to materialism, and to the “ now fashion

able Association School,” as Professor MahafFy calls it,

has retarded by over fifty years the study of German

philosophy in England.

To many it may seem very great presumption on the

part of a native of Bengal to attempt to render into a

foreign tongue, and one so difficult to master as the English

is, the work of the greatest living writer of Erench prose. I am far from supposing that I have been able to do jus

tice to the original, or that there are not many others who

might have done it better, and, indeed, it is with much

diffidence I have undertaken the task. I do not pretend

to be a Bayard Taylor, doing into faultless English,

the Faust of G oethe; or a Carlyle translating W ilhelm Meister as only that sublimest of English prose-

writers could have done. A ll I have aimed at has been to give as clear and faithful a rendering of the original

as I could; and i f the kind and indulgent reader is but

able to understand, by means of it, what M. Benan

has so eloquently written, let me hope he w ill overlook

my broken and “ Babu-English,” much as the like of it

may be cavilled at by hyper-critical Anglo-Indians, and

professed friends of India, and I shall feel happy to think

that my labours have thus not been altogether fruitless.

The ease, the unaffected simplicity, the elegance, and the

propriety of thought and expression which are the French--

man’s, and in an eminent degree, M. Benan’s own, it is

not in my power, if, indeed, it is in that of any one else, fitly

to reproduce in another language. Though it is not to

excuse myself to the public, yet I may be allowed to say

X U T R A N S L A T O R ’S P R E F A C E .

that the circumstances under which this translation has

been executed have been anything hut favourable.

Almost life-long ill health, and leisure constantly dis

turbed by other less congenial occupations, are certainly

much opposed to literary success, however humble.

Y et I can say, without desiring to be egotistical, that I

have worked at this task as sedulously as my health would

permit.

M y obligations to learned and valued friends have

been deep. To Mr. Archibald E. Gough, M.A., Pro

fessor of Philosophy and Logic in the Presidency Col

lege, Calcutta, who first advised me to read M. Eenan’s

w o rk; and to Dr. George Thibaut, Ph.D., Principal of the Sanskirt College at Benares, I am indebted beyond

all hope of repayment. Whenever I came across a dif

ficulty in my work, these kind, courteous, and magnani

mous friends stretched forth a helping hand. Indeed,

had it not been for them and their assistance, I should

not have had the audacity to rush into print. The

explanations of the quotations from Greek and Latin, of

which I am myself ignorant, are due partly to the one*

and partly to the other. Lastly, my best thanks are

due to Brigade Surgeon David Boyes Smith, M.D., late

Principal of the Medical College of Calcutta, who, amidst

his varied occupations and extensive professional practice,

did not regard it as a burdensome task to revise my pages,

and to make many valuable corrections and suggestions.

His naive simplicity, kind and affectionate attentions, I

shall never forget. M y best thanks are also due to the

immortal author of these Dialogues and Fragments for

according me permission to translate his w ork; and to

M. Calmann L£vy, his learned publisher, for authorising

T R A N S L A T O R ’S P R E F A C E . x i i i

the publication of this English translation. I am also

much indebted to the anonymous reviewer of M. Eenan’s

book in the July number of the “ Westminster Keview”

for 1876. Vv^henever, in the few passages translated by

him, I have considered his rendering better than my own,

I have gladly adopted it.

As this book is intended for readers, many of whom

may be untrained in abstruse metaphysical studies, I

have ventured to add certain explanatory footnotes.

W ith these prefatory remarks, it only remains for me,

residing on the time-honoured and sacred banks of the

Hooghly, to offer to the students of other lands this my

imperfect translation of a work, the originality, eloquence,

and truth of which must please the imagination, excite

the intellect, and delight the heart of all who read it— a

work worthy of the world-wide reputation of the author

of the “ Vie de Jesus”R B. M.

U t t a r p a r a , 1883.

C O N T E N T S .

PAGE

P R E F A C E ......................................................................................................x x iii

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUES.

FIRST DIALOGUE— C E R T I T U D E S ................................................................ I

SECOND DIALOGUE— P R O B A B IL IT I E S .....................................................29

THIRD DIALOGUE— D R E A M S ..............................................................49

PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS.

SCIENCES OF NATURE AND HISTORICAL SCIENCES— LETTER TO

M. B E R T H E L O T ................................................................................85

IDEAL AND POSITIVE SCIENCE— REPLY TO M. BERTHELOT . 108

LETTER TO M. ADOLPHE G U ^ R O U L T ..............................................133

METAPHYSIC AND ITS FUTURE ..............................................140

E R R A T A .

Page 36, line 20, for “ ethical renovation,” read “ ethnical renovation.”

Page 82, footnote 2, line i,/or “ read “

Page 122, line 16, for “ are,” raid “ is.”

Page 141, line 37, or last line, for “ of said,” read “ said of.”

Page 156, line 9, /or “ ranked,” read “ rank.”

PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUES.

TO M. MARCELLIN BERTHELOT.

M ore than once, on certain ideas turning up in these pages

about which you and I have a thousand times talked to

gether, I have asked myself whether they were yours or

m ine; so entirely have our thoughts been intertwined

during the last thirty years, and so close has been our

intellectual intimacy that it is impossible for me to dis

tinguish what is mine from what is yours. It is as though

one should try to divide the limbs of an infant between its father and its mother. A t one time the embryo of a

S thought was yours, while the development of it belonged

to m e ; at another the germ was mine, but it was you

who rendered it fruitful. Everything good that I have

been able to say on the universe as a whole, and its har

mony, I am desirous to have regarded as belonging to y o u ; whilst, on the other hand, I claim a share in the for

mation of your philosophical spirit. I shall have no more.

You were eighteen years of age, and I was twenty-

two, when we began to think together. W e were then

what we are now. Our earnest-minded youth, lighted

up by hopes that were soon blighted, was followed by

ripe years full of sadness. Punished for faults which

we had not committed, we saw France sink into baseness,

TO M. M A R C E L L I N B E R T H E L O T .

folly and ignorance. Betrayed, as she has been by her

elder sons, our generation has reason to complain.

Each generation owes to the next what she has received

from the preceding ones, namely, an established social

order. After having brought on the fatal collapse of

February, those who were to bequeath to us a free

country, prepared, in spite of us, the disastrous solu

tion of December. Then, when we were resigned to

follow France in the path to which she had committed

herself, everything crumbled away anew, and we were

obliged to wait five years longer before the presumptu

ous politicians who had ruined us were pleased to con

fess their incompetence.Shall we at length see better days, and will our old

age be like the autumnal season of the Hebrew poet,

who reaped in joy the harvest which he had sown in

tears ? You hope so, and may you be right. So

many faults have been committed that there are not

many more to commit. I f France will once more play

her noble part of sympathy, liberty, and dignity in the

interests of all, the world will love her still. Her defeat

will be of more account than the most dazzling victory,

if she but exhibit the example of a nation wise without

leaders, and intelligent without masters. How gladly

will I then suppress all my gloomy forebodings ! How

happy would I be to retract them ! In the meantime,

our task is very simple. Let us redouble our efforts. I feel within me something of the elasticity and ardour of

youth. Would that I could conceive something fresh and

new. M. Hugo and Mme. Sand must have convinced the world that for genius there is no such thing as old age.

Taine, About, and Flaubert must compel the critic to

TO M. M A R C E L L I N B E R T H E L O T .

admit that their best works have as yet been attempts

merely. Claude Bernard and Balbiani must yet discover

new secrets about life. You must yourself surprise

science by some new synthesis. You must make an

attack upon the atom, and inquire if it is as incorruptible, as it is believed. Each one of us must surpass him

self, so that it may be said of u s : The French are

indeed still the sons of their fathers. Eighty years ago,

Condorcet, in -the midst of the Beign of Terror, as he

awaited death in his place of concealment in the Bue

Servandoni, wrote his “ Esquisse des Progres de VEsprit

Humain.” 1

1 Outline of the Progress of the Human Mind.— T b.

P R E F A C E .

T he Dialogues that form the most important part of this

volume were written at Versailles during the month of

M ay 1871. I had left Paris at the latter end of April,

grieved at heart by the aberrations which I witnessed in

the city, and satisfied that it was impossible to render

any service there to the cause of reason. Deprived of

my books and separated from my labours, I employed

those hours of forced leisure in the work of self-reflection,

and in drawing up a sort of summary of my philosophic

beliefs. The form of dialogue seemed to me convenient!

for my purpose, as it is free from dogmatism, and as it

admits of the different aspects of a problem being succes- j

sively presented without one being obliged to arrive at'

'conclusions. , Less than ever do I feel emboldened to

speak dogmatically on such subjects. The three pieces

now offered to the public are intended to present a series

of ideas developing themselves according to logical order,

and not to inculcate any particular opinion or to preach

any definite system of belief. The problems here treated

belong to those on which the human mind is always

busy, even though it knows full well that it can never

solve them. To awaken reflection, and at times even

xxiv P R E F A C E .

by certain exaggerations to draw forth the philosophical

judgment of the reader, is the single object which I here

propose to myself. /'The dignity of man does not require

that he should be able to give to these questions a definite answer; it does, however, demand that he should

not be indifferent to them. It is given to no one to

fathom'the abyss ; but that mind must be very superficial

which does not yield to the temptation of casting a glance

from time to time into its depths?)

I know too well the misinterpretations to which I

expose myself in treating of philosophical and religious

subjects, to hope that these remarks will be fairly con

strued. I am resigned beforehand to expect that all the

opinions professed by my interlocutors will be directly

attributed to me, even when they are contradictory of

each other. I write only for intelligent and enlightened

readers. These will perfectly understand that my cha

racters are distinct in personality, and that I am nowise

to be held responsible for any of the opinions they ex

press. Each of these characters represents, at the different stages of certainty, probability, and fancy, the successive

aspects of a free thought; not one of them is a pseudonym

which I would have chosen, according to a practice

familiar to authors of dialogues, to exhibit as embodying

my own sentiments.

For yet a stronger reason I must protest against the

interpretation that would seek to identify with these

fictitious names any of the philosophers or scholars of

our own time. The true interlocutors of these dialogues

are abstractions ; they represent actual or possible intel

lectual situations, and not real persons. These conver

sations are not such as the ancients took pleasure in

P R E F A C E . X X V

fancying as carried on between celebrated men, living or

dead; they are peaceful dialogues, with which the different lobes of my brain are familiar, when I allow them

to wander from point to point with perfect freedom. The

•age of absolute systems is gone by. Must it, then, be

said that man is to give up all search for a logical con

nection in the chain of events in the universe ? N o ;

but formerly every one had his own system ; he lived

by it and died for i t ; now we in succession traverse all

the systems, or, what is better still, we have taken them

all in at once.

In reviewing, at the end of five years, these impressions

of a time of gloom, I found them sad and harsh, and I at

first hesitated to publish them. The horrible reign of

violence through which we passed had given me night

mare. To worship God at such a time, one had either to

look very far off or Very high up ; “ the good God ” was

then the vanquished one. How often he had been in

voked in v a in ! . . . and in his place there was only an

unrelenting Sabaoth,1 who was affected only by the

moral refinement of Uhlans and the incontestable excel

lence of Prussian shells. I had lost sight of the much

more gentle God, whom I fell in with fifteen years before

on my way to Galilee, and with whom I had, on the way,

such delightful conversations.2 A distinguished lady, to

whom I had lent my manuscript, said to me : “ Do not

publish these papers; they strike one’s heart with a

chill.”The political situation in which the turn of events

1 It is a Hebrew word meaning nobis dum loqueretur in via ? ” “ Did “ armies.” “ Dieu Sabaoth ” means not our hearts burn within us while Lord of Hosts.— Tr. he talked with us by the way ?”—

2 Nonne cor nosti'um ardens erat in St. Luke xxiv. 32.— Tr.

placed France, increased m y apprehensions. In order to

think freely, we must feel sure that what we publish will

not be made a precedent of. In a State governed by a

sovereign who is master of his armed force we feel more

assurance ; because we know that society is protected

from its own errors. But when society depends only

upon itself, we become timid and afraid lest, by breathing

too hard, we shake down the frail edifice under which we

find shelter. A society having its principle of defence

only within itself has more need to take precaution than

one that is breastplated, shielded, so to speak, from

without. Hence the reason why republics, although

they are often more liberal as regards freedom of thought

than monarchies, indirectly do it harm, in consequence of

the precautions which the philosopher takes to prevent

the mass of narrow minds from mistaking his intentions.

Having well considered the matter, however, and taken

the advice of wise persons, as well as suppressed some

developments of thought, which might appear too singu

lar, I have made up my mind to submit to attentive

readers these pages which were written on purpose for

them. To minds who are but little versed in them such

reveries as these will be harmless; they will appear to them devoid of meaning. As regards those persons

that are versed in philosophical investigations, they will

very soon discover that my sole object has been to excite

reflection on problems that cannot be passed over in

silence without injury to truth. The desire I feel of being clear in what I write, and of imparting some

force of expression to my thought, sometimes induces me

to have recourse to a proceeding similar to that which

Jean Paul Bichter employs in that celebrated piece of

xxvi P R E F A C E .

P R E F A CE. xxvii

his in which, with a view to inspire a dread of atheism,

he represents it as preached by Christ himself. (̂ The most emphatic way of enhancing the importance of an

idea is to suppress it, and to show what the world would

become withoutîf) I hope at some future day to apply,

on a larger scale, this method of philosophical exposition,

in a work which I shall call “ Hypotheses” in which I

shall endeavour to delineate seven or eight systems of the

world, in each of which there shall be wanting one essen

tial element. By that means the part which that element

plays in the system of things will be brought out into extraordinary relief, such as will be patent even to the

dullest observers.

The great majority of people are divided, as to these

problems, into two categories, at equal distance from

which the truth seems to us to lie. “ What you seek

has been found long ago,” say the orthodox believers of

all sects; “ W hat you seek cannot be found,” say the practical positivists (the only dangerous ones), the poli

tical railers, and the atheists. Certain it is that no one

will ever know the formula of the living Infinite, but

neither will any one succeed in convincing mankind that

it is idle to aspire to know the whole of which he forms

a part, and which bears him onward in spite of himself.

Childish are those wonderful figures by which Raphael^/7

on the arches of the Loggia, and Michael Angelo, on the

ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, attempted to delineate the

beginnings of the universe ; and yet who does not rejoice

that they exist ? Philosophy, according to the day and

the hour, is either a frivolous, puerile, absurd thing, or

it is the one serious pursuit. It is dangerous for man to

be wholly absorbed in it, for his strength would be ex

xxviii P R E F A C E .

pended in pursuing that which ever eludes him. Neither

must he lose all taste for it, since by so doing he

only avows his mediocrity of sentiment and his want

of generosity of mind. \The universe has an ideal aim,

and it serves a divine purpose; it is not merely a vain

agitation of forces, of which the final issue is zero. The

aim of the world is to establish the reign of reason.

The organisation of reason is the duty of humanity. It

will be vain to urge it to relinquish these lofty aim Q

In bidding adieu to the dicta of a narrow materialistic

good sense, it will take advantage of the first hour of its

freedom to commit some folly, and thus to prove that

low enjoyment does not satisfy it.

This is the reason why ^very reflection that carries

man beyond the narrow circle of his egoism is salutary

and good for his soul, whatever direction this reflection

may take. The blasphemy of great minds is more agree

able to God than the interested prayer of the vu lgar;

because, although blasphemy implies an incomplete view

of things, it is, in a way, a just protest, whilst egoism

does not contain a particle of truth. One observation is

important, and I ought to dwell on it. These speculations have no practical application, or, at all events, like the

doute mtthodique of Descartes, they presuppose certain

self-prescribed a priori laws, of which the best guarantee

is a good nature. (Gentleness, good-will to all, respect

for all, love for and sympathy with the people, universal

kindness, an amiable feeling towards all living beings—

these constitute a sure law, and one that does not deceive

us. How are we to reconcile such feelings as these with

the iron hierarchy of Nature, and with the belief in the

absolute sovereignty of reason ? I for my part know n o t;

P R E F A C E . xxix

*but it matters little. Goodness depends upon no theory.

It is possible for one to love mankind while holding an

aristocratic philosophy, or not to love it, and yet be loud

in the profession of democracy. A t bottom, it is not the

great absorbing idea of equality which creates gentleness

and affability of manner. On the contrary, jealous equality

tends to produce a certain haughtiness of bearing and

hardness of heart. CjThe best foundation for goodness is the admission of a providential order, in which every

thing has its place and rank, its utility, and even its

\ necessity?) Men are not equal; races are not equal. The

negro, for instance, is made to serve the great enterprises

that have been willed and conceived by the white man.

It does not follow from this that the hateful American

slave system was legitimate. Not only every man, but

every being, has its rights. The lowest races of mankind

are vastly superior to the animals, to which latter even

we yet feel we have duties. It is not enough that we do no harm to any being; we must do them good, must

make of them, must console them, for the necessary

harshness of Nature. Well-grounded in these principles,

let us gently abandon ourselves to all our evil dreams,

let us even print them, since he who has given him

self up to the public owes to it all sides of his thought.

I f anybody should be made sad by them, there is nothing

for it but to say to him what the good cur6 said to his parishioners, whom he threw all into tears when preach

ing to them on the Passion, “ M y children, do not weep

so much as that, it happened long ago, and even perhaps

it is not quite true.” 1

1 I intend some day publishing an Science [The Future of Science], that essay to be entitled L'Avenir de la I composed in 1848 and 1849, and

XXX P R E F A C E .

Thus good-humour is the corrective of all our philo

sophy. I know of no philosophy to make one feel g a y ;

but Nature is eternally young, it is always smiling on

us. There is no road but there is a way out of it with

her. She gets out of the most desperate situations. A t the first glance, it seems as if the humanity of our time

were driven into a position whence there is no outlet. The old beliefs, by faith in which man was enabled to

practise virtue, are shaken, and their place has not been

filled up. (For us, cultivated minds, what equivalents to

these beliefs idealism supplies, are quite enough; because

we act under the control of ancient customs; we are like those animals from which physiologists remove the brain,

and which continue nevertheless to exercise certain vital

functions by the mere force of habit. But these instinctive movements will grow feebler with the lapse of time.

To do good, in order that God, if he exists, may be

pleased with us, will appear to many_an empty formula.

W e live on the shadow of a shade. (Ôn what will people

live after us ? . . . One thing alone is certain, namely, that humanity will draw from his own heart whatever is

necessary of an illusory nature, in order that it may per

form its duties, and fulfil its destiny. In this it has

never failed hitherto; nor w ill it ever fail in the future??)

I sometimes fear that I may he reproached with having

appeared to give myself up to the playful occupation of

a culpable leisure, in pursuing harmless chimaeras at a

time when my country was passing through the gravest

crisis it has yet experienced. I shall reply as I have

which will be much more consoling 1851 and the Coup cVEtat inspired than this, and will, moreover, please me with a pessimism of which I am those who are attached to the demo- not yet cured, cratic religion. The reaction of 1850-

P R E F A C E . xxxi

already more than once replied: I have always been at

the disposal of my country. In 1 869, being invited by a

large number of electors to present myself as a candidate

for membership in the Chamber of Deputies, I made, in

answering this call, very considerable personal sacrifices.

The only thing that I could not bring myself to do was, to

say a word more or a word less than what I considered it

was right to say. Since then, I have always repeated that

I was at the service of my fellow-citizens in the matter of

any commission with which they might choose to entrust

me. A ll solicitation in such a case seems to me out of

place. In the difficult times in which we now live,

political responsibilities must neither be courted nor

refused. They are blind and imprudent who court

th em ; while they who refuse them, and who, through

love of quiet, seek shelter from the dangers inseparable

from public life, must be regarded as egoists. I hereby

protest that if my country had imposed any duties upon

me, I should have discharged them with courage, and I

should have brought to bear upon them all the industry

and capacity for work of which I am possessed.

/

P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

F I R S T D I A L O G U E .

C E R T I T U D E S .

P h i l a l e t h e s , E u t h y p i i r o n , a n d E u d o x e s .

Eutiiyphron, Eudoxes, and Philalethes, three philosophers of the school that has for its fundamental principles the worship of the ideal, the denial of the supernatural, and the experimental investigation of the real, had left Paris in the first days of the month of May 1871. They were walking in one of the most secluded spots of the park at Versailles, overwhelmed with sorrow over the misfortunes of their native land. Eudoxes carried with him a copy of the “ Entretiens sur la Mdtaphysique ” 1 of Malebranche. They, sat down, and Eudoxes began to read from the thirteenth discourse:—

“ A h ! Theodorus, what a beautiful and sublime idea of Providence that seems which you have given me ! how fruitful, moreover, and luminous it is ! and how fitted to silence libertines and irreligious men ! Never did a principle involve consequences more advantageous to religion and morality. W hat light this admirable principle sheds! what difficulties it dissipates ! None of the phenomena which contradict each other in the economies of nature and grace im ply any contradiction in the cause that produces them ; they are, on the contrary, so many clear proofs of the uniform ity of his procedure. A ll the evils that afflict us, all the confusions that thwart

1 Conversations on Metaphysic.— T r .

P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

us, are in perfect harmony with the wisdom, the' goodness, and the justice of him who rules over all. God’s work must needs be done in ways and by means that bear the stamp of his attributes. I admire the majestic course of his general providence around us.

“ T h e o d o r u s .— I clearly perceive, Aristus, that you have closely and with satisfaction followed the principle which 1 lately explained to you, since you still appear quite affected by it. But have you fu lly grasped it ? have you thoroughly mastered it % I still have m y doubts on this point, because it is very hard to believe1 that in so short a time you can have considered it sufficiently to have fu lly mastered it. L et us hear, I pray you, some of your reflections, that I may be relieved of my doubt and feel satisfied ; for the more serviceable the principles are and the more fruitful, the more dangerous it is not to apprehend them quite clearly.

“ A r i s t u s . — I agree w ith you, Theodorus ; but what you have told us is so clear, the way in which you construe Providence tallies so completely with the idea of an infinitely Perfect Being, and with all we see happening around us, that I feel convinced of its truth.”

E u d o x e s .

How little really is wanting at times to that philosophy for our perfect acceptance of i t ! That grand principle of Malebranche, that “ God does not act by private volitions,” may well be accepted as the sum- total of our theodicy.

P h i l a l e t i i e s .

Assuredly Malebranche’s knowledge of the universe was incomplete, compared with what is accessible to us, yet he was able to draw sagacious conclusions from it.

E u t h y p h r o n .

To say nothing of a host of contradictions with which, considering the embarrassments that the intolerance of his age and his status as a religious must have caused him, we abstain from reproaching him, I cannot without protest consent to such haphazard theories in regard to the universe as a whole. W hat each one knows is the

C E R T I T U D E S . 3

result of observations that he has made from reality, as well as of observations made before his own day and beyond the range of his experience, but which have reached him either by hearsay or reading. Induction and generalisation applied to these facts beget more or less just ideas regarding portions of the universe. I say “ more or less just,” because, in order to assert anything in an absolute dogmatic form about a portion of the universe, we would require to be conversant with the infinite number of facts which constitute that portion,— an achievement impossible to human intelligence. Our knowledge in this respect might be compared to a topographical chart more or less correctly executed. The best chart falls far short of the country itse lf; it nevertheless gives an idea of it, and even the most indifferent chart is not useless.

Our knowledge ever loses in certainty in proportion as we embrace vaster sections of reality. W hat if our theory should claim to embrace the world in its entirety ? The position we should in that case assume recalls to my mind the impression I experienced one night in B^kes.1 It was very dark; a lantern lighted up the sand and the stones to the distance of a few paces around m e; beyond this small circle of light was the immensity of darkness. To have attempted to guess whether, at the distance of a kilometre from that place, I should find a plain, a mountain, a river, or a rock, would have been preposterous. W e should be acting similarly if, from the point where we are placed in the universe, we were to attempt to judge of the whole of it.

P h i l a l e t h e s .

W e are, however, obliged to try to construct out of what we see the theory of what we do not see, if we would not resemble the animal that, bending prone

1 It is a large county in the central part of Eastern Hungary.— T r.

4 P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

towards the earth, busies itself only with the object which lies nearest to its senses and its appetites.


Be it s o ; but do not forget that such views do not amount to more than what the ancients called placita philosophorum, ra apeatco/ieva.1 A higher doubt hoversover all such speculations. Doubt is inseparable from an insoluble question. Is not our very psychological constitution, which is the eye with which we see reality, itself apt to deceive ? Are not we the playthings of an inevitable error ? It is impossible to answer such a question without falling into a vicious circle.


It is not my wont to stop at this doubt, which has driven so many philosophers on paths which lead nowhere. As the instrument of reason, scientifically handled and applied in the form of an inflexible standard of reality, has never led to any error, we are bound to conclude that it is good, and that it may be relied upon. A balance verifies itself when, as we change the quantities weighed, it gives constant results.

E u d o x e s .

Moreover, humanity is not such a unity as Descartes or even Kant thought. W e know many humanities, and notably two principal forms, namely, that which has developed itself in Western Asia and in Europe, and that which has developed itself in Eastern Asia, I mean in China. Now these diverse humanities, although they are very unequal in extent, are yet built nearly upon the same psychological plan, and we may say. without fear of error, that the other humanities propa-

1 The dogmas of philosophers.— T r.

C E R T I T U D E S . S

gated in space, do not differ essentially from ours as regards the fundamental notions of reason and of morality ; it may be that they even differ from us less than an Andamanese or a Chinaman does.


These are sad times. Twenty times a day do we ask ourselves if it is worth while living to be present at the downfall of all that we have loved. Happy is the man who believes in an eternal city of God, and who, like St. Augustine during the siege of Hippo, can die in peace!— Would you have us compare our general ideas respecting God and the universe ? I am of opinion that these are subjects which we must fall back upon every ten years, in order to draw up for ourselves a sort of balance-sheet of the quantities which have changed since the last liquidation.

E u d o x e s a n d E u t h y p h r o n .

V ery willingly.


I, for my part, am in the habit of classifying my ideas on this subject under three categories. The first, which is unfortunately very limited, is the category of certainties ; the second, that of probabilities; and the third, that of dreams. W e shall refrain from referring to the last, if you please, Euthyphron, although perhaps it may be the most dear to each of us.


Dreams are good and useful, provided they are taken for what they really are. Do you remember the great principle of Hegel, “ that it is necessary to comprehend the unintelligible as such ? ”


E u d o x e s .

Philalethes might begin with explaining to us what ideas among those we possess regarding the universe as a whole he considers certain.


When I reflect upon the universe as a whole, two things appear to me quite certain; so certain indeed, that if I do not succeed in making them clear to all who are initiated into the scientific spirit, it will only he because of my imperfect expression of them. The first is, that .when we analyse what happens in those portions of the universe that are open to our observation, we find no trace of the action of definite beings superior to man, and acting, as Malebranche says, by private volitions.

E u d o x e s .

Explain to us clearly what you understand by these words.


The planet which we inhabit presents an appearance totally different from what it would do if man did not exist. In other words, in the fieri (becoming, development, process of things) of our planet, man acts after the manner of a cause. Outside this planet of ours the agency of man may be considered nil, because our planet acts but little on the universe as a whole except by gravitation; and man has not changed, nor is he able to change, the gravitation of his planet. Nevertheless, as the least molecular action reverberates in the whole, and man is the occasional cause at least of a number of molecular actions, we may say that man acts in the whole by a quantity equal to the small differential that exists between what the world is with the earth inhabited and


what it would be if the earth were uninhabited. W e may even affirm that the very animal acts in the universe in the manner of cause, inasmuch as a planet peopled solely with animals would exhibit on its surface phenomena referable to the free-will of the animal and different from purely mechanical phenomena in which we can detect no act of volition.

From this it follows, that if there were beings acting in the universe as man does on the surface of his own planet, or in a way still more efficient, we would in some way perceive it. I f a rational being were transported from another world to ours, he would conclude, long before he fell in with a man, that the planet was inhabited by reasonable and free beings like himself, skilled in the contrivance of means to the attainment of ends. The sight of a road, of a wall, or of an avenue of trees would be enough to convince him of th a t; just as the man of antiquity who landed on an island and found geometrical figures on the sand instantly concluded, “ There must be men here.” But the spectacle of the universe does not warrant us in arriving at any such conclusion. Everything in it indeed is full of order and harmony, but in the detail of what happens there is nothing of private intention; everything takes place according to general laws, not one single deviation from which with a view to a special end has ever been demonstrated.

One of the cases in which it would be most natural for such deviations to happen would be that of showing favour to a virtuous man or a just cause. But such a thing has never been known to happen. Nature is characterised by absolute insensibility, transcendent immorality, if I may dare to say so. The immorality of history and the injustice inherent in human societies are not a whit less. Whatever we may do, it will be always impossible for society to be just. I know that the great majority of men believe that there are deities, protectors of innocence and avengers of crime, who are


susceptible of being moved and softened. But this is because, not being initiated into the scientific spirit, they have not the faculty of analysis and observation necessary to perceive that in the course of events there do not occur interpositions of superior beings such as indicate any volition. Such alleged interpositions would have been confirmed. But no trace of the action of an intelligent hand, as interposing even for a moment to insert itself in the compact tissue of the world’s affairs, has ever once been authentically verified. The field of observation is so vast that, had any such interventions taken place, they would have been remarked by some one.

E u d o x e s .

Do you deny all efficacy to prayer ?


I do not deny prayer, regarded as a mystic hymn. Every act of admiration, of joy, and of love is a prayer in this sense. But interested prayer— the prayer by which the finite being seeks to substitute his will for that of the Infinite Being-— that I repudiate, and I even regard it as a sort of wrong done, innocently no doubt, to the Deity. “ Tenui popano corruptus Osiris.” 1 People attempt to bribe God by small presents. In the primitive ages, when a hero was preyed upon by cancer, it was believed that he was being eaten by a god ; fresh food was offered to the deity, in the hope that he might prefer it to the flesh of the patient, and so let him escape. The unscientific man believes that there are beings directly interposing in the affairs of the world, and he imagines that, by addressing these beings, he will obtain aid from them conformable to his desires. But

1 Osiris is bribed by a small piece of cake.— T r .


never has it been proved that such a prayer was followed by such a result. This the Greek philosophers perfectly understood. One of them, Diagoras of Melos, to whom were shown the offerings made by sailors in a temple of Poseidon, remarked, “ People reckon up those that are saved, but do not count those that were drowned, who yet had made vows as well as the others ! ” That is well said ! In such matters only the favourable cases are taken into consideration, whilst those that do not answer to the illusions which we seek to impose on ourselves are clean passed over. This is the explanation of all miracles; and prayer is, in fact, a request for a miracle, inasmuch as he who prays solicits the Deity to change for his private benefit the course which Nature would otherwise take. The sick man who prays to be cured when, according to the natural order of things, he ought to die, asks for a miracle ; he prays, in a case in which disease would prove mortal, that it may not do so. The peasants that make processions either to obtain rain or to stay it ask for a m iracle; they pray that the rain may fall at a time when naturally it should not fall : this would require an entire and an expressly-purposed overturn in the atmosphere. The heavy rains of the month of June depend on phenomena that have happened in the icebergs at the North Pole in the month of May. In such a case, the Eternal, knowing a month beforehand the prayers to be addressed to him, would require to have directed his attention to the movements of the icebergs, and disturbed them in their formation, or rather to have prevented the fields of Polar ice, as they advanced towards the south, from producing their ordinary effects in the cooling and condensation of vapours. And what would this be but a miracle ?

In order that the general belief in regard to this matter should be well grounded, we should be able to adduce cases in which prayer has been truly efficacious, that is to say, cases in which, at the instance of prayer, events

IO P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

had followed a course different from that which they would have taken without it. But such proof has never been, nor ever will be, attempted. People have been praying since the world began, and yet they have never been able to prove that a prayer or a vow was ever followed by an effect in answer to it. Nearly three thousand Punic inscriptions, all similar to one another, have been recently dug out of the earth. In each of these a Carthaginian devotee assures us that Tanith and Baal-Hainmon had heard his prayer, and that, in testimony thereof, he had raised this small tablet. So far so good; but Tanith and Baal-Hammon are false gods; nobody now allows that they were able to grant favours. A ll the three thousand Carthaginian tablets bear testimony to an error. Structures raised ex voto cannot therefore be considered as a proof that a vow has ever been answered. Even though the mass of a population should believe that they have experienced the efficacy of prayer, that would prove nothing. These Carthaginians would have us believe that they had experienced this very efficacy, and they were deceived, for their gods, as all the world knows now-a-days, were powerless.

It would be easy, however, to settle this matter by appeal to statistics. In times of drought, twenty or thirty parishes in one and the same province make processions with a view to obtain rain ; twenty or thirty others do not. B y means of registers carefully kept, and by the induction of large numbers of cases, it would be easy to ascertain whether these processions had any effect; whether the parishes that made them were more favoured than the others, and if the quantity of rain with which they were favoured was in proportion to their religious fervour.

The experiment might be repeated in a thousand different ways. W e might, for instance, have two rooms of children suffering from the same disease, taking care, however, so to isolate them that there may be no fraud

C E R T I T U D E S . i i

in the arrangement. On the one set we might allowO Oreligious persons to place some medals reputed to possess the power of working miracles, whilst on the other we would place nothing, and then we might see whether there resulted from the arrangement any appreciable difference. But the experiment has never been tried, and all sensible people will agree with me, I imagine, that, if it were made, the result would be such as might be easily predicted.

The same absence of supernatural interposition is to be observed in the events of history. The most pious and most orthodox nations are often defeated by those that are less pions and less orthodox, without its ever being possible for us to prove that a higher providence had befriended any but the strongest and most courageous party. The so-called God of armies is always on the side of the nation that has the best artillery and the best generals. Nature, in her management of things, displays an absolute indifference to good and bad. The sun rises equally on the good and on the evil.1

There is not, then, a single fact which requires us to believe that there are finite beings external to humanity capable of acting on our planet. By this I do not at all mean that there do not exist external to humanity other intelligent and active beings; but what I mean is this, that such beings do not affect by their action either our planet or the movements of the stars; for if such a particular influence existed, we would recognise it. Suppose some ants should establish their republic in a very solitary place, and one which might be visited by a human being only two or three times in a century. Let us suppose these ants capable of a certain knowledge of Nature and the discovery of some of her laws, but not of accounting for the huge being that threatened to crush them. Their natural philosophy would resemble ours,

1 “ For he maketh his sun to rise sendeth rain on the just and on the on the evil and on the good, and unjust ” (Matt. v. 45).— T r.


but they would be obliged to admit that at certain moments every forty or fifty years the laws were liable to be strangely upset; that then a mysterious and gigantic being, an intermittent, mysterious force, crossed their path and overturned everything. If the ants were philosophers, they would never confound the passage of such a being with a tempest or a waterspout, phenomena altogether mechanical and void of intention. Man, conceived of more or less vaguely, would be to them very much what God was to the ancients, a being more powerful than man, who occasionally interposed in the affairs of the earth and of humanity. Well, it has never been proved that such a being exists beyond man’s sphere ; never does such a phenomenon as the one the ants are supposed to have witnessed, on the hypothesis which I have just assumed, take place over the head of mankind. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and epidemics were formerly regarded as events of this order and as indications of the wrath of the Deity. A t this time of day no well-informed man will admit this. These events are regarded as natural, and, among the causes of the eruptions of Jorullo or of Hecla, no academy of sciences will think of reckoning, to ever so small a degree, the sins of the Mexicans or of the Icelanders. There are countries much less moral in character than Iceland where earthquakes are unknown.

E u d o x e s .

Is this the sum-total of your theology ? It is wonderfully negative.


W ait a lit t le ! I have told you that I accepted two propositions as certain in theology. As I hold it unquestionable that no caprice, no private volition, enters into the tissue of events that compose the universe, so


I regard it no less evident that the world has an aim and is steadily elaborating a mysterious work. There is a something which is developing itself by an internal necessity, by an unconscious instinct, in a manner analogous to the movement in plants towards water or the light, analogous to the blind effort of the embryo to leave the womb, or to that inner necessity which directs the metamorphoses of the insect. The world is in labour with something. “ Omnis creatura ingemiscit et par- tu rit” 1 The great agent of the march of the world is pain, the unsatisfied being that craves for development and is ill at ease in the process. Favourable circumstances engender only inertness ; restraint and obstruction {la gene) constitute the principle of movement. Pressure alone causes water to rise and directs it. The puberty of the young girl proceeds from an egg ripe to live, and which aspires to live. From the starfish, a pentagon which digests, a singular organism, which was doubtless possible at any early age of the world, up to the most perfect form of man, .everything aspires to exist, and to exist more and more; everything possible wishes to see itself realised; every reality aspires to self- consciousness ; every consciousness that is obscure strives to become more clearly conscious. Like a large heart overflowing with an impotent and vague love, the universe is ceaselessly in the agony of transformation. The organised body aims at realising a ty p e ; and as it grows, it acquires its different parts, and creates organs for itself by a kind of blind force, the effects of which we may predict beforehand. Each type derives from its own essence all that it is susceptible of as respects individual perfection. W hat human invention of the kind can compare with the suckers with which the poulpe has provided itself by a kind of deeply seated art ? What we can say of an animal’ type, we must say of a nation, of a religion, of every great organic fa c t; we must also

1 A ll creation groans and is in travail.— T r . From St. Paul.

say the same of humanity and of the entire universe. W e recognise an immense universal nisus [active exertion] to realise an end, to fill a living mould, to produce a harmonious unity, a consciousness. The consciousness of the whole appears as yet extremely obscure; it does not seem greatly to surpass that of the oyster or the polype, but it exists; the world is moving onwards with an unerring instinct to its goal. The mechanical materialism of the savants at the latter end of the eighteenth century seems to me one of the greatest errors that it is possible to adopt.

E u t h y p h k o n .

Take care that you, from your side of the question, do not approach too near the antiquated philosophy of final causes, which is so puerile in its explanations.


That philosophy erred only in form. What it placed in the category of being and of creation must now be placed in that of fieri, of slow evolution. “ To forge the first pair of forceps,1” says the Talmud, “ forceps were necessary, and these God created.” This is a mistake. Forceps were constructed by degrees, and by means of instruments more and more improved. The creation of man, of animals, and of life was achieved in the same manner. Those phenomena of consciousness in its obscure state are the proper domain of God. God is seen especially in the animal, in the infant, in the man of the people, and in the man of genius, who is in his own way a child and a man of the people. God is the reason of those who have no reason; he is the secret mainspring that brings everything into being, in conformity with the laws of aesthetic and of harm ony; he is the number, the weight, and the measure which makes the world harmonious and eternal.



W hat most confirms me in this view is the series of facts in which we detect Nature duping individuals out of respect to an interest that is superior to themselves. Consider, for instance, all that concerns generation. How thoroughly Nature makes us feel the importance she attaches to upholding the morality of the individual! She surrounds this treasure, this source of every life, with numberless precautions. Not content to append enjoyment to it, she has attached to it a number of instincts, a complicated tissue of contradictory sentiments, such as modesty, reserve, lasciviousness, shame, desire, like the ropes of a man-of-war, to pull, to tighten, to check, to stop, and to urge. Over-indulgence she visits with the most cruel penalties. Nature herself provides that- the woman should be chaste, and the man not too much so. Hence a body of ready-made judgments which cover with ignominy the woman who is not chaste, while it visits with something like ridicule the man who is. And such sentiments, when they are deeply rooted and obstinate, are part of Nature herself. Nature in her combinations seems to have had much rather a social end in view than the gratification of the egoism of individuals.

Desire is the grand providential mainspring of activity; every desire is an illusion, but things are so disposed that the emptiness of the desire is only felt when the desire has been satiated. Pothos accordingly is, and for ever remains, the first-born of the gods. The pollen contrives as ingeniously to enter the ovule as if it knew the laws of the vacuum. There is no object of desire the supreme vanity of which we do not recognise and confess when once we have embraced it. To this experience there is not a single exception since the beginning of the world. Nevertheless those who know this perfectly beforehand keep on desiring all the same; and though Ecclesiastes should preach for ever its undeceived bachelor’s philosophy, every one will admit the philosophy to be just, but will all the same keep, on desiring. What inconsistency !

i 6 P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

Nature wills the propagation of species, and employs a thousand artifices to attain this object. Multitudes of the acts of the living being are not the results of calcu-o olations bearing on personal advantage. Nature has implanted in the lower animals just as much maternal love as is necessary for the preservation of their species ; to mankind she has given just as much of disinterestedness as is necessary to keep up the transmission of a higher life. The ephemera lives three years in its larva state; its winged life lasts only for a day, during which brief space it couples, lays its eggs, and dies. No instinct is without a purpose. When we see in human nature a thousand facts that are not sufficiently explained by pleasure and by interest, we may unhesitatingly conclude that they are the tools of a mechanism ordained by Nature, although the purpose of that mechanism is hard to understand. Man is like the worker at Gobelins, who weaves on the wrong side a tapestry of which he does not see the design. He works for a few francs a d a y ; we for even less— for the illusion of well-doing. Oh, what a noble animal is man ! How wTell he carries his harness ! How just and profound is the sketch of the little ass of the Palatine ! “ Labor a, aselle, quomoclo ego laboravi, et proderit tibi.” 1

Evidently we are subservient to some purpose; we are worked (’exploit4), as some people say. Something is organised at our expense; we are the playthings of a superior egoism, which pursues an end by means of us. The universe is that great egoist, that decoys us by the grossest bird-calls; at one time with pleasure, which it afterwards asks us to repay in an exact equivalent of pain ; at another with a fanciful paradise, in which, as soon as we once repose in it, we find not a shadow of truth ; and at another with the supreme delusion of a virtue, which impels us to sacrifice our most obvious interests to a

1 Labour, little donkey, as I have laboured, and it shall profit thee. —1Tk.


purpose that is outside of and beyond us. The bait is evident, and yet we take the bait, and will always do so.


That is not so surprising as you think. A world founded on the policy you have been describing exists, because such a world alone is possible. A more intelligent humanity, in which all might see clearly, could not continue to subsist; it would die in its very germ, and consequently it does not exist. It is as if you felt surprised that there is no vertebrate without a heart." '

P lIIL A L E T IIE S. i.i " '

But what astonishes me is that a being so constituted as to live for a purpose beyond himself, and to sacrifice at times to that purpose his own personality,1 what, I say, astonishes me is exactly this, that such a being exists. The virtue of man is, in a word, the great proof of God. A s regards man, the universe appears to us like an overreaching tyrant, subduing us to its designs by Machiavelian tricks, and so managing matters that few are able to see through such impostures; for if everybody discerned them, the world would be an impossibility. Nature evidently takes care that the individual should be virtuous. Regarded from the standpoint of personal interest, this is a deception, since the individual will derive no temporal advantage from his virtue ; but Nature has need of the virtue of the individual. She has accord

1 “ If,” said Plotinus, “ know- loosened from its material prison, ledge is the same as the thing known, separated from individual conscious- the Finite, as Finite, never can know ness, and becomes absorbed in the the Infinite, because it cannot be Infinite Intelligence from which it the Infinite. To attempt, therefore, emanated. In this ecstasy it con- to know the Infinite by reason is templates real existence ; it iden- futile ; it can only be known in im- tifies itself with that which it con- mediate presence, Trapovaia. The templates.” — Lewes's H istory o f faculty by which the mind divests Philosophy, vol. i. p. 389, 5th ed., itself of its personality is ecstasy. 1880.— T r .

In this ecstasy the soul becomes

ingly provided for that by the categorial imperative,1 which is the greatest, the true, the only revelation. The surest virtue is that which is grounded on speculative scepticism. Nobody in a matter of business would risk a hundred francs with the hope of gaining a million on a probability such as that of a future life ; and yet everybody submits to death, or regulates his whole conduct, on such a probability. The reason is, that there is a category in the human spirit, which, instead of limiting itself, like the rest, to theory, seizes us by the throat and compels us. W e are wittingly duped by Nature for the sake of some transcendent purpose which the universe proposes to itself and which is altogether beyond us.

The beneficent impostures that Nature employs in order to attain her object, which is the morality of the individual, are marvellous to study in detail. The beliefs of natural religion— all springing from the categorical imperative— resemble a net that ensnares us, a philter that seduces us. And no criticism, no negative philosophy will avail anything. It is when we are at our best that we believe in God. Beligion is to man what maternal instinct is in birds— a blind sacrifice of self to an unknown end willed by N ature; a thing absurd in itself, good because Nature wills it, true, consequently, and holier than everything else. There is a thoughtful policy which manifests itself in all the phenomena of obscure consciousness or of unconscious existence. A grand purpose is being achieved by the devotion of man. To urge man not to devote himself is as if we should preach to the bird not to build its nest and not to rear its young ones. There is very little harm in th is: man and bird will ever persist in their eternal ways and means of acting, because Nature requires this persistence. An ingenious providence takes


1 i.e., “ By an imperative impul- law, the dictate of duty in us. A ll sion towards it.” Such is the term moral obligation is a categoHcal im- by which Kant denotes the moral perative.— Tk.


precautions to ensure the amount of virtue necessary for the maintenance of the universe.

E u d o x e s .

I f there were men in this world who, as that ancient said, could take with their left hand what you give them with your right, they might puzzle themselves over your sentiments. On the other hand, our materialists would accuse you of looking for disinterestedness where there is none. Selfish desire, according to them, sufficiently explains all the facts in which you find a sort of Jesuitical scheme of Nature to subordinate us to her ends.


The reason is that the savants who, quite unjustly for the most part, assume the name of materialists, have not sufficiently analysed the nature of our philosophic, msthetic, and moral instincts. I f man reflected on it carefully, he would perceive that he has, in the majority of cases, an immediate interest in not being virtuous. He is virtuous, nevertheless, at times. I f the true, the good, and the beautiful were worthless things, the pursuit of them would have been abandoned long ago, for they are totally unproductive. Far from contributing to success, true talent, true virtue, true science prejudice our life interests, and place him who is possessed of them in a position of inferiority as regards success; sometimes they bring him misfortune. If the true did not possess an objective value, human curiosity would have died out centuries ago. I f the good were not enjoined by a W ill superior to our own, a thousand experiences would have taught us not to be duped by it. The virtuous man, the scholar, and the great artist are thus the most illustrious proofs of God. But the humblest psychological fact, well examined, conducts to the very same conclusion. Among the prepossessions which the interest of humanity


and of nations requires, the spirit of family life must take rank before all others. The family virtues are indispensable to the proper continuance of a society. Nature has provided for this by strange defects in logic, of which happily at once the most refined and the most blast are the dupes. Monogamy is not indicated by the physiological constitution of man, but it is essential to the formation and preservation of great races : it has acquired from opinion the authority of a quasi-natural law. Numbers of worthy citizens live only to bring up their children, who, on coming to manhood, will, in their turn, have no other care than that of rearing theirs. The vicious circle is patent, but it deters nobody, because Nature has need of such disinterested care. She reserves to herself the chance that there may emerge some day from obscurity a man of the first rank, who, for the benefit of art, of science, or of politics, will in a short time and in a shining way make away with and utilise the capital modestly amassed by the earnest diligence of his ancestors.

The instinctive Machiavelism of Nature is seen, moreover, in the enormous dupery which is implied in goodness. The good-nature of the dog is not discouraged, although it often brings upon him only rebuffs; the abusive treatment of man never offends him, because he loves m an; he feels his superiority in consequence, and is proud to participate in the life of a higher world. If duty were the effect of either a selfish or a philosophical reflection, the dog would have long ago renounced i t ; for man is sometimes cruelly unjust towards him and slights his affection. This is also true of the morality of those whom Nature selects to act the part of self- sacrificers. There will always be willing victims ready to minister to the purpose of the universe. The races that are specially good— the Breton sailor, the Lithuanian peasant, for example— are treated with contempt by stronger races. He who obeys is almost always better

C E R T I T U D E S . 2 1

than he who commands. The individual devoted to goodness is doomed to he an object of disdain; but not the less will he continue to play his part, for it is necessary to the purpose of Nature. W e may say as much of probity, although, in this case, the argument is less forcible, since there is a penalty attached to the opposite of probity, whilst there is none to that of goodness. A t bottom, all alike are caught in those ingenious bird lures. To attempt to remove the sentiment of piety from this world and to reduce everything to pure egoism were as impossible as an attempt to take away from the woman her maternal organs. The egoist who prides himself on having constructed his theory of enlightened self-interest is himself one of Nature’s dupes: the egoist gives the lie a thousand times every hour to his own system. The life of an egoist is a tissue of inconsistencies, of actions that, from his own point of view, are absurd and foolish.

E u d o x e s .

The fact is that I do not know any saint that has carried self-abnegation so far as a certain savant in our time, whom superficial minds characterise as an atheist and a materialist.


You are right here. In no system has virtue so much objective value as in ours. To obey Nature is, according to us, to co-operate in the divine work. Kant, with his admirable genius, clearly saw that that was the basis of religion, which springs from practical, and not from speculative reason. God, considered as the soul of the world, charged with its preservation and destiny, loves virtue and approves it, because it serves his purpose; it adds a stone to the edifice that is hourly rising toward the Infinite. Thus virtue occupies a transcendent rank in


the universal fabric; it is the mainspring, the great factor, of the divine p lan ; it is thus the best proof of the existence of such a plan. Virtue exists; it is necessary to account for it. This wheel-work cannot certainly be superfluous. Eeligion in humanity is what the building of the nest is to the bird. A ll of a sudden an instinct springs up mysteriously in a being that had never before felt it. The bird that has never laid an egg or seen oneOOlaid knows beforehand the natural function to which it is going to contribute. W ith a sort of pious joy and devotion it works towards an end which it does not comprehend. The bee also makes wax, the ant lays up in store, for the mere purpose of storing up, from an impulse far beyond what selfish prudence would dictate to them.

The birth of the religious idea in man is effected in a similar way. Man moved along unheeding ; i suddenly, like a moment of pause, there is silence, a- break, as it were, in sensation. “ 0 God ! ” he then cries, “ how strange is my destiny! Is it really true that I exist ? 2 W hat is the world ? That sun, is it I ? Does the light shine from my heart ? 0 Father! I see thee beyond the clouds! ” Then the noise of the external world begins again; the vista closes ; but from this moment a being to appearance egoistic will proceed to perform inex

1 There are moments in a man’s “ being.” When such relation is life when the social consciousness, not established, when the two cor- the “ better self,” suddenly occurs to relatives are detached, the “ better him, i.e., when he thinks little of his self ” is not yet born ; there is only personality.— T r. the consciousness of some object

2 Mr. C. E. Appleton, in an article being over against man. When on “ A Plea for Metaphysics ” in the man feels this over-againstness, his November number of the Contem- social consciousness springs up in porary Review for 1876, translates him. See on this very interesting this sentence thus : “ Is it really subject Matthew Arnold’s “ Cul- true that I am standing aloof and ture and A n arch y” and “ St. Paul alone over against this immensity?” and Protestantism; ” and Emerson’s The relation of the thinking and “ Essays, Lectures, and O rations;” feeling subject— man— to the uni- and, more particularly, the essay of verse— an undefined, obscure object the latter on “ The Over-Soul.”— — a relation in which the two corre- T r.latives meet for the first time, is


plicable actions, begin to act in opposition to his own evident self-interest, subordinate himself to an end that he does not know, and feel the necessity of bowing his head and worshipping.

Oh, supreme joy for the virtuous m an! The world holds together by means of him. I f self-consciousness is at times disturbed when he feels he is detached and alone, unable to reply to the objections of materialism, let him be of good cheer: he is in the r ig h t; he is the wise man ; he is one among a hundred thousand ; it is by him Sodom is redeemed. The minority to which he belongs constitute the raison d'etre of our planet. It is for the sake of him and of those like him that the earth exists and maintains itself in being.

Thus a higher order of things is imposed upon us, which carries us along. Nature treats us like a troop of gladiators destined to be slain in a cause which is not theirs ; she acts towards us like an Oriental potentate with Mamelukes under him, whom he employs for some mysterious purpose, but to whom he never shows himself in person. Two feelings would arise in these subordinates : in one party, rebellion, hatred for the tyrant (such is the moral situation at which Schopenhauer halted); in the other, resignation, even gratitude, and love for the unknown purpose of things; this latter is Fichte’s point of view, and it is the one I have succeeded in holding by hitherto.


I congratulate you on this. You will allow, however, that both these alternatives are legitimate to a certain extent. W e serve a purpose prescribed by Nature which Nature does not reveal to us. We are, by your showing, victims without the consent of our w i l l ; must we be resigned victims into the bargain ?



Yes, we must. There is a contradiction in Schopenhauer which renders his attitude much less legitimate than that of Fichte. He admits that the universe has an aim, and he has very distinctly recognised the Machia- velism of Nature— as, for instance, in love ; but he does not perceive that this suffices to establish theism and to prove that virtue has a meaning. Schopenhauer ought to have concluded that the supreme virtue is resignation, that is to say, the acceptation of life such as it is, as subserving a higher purpose. His premises implied this. If Nature has an aim, we must lend ourselves to i t : to obey Nature, to follow her indications, or were it only to let ourselves follow her bent, is already a law. Now if life has a law, it has a meaning. Schopenhauer is not a rebel like Byron or Heinrich Heine, neither of whom perceive the moral la w ; he is a much more daring revolutionist, a man unresigned to Nature, who claims a right to thwart her wishes. In the first place, this is culpable ; in the second, useless ; for Nature will always have her w a y ; she has arranged matters too well, she has too carefully loaded the dice ; and, whatever we may do, she will attain her object, which is to dupe us for her own profit. The great question is to know whether Nature has a purpose. This might be denied with some show of reason; but Schopenhauer does not deny i t ; and, as he does not, it is difficult to understand his immorality. I see clearly with Schopenhauer that there is a great ego which deceives us ; but, unlike Schopenhauer, I am resigned ; I accept, I submit myself to, the purposes of the Supreme Being. Morality is thus reduced to submission. Immorality consists in revolting against a state of things of which we see the dupery. W e must atone and the same time perceive and submit to it.

This revolt of man is the crime par excellence; to speak truly, it is the only crime there is possible. Man is


bound by certain artful devices of Nature, such as religion, love, the sense of the good and the true; all instincts which, as far as his mere personal interest is concerned, beguile him and carry him onwards to purposed ends external to himself. Man, in the progress of reflection, discerns more and more the deceptions of Nature, and by his criticism' proceeds to demolish religion, love, goodness, and truth. W ill he go through with this principle, or will Nature prevail ? Perhaps the extinct planets are those in which criticism has foiled Nature ; and sometimes I imagine' O

that if every one were to accept our philosophy, the world would come to an end.

• E u d o x e s .

That is very little to be feared. Nobody will believe us, good sir. The bells will continue to ring ; the joyous hallelujahs of Nature will resound eternally; there will always be pure souls to chant the hymn of the mystic nuptials. The great, the supreme, the internal consolation lies in thinking that we form part of a whole that is advancing steadily to its goal, and that whatever faults we may commit, there is no fear that the bark in which we sail will suffer in consequence. Let us not, moreover, be deceived in this. The new materialistic school regards us, who are idealists, about as dangerous as those who are orthodox.


The materialistic school is right. “ JEst Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo ” 1 It is only some puny minds who can rest satisfied with this philosophy of pygmies. The great man ought to co-operate in the fraud that forms-the basis of t h e u n i v e r s e ; the noblest occupation of genius is to be an accomplice with God, to connive at the policy of the

1 There lives a God in us ; we become warm, he moving us.— T r.


Eternal, to help in spreading Nature’s mysterious nets, to aid her in deceiving individuals for the general good, to be the instrument of this great illusion by preaching virtue to men, knowing very well that they will derive no personal advantage from it, just as a military chief leads on poor people to death for a cause which they can neither comprehend nor appreciate. W e work for a God, just as the bee makes his honey for man, without knowing it.o


But man is to the bee a superior individual, whom she must know, whereas we have no such superior who may be confined within the limits of a finite personality. If we had such a superior, we should know him. Nothing ever happens similar to what takes place when man empties out a beehive in order to get the honey.


There is not, in fact, within the range of our means of observation any consciousness (I mean to say, any thinking and finite consciousness) superior to m an; but there is a vast spontaneous consciousness1 which holds sway over him. Thus our formulae amount to that of the deists. Let us fall with the aims of N ature; let us (though not duped) be her dupes, the voluntary dupes of her Machiavelism ; let us enter into her purposes; let us be resigned to her. Evil is revolt against Natureo owhen we see that she deceives us. Yes, surely, she deceives us ; but let us submit. Her aim is good ; let us will what she wills. Virtue is a resolute amen, uttered

1 Obscure and indistinct conscious- is the unshaped material of thought, ness. Herbert Spencer says: “ Man, which is shaped afresh in every over and above his clear and distinct thought.” This “ unshaped mate- consciousness of the relative and the rial of thought” is the idea of the finite, has an indistinct consciousness Hegelians. Herbert Spencer might of the absolute and the infinite.” In be called an extremely negative Hege- another place he says: “ Thisabsolute lian.— T k.

C E R T I T U D E S . 2 7

with reference to the obscure ends that Providence pursues through us.1


In your view we form part of a paradoxical scheme intended to render it perceptible, and of an irony which you rightly hold to be highly philosophic. You are ready to fall in with the deceptions of the Eternal, but you hold to this, that he knows that you are not his dupe. I have always remarked in you a singular and very delicate sentiment: it is a kind of fear of seeming to derive any advantage from your virtue. You have the greatest horror of pharisaism ; so much so, that after you have paid the highest homage to virtue, you feel the necessity of saying that you make little account of it, and that it is really nothing but deception. You would be capable of affecting to be vicious in order not to seem pharisaical in an age of hypocrisy like ours, in which it pays to be a good thinker.

P h i l a l e t i i e s .

Really, had I been a priest, I should have steadily refused to accept fees for my mass ; I should have been afraid to act like the merchant who should hand in an empty sack in return for the money paid him. I should also scruple to reap any profit from my religious beliefs. I should be afraid to appear to be distributing any false notes, and, by alluring poor people with doubtful hopes, to stand in the way of their obtaining their proper share in this world. These things have sufficient reality about them to justify people talking about them, living by them, and continually reflecting upon them ; and yet they are not sufficiently certain to warrant one to feel sure that

1 Virtue is a voluntary co-opera- each man obscure, and they do not tion with the general tendencies immediately benefit him.— T r . of th ings; these tendencies are to


in professing to teach them he is not practising deception in regard to the quality of the article he delivers.


It is late, and the chill of evening makes itself early felt in the midst of these thick hedges. W e have, moreover, nearly exhausted, I believe, what Philalethes, at the besdnnins: of our discussion, called the certainties ofO O 'the subject. To-morrow we might meet again; it may be that I shall have some objections to make? for although I admit that a Superior W ill employs us in his service, and accomplishes some end by means of humanity, I have not hitherto been accustomed to regard such ideas as a succedaneum for deism or natural religion. I much desire that we had Theophrastes with us, whom I have sometimes heard expressing bold views regarding the purposes of the universe.

P h i l a l e t h e s a n d E u d o x e s .

Bring h im ; he will be welcome.

( 29 )

S E C O N D D I A L O G U E .

P R O B A B I L I T I E S .

E u d o x e s , P h i l a l e t h e s , E u t h y p h r o n , T h e o p h p a s t e s .


I n our yesterday’s conversation, Theophrastes, we endeavoured to determine what our ideas are respecting the kind of consciousness which the universe as a whole appears to reveal. We are nearly agreed that it is an obscure consciousness and a spontaneous, analogous to that which presides over the development of the embryo or the animal,— a consciousness wonderfully reliable, nevertheless, and which attains its object by means of a perfect precision of aim. Euthyphron has told us that you have peculiar views on this subject. Pray, expound those views to us, if you think we are capable of comprehending them.

T h e o p h r a s t e s .

I believe, indeed, that there is, as it were, a resultant of the world, a capitalisation of the store of humanity and of the universe, such as is produced by slow and gradual accumulation, accompanied with enormous losses, but with an incessant increment, just as in the nutrition of an adolescent. That which remains is good, and cannot but be good; only that which is done for the ideal endures and produces a resultant. The rest is abolished. A s the rival egoisms exactly counterbalance and cancel each other in this world, a useful effect can be produced


only by the imperceptible sum of disinterested action. What is conserved is as nothing compared with the enormous amount of activity that is simply wasted; but it alone subsists, while the rest is lost. An immense capital is thus formed by the accumulation of useful labour. It is by the little particle which we have deposited in this store of eternal progress that we severally live in eternity. The proof that such a balance of profits and losses exists lies in the fact that the world has an onward movement. If there were no surplus of good in it, the world would not go 011; it would either maintain itself in idle equilibrium or waste itself in aimless effort, like that of a locomotive gliding on its rails. The whole train is carried along, it is difficult to say in what direction, but onward it goes ; it advances steadily towards infinity, and carries us along with it.

In order clearly to understand this, we must go back to the conceptual origin of motion in the universe. The beginning of motion in the universe, and consequently of the universal fieri, was a disturbance of equilibrium, which itself proceeded from what is non-homogeneous ; for a homogeneous world would never have m oved; it would have remained idle to all eternity, without development, without progress. W hy then did not the universe keep quiet ? W hy did it choose to run to meet adventures, instead of lying dormant in the bosom of absolute uniformity ? It was some spur that goaded it. A latent unrest gave it the s ta rt; an inner haze brought clouds on the dull serenity of its azure. W hat produces life is always a sudden start from apathy, a desire, a movement, the initiative of which is with no one, something which says, “ Forward! ” W hy does the embryo struggle to leave its mother’s womb ? W hy is the infant made to suffer pain during dentition ? W hy does it not do without it ? It no more does without it than does the young man when he follows his love-passion, which will perhaps embitter his whole life and kill him.

P R O B A B I L I T I E S . 31

A disturbance of equilibrium lias likewise been the origin of civilisation. Life and movement are like an interval of noise between two moments’ silence— an interval during which nothing is either gained or lost. By a kind of law of inertia the world and society tend of themselves to the equilibrium which would be their death. The beginning of history, or, what comes to the same thing, the transition from animality to humanity, wTas a crime— a sudden departure from a paradisaical state devoid of individuality, to one of war, of love, and of hatred.

And what was it that gave rise to the original revolt ? The Epicurean School, the great scientific school of antiquity, has asked, as we do, “ Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors ? ” 1 W ith w7hat intent was the primitive harmony in things broken ? W hat cause, internal or external, could set them in motion ? The cause was the craving to exist, the thirst for consciousness, the necessity there was that the ideal should be represented. The ideal appears thus as the principle of god-developing evolution, as the Creator par excellence, as the aim and prime mover of the universe. The pure idea is only a virtuality; pure matter is inert ; the idea becomes real only through material combinations. Everything issues from matter, but it is the idea that animates everything, which, by aspiring to realise itself, starts into existence. This is God. There are no edifices without stones; there is no music without either strings or copper; there is no thought without nervous m atter; but the stones are not the edifice, the violins are not music, the brain is not thought. These are but the conditions without which there would be neither edifice, nor music, nor thought. A sonata of Beethoven on paper exists only potentially. W hat makes it exist is vibration, a measurable physical fa c t; so much so, that the

1 Horace, Epist. i. T, ep.xii. W hat jarring harmony of things? (Smart), is the intention and power of the — T r .


concert, a moral non-measurable fact, results from two things — first from the thought of the composer, then from the material fact of vibration. The idea is a virtua l ly which wills to b e ; matter gives it concretion, and makes it pass into being, into reality. Thus the two poles of the universe are the ideal and the material. Nothing exists without matter ; but matter is the condition of being, not its cause. The cause, the efficiens, belongs wholly to the idea. “ Mens agitcit molem.” i It is the idea that really exists ; that alone is and ceaselessly aspires to a complete existence by giving rise to material combinations that are fit to produce it.

W e thus come to attribute perfect existence only to the idea, or rather to the idea conscious of itself, to the soul. Certainly the atom has an existence. . It has this great and singular privilege, that it is not liable to attack, and, if we must hold by what we know, eternal; since not only are no more atoms made or unmade, but because nothing in the way of experiment gives us the least idea of the manner in which an atom could have been formed. The organised being falls ill and d ies; the atom is never i l l ; it is absolutely inviolable. The atom of carbon which forms the dust of the M ilky W ay is the same as that which feeds our fires ; but it has certainly no consciousness. The soul, on the contrary, begins and ends ; it springs from combinations of atoms ; it is in a manner existence at the second power. Although transient, it has an immense superiority over m atter; it transcends and makes us forget it.

E u d o x e s .

You overthrow current opinions in a strange way. Formerly the divine intelligence was conceived of after the type of a man of genius, of a sublime mechanic, com-

1 The mind sets the mass of things in the divine mind, which pervades in motion (from Virgil). I t expresses the whole universe.— Tu. the Stoic doctrine of the right reason

P R O B A B I L I T I E S . 33

bining means to bring about an end ; now you have got the length of conceiving of it as the spontaneous impulsion to life, the vague consciousness of the being that aspires to conserve and to complete itself.


Formerly also Homer was conceived of as writing in his study like a man of letters; now-a-days the Homeric poems are accepted as the anonymous production of the Greek genius, and they seem to us, thus considered, a thousand times more beautiful. Formerly religion meant subjection to a superior being; now-a-days it means the adoration of the idea in its purity, and, as Strauss has so well defined it, “ it is that mental act which gathers and brings into a focus the rays of the ideal, reflected and refracted as they are amidst the multiplicity of phenomena.”


But what, in your opinion, is the aim that Nature pursues by so many ingenious means ?


The word which, in my opinion, best sums up this aim is the word “ consciousness.” The world aspires to greater and greater fulness of being, and being in its fulness is conscious being. The whole effort of the world tends to know itself, to love itself, to see itself, to admire itself. The aim of the world is to bring forth reason. Everything contributes to that aim. Each planet manufactures thought, aesthetic or moral sentiment; the small harvest of virtue and reason which each world produces is the final aim of that world, just as the secretion of gum is the final aim of the gum-tree. Thought is the final result. Galileo, Descartes, Hew ton, were in their day the aim, or rather the final outcome, of this world,

3 4 P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

since the loftiest view of the world resided in them. Being in itself, an abyss of darkness, is not satisfied to remain in its solitude. Already by means of the animal it has come to exist.1 The animal gets the length of aO O

vague contemplation of N ature; during hours of love it may have glimpses of the world of aesthetic and of art. The dog attains almost to virtue ; the dialogues of singing-birds are charming hymns, in which these little beings doubtless aim at something more than the mereo opleasure of exercising their voices. But all this is so insignificant as hardly to deserve mention. B y means of man the life of the universe is far more centralised; the true reflection of the rays of the universe really begins with science, high virtue, and high art. Humanity is thus the highest expression known to us of the life of Nature. The human brain is the most perfect instrument existing for the consciousness of the universe, at least in those parts of space that are accessible to our investigation.

No doubt tfiere are higher instruments of thought, with which we are not acquainted, but we are entitled to affirm that no thinking being outside our planet has attained to either omniscience or omnipotence, since there is no proof that there ever existed a thinking being who was able to extend his influence from one planet to another. If there existed anywhere beings that knew enough of the laws of matter and of force to be able to act at the distance of millions of leagues in space, we should know something of them by certain events that elude ordinary explanations and that wear an intentional character.


I refrain from speaking of other worlds. The number of the heavenly bodies in which, at a given moment, life can develop itself is, undoubtedly, infinitely small

1 i.e., in manifestation.—Tr.

P R O B A B I L I T I E S . 3 5

in proportion to the number of existing bodies. The earth is at the present moment perhaps the only inhabited globe in the midst of almost boundless space. Let us speak of it alone. Well, such an effect as the one of which you have just spoken is beyond its power. The words “ omnipotence ” and “ omniscience ” ought to be left ' to scholasticism. Humanity has had a beginning ; it will have an end. A globe such as ours has in its history only one period of temperature during which it is habitable ; in a few hundreds of thousands years this period will have expired. The earth will then probably be, like the moon, a worn-out planet, having accomplished its destiny and used up its planetary capital— -its coal, its metals, its living forces, and its races. In fact, the destiny of the earth is not infinite, as you suppose. Like every other body that revolves in space, it will draw from its bosom all that can be drawn out of it; but it will d ie ; and depend upon it it will die, as the sage of Theman in the Book of Job says, “ before it has attained wisdom.” Here is a problem with opposite data limiting itself like that of the telescope, in which, if you increase certain advantages, you incur compensating disadvantages, so that the relative limit of the advantage is mathematically fixed.

T h e o p h k a s t e s .

Doubtless all development is limited on account of the limits of the medium whose resources it utilises, but it is less in proportion as the medium is more extensive. Now, the rational development of the world is not subordinated to that of man, nor to the meagre resources of the terrestrial globe. The limits of the development of the spirit would be immeasurably extended if the thinking beings of the different planets, and particularly of the different sidereal worlds, were in communication with each other. It may be that one day the whole universe


will be united in a single community with a single capital. The resources for the development of the spirit would then be inexhaustible; and the conquest of the ideal would be achieved with a deposit of funds in a manner infinite.


Yes, but here you take up a position that is not only beyond the test of experiment, but even beyond the range of conceivability. What is the law of all the developments of life ? Humble beginnings, slow advances, rapid advances, relative perfection, slow decline, rapid decline, and death. Everything, therefore, leads us to believe that, after having attained its highest stage, civilisation will enter into a path of decline; for the moral and intellectual forces of humanity are finite, and the development of humanity resembles that of an individual, who has a childhood, a youth, a maturity, and an old age. Hitherto this law has been fulfilled in the development of individuals, of nations, of dynasties only. There have always existed in humanity sources of juvenescence and of et^cal renovation, to revive old, decrepit societies; but such sources may one day be dried up.

You will tell me that we have barbarous people among us; but these are old barbarians more worn out than ourselves. There are among the Germans, and particularly among the Sclavs, dense layers of population which have not yet reached the light, and are full of promise; but after them we see nothing but an ethnical levelling, in which the lowest elements will numerically preponderate, and will systematically destroy those in whom, by the law of atavism, the noble races of the past reappear. An irremediable decline of the human race is possible: the lack of sound ideas regarding the inequality of races may bring about a general debasement. The danger to the planet is this, that, in consequence of egoism engrossing the largest share of the energy of in


dividuals, and of the worship of the good, the true, and the beautiful being restricted to an inconsiderable nobility, — the danger, I say, is that the planet may lapse into a state in which, as all the individuals acquire a distinct consciousness of their rights, it may be impossible to originate a single disinterested thought. The inequality of classes, which argues a sovereign injustice in the midst of one and the same race, is, in fact, the secret of human progress, the lash of the whip that urges the world to move on, by giving to society an object to aim at. Fancy what a spectacle the earth would have presented, had it been peopled solely with negroes, subordinating everything to individual enjoyment in the midst of a general mediocrity, and substituting jealousy and the desire of physical well-being for the noble pursuit of the ideal! I f such a spirit were to prevail among us, it would be the end of all civilisation, of all striving after reason. Now such a prospect is to be dreaded, unless means are found to make the designs of genius triumph over the grovelling thoughts of a materialistic populace, attentive only to its grosser appetites.

Moreover, a great danger is threatened by the indefinite accumulation of scientific data within the limited sphere of the spirit. It is to be feared that the human brain may be crushed under its own weight, and that a time may come when its very progress may cause its decadence, as happens in the case of an equation which bears in its very expression its extent, its maximum. An age of decline, a middle age not followed by a renaissance, may thus be foreseen; an age in which nobody will be any longer able to comprehend a philosophy of any elevation, in which the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace will be an unintelligible work, doomed to disappear, if there happen to be no copies of it on vellum, at the end of the time when the paper of the best edition must have rotted away.



That is perfectly probable, but that does not bear upon our thesis. W e do not say that the absolute of reason will be attained by man ; we aver that it will be attained by something analogous to humanity. Thousands of attempts have already been made, and thousands more will be made ; it will be enough if one of them prove successful. The forces of the earth, as you have very well observed, are finite. It is clear that if the mechanical theory of heat does not within five or six hundred years lead to the discovery of the means of supplying the want of coal, humanity will lapse into a condition of mediocrity from which it will be ill able to come back. Now, will the theory of heat be carried to that degree of perfectiou ? It may be questioned. Hostile reactions may lay an arrest on the human spirit, and render it incapable of calculations transcending experience. Even at the present hour there are not more than fifty persons capable of keeping abreast of the progress of certain sciences and of carrying them onwards. Culture such as this, residing in a very, small number of brains, may be easily destroyed. An inquisition of no great severity, such as Italy witnessed in the sixteenth century— measures such as Louis X IV . employed against the Huguenots, would suffice. A fall of one or two degrees in the intellectual temperature is enough to annihilate these delicate beings, who thrive like greenhouse plants, only in conditions of a very narrow range. Humanity might thus be drowned at a couple of feet from the plank which would have saved it. The fate of a world may depend upon one man, or a small number of men, who might have surmounted the difficulty on which a whole humanity foundered. There probably have been worlds, as there still will be, in which men who might have been the saviours, the redeemers of the universe, perished in misery or failed in finding the conditions requisite for their development;


there have been others in which the germ of civilisation was stifled by exterminators, by such men as Philip II., having succeeded in their attempt to lay an arrest on the spirit.

Many circumstances therefore may interrupt the development of humanity, and for want of communion1 between the different worlds, baffled attempts of this nature leave everything to be begun anew, since the fruitless attempt, being totally forgotten, does not serve as a starting-point for improvement afterwards. Ancient civilisation since its downfall has powerfully contributed towards modern civilisation through the written and figured monuments which it left behind it, and which were studied during the Renaissance. On the contrary, if Mars or Venus has witnessed any attempts at progress, these attempts as regards the earth are the same as if they had never existed.

Can it be the fate of the earth to terminate in this way ? It is much to be feared, but it is not certain. In spite of all its infirmities the earth has this advantage, that its instability will endure. Humanity will never attain equilibrium, which is the end of progress, like the bees and the ants, which have attained their state of rest.

However this is of slight moment. It is quite possible that the earth may fail in its duty, or may exhaust the conditions of its existence before its task is done, as may have already been the case with thousands of millions of other celestial bodies. It is enough that one at least of these bodies accomplish its destiny. Let us remember that the experiment with the universe is being tried on an infinite number of worlds. Among the number, one will attain to perfect science; and bear in mind that a single success will suffice. The universe is a lottery, with an infinite number of tickets, but where all the tickets will be drawn. When the right ticket appears, that w ill not be a stroke of Providence; it is certain of necessity to come forth.


There are two ways of attaining an object; either to aim exactly, or to fire so many shots that one of them may hit the point intended. One shell which, well directed, blows up a fortress, is worth ten thousand others badly aimed. Just imagine the waste in the pollen of flowers ! Hardly a millionth part of it enters the fecundating valvule and lives. The spawn of the codfish offers an example of a far more enormous prodigality. Nature acts like a workman that bungles terribly with his materials, and wastes them extravagantly. It is of little consequence to Nature that so much of her force is lo s t; she is a sower who scatters her seed at random, without troubling herself about the grain of seed that falls on the stone. One grain out of a hundred thousand fructifies ; that is e n o u g h . Let us/ O

suppose the germs of life wandering about in space and groping blindly after the exact point where they may germinate; the chance is very small that this or that germ among them will find this point; but if the germs are infinite in number, one of them will fall on the right place. Or rather suppose a vault of crystal extending over a thousand million leagues, in which there should be only one hole, a line 1 in diameter, and which a blind insect eternally struck with its wing, in quest of the passage through the tiny opening. The insect will succeed, if it has unlimited time and opportunity to compensate for the improbability of the chances. Nature does nothing towards avoiding threading blind alleys. A small whale m a reservoir grows bigger and bigger, till it has exhausted its possibility of life. A young plant is as well off in the hollow of a rock as in an open soil. Everything that can germinate germinates without regard to any arrestment in its development that may arise. I remember seeing small tortoises at the bottom of the Ouadi-Hamoul in Syria. I knew that the Ouadi was sure to dry up. I foresaw their death within two days;

1 The twelfth part of an inch.— T r.

P R O B A B I L I T I E S . 4 r

but they thought nothing of it; they were as gay and lively as ever.

A ll Nature betrays contempt for the individual. The lustre (eclat) of a capital springs from a vast provincial dunghill, where millions of men lead an obscure life in order to bring forth some brilliant butterflies, which come to burn themselves in the light. Thirty or forty millions of men have at least, among our modern thifck- skulled races, to be drained off the soil in order to produce a great poet or a genius of the first order. In a society consisting of five or six millions of men, the birth of a great man rarely happens, the selection not being taken from a mass sufficiently large. The man of genius springs from a portion of humanity macerated, subjected to pressure, filtered, distilled, concentrated. A small planet could have no man of genius. In a cubic kilometre of sea-water there is a small quantity of silver appreciable; in a cubic metre it is altogether inappreciable.

Just as in a machine the serviceable force is only a portion of the force expended, so it is in the universe. But the universe, like all Nature’s machines, is remarkable for the smallness of its productive fcrce as compared with its mass : in general, the mechanism of the universe is extremely imperfect from the point of view of economy. The universe is like a factory in which a hundred thousand hundredweights of coal are consumed to perform the work of a single hundredweight. The useful man is hardly one in a million. Hence we are tempted to infer the inferiority of the earth. A planet in which there were neither fools nor knaves would seem superior. But this is an illusion. Work done with truth for its object is insignificant in appearance, yet it alone abides; the rest all melts away, so that the capital of the true,1 -although resulting from very small savings, is ever on the increase. Mistakes and follies destroy each other, whereas truth is

1 Literally, the capital of truth.— T r.


all the permanent residue, all the efficiens, all the net result of the labour of hum anity; at a distance error and frivolity are found to he purely and simply eliminated. The fool and the knave leave not a trace behind them.

Great, assuredly, is the number of purely egoistic, materialistic, and irreligious lives which are totally lost, so far as regards the ideal purpose of the universe. But it is enough that there are some who are not so. Philo- sophy is the fruit of the tree of hum anity; the fruit is nothing as compared with the bulk of the tree. A large tree yields a fruit as bi" as a finger ; it is the mission of this enormous branch to produce this small body. Formerly, philosophy, which is the aim and end of creation, lived on the crumbs from the tables of princes, who defended and shielded it against the universal fo lly ; now’ it lives on crumbs from the world’s table. Such a condition, humble though it be, is better than if in the world the philosophers were what it seems they should be. Two sets of experiments show the danger there is in devoting too great riches to spiritual undertakings. The wealth accumulated in the hands of the Church during the Middle Ages was to a great extent lost as regards the end for which it was intended. The largeO Gendowments of the English universities are so administered that only a small fraction of them is applied to scientific purposes.

It is certain that if the rule were to adjust the place of each individual in society to the ideal service which he renders, Descartes, Newton, Galileo, Huyghens, ought to have been princes or millionaires in their time. No one can possibly maintain that the services rendered by a banker as compared with those rendered by Linnaeus or Ampere bear the proportion of a thousand to one. But, taking everything into consideration, it is better that things are as they are. Even should the earth belong to us, it would be far better to let it be governed by men of the world, who, by their levity and heavy egoism, are


preserved from our scruples and our awkwardness. The apparently useless lives of the rich and of people of fashion are of greater value than we suppose. Such people are necessary for running horses, for giving balls, for performing, in a word, those works of vanity that wTould tire the wise, and for consuming the dangerous' enjoyments that would distract them.

We do not quite know what gratitude we owe to those who undertake to be rich on our account. There is only a very small number of brains capable of philosophising. The toilette, promenades in the Bois de Boulogne, equipages, the opera, races, the chase, use up an energy that might be hurtful without these, and set the useful lobes of the brain of man free from the quadrille1 that besets them. Yes, all that noisy ongoing of the world is necessary in order that a Cuvier or a Bopp may sit quietly in his study, have a good library, and be neither obliged nor tempted to waste his time in such vanities. Hence countries in which there are established degrees of rank are the best for scholars, because in such they have neither political nor social duties; nothing, in fact, warps them. In short, it is for this reason that the scholar pays (though not without some irony) a willing homage to military men and men of the world. The calm thinker lives behind them, whilst the priest worries him with his dogmatism, and the people with its superficial primary-school judgment and its village- pedagoguish ideas.

Beason has time as her auxiliary, and here lies her strength. She loses no opportunity ; on the contrary, all that is not herself lapses to nothingness. Even within the limits of our planet, human faculty has long centuries in reserve before the period of its decline can come: it will pass through successive stages of decay and of revival. W hile the ripe fruit is rotting off, the new fruit is coming. The number of experimental essays is1 A kind of game of cards played by four persons with forty cards. — T r.


incalculable. Amongst the infinite number of consciousnesses one will pass the narrow strait and enter the port.


You think, then, like Hegel, that God is not, but that he will be ?


Not exactly. The ideal exists, it is eternal; but it is not yet materially realised; some day it will be. It will be realised by a consciousness analogous to that of humanity ; but, as compared with our present state, which is so mean and so miserable, it will seem as infinitely superior to it as a perfect steam-engine is alongside the old machine of Marly. The universal business of every living thing is to make God perfect, to contribute towards that grand ultimate resultant which will close up the circle of things by unity. Hitherto this task has been accomplished by a blind instinct, by an unconscious tendency in things ; some day Eeason, which has till now had 110 share in the task, will take the conduct of this grand work in hand, and after having organised humanity, will organise God.

The immensity of time is in this case the capital factor. Beyond the range of ten thousand years we see nothing in history; the acceleration of the scientific movement in humanity scarcely dates farther back than a century. W hat will humanity be in ten thousand or in a hundred thousand years ? What will the world be in a thousand million years ? Perhaps the earth did not exist a thousand million years ago; it was merged in the atmosphere of the sun, and the moon was not detached from it. What then will it become in a thousand million years ? It is impossible to say ; and yet such a day will come; nothing is more certain. W e have no definite idea of the state of matter in the earths interior; and


yet such an inconceivable state of things exists within five hundred leagues of us.

However, we must take this into account, that humanity has in its hands an instrument which it had not before, namely, science. W ithin less than a hundred years science has found out the uses of steam, invented 1 railways, electric telegraphy, photography, lighting by gas, and made a thousand discoveries in chemistry. The application of science to military art dates from eight or ten years back ; it has introduced such changes that Frederick the Great and Napoleon I. would feel lost among them. To foresee the state of industrial and of military art a hundred years hence is impossible; it would be utterly vain to attempt to conceive what these may become in a thousand or in ten thousand years; and in ten thousand years from this the earth will no doubt exist, and, in spite perhaps of very serious deteriorations, will still be habitable.

I am aware of the dangers that will result to civilisation from the exhaustion of coal and the generalisation of egoistic ideas, contingencies which may be considered as nearly of the same order— the diffusion of low democratic ideas being, in its way, a kind of exhaustion of coal, an end of moral fervour and of the capacity of self-devotion, an exhaustion of the old economic resources of the earth. Sometimes I picture to myself the earth in the future as a planet of idiots basking in the sun, in the sordid laziness of an existence which aims only at possessing the bare necessities of material life. But science will be able to contend against these deleterious contingencies— against the first by finding means of storing up the energy of the sun or the force of the tides before the precious combustible is exhausted in its workable beds ; against the second by improvement in military art, which will constitute a force organised in the hands of an intellectual and moral aristocracy. Our modern armies are already somewhat of this nature. They give to their


chief an assured command over the unarmed and undisciplined multitude ; but they contain a cause of inherent weakness, which is altogether irremediable, because they are taken from the ranks of the people ; and if the people were in the mass corrupted by envy and cupidity, it would be impossible to obtain from them support in combating these evil passions. If we would imagine a state of things likely to hold good, we must figure to ourselves a small number of wise men governing mankind by means known only to themselves, and of which the mass of the people could not make use, because they would presuppose too strong a dose of abstract science.

Thus science is the great agent of the divine consciousness. So far as it is theoretical, it is the universe knowing itse lf; so far as it is applied, it affords to the divine energy means the potency of which cannot be calculated. In fact, advances in consciousness have been hitherto achieved only by the simple energy of Nature, by an instinct but slightly different from that which presides over the birth and development of the animal. Some day enlightened reflection will penetrate here; science will accomplish the reform of the instinctive w orld; a number of things that belong at the present to the category of instinct will then pass into that of reflection.

E u d o x e s .

A rt will suffer by it.


It certainly w il l ; high aft will even disappear. The time will come when art will be a thing of the past, a creation made once for all, the creation of the unreflecting ages, which will be respected with reverence, whilst the fact will be acknowledged that its part is played out. Sculpture, architecture, and Greek poetry are already in this condition. In our days these wonders rank among absolute


impossibilities, and even though some one succeed in the production of admirably successful pastiches, they will still be pastiches merely,— imitations without any life or any reason for their existence. Our art is to these ancient masterpieces what an edifice of ashlar is to one o f , marble. The palmy days of sculpture are numbered as soon as people cease to go about half naked, and as soon

v as beauty of physical form becomes a thing of secondary importance. Epic poetry disappears with the age of individual heroism; there is no epic poetry side by side with artillery. Every art, music excepted, thus belongs to a state of things that is past; and even music, which may be considered as the art of the nineteenth century, will one day be a thing done and worked out. And what about the poet and the good man ? The poet is a consoler, and the good man is an attendant on the sick. They are very useful offices no doubt, but temporary, since they imply the existence of evil— that evil which science hopes to reduce to a minimum.

The progress of humanity is by no means an aesthetic progress. Nature attains her object by means of virtue, of art, of science— above all, by means of science. Perhaps a time will come (indeed we already see the dawn of that day) when a great artist and a virtuous man will be antiquated things— almost useless; while, on the other hand, the learned man will be more and more valued. Beauty will disappear almost on the advent of science; but the advancement of science and human power are beautiful things likewise. What, for example, will not physiology achieve when it shall have replaced that antiquated empirical system which goes by the name of medicine ? The generation and education of man have hitherto been well-nigh fortuitous; science has not affected them. Just imagine the social revolution that will be accomplished when, by imitating the action of the leaves of plants and by seizing the carbonic acid of the air, chemistry shall have discovered the means of


producing aliments superior to those furnished by the vegetables and the beasts of the field. The day will come in which man will dispense with the necessity of killing in order to live. The day in which the hideous spectacle of the butcher’s shambles shall disappear will also clearly mark an advance in the education of the senses. W hat will happen when, above all, man shall be in possession of the law that determines the sex of ' the embryo, and when he shall be able to apply such knowledge at will ? This is one of the discoveries that may be considered susceptible of being made in a not distant future.


You approach very closely to the opinions of Theoc- tistes. It is to be regretted that he is not here.

E u d o x e s .

Theoctistes exaggerates his views, and errs in attempting to draw precise images from what can only be vaguely perceived ; yet rays of light do occasionally break forth from his sombre darkness; besides, he is serious, grand, simple, and sincere. (To Philalethes)— Try to bring him.


He shall be here to-morrow.

( 4 9 )

T H I R D D IA L O G U E .

D R E A M S .

P h i l a l e t h e s , E u t h y p i i r o n , E u d o x e s , T i i e o p h r a s t e s ,

. AND T h EOCTISTES.


F o r the last two days, Theoctistes, we have been attempting to collect our ideas on the final object and secret mainspring of this universe. W e know that you occupy yourself, as we do, with such thoughts, and that you share in the profound peace which they impart. W e are all nearly agreed on this point, that the aim and end of the world is to produce a reflective consciousness more and more perfect. W e do not know any higher form of this reflective consciousness than humanity, but, without speculating ou what may exist in other planets, our imagination ventures to form to itself some ideas of the future progress of this consciousness.

T h e o c t i s t e s .

I go yet further, and suffer my imagination to picture to itself the history of what exists beyond humanity, under forms which transcend it, and, in short, to assign to the universe a purpose superior to it.


Explain to us your views on this subject.D



They are but dreams.

E u d o x e s .

If every one wrote down his dreams about the infinite, some truth might, perhaps, be arrived at by comparing them ; but few are capable of such ingenuousness.


We must at the outset have some understanding as to the meaning of the word “ consciousness.” Undoubtedly, a consciousness is complete only when it culminates in a personal identity, in a single sensorium, constituted by a nervous mass, moving a definite organism. There exist, however, living wholes that are not personalised in this way. Nations, such as France, Germany, England; cities, such as Athens, Venice, Florence, Paris, behave like persons possessed of a character, a mind, and definite interests; we may argue about them as we argue of an individual; they have, like the living being, a secret instinct, a feeling of their essence and of their conservation ; so much so that, independently of the reflection from the politicians, a nation or a city may be compared to an animal, which is so ingenious and so deep- scheming when it is called upon to save its own life and secure the propagation of its species. The same must be affirmed of churches, of religions, of all associations constituting organic wholes, which comport themselves exactly as individuals. The greatest achievement of modern physiology has been to show that the life of the plant and that of the animal are only a resultant of other lives, harmoniously subordinated and culminating in a single concert. The life of the vertebrate is the centralised resultant of the individuality of each vertebra; a tree is the consonance of thousands of buds. Con

D R E A M S . 5 i

sciousness, in a similar way, is the resultant of millions of other consciousnesses, concurring to one and the same end. The organic cell is already a minute personal concentration ; several cells in harmonious co-operation constitute a consciousness of the second degree (man or animal). A plurality of consciousnesses of the second degree forms by association in groups a consciousness of the third degree— such as the consciousness of cities, of churches, of nations, growing out of millions of individuals, living on one and the same idea, and endowed with sentiments in common. Tor materialism, nothing} oexists fully but the atom ; but for the true philosopher, for the idealist, the cell exists more truly than the atom ; the individual more truly than the c e ll; the nation, the church, the commonwealth exist more truly than the individual, since the individual sacrifices himself for these entities, which yet a gross realism regards as mere abstractions.

Love seems to me the strongest manifestation and the most obvious demonstration of this deep inner law of life. Love is accounted for only by the pre-existence of the consciousness of the germs. The adult individual carries in himself millions of obscure consciousnesses, each desiring to be, aspiring to be, endowed with the obscure sense of the conditions necessary to their development, which cause the individual to share in their desires and their distresses. The most virtuous of men cannot prevent, in the depths of his organisation, millions of rudimentary creatures from crying out, “ We desire to live.” These homunculi [manikins], which I would fain designate virtual men, identical with us and forming part of us, see through our eyes, feel with our senses, and form an instinctive judgment of the conditions under which, as they issue from their prison, they can come forth into life.

This is why love springs up in us involuntarily, in a way there is no resisting, and why it has no connection with


our moral consciousness ; so that the struggle between love and duty is one of the fundamental themes of high art. For these little beings are not m oral; they have not read Malthus ; their only craving is for existence in its fulness ; they do not enter into our subtleties ; they do not understand our social scruples; they have a morality of their own, independently of our proprieties and of our laws. Hence the strife there is between abstract philosophy and the simple estimates of living germs within us, which are in part ourselves, and which, in willing, make us w il l ; between a reflective being, observing the consequences of his acts, and a small embryo of an embryo that has but the desire to exist. This is why the sexual instinct is awakened in us by persons for whom we often feel a thorough disesteem, the elementary homunculus consulting only his own convenience with a view to existence; whence the incessantly recurring difficulties of society, since perfect marriage presupposes both moral esteem and sexual affection, two conditions that may meet together, but may also very naturally not coincide.

The same inference, viz., the individuality of the germ, may be deduced from the law of heredity and of atavism. The first development of the embryo, the manner in which each individual opens up into life, is the result of habits and of experiences acquired by his predecessors. Each being has lived in his ancestors, has occupied their status, has assumed their bearing, and has obeyed their desires and their predominating feelings. The great-grandchild of the serf has still a crouching attitude ; the emancipated rayah instinctively turns aside from the path of those that caused his grandfather to tremble. Are the perversions of the sexual instinct themselves anything but errors of the elementary being, yielding to false indications, in cases in which what the Stoics called the hegemonic [governing] faculty, viz., reason, is not present to set and keep them right ? Starting from this idea, we come upon

D R E A M S . 5 3

the conception of a future consciousness of humanity, infinitely superior to that which exists now— a time when humanity might be as a great tree in which the individuals would be buds, when the consciousness of all should constitute one single consciousness, just as is said of the Primitive Church : Multitudo creclmtium erat cor unum et anima icna.1 Already in our own time the State exhibits something analogous, since it produces an ideal (of art, of science, and of goodness) with the money of ratepayers, who, for the most part, are materialists. Royalty, in like manner, affords us an instance of a nation concentrated in an individual, or in a family, if you will, and attaining by that means the highest degree of national consciousness, since no consciousness is equal to that which proceeds from a brain, however mediocre. Our conjectures concerning these future forms of the Divine consciousness may be resolved into three types— the monarchical form, the oligarchical, and the democratical, according as we conceive the universal consciousness, either united and concentrated in a single being summing up all the others, or residing in a small number of individuals governing the rest, or residing in all by a kind of harmony and universal suffrage.


This is startling indeed; we are listening to you.


The democratic solution is what seems least likely to be realised, according anyhow to the order of philosophical ideas in which we take delight. Eor be careful to observe that we are a thousand leagues away from politics, and that the words have for us here the meaning of our definitions.

1 “ The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul.”— T r.



That is understood.


To convert to reason, one after another, and one by one, the two thousand millions of human beings that inhabit the earth ! Can we conceive of such a tiling ? The immense majority of human brains are proof against truths that bespeak even in the slightest degree any elevation of sentiment. Women not only are not made for such offices, but such offices divert them away from their true vocation, which is to be good or beautiful, or both together. It is not our fault that it is so. The aim of Nature, we must allow, is not that all men should see the truth, but that a few should see it, and that the transmission of it should be preserved.

From the theologian’s point of view the democratic thesis is false from the very foundation. A ll forms of consciousness are sacred; but they are not all equal. Where shall we stop and draw the line ? The animal also has its rights. Is the Australian savage to have the rights of man, or those of the animal ?

To elevate all men is the first duty of society ; but to raise them all to the same level is impossible; the world being constituted as it is, we cannot even say that it would be very beneficial. For the man that has passed through school is none the happier or the better on that account; he loses by these bits of half knowledge the charm of simplicity without acquiring that of high culture. It must be confessed that we can hardly imagine a high culture reigning over one portion of mankind, unless another portion serve it and share in it in a subordinate manner. The essential point is that high culture establish itself and become mistress of the world, by making the less cultivated portions feel its benign influence.

‘ D R E A M S . 55\

This being achieved, there will be no need to coerce these latter, or to demand of them acts of faith. The Church was wrong in thinking that it is good to compel men to adhere to formulas which they do not comprehend. The policy of science, when it rises to sovereign authority, will probably more resemble the policy of Islam than that of Christianity. Christianity persecuted because it looked upon religious faith as acting ex opere operato upon the individual that does not comprehend it, and saving him after the fashion of a pill which he swallows without knowing its contents. Islam, on the contrary, rarely compelled the vanquished to become Mussulmans; it does not even attach much importance to their conversion. No more do we see any great advantage in science being subscribed to by those who do not understand i t ; it is enough that they work for it, and bow down before its undisputed power. W hat matters it though the millions of sliallow-pated people that cover our planet should either ignore the truth or deny it, provided it be seen and worshipped by the intelligent ? W hy annoy others with speculations that are not intended for them ? The theorems of Abel or of Cauchy lose nothing of their certainty because only a hundred persons understand them. It is enough for truths of this high order that they have been discerned by a small number of thinkers, and that they be recorded in books for the sake of those that may one day wish to know them. Eeason and science are products of humanity, but to seek for reason directly for the people’s sake and through the people’s agency is chimerical. It is not necessary for the perfect existence of reason that the whole world should recognise it. Anyhow, such an initiation, if it is ever to take place, will never be effected, at any rate be facilitated, by the low democracy which seems on the contrary to threaten the extinction of all arduous culture and of all high discipline. The ideal of American society is, perhaps, further removed than any other from the ideal of a society


governed by science. The principle that society exists only for the well-being and liberty of the individuals composing it, does not seem consistent with the plans of Nature— plans in which the species only is taken into account, and in which the individual seems to be sacrificed. It is much to be feared that the last expression of democracy, thus understood (though I feel anxious to add that it may be conceived otherwise), may be a social state with a degenerate populace, having no other aim than to indulge in the ignoble appetites of the vulgar.

E u d o x e s .

It certainly is not very clear why God should have created the world for an end so insignificant and so insipidly commonplace. But instead of deceiving humanity, and subduing it, were it not better to have tried to persuade it ?


Indirectly, and by an act of faith, undoubtedly; but directly, and by conclusive demonstration, that would be extremely difficult. It has taken us forty years of reflection— a life wholly occupied in thinking, the surrender of every other interest, of every care, the sacrifice of our fortune, almost of our duties— to acquire a few notions, more or less imperfect, on these obscure subjects. How can you imagine that such lives as these can become the common law of humanity ?


That is true.


There is little likelihood, therefore, that God will be realised by democracy. Sectarian and jealous democracy is exactly what we may call the theological error par excellence, since the purpose prosecuted by the world, far

D R E A M S . 5 7

from being a levelling of the mountain summits, must, on the contrary, be to create gods, superior beings, such as the rest of conscious beings shall adore and serve, and feel happy in serving. Democracy is in this sense the antipodes of the ways of God, because God has not willed that all men should to an equal degree live the true spiritual life. W e are not partial to the ancient regime, as it suppressed thought. It often hampered and oppressed learned m en; but a democracy without ideal would not be much more favourable to them. For the present, democracy must be preferred, because it is less hostile to the forward movement of the spirit than the ancient

/'regime ; but the laxity which it fosters might be fatal in the long run. Self-devotion is indispensable to science; true scholars cannot thrive among an immoral or a superficial-minded people : a scholar is the fruit of the self- denial, the earnestness, the sacrifices of two or three generations ; he represents an immense economy of life and strength. A body of learned men recruiting themselves from within is an impossibility. The Eedeemer, the Messiah, cannot spring from a country given up to egoism and coarse indulgences. The thinker must find people willing to do his share of work, and that, though they neither understand nor appreciate what he does. W hat is more contrary to the spirit than democracy that prizes only what it can directly grasp, or rather what it imagines it grasps ? Primary instruction will render self- denial of this kind pretty rare, for there is reason to fear that the people which have received primary instruction, being puffed up with foolish conceit, will not be disposed to contribute to the maintenance of a degree of culture superior to their ow n; that is to say, to provide themselves with masters.

The aim of humanity, in a word, is to produce great m en ; the great work w ill be accomplished by science, and not by democracy. Without great men nothing can be done; without them there can be no salvation. The


work of the Messiah, of the Liberator, will be accomplished by a man, not a mass of men. W e are unjust to the countries that, like France, produce only what is exquisite, who manufacture lace, but not household linen. These are the countries that contribute most to progress. The essential point is less to produce enlightened masses than to produce great geniuses, and a public capable of appreciating them. If the ignorance of the masses is a necessary condition for this end, so much the worse. Nature is not stopped in her course by such considerations ; she sacrifices entire species in order that other species may find the conditions essential to their existence.

In these providential arrangements, moreover, there are no victims. A ll contribute towards superior ends. In the handful of grain that the sower casts at random, even the wasted seeds have their role. If the question here were one of personal welfare, o h ! then I do not know who is the one bereft of his inheritance. Each individual is happy in his own place. The people of the world and the men of the people have a thousand pleasures, a thousand compensations which we have not. They amuse themselves. Who among us has not occasionally felt a twinge of envy in passing near some merrymaking group of simple folks, and does not with jealousy listen to their joyful songs ? This superior world that we dream of for the realisation of pure reason would contain no women. Woman should remain the reward of the lowly, in order that the latter might possess a motive to live. They would not be the most to be pitied.

E u d o x e s .

When I hear you, I am always tempted to say with Strepsiades in Aristophanes, “ You will not persuade me, even though you do persuade me.” But we are eager to know what you understand by the oligarchical solution of the problem of the universe.

D R E A M S . 59


That solution is much more easy to imagine than the democratic one. It enters thoroughly into the obvious plans of Nature. A select body of intelligent beings, possessed of the most important secrets of reality, would rule the world by the powerful agencies at their command, and establish the sovereignty of the largest possible amount of reason.

E u d o x e s .

Theophrastes arrived yesterday at ideas of the same kind.


W e come upon ideas of the sort from all sides. By a wider and wider application of science to the art of war, a universal sovereign government will become possible ; and this government will be secure in the hands of those who shall direct the armaments. In fact, the improvement of arms leads to the reverse of democracy; it tends to strengthen, not the multitude, but power, because scientific arms may be of service to governments, and not to the masses.

In the Middle Ages, the exclusive possession of horses and of good armour secured to the nobles for centuries an absolute superiority over the serf. A t the market-bridge of Meaux, twenty-seven knights exterminated the Jacquerie in a single day. A t first, gunpowder served the purposes of royalty only. In the future, engines may be invented, which, except in skilled hands, will be useless implements merely. Thus we can imagine a time when a group of men might, by undisputed right, reign over the rest of mankind. Then would that power be re-established as a reality which the popular imagination used formerly to ascribe to magicians. Then the idea of a spiritual power, that is to say, a power having intellectual superiority as

6o P H I L O S O P H I C A L D I A L O G U E S .

its basis, would be a reality. Brahmanism prevailed for centuries through the belief that a Brahman could, by his glance, strike any one dead against whom his wrath was kindled. This belief, resting as it did on a complete error, could not offer a very firm basis ; but some day, perhaps, science may possess a similar power unmixed with any delusion. The superiority of her resources will be so great that rebellion will be out of the question.1 For centuries the Christian dogmas had the power of causing those to be burnt that denied them, while scientific dogmas would directly and ipso facto annihilate those that will not believe them. In the Middle Ages, the Church proposed to realise a spiritual power, but not having at her command a sufficient force of her own, she remained always feeble, obliged as she was to have recourse incessantly to the secular arm, which imposed upon her its own terms, and demanded in return the curtailment of ecclesiastical right. A spiritual power will be really strong only when it is furnished with arms, when it has in its hands a material force belonging exclusively to itse lf; that is to say, when it has the means of restraining its enemies in an effective way, as the Brahman held his enemies in check, in an imaginative way, by the terror of his glance.

In default of bond fide armies, the Church had at her disposal the fear of hell, which, in times of faith, was a very efficacious weapon. By that means she acquired power over the barbarians, whom she thereafter called upon to execute her commands, and by whom she secured for herself such great influence ; but this safeguard lost much of its strength when hell ceased to be any longer seriously dreaded, just as the Brahman lost his influence when people no longer believed in his angry glance. W e ll ! I sometimes dream an evil dream; I fancy an authority will some day have hell at its command, not a chimerical hell of whose existence there is no proof, but a veritable one.

1 Literally, there even will be no rebellion.—T r.

D R E A M S . 6 1

E u d o x e s .

W hat a dreadful thought1 to indulge in !


Is it much more dreadful than what passes under our eyes ? W ar transformed into a preventive terror, the hostage tortured, not as one guilty, but with a view to frighten people and to prevent their defending themselves, — this principle that had been forgotten since Louvois, now boldly acknowledged, namely, that cruelty is a power, and constitutes in human affairs an advantage which we must not throw aw ay! An improved Gehenna is, from this point of view, worth a battalion, since it may inspire the same terror. The Duke of A lva knew th is ; Agathocles and the Carthaginians, who made ferocity a part of their strategy, knew it also. By a careful analysis of facts, it is found that the force at command is nothing but the fear that is inspired by it; and this fear may spring either from real or from imaginary threats. Viewed thus, violence and imposture are two equivalents; the one takes the place of the other and dispenses with it. The Gallic clergy very effectively put a stop to plundering and murder by the Franks by instilling into them an excessive dread of St. Martin. Superstition, on the other hand, is of no power with a Jengis Khan, or a Tamerlane.

E u d o x e s .

You are wrong to let your thoughts wander in these unwholesome tracks. Don’t you see that the moral sense inherent in mankind will always render such horrors impossible, and that the monsters you are fancying will find no instruments ?

1 Literally, nightmare, incubus.— Tr.



Do not, however, push me too far, or else I will propound to you a hypothesis that will make my nightmare- dream a possibility. I have never said that the future would prove cheerful. Who knows but that truth is of a sad nature ? Power has been hitherto maintained over mankind only by the care which those possessed of it have taken to keep the barbarous masses placed in their hands as blind tools of their purposes. The positivist1 tyrants that we have been speaking of would hardly hesitate to maintain, in some lost district of Asia, a nucleus of Bashkirs or Kalmuks, obedient machines, unencumbered by moral scruples and prepared for every sort of cruelty. Please to notice, besides, that I am now supposing an immense advancement of the human consciousness, a realisation of the true and of the just, of which we have not yet seen any instance. I am supposing (and I believe I am right in this) this step in advance accomplished, not by the whole race, but by an aristocracy placed at the head of humanity, and which will be the depository of the reason of the mass. It is clear that the absolute reign of one portion of humanity over another is odious, if we suppose the governing body to be swayed only by personal egoism or by class egoism; but the aristocracy of w hich . I dream would be the incarnation of reason; this would be a papacy of real infallibility. Power, in its hands, could not but be beneficial, and there would be no need to haggle with such an aristocracy for it. This would be legitimate power par excellence, since it would enforce true opinions on the ground of real terrors. The Church and Brahmanism were based upon an error. No Brahman ever blighted any one with his curse; he therefore founded a false doctrine on an unfounded fear. But the being possessed of science would set up unlimited terror in the service of

1 ie., having an eye to material advantage.— Tr.

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truth. Terrors, however, would soon become superfluous. The inferior portion of humanity, 011 such a supposition, would soon be checkmated by evidence, and the very idea of revolt would disappear.

Truth will one day be power. That “ knowledge is power,” is the noblest word that was ever spoken. The ignorant will see the effects and will believe; theory w ill be verified by its applications. A theory which shall lead to the invention of terrible engines, overpowering and subjugating all, will establish its truth by irrefragable evidence. The forces of humanity will thus be concentrated in a very small number of hands, and become the property of a league capable of regulating the life of the planet, and of, by that threat, terrifying the whole world. On the day when a few persons favoured of reason shall really possess the means of destroying the planet, their supremacy will be established; these privileged persons will rule by means of absolute terror, because they shall have in their hands the life of a l l ; we may almost say that they will be gods, and that the theological epoch dreamt of by the poet for primitive humanity will then be a reality. Primus in orbe cleos fecit timor.1

Thus we may imagine a time when power will actually establish the reign of reason without the need of h a v i n go orecourse to imposture, which is only the weapon of the weak, and a substitute for power. The worship of reason will then be a truth; for, whoever shall offer any resistance to it, that is to say, shall not recognise the reign of science, will have to atone for his offence on the spot. W hat childish folly it was to celebrate the Feast of Reason when its army was composed of an unintelligent people, with exceedingly little reason and no constancy, and armed with pikes and bad muskets ! When reason shall be all- powerful, she will indeed be a veritable goddess. Then it will no longer be necessary to speak of authority; that word has now no meaning, except to denote a force of

1 Fear was the first thing to create gods in the world.— T r .


opinion that is ineffective: it is a pure trick of language. Then the power of reason w ill be effective in the highest degree, since all disregard of that power will be punished with instant death. Preventive measures will be useless. This will be the realisation of what was formerly fabled as the vengeance of the gods; but the reality will be far superior to the myth, inasmuch as the vengeance of the gods was slow, uncertain, imperfect, and as we now know, devoid of truth ; while, on the other hand, the sanctions of scientific law will be infallible, instantaneous, and, like Nature herself, without appeal.

E u d o x e s .

Among a thousand objections that I might make to your views, I shall mention but one. You suppose an immense improvement in science, and you are right, but you say nothing of the condition of the thinking subject. Now, the advance in science and power that you have just delineated far exceeds the capability of any brain whatever. There is a contradiction between the conquests of reason that you imagine, and the intellectual and physical capacities, which always remain very limited.


I have told you that the class of ideas with which I am now dealing, refers but imperfectly to the planet earth, and that such speculations must be understood to aim at what transcends humanity. No doubt the knowing and thinking subject will be always limited, bat knowledge and power are unlimited, and, consequently, the thinking nature itself will be capable of being greatly improved without quitting the known domain of biology. A broad application of the discoveries of physiology and of the principle of selection might lead to the creation of a superior race, deriving its right to rule not only from its science, but from the very superiority of its blood, its

D R E A M S . 65

brain, and its nerves. Thus there might be a race of gods, or devcts, beings of ten times greater worth than we are, and capable of subsisting in artificial media. Nature produces nothing but what is capable of living under general conditions; but science may extend the limits of viability. As yet Nature lias produced only what she could; spontaneous forces will not pass beyond the low-water mark which they have reached. It is for science to take up the work where Nature has left it. Botany artificially maintains certain vegetable products, which would disappear unless the hand of man continually sustained them. It is possible to conceive a time when the production of a deva might be estimated at a definite capital, representing costly apparatus, slow processes, elaborate selections, a complicated education, and the laborious preservation of such a being in antagonism to Nature. A manufactory of Ases, an Asgaard/ may be re-established in the heart of A s ia ; and, if myths like these are repugnant to any one, let him note carefully the method that ants and bees employ to determine the functions to which each individual is to be devoted ; let him reflect, especially, on the means employed by botanists when they create their artificial rarities. It is always the nutrition, or rather the development, of one organ by the atrophy of another which is the secret of these anomalies. Call to mind the Vedic doctor whose name, according to Burnouf, signified, ov t o airep/aa eU TTjv (cecfraXrjv dveftrj.2 As double flowers are obtained by the hypertrophy, or the transformation of the organs of generation, as florescence and fructification exhaust the vital powers of the being that performs these functions, so also it is possible that means may be found one day of concentrating in the brain the entire power of the nervous system, and of transmuting all nerve-energy into brain-

1 The divine world of the Scan- A scs in old Norse is a.<?, pi. A esir ; dinavians; from = god, and in Gothic, A n s ; in Saxon, os (cs). (jaard = a place. The singular of — Tr.

2 H e whose semen has gone up unto his head. — T r.


energy, by atrophying, if we may say so, the opposite pole. One of these functions is an enfeeblement of the other; what is given to the one is taken away from the other. It is unnecessary to say that we are not speaking of those shameful suppressions1 that produce only imperfect beings. We are speaking of an inner transfusion by means of which the forces that Nature has directed towards various operations might be employed for one and the same object.

We may imagine, then, (no doubt, beyond the limits of our planet), the possibility of beings who might be almost as superior to man as man is to the lower animals ; a time when science would supersede existing animals by higher organisms, just as we see that by chemistry whole series of natural products have been supplanted by far more perfect ones. As humanity issued from animality, so from humanity would issue divinity. There might exist beings who would employ man as he now employs the lower animals. Man hardly pauses at the thought that a single step, a movement of his, crushes myriads of animalcules. But, I repeat, intellectual superiority carries with it religious superiority; these future masters we must conceive of as incarnations of the good and the true ; there would be joy in being subject to them.

The principle most strongly denied by the democratic school is the inequality of races and the legitimacy of the rights derived from superiority of race. Far from seeking to exalt the race, democracy tends to lower i t ; she would have no great m en; and if there were a democrat present, and he heard us dwelling on the improved means of creating masters for other men he would be a little surprised. It is absurd and unjust, in fact, to impose upon men, by a sort of divine right, masters who are in no respect superior to them. The aristocracy of the present day in France is insignificant enough, since the titles of nobility, of which three-fourths are

1 Probably castration is meant.— T r .

D R E A M S . 67

usurped, and of which the remaining fourth, with hardly ten exceptions, is derived from royal grants and not from conquest, no longer correspond, as at their institution, to a superiority of race. But this superiority of race might again become real; and then the fact of nobility would be as scientifically true, and as undeniable, as the pre-eminence of civilised man over the savage, or of man in general over the lower animals.

Thus we can imagine a time when all that formerly held sway in the form of prejudice and groundless opinion may hold sway as genuine and tru e: gods, heaven, hell, spiritual power, monarchy, nobility, legitimacy, superiority of race, supernatural powers, may all be revived by virtue of the existence of man and of reason. Should such a solution ever be in any measure realised on the face of the planet earth, it seems as though Germany would fulfil it.

E u d o x e s .

Do you mean this as a eulogium or a criticism ?


Take it whichever way you please. France always inclines to liberal and democratic solutions; that is her glory; the happiness of men and liberty is her ideal. If the final upshot of things is that individuals should enjoy in peace their little limited destiny (as it possibly may be, after all), liberal France will have been in the righ t; but she is not the country that will ever attain great harmony, or rather that great subordination of consciousness of which we speak. On the other hand, the government of the world by reason, should it ever come to pass, seems more suited to the genius of Germany, which shows little anxiety for the equality, or even the dignity, of individuals, and which aims before everything at increasing the intellectual powers of the race.


E u t h y p h r o h .

You forget that in the age of the far-off avatars, Frenchmen, Sclavs, and Germans will have long ago ceased to exist, and that history will have altogether ceased to remember these mean provincial varieties.


M y aim was merely to draft from existing humanity some outline of the great battles of the future.

E u d o x e s .

But don’t you think that the people, when they see their master growing up, will foresee the danger and be on their guard ?


Assuredly. If the order of ideas that we are now tracing ever attain to any reality, there will arise persecutions against science, more particularly against physiology and chemistry, compared with which those of the Inquisition will seem mild. W ith a profound instinct the crowd of simple beings will detect their enemy. Science will, again take refuge in hiding-places. A time may come when a work on chemistry will compromise its owner as much as a work on alchemy did in the Middle Ages. Probably the most dangerous moments in the life of a planet are those in which science begins at length to unmask its hopes. There may then arise fears and reactions destructive to the spirit. Thousands of humanities have perhaps foundered in this strait. But among them there will be one that will clear i t ; mind will triumph.

Necessity, moreover, is in this case the best of securities. Man cannot any longer do without science. In degraded epochs, as, for example, in the Middle Ages, medicine

D R E A M S . 69

was the only stay of the rational sp irit; because a patient desires at any cost to be cured, and no cure can be wrought without a measure of science. But at the present time, war, machinery, the industrial arts require science, so that even persons most opposed to the scientific spirit are obliged to learn Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. The supremacy of science is, on all hands, thrust even upon its enemies.

E u d o x e s .

Your hypothesis of the oligarchical triumph of the spirit conducts you only to a gloomy picture of things. W hy not allow that the advent of a superior humanity may prove a benefit to all, and that this very superiority may consist in the advantages being distributed less than they are in our sad world, all men being then assimilated and deified into a single glorious type ? But I wait impatiently to hear what conception you have of the monarchical future of the universe. That will be more comforting, I hope. I feel the need of a Heavenly Eather to deliver me from your hell.

T h e o c t i s t e s ,

St. Paul has admirably said : cva fj 0 0eo? rrdvra ev nrdaiv} More than six hundred years before, Xenophanes had said still better: ovXos opa, ovXo9 Be voei, ouXo? Be t aKovec.2 A t the present time, such a formula is not realised; but the Unitarian solution, in which the whole universe should minister to the perceptions, the sensations, and the enjoyments of a single being, cannot, considering the infinitude of time to come, be regarded as an impossibility. France, in the time of Louis X IY . and Louis XV., presented the example of a whole country

1 “ That God may be all in all.”— 1 Cor. xv. 28.2 “ H e sees as the whole, thinks as the whole, hears as the whole.”—

T b. Fragm. Philos. Grsec. i. p. 101 (Didot).


contributing to the production of a brilliant and complete life, namely, that of the King, all social functions being organised with a view to his glory and pleasures. W e may imagine a state of the world in which everything might likewise culminate in a single conscious centre, in which the universe might be reduced to a single existence, in which the conception of personal monotheism might become a truth. An all-knowing and all-powerful being may be the last term of god-developing evolution, whether we conceive him as enjoying (jouissctnt) by all (all also enjoying by him), according to the dream of Christian m ysticism ; whether we conceive him as an individuality attaining paramount power; or whether we conceive him as the resultant of a thousand million of beings, as the harmony, the sum-total of the universe.

Thus the universe might be consummated in a singleo oorganised being, in whose infinity would be summed up at once myriads of myriads1 of lives, those that are dead and those that are living. A ll animate nature would produce a central life, a grand hymn issuing from thousands of millions of voices, just as the animal springs from millions of organic cells, and the tree from millions of buds. A single consciousness would be the work of all, and all would participate in i t ; the universe would be an infinite polype, of which all the beings that have ever existed would be soldered together at their base, each living at once after its own life and the life of the whole.

Already we participate in the life of the universe (a life as yet very imperfect) through morality, science, and art. Eeligions are the epitomised and popular forms of this participation ; in this their sacredness consists. But Nature aspires to a far closer and more intense communion, a communion which will attain its final term only when there shall arise a really perfect being. Such a being does not yet exist, since we have only three ways

1 Literally, “ D e c illio n ” according thousand raised to the eleventh to the French notation, means a power.— T r .

D R E A M S . 71

of verifying the existence of a being, namely, by seeing him, by bearing others speak of him, and by beholding his acts, and since by none of these three means is such a being as we are speaking of known ; but we can conceive the possibility of a state in which, in the infinity of space, everything lives. A t present, only a small quantity of matter is organised, and even that feebly organised ; but we may conceive of an age in which all matter might be organised, in which thousands of suns united together might go to form a single being, feeling, enjoying, and imbibing, through its burning throat, a river of delights which might flow out of him in a stream of life. Such a living universe would present the two poles that every nervous structure presents, the pole, namely, which thinks, and the pole which enjoys. At present the universe thinks and enjoys through millions of individuals. Some day a gigantic mouth may taste wflfh some relish the infinite ; an ocean of intoxicating delight may flow into i t ; an inexhaustible discharge of life, conscious of neither rest nor fatigue, may gush forth into eternity. To coagulate this divine mass, the earth will, perhaps, have been taken and tempered like a clod, which we knead without thought of the ant' O

or the worm that is concealed in it. W hat would you have ? 1 W e do the very same thing. It is Nature’s sole care, at every step, to gain a superior end at the expense of inferior individualities. Does a general, the chief of a State, take account of the poor people whose lives he sacrifices ?

A single being summing up the fruition (jouissance) of the universe, an infinite number of individuals joyful in contributing to it, no contradiction is involved here, save to our superficial individualism. The world is but a series of human sacrifices ; their sting might be removed by joy and by resignation. Alexander’s companions lived

1 I t is difficult to give an exact nearest approach to it is “ it is so.” equivalent in English of the French — T r . phrase, “ Que voulez-vous ? ” The


on Alexander, and enjoyed Alexander. There are certain states of society in which the lower classes enjoy the pleasures of their nobles, take delight in their princes, call them “ our princes,” and make their glory their own. The animals that contribute to the maintenance of the man of genius, or of the good man, would feel they ought to be satisfied, if they knew what service they are rendering. Everything depends on the aim and object; and if some day vivisection on a large scale became necessary in order to discover the profound secrets of animate Nature, I can imagine creatures coming crowned with flowers to offer themselves up in the ecstasy of voluntary martyrdom. The useless slaughter of a fly is a censurable a c t; he who is sacrificed for ideal purposes has no right to complain, and his fate with regard to the infinite (ra> Oeco)} is an enviable one. So many others die without leaving a trace in the construction of the tower of infinity ! The sacrifice of one living being to the egoism of another iso o o

monstrous ; but the sacrifice of a living creature to an end desired by Nature is justifiable. Strictly speaking, the man of purely selfish aims commits an act of cannibalism in eating flesh ; only the man that works, to the best of his might, for the good and the true, has the right to do this. The sacrifice in that case is made to the ideal, and the victim has that which so many others have not, his small share in the work of eternity. In good old times, the immolation of an animal intended to be eaten was justly regarded as a religious action. Such slaughter committed under pressure of an absolute necessity should be disguised, it was thought, by garlands and some religious ceremony.

The majority have to think and live by proxy. The idea, which prevailed in the Middle Ages, of people praying for those who have no time to pray, is a very just one. The mass is devoted to labour; a few perform for them the high functions of life ; this is humanity. The result of the obscure work of a thousand peasants,

D R E A M S . 7 3

serfs of an abbey, was a Gothic chapel in the midst of a beautiful valley, shaded by tall poplars, to which pious people used to resort six or eight times a day to chant psalms to the Eternal. This constituted a rather noble way of doing worship, particularly when, among the ascetics, there were a St. Bernard, a Rupert de Tuy, and an abbot Joachim. That valley, those rivers, those trees, those rocks would fain call upon God, but they were voiceless ; the abbey gave them a tongue. Among the Greeks, a nobler race, this was done better by means of the flute and the sports of shepherds. Some day this will be done better still when a laboratory of chemistry or of physics shall supersede the abbey. But in our days the thousand rustics that were formerly serfs, being now emancipated, give themselves up, as is like, to a coarse merrymaking, without any ideal result whatever, on the lands of the aforesaid abbey. The tax imposed on these lands alone purifies them a little by making them contribute to a higher purpose.

There are some who live for all. Were this rule changed, nobody would live. The Egyptian, a subject of Chephrem, who died building the pyramids, spent a better life than he that spends his useless days under his palm trees. Herein consists the dignity of the people ; they desire no other; they will never be satisfied with egoism. Their wish is that, if they themselves do not reap enjoyment, there should be others who do. They are ready to die for the glory of a chief, that is to say, for something from which they themselves do not derive any direct advantage. I am speaking of the true people, the unreflective mass given up to the instincts of race, whom reflection has not yet taught that the greatest folly that can be committed is to submit to be slain for anything whatever.

Thus, I sometimes conceive of God as the great inner festival of the universe, as the vast consciousness in which everything is reflected and echoed back. Each class of society forms, as it were, a system of wheels, an arm of


the lever, in this vast machine. This is why each class has its own virtues. W e are all functions of the universe ; duty consists in each one of us acting his part well. The virtues of the plebeian ought not to be those of the noble ; that which constitutes a perfect nobleman would be a blemish in a humble commoner. The virtues of each are determined by the requirements of Nature ; the State in which there are no social classes is in the teeth of Providence. It signifies little that St. Vincent de Paul was not a great genius. Eaphael would have gained nothing by being well-ordered in his manners. The divine energy, which is in all, is brought forth by upright men, scholars, and artists. Each one has his part to play. The duty of Goethe was to be an egoist with reference to his work. The transcendent immorality of the artist is in its own way a supreme morality, if it helps towards the accomplishment of the particular divine mission with which each one is entrusted here below.

For myself I enjoy a taste of the whole universe by that kind of general sentiment which makes us feel sad in a sad town and merry in a merry one. I thus share the pleasures of the voluptuous, the debaucheries of the debauchee, the worldly-mindedness of the worldly, the sanctity of the virtuous man, the meditations of the scholar, and the austerity of the ascetic. B y a sort of sweet sympathy I imagine myself as their consciousness. The discoveries of the scholar are my property; the triumphs of the ambitious are a festive season to me. I should feel grieved if the world were to suffer any wa*nt ; for I have the consciousness of all that is in it. M y only grief is that the present age is so debased that it no longer knows how to enjoy. I therefore take refuge in the past, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in antiquity; all that has been of beautiful, of courteous, of true, and of noble, is like a paradise to me. W ith this idea I defy any misfortune to reach m e; I carry with me the enchanting garden of my varied thoughts.

D R E A M S . 75


Yon have sought to show under what forms we might conceive to ourselves a consciousness of the universe more advanced than that of which humanity is the manifestation. I am told that you possess also an expedient by which to render the immortality of individuals conceivable.


Say, rather, the resurrection of individuals. On this head, I discard the conceptions, otherwise so wonderful poetically and ideally, in which the Greek genius excelled. Plato, it seems to me, is not to be listened to when he maintains that death is a good, the philosophical state par excellence. It is not true, as is said in the Phaedo, that the greatest possible separation from the body constitutes the perfection of the soul. The soul without the body is a chimaera, since nothing has ever revealed to us such a mode of existence.

Yes, I conceive the possibility of the resurrection, and I often say with J o b : Reposita est hcec spes in sinu meo.1 I f ever in the final phase of evolution the universe be resolved into a single absolute being, that being will be the complete life of a ll ; he will revive in himself the life of all those beings that have vanished from existence, or, if you prefer it otherwise, in his bosom all those will live again that have beforetime existed. When God shall become both perfect and all-powerful, that is to say, when scientific omnipotence shall be concentrated in the hands of a good and upright being, that being will wish to revive the past in order to repair its numberless injustices. God will exist with ever greater fulness ; and the more he does so the more his justice will be perfected. This climax will be reached on that day when, whoever may

1 This hope is laid up in my bosom.—Tr.

have contributed to the divine work shall feel that it is finished, and shall see the share that he had in it. Then the eternal inequality of the individual beings will be sealed and fixed for ever. He that has made no sacrifice to the good or the true will then recover the exact equivalent of his venture, that is to say, nothing. It must not be objected to this that a reward, which may turn up perhaps only after a thousand million of centuries, will be greatly lessened in value. The sleep that lasts a thousand million centuries is the same as that which lasts an hour, and, if the reward which I picture to myself be granted to us, it will seem as if it followed the hour of death instantaneously. Beatam rcsurrectionem exspectctns,1 such is the fittest epitaph for idealist and Christian alike.

A world without God is horrible. Ours appears such at the present d a y ; but it will not always be so. After frightful interludes of ferocity and egoism on the part of the developing being, there will, perhaps, be realised the dream of the religion of deism, to wit, a supreme consciousness, administering justice to the poor and making amends to the virtuous. “ This must b e ; therefore it is,” says the deist. We, on the other hand, say, “ Therefore it will be,” and this reasoning has force, because we have seen that the dreams of the moral consciousness may very well become realities some day. A consciousness may thus be conceived which will sum up all others, even those that have preceded, which will embrace them so far as they have contributed to the good or the absolute. In this pyramid of good, raised by the successive efforts of individual beings, each stone counts. The Egyptian of the time of Chephrem, of whom we spoke a little ago, still exists in the stone that he la id ; so will it be with the man that has laboured along with others at the work of eternity. W e live in proportion to the part we have played in the construction of the ideal. The work of humanity is that which is good; those that have con-

1 Looking forward to a blessed resurrection.— T r.


D R E A M S . 77

tributed to the triumph of the good fulgcbunt sicut stellce.1 Even if some day the earth serve but for ashlar in the building of a future edifice, we shall be what the shell of geology is in the block of stone intended for building a temple. That poor trilobite, of which traces are imprinted in the thickness of our walls, yet lives there in a small degree ; it still forms a small part of our dwelling- house.

E u d o x e s .

The immortality you imagine is only apparent; it does not transcend the eternity of the action ; it does not imply the eternity of the person. Jesus exercises a far greater influence now than when he was an obscure G alilean; yet He is no longer in the land of the living.


He lives still. His personality continues to exist, and is even greater than before. Man lives where he acts. Such life is dearer to us than the life of the body, since we willingly sacrifice the latter to the former. Bear in mind that I am not speaking only of life in the esteem of others, of reputation, and of being kept in memory. Such a life is, in fact, not adequate; it is subject to too many injustices. The best men are those that shun it. Tamerlane is more famous than many an unknown just man. Marcus Aurelius has his due share of fame, solely because he was an emperor and wrote his reflections. True influence is latent influence; not that the final judgment of history is at bottom altogether false, but it is at fault, as out of all proportion. This and the other nameless person has been perhaps greater than Alexander; many and many a heart of woman who has not uttered a word

1 “ Shall shine like stars.” Daniel, to righteousness as the stars for ever chap. xii. 3 : “ A nd they that be wise and ever.” Quoted as an inscription shall shine as the brightness of the on the tomb of Fichte.— T r. firmament; and they that turn many


during lier whole life has felt more truly and intensely than the poet that has sung most sweetly. I speak of life as regards its influence, or, as the mystics have expressed it, of a life in God.1 Human life, by its moral reverse, describes a small furrow, like the point of a compass, in the bosom of the infinite. This arc described in God has no otherend than God. It is in the memory of God that menare immortal. The esteem in which he is held by theabsolute consciousness, the memory that it preserves of him, is the true life of the just m an; and such a life is eternal. Doubtless it is anthropomorphism to attribute to God a consciousness analogous to our ow n; but the employment of anthropomorphic expressions in theology is unavoidable ; it has no more disadvantage than the employment of any other figure of speech or metaphor. Language becomes impossible, if we push purism in this respect too far.

E u d o x e s .

That is understood; but you have not explained to us how it is possible to speak of real existence without consciousness.


Consciousness is perhaps a secondary form of existence. Such an expression has no meaning when it is applied to the All, the universe, God. Consciousness implies a limitation, an antithesis of the ego to the non-ego, which is the very negation of the infinite. It is the idea that is eternal. Matter is a thing altogether relative; it is not really that which i s ; it is as the colour that is subservient to the painting; it is as the marble that is subservient to the sculpturing ; the wool that is subservient

1 Co-operation with the process of in this life and exerting an influence the universe ; participation in the on future generations in the promo- divine nature. Living for ideal ends tion of the pursuit of the ideal.— T r .

D R E A M S . 79

to the embroidering.1 The possibility of causing to exist anew what has already existed, of reproducing all that has had reality, cannot be denied. I am anxious you should note that every affirmation in such matters is ail act of fa ith ; and by an act of faith is meant an act transcending experience (I do not say contradicting it). After all, is our hope presumptuous ? Is our demand selfish ? No, certainly not. W e do not ask for a recompense ; we want simply to be, to know more, to know the mystery of the world, which we have been seeking so eagerly, and the future of humanity, which has so deeply interested us. This is allowable, I hope. Those that regard existence as a duty, not as an enjoyment, are justly entitled to do so. As for myself, I do not precisely lay claim to imm ortality; but I should like two things ; first, that my sacrifices to goodness and to truth should not have been offered up for nothing and to empty vacancy,— I do not want to be paid for them, but I desire that they may fulfil some purpose;— and, in the second place, I should be very glad that what little I have done should meet with somebody’s acknowledgment. I want God’s esteem, nothing more; this is not exorbitant, is it ? Do we reproach the dying soldier with taking an interest in the issue of the battle, and wishing to know wdiether his general-in-chief is pleased with him ?

Sensation ceases with the organ that produces i t ; the effect disappears with the cause. When the brain is decomposed, no consciousness, in the ordinary sense of the word, can continue. But the life of man, in the whole of the general scheme, the place he occupies in it, his share in the general consciousness, this has no connection with an organism; this is eternal. Consciousness has a relation with space; not as residing in a certain point, but as feeling in a definite space. The idea has no such relation ; it is the purely immaterial; neither time nor death has any power over it. The ideal alone is

1 M atter is the heterization of thought.— T b .


eternal; nothing but itself, and what contributes to it, endures.

Let us take heart, poor victims that we are; a God is produced out of our tears.


Scholars of the positivist school will always have one great objection against what you have set forth, and also against many of the views that have been expounded to us by Philalethes and Theophrastes. You ascribe to the universe and to the ideal volitions, acts that have hitherto been remarked only among organised beings. Now, nothing justifies us in regarding the universe as an organised being, even after the type of the lowest zoophyte. Where are its nerves ? Where is its brain ? And never has consciousness or feeling in the slightest degree been proved to exist in a being destitute of nerves or brain, or rather a material organisation.


Your objection, although conclusive as against the • existence of separate souls and of angels, is not conclusive as against the hypothesis of an elastic energetic force at the heart of the universe. This instinctive impulsion would be something sai generis, it would be a first principle like the movement itself. We have never been able except metaphorically to exhibit the universe as an animal. An animal implies species— a number of individuals ; there would then be a multiplicity of universes ! But that the infinite mass produces a sort of general exudation, to which, for want of a better name, and in consequence of an unavoidable anthropomorphism, we give the name of consciousness, is what the general facts of Nature appear to indicate. Everything in Nature is reduced to motion. Yes, certainly ; but motion has a cause and an aim. The cause is the id ea l; the aim is consciousness.

D R E A M S . 81


I often say to myself that if the aim of the world were a career as eager and impetuous as you suppose in the direction of science, there would be no flowers, no brilliant birds, no joy, and no spring-time. A ll this implies a God less busied (affaire) than you suppose, a God already here (arrivd), who pleases himself playfully, and enjoys a definitively achieved state of being.

E u d o x e s .

I shall go even farther than you, and would find in the centre of the universe an immoturn quid} a place of ideas, as Malebranche would say. W e are ever returning to the formulas of this great thinker, whenever we come to treat of the relations between God and the universe, between the individual and the infinite. Believe me, God is an absolute necessity. God will be, and God is. As regards reality, he will h e ; as regards the ideal, he is. Deus est sirnul in esse et in fieri!1 Only that can develop itself which already is. How besides can we imagine a development with nothing as its starting-point ? The original abyss would for ever have stood still, if the Eternal Father had not made it fruitful. Alongside of the fieri there must be preserved the esse; alongside of motion, the mover ; in the centre of the wheel, the immovable nave. Theoctistes has very well proved to us that the monotheistic hypothesis alone favours the realisation of our most deeply-rooted ideas regarding the necessity of a superior justice for man and humanity. Let us add that if motion existed from all eternity, we cannot conceive how the world has not attained a state of rest, uniformity, perfection. It is' no more easy to explain how equilibrium has not yet been restored than to show

1 A n unmoved something.— T r .2 God is in being and in becoming at the same time.— T r .


how it was disturbed. I f the marksman of whom we spoke yesterday has been shooting from all eternity, he ought by this time to have hit his mark.

E n t h y p i i r o n .

W e are here verging on the antinomies1 of K ant— those chasms in the human spirit in which we are bandied about from one contradiction to another. Having reached the brink of these, we must stop. Reason and language apply only to the finite.2 To transfer them to the infinite is the same as if we affected to measure the heat of the sun or of the centre of the earth with an ordinary thermometer. The particular development of which we are the witnesses, is only the history of an atom ; we would have it to be the history of the absolute, and we apply to it the lines of a background situated in infinitude. We blend together the plans of the landscape ; we commit the same error as that to which we are liable in deciphering the papyruses of Herculaneum. The different leaves are mutually interlaced, and we refer to one page letters that belong to ten pages farther on.

E u d o x e s .

Let us thank Theoctistes for having expounded to us all his dreams. “ It is nearly so that the priests deliver themselves ; but the phraseology is different.” It is only superficial minds that avoid being beset with these questions. They shut themselves up in a cave and deny the existence of the heavens. These very people would have said to Columbus, as he gazed at the horizon of the sea towards the W e st: “ Poor fo o l! thou seest very well that there is nothing beyond that.”

1 The pairs of contradictories into the absolute. They correspond to which the understanding falls when Hamilton’s pairs of alternative im- it strives to conceive the infinite and possibilities of thought.— T r .

2 w t ^ T ^ fr f ^ n r r fw ^ i f* r^ T * r■5T fs w fr T II Taitiriya Upanishad, Ch. II. 4.— T r.

D R E A M S . 33


In a few years, if we exist and if anything exists, we may be able to resume these questions, and to see in what respect our mode of looking at the universe will have changed. W hat a pity that we cannot, as in the legend narrated by Thomas de Cantrimpre, appoint a meeting-place for such of us as shall be dead, to give us an account of the real state of things in the other life !

E u d o x e s .

I believe that in such a matter the testimony of the dead counts for little. As is said in the parable : Ncque si quis mortuorum resurrcxerit credent} As regards virtue, each one finds certainty by consulting his own heart.

1 “ Neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” — T k.

PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS.

P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

TH E SCIENCES OF N ATU RE, A N D TH E H ISTO R ICA L SCIENCES.

Letter to M. Marcellin Berthelot.

D i n a r d , near S t . M a l o , August 1863.

H e r e , on the sea-coast, as I revert to my earliest thoughts, I begin to regret that I should have preferred the historical sciences to those of Nature, especially Comparative Physiology. In those old times at the seminary of Issy, I felt a very warm affection for these studies ; but at St. Sulpice, I was turned aside from them by Philology and History ; and every time I converse with you, and with Claude Bernard, I regret that I have but one life, and I ask if in devoting myself to the historical sciences of humanity, I have really chosen the better part.

W hat in reality are the three or four thousand years of history which we can have any knowledge of during the infinite lapse of time that has preceded us ? Nothing, indeed; and the philosophers of the literary school, whether hostile or indifferent to the results that accrue from the natural sciences, will always be set against genuine progress. History, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, the series of facts known to us in the development of humanity, is only an imperceptible portion of true history, considered as the record of what we may know regarding the development of the universe. The enthusiasms which the critical

88 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

study of the past inevitably excites, moreover, are opposed to what such investigations induce, the dispassionateness, namely, and disinterestedness that are indispensable to the discovery of truth. If the historical sciences left the public as tranquil as chemistry does, they would have been much farther advanced; but what constitutes their danger, constitutes also their greatness. For with the enormous difficulties they encounter,— in spite of the obstacles which stand in the way of their impartial treatment, in spite of their intimate connection with politics and morals, in spite of the shock they must give to a host of respectable interests and prejudices,— historical studies have no need to feel dispirited under the disdain which they experience at the hands of many of your confreres. When I think of what these studies might be, if they were cultivated by philosophic intellects, free from the narrow-mindedness of the classicist, I feel emboldened to pursue researches which those only that do not comprehend them treat as useless curiosities.

Time seems to me more and more the universal factor, the great co-efficient of the eternal “ becoming ” (devenir). A ll the sciences appear to me graduated by their object to a moment of duration. The mission of each of them is to teach us a certain period in the history of life.

/History, properly so called, is, from this point of view, the youngest of the sciences; she enlightens us only respecting the last epoch of the world, or rather the last phase of that epoch./ W hat she teaches us, she teaches imperfectly, and with unconscionable gaps. History begins to

v be committed to writing only at an epoch when mankind has arrived at a very advanced state of reflection. Egypt and China are already old ere we come to have any knowledge of them. The Greeks and the Jewish nation burst upon us in all the splendour of an admirable youth; but before that what adventures had they not experienced ! For want of old native documents, the origin of Rome will always remain a mystery. And what shall we say

T H E S C I E N C E S O F N A T U R E A N D H I S T O R Y . 89

of the long sleep through which the Celts, the Germans, and the Sclavs, passed before they fell in with nations possessed of the art of writing whom they compelled to take notice of them ?

Through its marvels of scientific induction, our own century has succeeded in moving far backwards the limits of history. Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology enable us to reach epochs far anterior to all written documents. In fact, men talked, and invented myths, before they wrote. Certainly history by means of its traditions reaches back also to a period far anterior to that of its earliest historians; but the transmission of events in any degree ancient is extremely imperfect, whilst language and mythology preserve themselves intact for thousands of years. The Lithuanian even now speaks almost Sanskrit, and Herr Grimm has proved that the primitive myths of the Indo-European race are still extant among the peasants of Swabia and the Hartz Mountains. What is not treasured up and transmitted to us in ancient, popular, or sacred songs, particularly in the Yedas, the oldest and the most venerable of them a l l ! A careful analysis has thus furnished science with excellent data regarding an epoch in which historiography neither did nor could exist. As to what concerns our race in particular, it is certain that, thanks to the ingenious researches of Kuhn, Max Muller, Pictet, Breal, we have a far clearer knowledge of the primitive Aryans, the common ancestors of the Greeks, the Latins, the Germans, and the Sclavs, before their dispersion, than we have of certain states of society actually existing at this moment in Africa and Central Asia. A similar analysis applied to Semitic antiquities would enable us, although less distinctly, to obtain a glimpse of the time when the Syrians, the Arabs, and the Hebrews lived together. If earnest students were not so rare, what discoveries would not come of a philosophical and critical study of Chinese, and of the languages of the Tartars ! A new science, dis

9o P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

closing to us the story of pre-historic times, has thus been founded ; a history different from that which springs from mere chronicles, for it treats neither of successions of kings, nor of battles, nor of the capture of towns, but of things in reality of very different importance. Events which at the present time exercise the most potent influence on human affairs, took place at that far-distant period. The filiation of races, the primitive laws, the diversity of languages, the fundamental structure of the idioms that are still spoken— all come from these sources. When Herodotus wrote, the Sclavs and the Germans had been living for centuries already characterised by their essential features; customs prevailing in our times in more than one village of Germany had the force of law in some district of Scythia; the language of Goethe and of Micjkiewicz was already sketched out beforehand as regards its general outlines.

»Thus Comparative Philology and Comparative Mythology carry us back far beyond historical tex ts ; indeed, almost to the very origin of human consciousness. In the chronological order of the sciences, these two branches of study take rank between history and geology^) This latter is in fact far from being foreign to the history of man. Indications hitherto isolated and doubtful, but which will perhaps become more numerous and concurrent, will induce us to date much further back, than we are at present led to suppose, the existence of mankind on our jDlanet. Beyond the horizon to which we are referred by Comparative Mythology and Comparative Philology, which goes no farther back than the formation of the reflective races, there will extend the horizon of Comparative Palaeontology, Comparative Zoology, and Comparative Anthropology. Pre-historic Archaeology, in particular, will here find important applications, because man had fashioned implements for his use long before his language and his myths assumed a fixed form. I incline to the opinion which considers the so-called “ Celtic ” monuments of


Brittany and of Denmark to be remains of that primitive humanity which preceded the arrival on our soil of reflective races. It is said that not a single article made of iron is found in them ; even bronze is very seldom met with. No Aryan nation has ever built like them. A ll this is still in the condition of scattered documents. But do not you think that if Animal Morphology were studied more philosophically, with the penetrating eye of a Geoffrey St. Hilaire, a Goethe, or a Cuvier, undisturbed by the rage for speaking officially, do not you think, I say, that it would solve the mystery of the slow evolution of mankind, of that strange phenomenon by virtue of which one species of animals gains a decisive superiority over the rest ?

For my part I have always thought that the secret of the formation of species lies in Morphology, that animal forms are a hieroglyphic language to which we have no key, and that there is a complete explanation of the past in the facts transacted under our eyes, which we know not how to decipher. In this case, too, time has proved factor par excellence. Man has come to be what he is by an obscure onward movement which has lasted for thousands of years, and which probably attained perfection in several respects at once. The zoologists who, according to the phraseology of scholasticism, see everything in esse, instead of seeing everything in fieri, deny, I am aware, the secular modifications of species. W ith them each animal type, being constituted once for all, holds on through ages with something akin to inflexibility. W hat can be less philosophical ? Nothing in Nature is stable; in it everything is perpetually developing. The scale upon which a regular system of experimenting to determine the fixity of species may have been made is an imperceptible one. Deference is made to Aristotle, to the catacombs of Egypt. Suppose we grant that the identities established by these means of verification are quite genuine. W hat does that amount to ? The true catacombs


to consult in such cases are the geological beds. Now, what do these beds present to us ? An animal and a vegetable life very different from what now exists. And how has the transition from the diverse fauna and flora as revealed by Geology to the existing fauna and flora come about ? Was it by sudden and abrupt essays, by destructions and new creations ? Such an idea is subversive of the most firmly-established principle of natural philosophy, to wit, that the development of the world has taken place without the intervention of any external being acting, as Male- branche has said, by “ private volitions.” Geology, moreover, conducts towards quite different hypotheses. The opinion, which is, I believe, that of Mr. Lyell, that the existing causes continued in action for ages, suffice to explain all the transformations that our planet has undergone, may one day be modified (perhaps it is so already); but we may be sure that the idea of creations by jerks, of changes not resulting naturally from anterior states, will never be entertained by any savant who is in earnest.

|~The more we seek to fathom the history of the physical and moral revolutions that have taken place on the surface of our globe, the more we shall see that the slow action of ordinary causes accounts for all the phenomena that were formerly explained by extraordinary causes. A day will come when Zoology will be historical, that is to say, when, instead of confining itself to the description of the existing fawaa, it will seek to discover how such fauna have attained the state of development in which we now see them. It may be that Darwin’s hypotheses on this subject are judged insufficient or inexact; but they are undoubtedly in the line of the great explanation of the world and of true philosophy^

The obscure period of the history of our planet during which man appeared is not therefore altogether a sealed book to us. The combined efforts of Geology and Comparative Zoology will penetrate the mystery up to a certain point. W hat Comparative Philology is to History,


General Anthropology will be to Comparative Philology. This latter science treats of humanity as already divided into families ; General Anthropology will seek to discover the very law of its formation. Comparative Philology is History prior to reflection ; Anthropology will be History prior to language, and to the composition of the groups of ideas which, having become the patrimony of each race, to this day determine the march of humanity. In this science of the primitive times, Zoology and Botany rank as the most ancient documents that bear record of the history of life.

The history of our planet prior to man and to life is in one sense less beyond our reach, because it turns on facts of a far less subtle nature. It is the geologist that becomes the historian in this case, and who, with the help of general physics, has composed the narrative of the changes the earth has undergone since the day when it began to exist as an independent globe. A t no period certainly have more decisive events taken place. Even at the present day we are influenced by occurrences that happened long before the existence of man. It may be said with truth that the geologist holds the secret of history. W hat event ever equalled in importance the chances that opened the Pas-de-Calais and the Bosphorus ; the circumstances, purely fortuitous (in the merely relative sense of the word), that have determined the forms of continents, the sinuosities of seas, the proportion of emergent and submerged surfaces, the nature of the sub-soils intended for each race, all of which have had so sovereign influence on the destiny of each of them ? W hat would have happened if, between the Mediterranean and the seas of the West and the North, there had not extended itself that expanse of land predestined to become the heart of hum anity; if Iceland and Greenland, by stretching a few degrees towards the south, had, at an earlier date, yielded a regular route from one continent to the other ? The whole destiny of the planet earth is by


this means, I do not say explained, but explicable. /From the date when the earth deserved a distinct name in the solar system, up to the point at which we see it has arrived, there are certainly for us numberless gaps and obscurities; but we have got hold of a sequent chain, a

everything is linked, and in which each moment finds its raison d'etre in the one that preceded iL j

Does our historical science stop there ? Have we no means of reaching a period when the planet earth did not exist ? We have; because Astronomy enables us to transcend every planetary conception, and has attained a point of view from which the earth is but an individual in a greater whole. By means of Astronomy human science leaves the earth, embraces the universe, and is able to obtain a glimpse of how the earth was formed in the solar system ; for, beyond a doubt, our planet has not always had a separate existence of its own ; it is a member of a more extended body; its individuality has had a beginning. Laplace’s Systeme du Monde is the history of an ante-terrestrial epoch of the world before the formation of the planet, or,, if you will, of the earth in its union with the sun. In fact, at the point at which we have arrived in our reasoning, the history of the world is the history of the sun. The small atom, detached from the large central mass round which it gravitates, hardly counts for anything. You have proved to me, in a manner which has silenced my objections, that the life of our planet has really its origin in the sun, that all force is a transformation of the sun, that the plant which feeds our hearths is warehoused from the sun, that the locomotive moves by an effect due to that power of the sun which has been lying dormant for ages in the subterranean beds of coal, that the horse draws its strength from the vegetables, which, too, are produced by the sun, that the rest of the working power on the surface of our planet is resolved into the raising of water,— a phenomenon which

igress, a forward movement at least, with which


is directly the work of the sun. Let us, therefore, cease to speak of the planet earth, it is an atom ; let us speak of that great body situated in a certain region of space, and round which gravitate small satellites detached from it. Before religion came to proclaim that God must be placed in the absolute and the ideal, that is to say, outside and above the world, one worship alone was agreeable to reason and science, namely, the worship of the sun. The sun is our mother-country, and the proper god of our planet. There is nothing that should puzzle us in the idea of an incalculable series of ages being necessary to translate into the category of time the revolutions that have drawn all actually existing realities from the solar mass. Thousands of millions of centuries are at our disposal. The infinity of time is before us, and none of its infinitesimal factors has been devoid of events. The limited horizon which bounds our study of Nature is the chief reason why it is impossible to so many to conceive, in a large and liberal way, of the history of the universe.

But is the solar system itself eternal ? Cannot we go beyond it ? Unquestionably we can, and do, since from sidereal astronomy we learn that the solar system is only a point in space, that it is one of thousands of similar systems. I f no data remain to us bearing on the origin of the sun, it must nevertheless have had such an origin. The nebulae and the M ilky W ay are records of this very ancient history ; but, alas ! impossibilities, which there is no hope of removing, make us pause here. Astronomy, arrived at such distances, can only stammer and stutter, and if we were confined to its testimony we must feel constrained to believe that the highest point of our knowledge is the sun. Beyond that, we should know only one thing, namely, that the sun is not unique of its kind, that there are other suns, doubtless of the same nature and subject to the same laws as the one which we know.

A t this point it is that Chemistry steps in with its superlatively illuminative revelations. Many little facts


for a long time seemed to point to the conclusion that the bodies diffused in space are of the same composition as those that constitute our globe. Bunsen and others, whom you know better than I do, have demonstrated this capital truth, that the chemistry of the sun is the same as that of the earth, and that the elements of the sun are the same as those of our planet. From that moment chemistry ceased to be a science referring only to the earth, like geology ; it is now a science which presides over at least the entire solar system, and which very probably extends beyond it. Do the experiments of Bunsen apply in any measure to the fixed stars ? I cannot say ; but the close analogy between the stars and the sun leads us to believe that chemistry, as we know it, applies equally to them. This is as much as to say that chemistry discloses to us ante-solar facts, and that she enables us to reach an epoch in history in which the distinction of the systems of worlds did not exist, at least in certain regions of space. W hat is chemistry viewed thus ? It is the history of the most ancient era of the world, the history of the origin of the molecule. Do you not think that the molecule might very well be, like everything else, the product of time, the result of a very protracted phenomenon, of an agglutination continued through countless1 ages ? Beo o o O

- that as it may, chemistry evidently precedes astronomy, as it reveals to us laws and a development prior to the individual existence of the celestial globes. By its means we dive into a world wherein there is neither planet nor sun ; we transcend the solar period and are in a molecular period. Can we not go farther back still ?

It was you who led me one day to observe that, virtually at least, Mechanical Physics is anterior even to chemistry. B y it we are transported to a world composed of pure atoms, or rather of forces stripped of every chemical property. Mechanics alone prevailed in that primitive state in which everything had only one aspect,

1 Literally, thousands of millions.— Tr.


and in which there was no distinct individuality. Was there an age of the world in which matter thus existed without any intrinsic quality, without any other qualification (determination) than the quantity of its mass ? Certainly, it is not necessary to maintain th is ; yet I cannot help imagining gravitation to be something prior to chemical reactions. Thus, from its object, Mechanics seems to me the oldest of the sciences. Was its reign eternal ? Have force and mass had a beginning ? W hat does the word “ commencement ” mean, when it refers to what we conceive as primordial and without any antecedent ?

It is here that our reason gets lost, that all science is at a standstill and analogies are silent. The “ antinomies ” of Kant rise up as insuperable barriers. How, every time that the notion of the infinite turns up, we become involved in an endless series of contradictions and of vicious circles ! Could it possibly be Mathematics, could it be the infinitesimal calculus in particular, which would contain for us the secret in this case ? Mathematics, by its various orders of infinity, unquestionably affords us the only image that may throw some light on such a strange situation of the human mind as this, placed as it is between the necessity of supposing a commencement in the universe and the impossibility of admitting i t ; but this is an image m erely; mathematics, not going beyond the sign or the formula, or, in other words, not implying any reality. I11 fact, mathematics would be true even though nothing should exist. It exists in the absolute, in the id ea l; whereas all the series of phenomena to which we have hitherto confined ourselves is in the domain of the real. Between the first existence of an atom and mathematics there is an abyss. Mathematics is but the development of the principle of identity, a tautology of priceless service when we apply it to something real, but incapable of revealing either an entity or a fact. It furnishes us with none of the laws of N ature;


but, by providing admirable formulas for expressing the changes in quantity, it wonderfully helps in educing from the laws of Nature all that they contain. It teaches nothing about the development of being, but it shows under what categories it was decided from all eternity that being should exist, assuming that it would exist.

I say as much of Metaphysic. I have on previous occasions denied the existence of Metaphysic as a separate and progressive science; I do not call it in question as a whole of notions of an immutable quality in the manner of Logic. These sciences teach nothing, but they help us to analyse what we knew. They are, anyhow, wholly outside the facts. The rules of syllogism, the fundamental axioms of pure reason, would, like mathematics, be true, even although there were nobody to perceive them. Pure mathematics, logic, metaphysic, so many sciences of the eternal and the unchangeable, are by no means historical or experimental, and have no connection with existence and facts. By their means we enter a world that has neither beginning, nor end, nor reason why it should exist. Let us not deny that there are sciences of the eternal; but let us rank them quite distinctly as beyond the sphere of reality. In the category of reality whatever we see is a development graduated according to time, in which we distinguish :—

I. An atomic period, at least virtually so, a realm of pure mechanics, but containing already the germ of all that was to follow ;

II. A molecular period, in which chemistry comes into play, and in which matter has already distinct groupings.

III. A solar period, in which matter has agglomerated in space into huge masses, separated by enormous distances;

IV. A planetary period, when in each of these systems distinct bodies detached themselves around the central mass, each having its independent development, and when the planet earth, in particular, commences to e x ist;

T H E S C I E N C E S O F N A T U R E A N D H I S T OR Y . 99

V. The period of the individual development of each planet, in which the planet earth traverses the successive evolutions revealed by geology, and in which life appears, and botany, zoology, and physiology commence to have each its object;

VI. The period of unconscious humanity, which has been revealed to' us by philology and comparative mythology, and which has been extending from the day that there appeared on the earth beings deserving the name of men, down to historical times ;

V II. The historical period, beginning to dawn in Egypt, and comprehending nearly 6,000 years, of which only 3,000 were followed by any consequences, and only 300 or 400 were marked by a perfect consciousness of the whole planet and of the whole of humanity.

In a word, what we call history is the history of the latest period; as if, to understand the history of France, all that we could know were limited to what has taken place within ten years back. Two V .w.'.onts, nnmely, time and the tendency to progress, explain tne universe. Mens o/jiUti molem . . . Spiritus intus edit} . . Without this fertile germ of progress, time remains eternally barren. A sort of internal spring, impelling everything to life, and to a life more and more developed, is the necessary hypothesis. The atomic schools of antiquity, which discovered so many truths, arrived at the absurd error of supposing that they understood this. The “ fillip ” of Descartes is not enough. W ith that fillip we should not get beyond mechanics, and, to tell the truth, tlît great genius never got beyond them. We must presuppose the permanent tendency to exist with ever greater fulness, the necessity of onward movement and progress. What is observed in the plant and in the animal must be admitted in the case of the universe, namely, an internal force which impels the germ to fill in a plan which was

1 “ The mind sets the mass of force nourishes it up from within.” things in motion. . . . A n ethereal — V i r g i l . — T r .

sketched beforehand. l f There is an obscure consciousness of the universe which tends to realise itself, a secret spring which pushes, as it were, the possible into actual existence. Thus being seems to me a compromise between opposite conditions, like an equation which, in the majority of hypotheses, offers either negative or imaginary solutions, but which, in certain cases, yields real solutions; like a winnowing machine which lets that only pass which has a right to l iv e ; that is to say, that only which is harm onious^ A thousand species have existed, or have tended to exist, which no longer exist. Some of these have lasted only a century, while others have been in existence for a hundred centuries, because the conditions of their existence were more or less contracted (in our days the giraffe, the beaver, and the whale are dying ou t); some have become altogether extinct, others have merely undergone changes ; while a third set have had but a virtual existence, which, for want of favourable conditions, has not been realised. Thus the universe is a huge strife in which victory is ensured to what is possible, flexible, and well poised, in which everything is in equilibrium, is pliant, and balanced. The organ creates the want, but it is also the result of that w an t; at all events, the want itself, what is it but that divine consciousness which reveals itself in the instinct of animals, in the innate tendencies of man, in the dictates of conscience, in that supreme harmony which causes the world to be full of number, of weight, and of measure ? There is nothing that has not its raison d'etre ; and it may be added that whatever has its raison d’etre has either been or will yet be.

One thing is certain, viz., that every development which has had a beginning will come to completion. To hazard such an assertion is not more rash than to affirm that the seed will become a tree, and the embryo a

1 The adjustment of organisms to mined by natural selection through unvaried means, in which the species the survival of the fittest in the of plants and animals are deter- struggle for life.— T r.



complete animal. Undoubtedly we never have the right to say this as regards particular cases; it is never certain that such and such a seed, or such and such an embryo will not meet with mishaps, which will arrest its grow th; but these mishaps amount to nothing in the whole. Numberless germs of flowers perish every y e a r; yet we know that there will be flowers next spring. W e single out several phases of a development, which has gone on for thousands of millions of centuries according to a very determinate law. That law is the progress which has made the world pass from the sway of mechanics to that of chemistry, from the atomic and molecular to the solar state, if I may dare to say so, that is, to the state of isolated masses in space ; that law which has -drawn from the solar mass planetary existences separated from it, albeit they are always closely dependent upon i t ; that law which in every planet, at least in ours, has produced a regular development— the apparition of life, the successive perfections of that life, the dawn and the progress of consciousness,at first obscure and involved, towards something more and more free and clear, the slow formation and development of humanity, at first unconscious as manifested in myths and language, then conscious as manifested in history properly so called ; and this history itself continually becoming more a unity, more powerful, and more comprehensive. The progress towards consciousness is the most general law of the world. The highest thing known to us in the order of existence (that is to say, outside the absolute and the ideal), is humanity. It is true we cannot deny that there may be in other celestial bodies forms of consciousness much more advanced than those of humanity ; but we have no knowledge of them. More than that, we are able to assert that none of these forms of consciousness, whose existence is more than probable, has arrived at a point immensely superior to that which man has been able to attain. W hat in reality would constitute an immense superiority in an intelligent


consciousness would be the fact that it has, otherwise than by scientific induction, overstepped the limits of its planet, and that it has extended its action beyond the heavenly body where it originated. But nothing like to this has taken place in the solar system. A ll the humanities that this system can contain are imprisoned within their astronomical limit, and none of them possess enough of knowledge to enable them to act on the other bodies of the system. W e may say the same thing of other solar systems ; but, certainly, no being or class of intelligent beings in any part whatever of the visible universe, has attained to perfect mastery over matter, nor has it come to have any communications with living beings on other planets. Never has an event been observed that obliges us to frame such a hypothesis. External to man, no one has ever proved that a single free act has interfered in the current of things, such as to cause them to take a course different from what they would have taken without it.

Erom the long term of history known to us, can we draw any inference regarding the future ? There will be an infinitude of time after us, as there has been before us, and in thousands of millions of ages the universe will be different from what it is to-day, as much as the world of to-day differs from the time when neither the earth nor the sun existed. Humanity has commenced, and humanity will end. The planet earth has commenced, and the planet earth will end. The solar system has commenced, and the solar system will end. Only neither being nor consciousness will end. There will yet exist something which will be to the existing consciousness what the existing consciousness is to the atom. And at first humanity before exhausting its planet, and before undergoing fatally the effect of the cooling down of the sun, may count on many thousands of centuries. W hat will the world be when what has taken place since 1763 shall be reproduced a million times ; when chemistry, instead of eighty years of progress, shall be able to count a hundred


millions ? Every attempt at conceiving such a future is ridiculous and fruitless. Such a future will nevertheless be. Who knows but that man or some other intelligent being may get the length of knowing the final expression of matter, the law of life, and the law of the atom ? Who knows but that some predestined chemist, master of the secret of matter, may yet be able to transmute everything ? ^Who knows but that an all-knowing biologist, ) master o£ the secret of life, may yet succeed in changing its conditions, and that natural species may some day pass for the relics of an antiquated ill-assorted world, the remains of which will be preserved in museums as curiosities ? In a word, who knows but that infinite science may yet inaugurate an infinite power, according to the noble saying of Bacon: “ Knowledge is power ? ” The being that shall possess such science and such power will be the true lord of the universe. Space having no longer any existence for him,1 he will overleap the bounds of his planet. One power alone will really govern the - world; that power will be science, that power will be mind.

God will then be complete, if we take the word God as a synonym for the sum-total of existence. In this sense, we say God will be rather than that he i s ; he is in fieri ; he is on the way to become. But if we stopt there, it would be a very incomplete theology. God is more than the sum-total of existence; he is at the same time the absolute. He is that order in which mathematics, metaphysic, and logic are tru e; he is the locus of the ideal,2 the living principle of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Viewed thus, God fully and unreservedly i s ; he is eternal and immutable, without either progress or becomingy

1 More freely rendered, space no know them to be true or not. Such longer forming a barrier to him.— truths are the fundamental logical T r. laws, the axioms and postulates in

2 The idea is the locus of the geometry, the primitive data of eternal varieties of the truths that arithmetic and algebra. — T r .are always true, whether any one


This triumph of mind, this true kingdom of God, this return to the ideal model, seems to me the highest end and aim of the world. As far as we know, humanity is the chief instrument of this sacred work. The humblest animal, the lowest zoophyte, is in its own way already a commencement of the knowledge of Nature through herself, a dim return towards unity; but humanity, by the faculty that it has of capitalising discoveries, by the privilege that each generation has of starting from the point at which the preceding generation stopped towards yet greater progress, is marked for a higher destiny. The sovereignty of mind is the proper work of humanity. Even though humanity itself may not reach the goal, it will at least have left its mark in the series of efforts to attain it. Then shall we idealists rise to the ascendant. W e ourselves shall have become ashes millions1 of years ago, the few molecules that make up the substance of our being will have been dissolved, and have passed through incalculable transformations; but we shall revive again in the world that we have contributed to construct. Our work will triumph. The moral sense will then prove itself to have been rig h t; faith which believes against all appearances will be justified; it is she who will appear to have guessed w isely; religion will be proved true. Virtue will then be explained. We shall comprehend the object and meaning of that strange instinct which impelled man without any covert regard to his own interest, and without hope of reward (true virtue hinges on this condition), to self-denial and self-sacrifice. The belief in a divine Father will be justified. Our petty discovery, our efforts to bring about the reign of the good and the true, will be a stone hidden within the foundations of the temple of eternity; we shall not the less have contributed to the divine work.2 Our life will have been part and

1 Literally, thousands of millions.— T r.2 The universal process of things ; the world-process.— T r.


parcel of the infinite life ; we shall have onr place marked in it for eternity.

Whose, then, is the sentence that a well-wisher anonymously addressed to me a few days ago, “ God is immanent in the universe as a whole, and in each of the beings composing it. Only he does not recognise himself alike in all. He knows himself more in the plant than in the rock, more in the animal than in the plant, more in man than in the lower animals, more in the intelligent man than in the man of shallow understanding, more in the man of genius than in the intelligent man, more in Socrates than in the man of genius, more in Buddha than in Socrates, and more in Christ than in Buddha.” This is the fundamental thesis of all our theology. I f this is what Hegel meant to say, let us confess ourselves Hegelians.

I know that the ideas which our purely experimental philosophy forms to itself regarding consciousness seem to be little in keeping with such aspirations. In fact, consciousness is with us a resultant. Now the resultant disappears with the organism whence it springs; the effect disappears with the cause; when the brain suffers decomposition, consciousness must then vanish. But the soul and its personality must be conceived of as things distinct from consciousness. Consciousness has a close connection with space, not that it has its habitat in a given point, but that it acts within certain defined limits. The soul, on the contrary, the personality of each individual, is nowhere ; since man often acts with more effect at the distance of a thousand leagues than in the district which he inhabits. The soul is where it acts, where it loves. God, being the ideal, the object of all love, is therefore essentially the locus of souls. The place of man in God, the opinion which is held of him by absolute justice, the rank he holds in the only true world, which is the world according to God, in a word, his___share Jn, the general consciousness, that is his true

io6 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

being. This moral being of each of us and all of us is so much our essential ego that to it great men sacrifice their physical life, shortening their days, and, if need be, suffering death for their true life, which is the part they play in humanity.

In this point of view, who is more alive at the present moment than Jesus ? Is not Jesus a thousand times more really alive ? is he not a thousand times more beloved in our days than when he went up and down Galilee ? This is not a matter of reputation and glory, which, not to say how vain it is, perpetrates not unfrequently a crying injustice. Numbers of men who hold the first rank amongst mankind are and will remain forgotten. “ They live for God,” rco Oeco, as the author1 of the treatise Be Rationis Imperio expresses it— an admirable tractate written by a compatriot and contemporary of Jesus. The unknown saints are the greatest saints, and God guards the secret of the highest attainments that have gone to ennoble a moral being. Men who are utterly ignored by the multitude exercise in reality a greater influence on the world than those whose reputation is the most noisy. It is in God that man is immortal. The categories of time and space being merged in the absolute, existence in relation to it is as much what has been as what will be. Thus it is in God all souls that have lived still live. W hy, then, might not the supremacy of mind, which is the end and aim of the universe, be thus the resurrection of all consciousnesses ? Mind will be all powerful, the idea will be all reality. W hat does such language as this signify but that in the idea everything will revive ? The way in which these things will be accomplished cannot but escape us : because, I repeat it, in a thousand million centuries the state of the world will perhaps be as different from what it is now as the mechanical atom is from a thought or a feeling.

1 A Jew who lived in the beginning of the first century.— T r.

W hat we can nevertheless affirm is that,/the final resurrection will be accomplished by science— by the science, I say, either of man or of some other intelligent being.

The work of the scientific reformation of the universe, which is laid upon reason, is hardly yet commenced/ A thousand times will attempts at this be treated as criminal; a thousand times will the spirit of conservatism exclaim that we outrage God by tampering with his w ork; but the progress of consciousness is a thing pre-ordained. Admitted that our planet is doomed to attain only commonplace results, and that routine, under the pretence of preserving its indispensable dogmas, may succeed in stifling the scientific spirit and in rendering mankind incapable of noble deeds, what would such a loss be to the universe as a whole ? The same as that of a grain of wheat which, in the plains of Beauce,1 falls on a piece of flint, or as that of a germ of life which, in the mysterious night-season of generation, fails to find the conditions that are favourable to its growth.

Good-bye, let us ever search for tru th !

1 Beauce, spelt also “ Beausse,” is so productive of wheat that it has and “ Beaulffe,” is a district in the for- acquired the title of “ The Granary mer province of Orlânnoisin France, of Paris.”— T r.In spite of want of water, the country


( i°8 )

ID E A L SCIEN CE A N D PO SITIV E SCIENCE.

Reply to M. Berthelot.

Y o u r exposition of the system, or rather of the history of the world, such as you understand it, must, I am sure, have excited the astonishment of many people. Some1 will not allow that it is permissible to treat of such questions, because they possess a priori complete solutions of the origin and end of all things. Others, on the contrary, do not even imagine that we can seriously approach them from any point of view whatever and arrive at solutions with the least degree of probability in them. They altogether repudiate expositions of this sort, and regard them as alien to the domain of science. In fact, the legitimacy, and, particularly, the certainty, of such conceptions may always be controverted, inasmuch as it is the positive data of a general and impersonal order, and glimpses (ciperqus) of a particular and individual order, that go to form the tissue of them.

It is from the former data that systems of this nature derive their force, or rather their degree of probability; the latter render them liable to attack and to be treated as sheer chimseras. But, if we accept the amalgamation of these two elements, no regular system, no conception of Nature as a whole, is possible. And yet the human mind is led, by an imperious necessity, to affirm the last term of things, or, at least, to seek for i t ! It is this necessity that renders such attempts legitimate, but on the condition of assigning to them their true character, that is to say, of showing explicitly what are the positive data on which we rely, and what are the hypothetical data that

1 The popular religionists, that is.—Tr.

I D E A L A N D P O S I T I V E S C I E N C E . 109

are introduced to make the system possible. In a word, it must be clearly pointed out that in this case we proceed by a method entirely different from that of ancient metaphysic, and that the solutions at which we arrive, far from being the most certain in the category of knowledge, and those from which we deduce a priori all the rest by means of the syllogism, are, on the contrary, of the vaguest. In short, in the attempts relating to what I shall call ideal science, in the matter of either the physical or the moral world, there exists no probability except on the condition that they are founded on the same methods as those which constitute the strength and certainty of positive science.

I.

Positive science seeks for neither first causes nor the final causes of things, but goes on establishing facts and connecting them with one another by proximate relations. It is the chain of these relations, which is extended farther and farther every day by the efforts of human intelligence, that constitutes positive science. It is easy to show by a few examples how, starting from the most ordinary facts, from those that form the object of daily observation, science, by a series of “ whys” constantly resolved and as constantly recurring, rises to the general notions which represent the common explanation of a vast number of phenomena.

Let us begin with notions borrowed from physical science. W hy does a torch or a lamp give light ? This is a very simple question, and one which has never ceased to interest the curiosity of man. W e can now answer i t : the reason is that the torch in burning disengages gases that were mixed with the solid particles of carbon and raised to a very high temperature. This answer is not arbitrary, nor is it founded on reasoning ; it follows from a direct examination of the phenomenon itself. In fact,

n o P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

the gases combine to form the burning column which escapes from the lamps ; chemistry can collect them together and analyse them in its own apparatus. Carbon will be deposited if a cold body be introduced into the flame. As for the high temperature of the gases it is manifest, and can be measured with the instruments of the physicist. Thus, then, is the light of the torch explained, that is to say, referred to its proximate causes.

But presently new questions arise. W hy does the torch disengage gases ? W hy do these gases hold carbon in suspension ? W hy are they raised to a high temperature ? These questions are answered by submitting the facts to a more searching observation. The torch contains carbon and hydrogen, both combustible elements. These are observable facts ; the carbon can be set free by heating very strongly the matter of the torch; the hydrogen forms part of the water that is produced when the torch burns. These two combustible elements of the lighted torch unite with one of the elements of the air, namely, oxygen ; which is a new fact established by the analysis of the gases disengaged. Now this union of the elements of the torch, the carbon and the hydrogen, with an element of the air, the oxygen, produces, as is proved by experiments made upon the elements when isolated, a very large quantity of heat. W e have thus explained the elevation of the temperature. W e at the same time explain why the torch parts with the gases. This is chiefly because from its elements, united with oxygen, are produced, first from the carbon, carbonic acid, which is naturally gaseous, secondly, from the hydrogen, water, which at this high temperature is reduced to vapour, that is to say, to gas. Finally, carbon in a state of powder and suspended in the flame to which it gives its brightness, is produced, because hydrogen, more combustible than carbon, is the first to burn at the expense of the oxygen ; while the disengaged carbon arrives in a solid state at the surface of the flame, which is bright or smoky

IDEAL AND POSITIVE SCIENCE. i i i

according as it burns more or less completely. Thus we see the series of our second “ whys ” solved and explained, that is to say, referred by the observation of facts to notions of a more general order.

Such notions are resolved in the end to th is: the combination with the oxygen of the elements of the torch, namely carbon and hydrogen, produces heat. They are more general than the particular facts from which we started. In fact, they explain not only why the torch is luminous but also why the combustion of the wood, of the pit-coal, of the oil, of the spirits of wine, of the gaslight,1 &c., produces light. The observation of these various results proves that they all proceed from oner;'and the same proximate cause. Almost all the phenomena of. light and heat produced in ordinary life are similarly explained. Here we see how positive science rises to general truths by the separate study of phenomena. Nevertheless, we may, before insisting on the nature of its method, pursue its applications farther to truths of a higher order.

W hy do carbon and hydrogen, by their combination with oxygen, produce heat ? Such is the question that now presents itself to us. The experiments of chemists have supplied the answer: viz., that it is a particular instance of a general law in virtue of which all chemical combinations disengage heat. The sulphur of the burning match, that is to say, the sulphur that unites with oxygen; the phosphorus that combines with this same oxygen with a dazzling l ig h t; the bits of iron, detached from the feet of horses, that burn in sparks ; the zinc that produces the bluish, dazzling light of fire-works, furnish farther examples familiar to all the world and illustrative of the same general law. This law embraces thousands of phenomena that daily develop under our eyes. The heat of our hearths and of our stoves, the heat that propels our steam-engines, as well as what maintains the life and

1 Hydrogen Bicarbonate.— T r.

H2 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

activity of animals, is produced, as is proved by experiment, by the combination of elements. Thus, we have arrived at one of the fundamental notions of chemistry, at one of the causes that produce the most numerous and most important results in the universe.

We have not, however, as yet come to the end of our “ whys.” Immediately after every problem is solved, the mind of man raises another new and wider problem. W hy does chemical combination liberate heat ? This is what we now ask ourselves. Now, the most recent experiments tend to prove that the answer must be deduced from the facts which refer heat to purely mechanical explanations. Heat appears to be nothing more than a special movement of the ultimate particles of bodies ; in fact, this movement can be transmuted at pleasure, and in an equivalent manner, into the ordinary effects produced by the action of gravitation and of mechanical agents properly so-called. Such is precisely the origin of the work of steam-engines. Now, in the act of chemical combination, the particles of bodies change their relative distances and their relative positions ; from this results an effect which is equivalent to a disengagement of heat. It is in virtue of a similar but more palpable effect, that iron when beaten with a hammer grows hot, the mutual approximation of the particles of the iron and the kind of motion which they have assumed giving rise to that same equivalent transmutation of a mechanical into a calorific phenomenon. Every disengagement of heat, produced either by a chemical action or by an action of a quite different kind, thus becomes a particular instance of mechanics. Physics and chemistry are thenceforward resolvable into mechanics, not in virtue of obscure and uncertain glimpses (apergus), nor as the result of a priori reasonings, but on the strength of notions that cannot be disputed, notions that are all along based upon observation and experiment, and that tend to establish, by a direct study of the reciprocal transmutations of natural forces, their fundamental identity.

IDEAL AND POSITIVE SCIENCE.

To attain such high results and to connect such a mul-1 titude of phenomena by the bonds of one and the same law, which is at once general and conformable to the \ nature of things, the human mind has followed one simple j and invariable method. It has established facts by ! observation and experience; it has compared them ancl j deduced from them relations, that is to say, more general j facts, which (and herein consists the sole guarantee of ! their being genuine) have in their turn been verified by j observation and experience. Thus a progressive generali- / sation, deduced from previous facts and incessantly verified j by new observations, conducts our knowledge from ordinary ; and particular phenomena up to natural laws, at once the j most abstract and the most comprehensive. /"But, in the construction of this pyramid of science, every layer from •' the base to the summit, rests on observation and experi- ! ence. It is one of the principles of positive science that ^ no reality can be established by reasoning. The world ■; cannot be divined. Every time that we reason about matters of fact, the premisses must be deduced from experience and not from our own conception; moreover, the conclusion I which we draw from such premisses is only probable and ! never certain ; it becomes certain only when, by the aid of i direct observation, it is found to be consistent with reality^

Such is the solid principle upon which the modern I sciences rest, such the origin of all their genuine developments, such the guiding thread of all the discoveries that have so rapidly accumulated, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, in all branches of human knowledge. /

This method has been late in making its appearance in the world ; its triumph, if not its birth, is the work of modern times. The human mind had at first proceeded! by other ways. When for the first time it ventured t o ' trust to its own guidance, it sought to guess at the world and to construe it, instead of observing it. It was by meditation persisted in for years, and by the ceaseless concentration of their intelligence, that the Indian sages

i i 4 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

strove to attain to the sovereign conception of things, and, thereby, a mastery over Nature. The Greeks had no less confidence in the power of speculation, as the history of the philosophers of Greece and of the Neoplatonists testifies. The rapid progress of the mathematical sciences kept up this illusion. By the aid of a few axioms deduced either from the human mind or from observation, and advancing solely by way of reasoning, Geometry had commenced, from the time of the Greeks, to raise that marvellous edifice which has all along existed, and which will always continue to exist, without any essential change. Here Logic reigns supreme, but it is in the world of abstractions. Mathematical deductions are certain only in their own sphere; they have no efficient existence beyond the sphere of Logic. If we apply them to the sphere of realities, where they constitute a powerful instrument, they instantly fall under the common condition of knowledge; in other words, their premisses must be derived from observation, and their conclusion must be verified by that same observation. But the true nature of these applications was not at first recognised ; and, until modern times, it was very generally supposed possible to construct the system of the world by means of deduction and after the fashion of geometry.

In the beginning of the sixteenth century, a decisive change of method appears at work in the labours of Galileo and of the Florentine academicians. They are the true fathers of positive science; they laid the first courses of the edifice that has ever since continued steadily to rise. The eighteenth century saw the triumph of the new method : from the physical sciences, to which this method was at first confined, that century began to apply it to the political and economical sciences, and even to the moral world. To regulate society in conformity with the principles of science and reason was the ultimate aim of the eighteenth century. The original founding of the Institute testifies to this fact. But the application of


science to matters of a moral character claims a special regard, because this universal extension of the positive method is decisive in the history of humanity.

' I have hitherto dwelt principally on the physical I sciences, and I have affirmed tha(f we cannot arrive at the I knowledge of things otherwise than by direct observation. ! This is true alike in regard to the world of living beings I as in regard to that of inorganic, in regard to the moral ) no less than the physical world?) y

In the moral, as in the material sphere, we are first called upon to establish facts and to verify them by observation, then to bind them together by constant reference for basis to this same observation. A ll reasoning that tends to deduce them a priori from some abstract axiom is chimerical; all reasoning that tends to array one set of truths in matters of fact against another set, and to demolish some of them in virtue of what in logic ' is known as the principle of contradiction, is equally chimerical.^(It is the observation of the phenomena of the moral world as revealed either by psychology or by history and political economy, it is the study of their relations, gradually generalised and continually verified, that serves as a basis for the scientific knowledge of human nature^/ The method according to which the problems of tEe ' material and industrial world are daily solved is the only method that can, and, sooner or later, will, solve the fundamental problems affecting the organisation of societies.

It is by establishing moral truths on the solid foundation of practical reason, that Kant, at the latter end of the last century, assigned to them their true basis and their decisive position. The sense of right and wrong is an original fact in human nature; it imposes itself on us independently of all reasoning, of all dogmatic belief, of all idea of punishment or reward. The notion of duty, that is to say, the rule of practical life, is thus recognised as a primitive fact, beyond and above all discussion.

1 16 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

Henceforth it can never he compromised by the collapse of the metaphysical hypotheses on which it has for so long been made dependent.

It is the same with free-will, without which duty would be but a meaningless word. The abstract discussion which has so long been kept up between fatalism and free-will has no longer a raison d'etre. Man feels that he is free : it is a fact which no reasoning can affect. Such are some of the great conquests of modern science.

Thus positive science has little by little acquired in humanity an authority founded, not on abstract reasoning, but on the necessary accordance of its results with the very nature of things. The child is pleased with its dreams, and so are nations in the first stages of their development ; but dreaming serves no purpose unless it be to practise deception upon ourselves. Accordingly, every man, provided with an adequate education, accepts at once the results of positive science as the only test of certainty. These results have now become so numerous that, in the sphere of positive knowledge, the most ordinary man, with but moderate education, is possessed of an infinitely wider and profounder knowledge than the greatest' men of antiquity and of the Middle Ages.

Old opinions, too often born of ignorance and fancy, gradually disappear to make room for new convictions, grounded on the observation of N ature; and here I refer to moral as well as physical nature. The earliest opinions have been constantly changing, because they were arbitrary ; the new ones will last, because reality becomes more and more manifest by them, in proportion as they find their application in human society, from the material and industrial, up to the highest moral and intellectual, sphere. The power which they give man over the world and over man himself is their surest guarantee. W hoever has tasted of this fruit can no more part from it. A ll reflective minds are thus secured beyond risk of relapse in proportion as the trace of all old prejudices is

effaced; and there arises in the highest regions of humanity an aggregate of convictions that will never more be overthrown.

II.

I have spoken of positive science, its object, its method, and its certainty; I now proceed to speak of ideal science. Let us begin with its object.

Positive science embraces only a portion of the domain of knowledge as cultivated by humanity up to the present time. It collects the facts that have been observed, and constructs the chain of their relations ; but this chain has no— I do not say certain, but even partially cognisable— beginning or end. (^The inquiry into at once the origin and the end of things lies outside of positive science. It never approaches the relations of the finite with the infinite. Must this inability be considered inherent in human intelligence^ Must we, with a school that in France and elsewhere numbers many illustrious partisans, regard as vain all curiosity that extends beyond the immediate relations subsisting among phenomena ? Must we discard as among the barren controversies of scholasticism, all other problems, because the solution of these does not admit either of the same clearness or the same certitude ?

The answer must be sought in the history of the human mind. This is the only way of remaining true to the method itself. (Now, the science of the relations that are directly observable does not completely meet, and never has met, the requirements of humanity? On this side, as on that, of the scientific chain, the mind of man is never done imagining and inventing new lin k s; wherever it is in ignorance, it is led by an invincible power to construe and to imagine until it reaches upwards all the way to first causes. Behind the cloud that envelops every end and every beginning, the human mind feels that there are realities thrust upon it, and which it is



constrained to conceive of ideally, if it cannot actually know them. It feels that the fundamental problems of its own destiny reside there. ^These hidden realities, these first causes, the human mind connects in a fatal manner with scientific facts, and, combining all in one, forms a whole of them, a system whichujejnbraces the universality of things material and mprak^

This process of the human mind represents an observed fact proved to exist by the study of each epoch, each people, and each individual separately; we may not refuse to take notice of it. Here we have a fact like so many others; its necessary existence does away with all question as to its legitimacy. There takes place in the intellectual and moral sphere of things something similar to what exists in the political sphere. The existence in actual form of an ideal and absolutely perfect government has always been justly regarded as a cliimsera, and yet no nation has ever been able to exist for a single moment without a system of government more or less imperfect. Similarly, in the sphere of the intellect, an exact knowledge of the totality of things is beyond the reach of the human mind, and yet every man is forced either to construct for himself or to accept ready-made a complete system which shall include his own destiny and that of the universe.

How must such a system be constructed ? This is the question of method in ideal science. It is our purpose first to call to mind the scientific method which men have in general hitherto followed in the construction of this ; we shall then state what, in our opinion, is the method that we should follow as a result of our present intellectual state and the development attained by the positive sciences.

Let us interrogate the early philosophers: “ Thales considers water as the first principle.” 1 Anaximenes and

1 Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book I., French] by Messieurs Pierron and vol. i., p. 14 et seq., translated [into Z^vort.


Diogenes maintain that air is prior to water, and that it is the principle of simple bodies. Hippasus of Meta- pontus and Heraclitus of Ephesus insist that fire is the first principle. Empedocles recognises four elements, adding earth to the three elements above named. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae maintains that the number of principles is infinite. Hardly anything formed of like parts is subject to any other kind of production or to any other kind of destruction than aggregation or separation; in other words, such things are neither born nor do they perish; they exist eternally.1

The majority of these systems are not founded merely on the study of matter, but they at the same time have recourse to moral and intellectual notions. Parmenides invokes as a principle, “ Love, the most ancient of the gods ; ” Empedocles introduces “ Harmony and Discord ” as opposite causes of contrary effects ; that is, the good and the evil,the order and the disorder that are found in Nature. Anaxagoras has recourse to “ Intelligence ” in order to explain the universal order of things, preferring, for the most part, to account for phenomena by “ air, ether, water, and many other things out of place in the judgment of Plato.’5 2

Here, now, we have the world explained, by purely logical considerations. “ From the time of these philosophers and before their day” 3 those who were called Pythagoreans applied themselves at first to Mathematics. Nursed in this branch of study, they thought that the principles of Mathematics were the principles of all existences. Numbers are by their very nature anterior to ideas, and the Pythagoreans supposed that they perceived in numbers, rather than in fire, earth, and water, a host of analogies with what exists and what is produced. A certain combination of numbers seemed to them to represent justice ; another

1 This is well-nigh the doctrine of 3 Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book I.,simple bodies of modern chemistry. translated by Messieurs Pierron and

- Phsedo X C V I I . Zevort, p. 23.


combination, the soul and the intellect” This is why “ they thought that numbers are the elements of all existences.”

But it is not my intention in this place to retrace the history of Metaphysic. It is enough for me if, by a few examples, I show how it proceeded at first. ,̂-The true nature of its method is distinctly manifest in ' these first artless attempts, in which each philosopher, deeply impressed by some particular physical or moral phenomenon, generalises it and deduces from it, by means of reasoning, a complete system and explanation of the universe,' Since that date up till recent times, whatever art and profundity may have appeared in its systematic constructions, the method of Metaphysic has hardly changed. It lays down one or more axioms borrowed either from the internal sense or from external perception; 1 then it sets to work after a rational way and conformably to the rules of logic. It pursues the series of deductions until it has built up the complete system of the world ; for, as Aristotle says, “ the philosopher who is in complete possession of the science of the universal is necessarily in possession of the science of all things. . . . W hat there is most scientific concerns principles and causes. It is by means of them that we know other things ; whilst as for them, they are not known by means of anything else.” 2

The triumph of this method is attained in the establishment, during the Middle Ages, of great scholastic mechanisms, in which the syllogism, starting from certain axioms dogmatically imposed and above all debate, thereafter holds sway as sovereign from top to bottom. Until modern times, Descartes, who overthrew the ancient edifice of authority in philosophy, remained true to the deductive method. “ I have observed,” says he,3 “ certain laws so established by God in Nature, and of which he1 Ft(ZeHamilton’sMetaphysics,1877, is more forcible : Aid, yap ravra Kal

V o l.ii., Lect. xxii., p. 43 .— T r. iK roirw v rbXKa yvwpifcrai, aXV 01)2 Metaphysics, Book I., transla- ravra 8ia ruv viroKeipitvuv.

tion already referred to. The text 3 Discourse on Method, 5th part.


has impressed in our souls such notions, that, after we have reflected sufficiently upon these, we cannot doubt that they are accurately observed in all that exists or takes place in the world.” And farther on : 1 “ But the method I have adhered to here is as follows : in the first place, I have essayed to find out in general the principles or first causes of all that is or can be in the world, without taking into consideration for this end anything but God alone who has created it, and without educing them from any other source than from certain germs of truth naturally existing in our souls. After that, I examined what were the first and most ordinary effects that ought to be deduced from these causes; and it appears to me that, in this way, I have found heavens, stars, an earth, and even on the earth, water, air, fire, minerals, and some other things of this kind, which are the most common and simple of all, and hence the easiest to know. Then, when I wished to descend to particulars, so many diversities presented themselves to me, that I did not believe it to be possible for the human mind to distinguish the forms or corporeal species that are upon the earth, from an infinity of others that might have existed, if it had been the will of God to place them there, or consequently to apply them to our use, unless we rise to causes through their effects, and avail ourselves of many particular experiments.” I have thought it my duty to insert the whole of this passage in consequence of the exact perspicuity with which Descartes there characterises his method. That great mathematician, whom we have often represented as one of the founders of the modern scientific method, places, on the contrary, reasoning and deduction at the beginning, and throughout the whole course of his system-building. Here experiment comes in only as an accessory, and with a view to disentangle the extreme complications of the reasoning.

He is not abreast of the last of the metaphysicians,

1 Discourse on Method, 6th part.

1 2 2 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

Hegel, wlio, in his turn, sought to re-construct the world a 'priori, by identifying the principles of things with those of a transformed logic. The ideal of the philosophers has almost always been “ a system of principles and derived knowledges, which is true in itself, and in virtue of

.its own inner harmony.” 1 W ell, I must frankly confess q that I consider that such an ideal is chim erical; the ex- , perience of centuries has proved this.(Tnthe moral as well

as in the physical world, all attempts to construct absolute systems, lying as they do beyond the reach of human nature, have failed. Besides, such a pretension must henceforth be regarded “ as that which is most opposed to a knowledge of the true in the physical as well as in the moral world. ” 2 No reality, I again repeat, can, be, .opt at by reasoning. Mathematics, whose method misled the ancients as well as Descartes, are here out of the question; it contains (all geometers are now agreed on this point) nothing real except what has been introduced into it beforehand in the form of axiom or hypothesis, and this reality passes through the play of symbols without ceasing to continue identical with itself. On the

l contrary, to pass from one real fact to another, we must '' always have recourse to observation.

^fetaphysic, however, is not a mere play of the human mind. It includes a certain class of realities which, however, have no demonstrable existence outside the thinking subject. The true meaning of this science has been clearly established by Kant in his K ritik of

-Pure Reason. It addresses itself to the study of the i logical conditions of knowledge, the categories of the i human mind, the forms according to which it is obliged1 o o

: to conceive of things. Metaphysic may thus be regarded

1 Tennemann, “ Manual of the His- version of the work from which it is tory of Philosophy,” translated [into quoted. See Bohn’s Edition of French] by M. Cousin, Vol. i. p. 45 Tennemann, p. 28.— Tr.(1829). The translation of this sen- 2 Letters to M . Villemain, by M. tence is here given exactly as it E. Chevreul, on Method in general, stands in the Rev. A . Johnson’s p. 36 (1856).


as a positive science based on the solid foundation of! observation. W e must be careful to add, however, that these forms, viewed independently of every other reality, are as empty as are those of Mathematics, which, moreover, deduces the same notions, although in a more restricted manner.

Not only does the direct criticism of reason prove that this is so, but we arrive at the same result by an examination of the systems that have followed one another in the history of philosophy. (Every metaphysical system, whatever may be its pretensions, is confined wholly to the sphere of logic ; in the sphere of reality it only exhibits A more or less perfectly the condition of science in its ownJ day; this is a necessity of which no one has ever been able to shake himself ricL^

Let us examine some of the conceptions which we have just indicated. The systems of the Ionian school correspond to the first glance taken of Nature. The notion of the laws of the physical world first begins to show itself in Anaxagoras, as is testified by those explanations that scandalised Plato so much. The school of Pythagoras presents in its general theories the wonderful discoveries which it had just made in Geometry, Astronomy, and Acoustics. Plato himself, when, through the lips of Tim- aeus, he explains to us a priori the plan pursued by God in the economy of the world, expounds a system of Astronomy, Physics, and Physiology which exactly corresponds with the very imperfect state of knowledge on these subjects of the age in which he lived. In the social sphere, his Republic sets before us an imaginary system of things, of which most of the materials are borrowed from contemporary data. The conception of beauty which imparts such a charm and so much lustre to the writings of the Greek philosopher, is the same as that of the artists of his day. Alongside of the marvellous development of Greek art, arises the theory of the beautiful, an a priori and, to appearance, absolute theory, actually


conceived by the aid of external data which were under the very eyes of the philosopher.

W hile seeking to achieve the reformation of philosophy, Descartes is no exception to the common law. He ends his Discours sur la Methode1 by declaring that he has expounded the laws of Nature “ with no other principle upon which to found his reasonings than the infinite perfection of God ; ” from which he believes he can deduce the properties of light, the system of the stars, the distribution of air and water on the surface of the earth, the formation of mountains, rivers, metals, and plants, and even the structure of man. But will the reasoning that is founded on the attributes of God lead to any new discovery ? Not at a l l ; the results are exactly and simply conformable to the positive knowledge of things which was acquired by experiment in the middle of the seventeenth century. Descartes suppressed his work in consequence of the sentence pronounced against Galileo, whose opinions on the system of the world he shared. Had he lived fifty years earlier, we should not have had to lament this loss. Descartes, holding to the astronomical opinions of the sixteenth century, would have been orthodox ; he would have demonstrated a 'priori that the sun revolves round the earth.

Lastly, to end with a contemporary, Hegel is equally incapable of emancipating himself from the common necessity of Metaphysic ; the universe, which he believes he has built up solely by means of transcendental logic,2 is found to correspond throughout with a posteriori knowledge. It

1 “ Discourse on Method.” — T r . sesthetical in origin, suggest to us2 For an explanation of “ trans- the notion of a peculiar science, the

cendental logic,” the ordinary reader science of that cognition by which may be referred to W allace’s “ Logic we think objects completely a p r io r i. of H egel,” p. 75, and to Mahaffy’s Such a science determining the origin, “ K ants’ Critical Philosophy,” vol. sphere, and objective validity of such i. pp. 16 6 -168. The latter says, cognitions, may be called transcen- “ L et us assume that there are con- dental logic, being concerned with cepts referring a p r io r i to objects, the laws of understanding and reason as we found intuitions so doing, only, and with these only so far as These concepts being mere acts of they apply to objects a p r i o r i — pure thinking, neither empirical nor Tb.


is thus that he draws up a priori all the philosophy of history of his own time, not without magnifying the latest events by an optical result natural to a contemporary. Were it necessary to enter farther into his system, I might show how the profound insight that makes everything hinge on the perpetual transition from being to phenomenon, and from phenomenon to being1 sprung from the self-same advances in the experimental sciences. To understand this, it is enough to glance at the development of scientific knowledge regarding fire and light. Originally, fire was regarded as an element, a being, in virtue of a title as complete and as absolute as any other. Now-a-days it is nothing but a phenomenon, a particular motion of material particles. Moreover, after having established a distinction between flame and the inflamed particles, there was a desire for some time to assign to the former, as its support, a particular fluid, caloric, whose combination with the elements should constitute bodies, such as we know them. Such was the opinion of Lavoisier. But now we see this calorific being has vanished in its turn, and it has been resolved to a mere phenomenon of motion. The principle of absolute contradiction between being and phenomenon, upon which rested the abstract logic of the ancients, is no longer applicable to realities. Bor modern science, as well as for the figurative language of our forefathers, the Aryas and the Hellenes, being and phenomenon are confounded in their perpetual transformation.

This impotence of pure logic is due to a more general cause. In order to reason, we are constrained to substitute for realities certain more simple abstractions, but the employment of which detracts from the absolute rigour of the conclusions. This is what renders all the

r> 1 See on this subject, the Qua- 320 et seq. ; and W allace’s “ Logic lity of Hegelian Logic, Stirling’s of H egel,” pp. 133-158.— T r. “ Secret of H egel,” vol. i, pp.


deductions of philosophical systems illusory. In spite of their pretensions, they have never done, nor will they ever do, anything but re-discover, by means of a pretended a priori, the knowledge of their own times.

I f their method must he given up, will the problems they grapple with suffer the same fate ? Must we give up every opinion regarding ends and causes, that is to say, regarding the destiny of the individual, of humanity, and of the universe ? Strange, indeed, is it that that science which was the first to rouse man’s curiosity, is at the present day that which requires to be justified. The persistence of the human mind in reproducing these problems proves that they are founded on general sentiments, and such as are innate in the human heart, sentiments that must be carefully distinguished from systems that have been so often temporarily reared in order to satisfy them. They are legitimate then, so far as they are sentiments.^ Must we banish them from the~dbinain of science, because they cannot be solved with certainty ? Must we leave their solution to mysticism ? I think not.

The true method of ideal science evidently results from the data inscribed in the history of philosophy itself. W hat the systems have done with a sort of

* unconscious dissimulation, we have now to do methodically, and with a complete knowledge in regard to causes.

Q[n short, in these problems as well as in others, we must accept the conditions common to all knowledge, and giving up all pretence of a certainty that is simply illusory, henceforth subordinate ideal science to the same method

V that constitutes the solid foundation of positive science. / There is but one method of constructing ideal science, to wit, (£he application to the solution of the problems laid down by it of every class of fact within our reach, with their unequal degrees of certainty, or rather of probability.')

Every science will bring its most general results to bear upon this. Mathematics lays bare the logical mechanism of human intelligence; Physics reveals to us the existence,

I D E A L A N D P O S I T I V E S C I E N C E . 12 7

the co-ordination and the permanence of natural law s; Astronomy shows us the abstract conceptions of mechanics realised, as also the universal order of the universe that proceeds from them, and, lastly, that periodicity -which is the general law of celestial phenomena.

f t is the study of these sciences which leads us at once’ to exclude from the world the intervention of all peculiar volition, that is to say, of the supernatural element. In the infancy of the human race, every phenomenon was regarded as the effect of a peculiar volition. Constant experience has, however, taught us that such was never the case. Every time that the conditions of a phenomenon are fulfilled, it never fails to appear.

W ith Chemistry is for the first time introduced the notion of being or of individual substance. Most of the old formulas of Metaphysic are here in a manner realised in a concrete form. But at the same time there appear new notions regarding the perpetual transformations of matter, and regarding its combinations and its decompositions, and the specific properties inherent in its very existence. It is here that the creative faculty of man is most extensively manifested, whether in reproducing natural entities through a knowledge of the laws that have presided over their formation, or in fabricating in virtue of these very laws an infinite number of others, which Nature would never otherwise have brought forth.

Beyond the bounds of Chemistry, the sciences of life commence, that is to say, Physiology, that physics of living beings which prosecutes the science of their structures, and also the sciences of animals and vegetables, all of which have till now been confined to the study of classifications. It is this last study that is called the natural method in zoology and botany: it reveals at once certain necessary frameworks of human knowledge and certain general principles which appear to regulate the harmony and formation of living beings. W ill science one day arrive at a clearer knowledge of these last principles, so as to obtain


control over the law of generation in living beings, as it has succeeded in doing so wTith the law of mineral substances ? It is easy to understand the vast philosophic importance of such a discovery. The assertion of such a possibility may fairly be regarded as a rash one, but yet the denial of it is perhaps still more so, as such denial is liable to be overthrown to-morrow by some unforeseen discovery.

Here now we come to a new class of phenomena, namely, that of history. C The necessary evolution of the solar system, and of geological metamorphoses, has been succeeded by a world in which, with the human race, free-will has made its appearance.' This has introduced a new element into things, it has changed the course of fatalisms in Nature. In this point of view, history constitutes amongst the sciences a separate group. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to discover the laws of history than those of the physical world, since in history there is hardly ever any experimentation possible, and observation is always incomplete. W e shall never be able to know a past event unless we can re-construct it in order to make it appear once more before our eyes, with the same certainty as in a series of physical phenomena. You know better than any one by what wonderful artifices in divination, confirmed by the most diverse indications, the historian makes up for this eternal inability, and, partly by means of facts, partly by imagination, re-constructs a world which he himself has not known, and which nobody will ever see again./ (Among the general results springing from the study of history, one is fundamental from a philosophical point of view ; it is the fact of the constant progress of human societies, a progress in science, in the material conditions of life, and a progress in morality, and all three correlatively> If we compare the condition of the masses, the slaves in" ancient times, and the serfs in the Middle Ages, now emancipated into their proper freedom under the single and sole condition of voluntary toil, which the discoveries

I D E A L A N D P O S I T I V E S C I E N C E .

of scholars and the sympathy of thinkers tend every day to render less painful, we recognise at once a manifestly progressive evolution. (v If we turn our attention to the great epochs, we clearly observe that the role of error and wickedness decreases in proportion as we advance in the history of the world. Societies become more and more civilised, and, I will venture to say, more and more virtuous. The amount of good always goes on increasing, and the amount of evil goes on diminishing, in proportion as the sum of truth increases and of ignorance decreases among mankind/} It is thus that the notion of progress has been evolved as an a posteriori result of historical studies.

A t last, on the summit of the pyramid of science are reared the great moral sentiments of humanity, namely, the sentiments of the beautiful, the true, and the good, the totality of which constitutes for us the ideal. These sentiments are facts revealed by the study of human nature :(1behind the true, the beautiful, and the good, humanity has always felt, without knowing it, that there exists a sovereign reality in which this ideal resides, namely God, the centre and the mysterious and inaccessible unity towards which the universal order converges. Sentiment can alone lead us to this ; its aspirations are just, so long as it does not go beyond its own sphere, under the pretence of giving expression to itself by dogmatic and a priori statements in the domain of positive facts^)

The physical and moral sciences, that is to say, the sciences of real existences, demonstrable either by observation or by testimony, are then the only sources of human knowledge. It is with general notions contributed by them that we must build the progressive pyramid of ideal science. Ho problem is interdicted to i t ; far from it, it alone is qualified to solve such, for the method I have just expounded is the only one that leads to truth.

It only remains for us now to inquire what is the certainty of the results furnished by the method that serves as our guide in ideal science. Truth, we must confess,


cannot be reached by ideal science with the same certainty as by positive science. Here the imperfection of human nature reveals itself with startling effect. In fact, ideal science is not, like positive science, completely formed by a continuous series of facts linked together by means of positive and demonstrable relations. The general notions at which each particular science arrives are disunited and separated from one another in one and the same science, and, more particularly, from one science to another. In order to reunite and form them into a continuous tissue, we must have recourse to gropings in the dark and to imagination, to fill up the lacunae and to extend the lines. It is, as it were, an edifice hidden behind a cloud, of which we perceive only certain outlines. Such a mode of construction is necessary, because each man in his turn works at it, and constructs, after his own fashion, and according to his own intelligence and feelings, the complete system of the universe. But we must not deceive ourselves as to the nature of such a construction. The more we rise in the order of sequences, and the farther we remove from observed facts, the more does certainty, or, to speak more exactly, the more does the probability diminish. Thus, while positive science once established is so for ever, ideal science constantly varies, and .will always vary. The same law holds good as regards human knowledge. W hat requires to be done now-a-days is to verify and establish this law and to conform to it, knowing beforehand that there is truth in every system in proportion, not to the rigour of its reasonings, but to the sum-total of the facts imported into it. Henceforth the problem no longer is that of choosing the system whose point of view is the most seductive by its clearness or by the hopes which it encourages. No good comes of deceiving ourselves. A ll things are, on fixed principles, independent of our wishes and of our will.

Among the distinguished men who at the present day make a profession of Metaphysic there are many who do

not yet appear to have comprehended this new way of stating the problem; they argue against facts that cannot be attacked by the syllogism; they assert things to be realities that they have derived from reasoning alone. Not understanding the point of view of the learned, they argue against materialism, spiritualism, pantheism, & c .; they frame definitions and deduce inferences with a view to attack them. There is more than one philosopher who invents chimaeras in order to enjoy the merit of disenchanting them, without perceiving thattjbhe progress of the human mind has changed the poles of demonstration] and that he is fencing with its own phantoms in the dreary arena of abstract logic. A ll such proceedings are diametrically opposed to experimental philosophy, which declares every logical definition oTTfie re a ito be impossible, and rejects every absolute and a 'priori deduction.

To sum up, ideal science takes up afresh the problems of ancient Metaphysic from the point of view of real „ existences, in accordance with a method borrowed from positive science, but it cannot attain to the same degree of certainty. I f it arrives at certain grand general features drawn from the knowledge of human nature and of the external wprld, it groups them by individual links of connection. (Side by side with demonstrated facts, fancy holds, and will always hold, the largest shared The same thing occurred in the ancient systems ; only they expounded a priori, and as the necessary result of reasoning, this same combination of fact and imagination, which we must hereafter set forth in its true character.

You have explained how you comprehend the general system of things on the ground of the totality of the facts within your knowledge, and by completing the construction from your own point of view. I, too, may one day compose my Be natura rerum, which, notwithstanding our agreement as to method, will doubtless differ in some respects from yours. For the present, I have preferred to set before you the nature of the new method and to- indi-

I D E A L A N D P O S I T I V E S C I E N C E . i 3r


cate wherein it differs from the ancient one, and also to show how,(Jide by side with positive and universal science, which compels our assent on the ground of its own certainty, positing, as it does, only observable facts, we may rear ideal science, which is quite as necessary as positive science, but whose solutions, instead of being enforced and dogmatic, as in former times, will henceforth have as chief foundation individual opinion and freedom?)

( 133 )

LETTER TO M. AD O LPH E GUfiROULT.

I n the number of the Opinion Nationalc for August 23, 1862, M. Adolphe Gu^roult addressed to me a letter in which he asked for an explanation of the following sentence quoted from my pamphlet, entitled “ La Chaire d’Hebreu au College de Erance.” 1

“ T h e h istorical sciences do not at a ll differ in m ethod from the

p h y sica l and m athem atical sciences. T h e y im p ly th at no super- /

natural agent ever interferes to disturb the progress of h u m a n it y ;

th a t th is progress is the im m ediate result of the free -w ill that is in

m an and of th e fatalism th a t is in N atu re ; th a t there is no free

bein g superior to m an, to w hom w e can attribu te an appreciable

participation in the m oral a n y more than in the m aterial govern

m en t of the universe.”

M y reply was conveyed in the following letter

C h a l i f e r t , near L a g n y ,

August 27, 1862.

D e a r S i r ,— The subtle questions that you have asked me in your issue of the 23d instant, coming as they do from you, cannot be allowed to remain without some reply. Ear be it from me to pretend to solve in a single page problems, the solution of which mankind have been in quest of for nearly four thousand years; but I owe you some explanation of the sentence which you have done me the honour to notice, and which, taken by itself, might lead to misconceptions.

You are quite right in holding that man is not absolutely free. There is in him a very considerable element of fatalism, springing from the fact that, on one side of

/ 1 The Chair of Hebrew in the College de France.— T r .


his being he forms a part of Nature. His body obeys the law of all ponderable bodies ; the chemical operations that take place in his organs know neither remission nor pity. But I cannot, on the other hand, admit that there is any free-will in Nature.

Bor an omniscient being, everything in the movements of this world would be calculable, had not man, by his freedom of action, the power of introducing a spontaneous force into the mechanism of things, and of thus changing the resultants. The weather that prevails to-day has not been decreed upon from all eternity, because the condition of the atmosphere has been altered to a certain degree by the labour of man. It has not been decreed from all eternity that such a forest should be cut down, or that such a marsh should be drained. But, in a world in which there were no living beings, everything would come to pass in accordance with laws of absolute inflexibility, and everything could be foretold by any one learned enough to do so. In other words, everything would be mathematical; there would exist no element that might not be foreseen.

You admit that science cannot prove the existence of a free being superior to man, as interfering in Nature in order to change her course. But, you add, can science positively prove that such a being does not exist ? I shall not inquire whether such a thing can be proved metaphysically and a priori. But the experimental proof is sufficient. Such a being has never revealed himself in a way which can be scientifically verified. Whenever he shall reveal himself we shall believe in him. It is not for us to prove the impossibility of a m iracle; it is for the miracle to prove itself. W hat proof have we that neither Sirens nor Centaurs exist, except that we have never seen them ? W hat was it that banished the ancient demonology from the civilised world, if it was not the observation of the fact that all phenomena formerly attributed to the action of demons can very well be explained

L E T T E R TO M. A D O L P H E G U E R O U L T . 135

without such assumption ? A being that does not manifest itself by any act is, in the eye of science, a being that does not exist.

I am aware that people are often led to distinguish the mere intervention of a superior will in the course of events with a view to a definite end, from a miracle properly so called. This is a distinction which vanishes before a strict analysis. What, in reality, does such an intervention mean ? It signifies that the world’s events may, in virtue of a supernatural force acting at a given moment, take a course different from that which they would have taken without it. A miracle is not more than this. The flagrant violation of accustomed order, which constitutes a miracle in the eyes of a shallow- minded man, only implies a degree more of difficulty; the words easy and difficult have no meaning as applied to an all-powerful being. W ith God, it is no more a miracle to resuscitate a dead man, to make a river flow back towards its source, than to change the direction of the wind on the day of a battle, to check the course of a mortal disease, to sustain a falling empire, or to trench upon the freedom of human resolutions. In the one case, the deviation from the law of nature is startling; in the other, it is obscure. W ith God, there is here no difference. Miracles of shame, which seek to hide themselves, are none the less miracles. Providence, as understood by the vulgar, is therefore synonymous with thauma- turgy. The whole question is this, to know whether God puts forth particular acts. For my part, I think that true Providence is no other than the immutable, divine, most wise, just, and beneficent order of the laws of the universe.

You seem to think, dear sir, that such a doctrine is synonymous with atheism. Against this I emphatically protest. Such a doctrine implies the exclusion of a capricious, thaumaturgic God, acting by fits and starts, letting the clouds as a rule take their proper course, but making


them turn from it when prayer is addressed to h im ; allowing a lung or any other of the internal organs to he decomposed up to a certain point, but arresting the decomposition whenever a vow is made to h im ; changing, in fact, his purpose, on the behest of interested motives. Such a God, I take it, is contrary to science. W e are unable to believe in such a thing, and even though the saddest consequences should result, the absolute sincerity which we profess would compel us to say so.

But, in discarding such a gross conception of the Deity, we believe that we are combating superstition, and not true religion. Malebranche has admirably proved before our day, in his Meditations ChrStiennes,1 that “ God does not act by private volitions.” Bolder than ourselves, that profound oratorian established this thesis a priori, and on considerations drawn from the perfection of God. We, for our part, establish the same thesis by the absence of facts to the contrary, and we interpret it th u s: “ There has never been proof, either in Nature or in history, of a single fact as proceeding from a private will superior to that of man.” Whenever this observation shall be overthrown by a single established fact, we shall lose no time in modifying the theory which we believe we can deduce from it.

As regards the true God of the human consciousness, the former proposition is unassailable. His raison d'etre, is an invincible faith, and not reasoning, more or less ingenious. Nature is immoral; the sun has witnessed the most crying iniquities and never once veiled his face; he has looked on crimes of the deepest dye with a smile. But in the consciousness of man a sacred voice makes itself heard which tells him of quite another world, the world of the ideal, the world of truth, of goodness, and of justice. I f there were only Nature, we might ask ourselves if a God is necessary. But ever since an upright man existed, we have had a proof of

1 Thoughts of a Christian.— T r.

L E T T E R TO M. A D O L P H E G U E R O U L T . 137

God. It is in the world of the ideal, and in it alone, that all the beliefs of natural religion have their justification. And I cannot too often repeat that it is the ideal which is, and the fleeting reality which seems to be. The just soul that sees, through the crystal of this world, the pure idea set free from time and space, is the most clear-sighted. He that has devoted his life to the good, the true, and the beautiful, is the best advised of men. This is the living God, who feels himself, and does not demonstrate himself. I have no need of miracles to believe in him. I have only to listen in silence to the imperative revelation of my own heart.

Accordingly the men who have had a truly fruitful conception of God have never put these questions in a debatable form. They have neither been deists after the manner of the French school, nor have they been pantheists. They did not lose themselves in these subtle questions in which their genius would have only exhausted itself and gone to waste. They had a deep and strong sense of G od; they lived in h im ; they did not define him. Jesus shines radiant in this divine phalanx, holding an exceptional rank. In recognising himself to be the Son of God, in authorising men to call God their Father, while overthrowing the superstitions of the ancient cultuses by his beautiful theory of prayer1 and of spiritual worship,2 and setting the example of a life wholly consecrated to the works of his Father, he realised the highest consciousness of God that has probably ever existed in humanity. The truly religious men of all ages will thus be his disciples, even although they should dissent on almost all points from doctrines that the Churches which have sprung from him have developed in his name.

“ Does anything, then,” you ask me, “ exist external to nature and man ? ” There is nothing which does not, I

1 M att. vi. who is spirit. Worshipping God in2 John iv. The worship‘of God, spirit.— T r.


would reply. Nature is but an appearance; man is but a phenomenon. There is the eternal foundation— the infinite, the substantial, the absolute, the id ea l; there is, according to the beautiful Mahommedan expression, that which endures ; there is, according to the Jewish expression, which is more beautiful still, that which is— that is, the Father, from the bosom of whom everything springs, to the bosom of whom everything returns. Let us eliminate from the divine life every notion that relates to our own transient life. Is this Absolute Being free ? Is he conscious ? Does the conscious particle that re-enters into him preserve its consciousness ? Yes and no are alike inapplicable to such questions. They imply an illusion absolutely incorrigible, a tendency to transfer to the Infinite Existence the conditions of our own finite existence.

W e can conceive existence only under the form of a finite ego. In order to be able to picture to himself a God as existing, it was inevitable that man should create him after his own image, that is to say, that he should fashion of him also a finite ego. Now who does not see what a contradiction there is in such a conception: the Infinite Being represented as fin ite; the Pure Spirit endowed with attributes which presuppose organs! In order to be consistent, we ought to push anthropomorr phisrn to its extreme limits and endow God with a body. For, let us not deceive ourselves in this, none of the faculties which the vulgar deism ascribes to God have ever existed without a brain. There never was such a thing as memory, foresight, the perception of external objects— in a word, consciousness— without a nervous system.

Every time the vocabulary of man is applied to the Deity, it grates on the ear. W hy seek to represent the Infinite by phrases and words that essentially involve limitations ? W hy affect to reason about what is acknowledged to be inexpressible ?

L E T T E R TO M. A D O L P H E G U E R O U L T .

W ith an infinite variety of formulas, and in endlessly diverse degrees of simplicity and refinement, mankind will for ever adore that single substance, with many names,1 the common Father of all who seek the good a ad the true. Every one frames his theology according to his wants, and every attempt of a violent nature to change abruptly accepted ideas on this subject is fraught with dangers. But we do violence to the opinion of none by freely expressing what we ourselves believe. The hearer or the reader is left perfectly free in presence of the doctrine expounded to him. He will consent to the doctrine, if it comes up to the degree of culture he has reached. He will not consent to it, if it is for him either premature or out of date.

Besides, who is deceived here ? and what a farce the human race is playing, if it is composed of a few millions of thinking beings engaged in mere make-belief, affecting one with another to accept creeds which they do not h o ld ! It is not by hypocritical reticence that we shall succeed in perpetuating for a single hour longer any creed whose day is done. Every opinion freely conceived is good and moral for him who has conceived it. On all hands we are led to sum up the external legislation of religion in a single word— Freewill.

Accept, dear sir, the expression of my most cordial feelings.

1 Aeschylus, Prometheus, v. 218.

( 140 )

M E TA PH Y SIC A N D ITS FUTU RE.

January i860.

O n e of the most significant facts in the intellectual sphere, that have distinguished these last thirty years is the sudden decease of all lofty philosophic speculation. I am not aware that, since the Middle Ages, the same phenomenon has ever announced itself with an emphasis so striking. In the first half of the seventeenth century, Descartes followed in the wake of a movement of prodigious activity— a movement, the imperfection, the defeat of which was due much rather to its arrogance than its reserve. Cartesianism, Leibnitz, Locke, and the French school fill up the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth century, without any appearance of flagging, in a continuous succession of rival systems. When the last results of Cartesianism and sensualism had been deduced, and the scepticism of Hume had seemed for a time to have fallen heir to the estate, Scotland, with her honest uprightness, and Germany, with her intellectual profundity and penetration, revived anew the exhausted thought of Europe, and prescribed a new starting point for thought. W e all know the splendid development which Germany during more than half a century achieved before the eyes of the world, which looked on astonished at so many new gifts, at that strange and attractive language, and that vigorous originality which, under the northern sky, has revived the glorious days of Socrates, of Aristotle, and of Plato. Neither did France on her part remain idle. W ith an eloquence till

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D I T S F U T U R E .

then unknown in philosophy, M. Cousin founded that species of eclectic speculation which is so appropriate to our times, while other parallel schools modestly continued their work, and obstinately refused to relinquish it. It may be said that up to 1830, the philosophical thought of Europe had not slumbered for an instant, and from the day it tore off the swaddling bands of scholasticism, it did not once pause to weigh the validity of its attempt, and its chances in the future.

If, on the other hand, we cast our eyes back over the last twenty-five or thirty years, we are struck with the remarkable silence that philosophy seems to maintain during that period. Hegel has passed away, leaving a heritage to his disciples, who seem bent on quartering their master, and dragging his limbs asunder to the four winds of the heaven. Schelling outlives himself, continually promising a new philosophy, and when he sets himself to keep his promises, finishing off with only helpless repetitions in which more than ever he betrays the weak sides of his nature, which has in it more of poetry than of science. M. Cousin considers his work as accomplished, since he believes himself free to show what his incomparable genius can do in other directions. The Scottish school loses itself in subtle analyses of words, in which all concern for the great problems disappears. One school alone remains erect, active, full of hope, and laying claim to the future, I mean the Positive School; but this does not form any exception to the law which I am indicating, because its first principle is precisely the negation of all Metaphysic, and it is at the obsequies of abstract speculation that it w ill coerce us to attend when once its vows and its predictions have come to be realised.

W hat is more significant is that this sleep of thirty years does not seem to be near ended. The stone that weighs upon philosophy seems so firmly sealed that one is tempted to say of her what Petrarch of said Italy,


Dormira sempre e non fia chi la svegli.1 Whence, in fact, can the new system arise that should be capable of once more rousing the minds of men, and rallying any disciples that continue convinced ? Could it possibly come from Germany ? I am aware that Germany has suffered less than the rest of Europe from the intellectual reaction that has characterised the middle portion of our century. This reaction, which among us may yet calculate (under very different forms) on fifteen or twenty years of certain victory, is already at an end in Prussia, in the downfall of the party— not a very earnest one— of the Stahls and the Hengstenbergs. Germany, rescued from this temporary eclipse, is about to return to its accustomed mode of life, to learned reflection and purified religion; but will it begin afresh to create systems such as those which it saw spring up in the beginning of this century ? I do not think so.2 The young adepts whom philosophy, properly so called, still reckons on seem to aspire to something quite different from originality. Strange that it is towards the French philosophy, either the materialism of the last century, or the eclecticism of this, that they seem to cast their regard. Can it be that England and Scotland have in reserve some philosophical surprise for us ? 3 Not as yet. Sir W illiam Hamilton has, by means of criticism, brought to an end the development, original as it was, of the schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow. England is in the midst of an intellectual movement in advance: in five and twenty years, Oxford, reformed on the model of German universities, will become th e . most brilliant focus of Germanic culture in the world; but it is not in the direction of abstract speculation that this movement is advancing. As regards Erance, the least that can possibly be said by way of criti-

1 She will sleep for ever, and there losophie of Fichte and Ulrici, 1859, is none to wake her.— T r . p. 286 et seq.

2 See on this subject a very in- 3 Lit., Will they suddenly surprise teresting article by M. Jurgen us by some philosophical discovery ? Bona Meyer in the Jouimal de Phi- — Tr.

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D I T S F U T U R E . 143

cism as to her present state is, that there is hardly any appearance here of the rise of a new system.1 The earnest spirits in it have other cares, and, for my part, I should pity the man whom an unlucky star should predestine to found a school amongst us. Socrates wTas fortunate in living at a time when the thinker had to be afraid only of hemlock. . . .

There seems evidence, therefore, on all hands that the present time is distinguished by an incapacity for philosophy. On all hands, then, I can descry the future in store for the historical sciences ; it is immense, and, if these sublime studies once overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of their advancement, we shall succeed some day in arriving at a very precise knowledge of humanity. I can descry also the future of the natural sciences ; it baffles all attempts to estimate it, and, if these noble studies are not retarded by the narrow spirit of immediate utility which tends to lord it over them, we shall some day possess such a knowledge of, and such a power over matter and life that it will be impossible to limit them. But I cannot descry any • future for philosophy, in the old sense of the word. Hegel, Hamilton, and M. Cousin, have all three, in their " own style and in a brilliant fashion, laid down the limit ordained of fate beyond which metaphysical speculation must henceforth rest in peace. They are not founders [originators of systems] like Descartes, Thomas Eeid, and K ant; they are men to whom it was committed to utter the last word of a vast labour of thought. One still speaks after them, often with talent, sometimes with in-

1 Certainly it would be unjust not Critique Gen&ralc of M. Charles to recognise the merit of certain Renouvier (Paris, t. i. 1854 ; t. ii. recent philosophical writings, which 1859)— a stiff work, still worthy of display a remarkable power of considerate study; and the beau-

" analysis. I would cite as examples tiful works of Vera on the philo- the Introduction c l VEsthetique of M. sophy of Hegel. But the isolation Noel S^guin (Paris, 1859)— the work and the undeserved oblivion in which of a very original thinker, whose these works remain afford the best

. genius shows a remarkable affinity proof of the fact above stated, with that of Hegel; the Essais de

144 P H IL O SO P H IC A L FRAGM ENTS.

sig h t; one no longer creates ; for, the only fertile thoughts are those that are opening out and unfolding, and have not yet attained to that degree of precision beyond which there is only the dry exposition of the school and the formalism of traditional instruction.

What, in fact, may convince us that this extinction of Metaphysic is not a mere transitory forfeiture of right, such as happens in the history of all sciences, is this, that other branches of knowledge seem to have become heirs to it, and to be dividing its spoils among them. Studies in religion, which philosophy, properly so called, always treats with a certain degree of scorn, because it does not perceive their importance, have, during the last ten years, acquired an interest again which we could not have anticipated. The positive sciences, on the other hand, have won over a great many minds which at other epochs abstract philosophy would probably have attracted. The true philosophers have become philologists, chemists, physiologists; we have ceased to look upon the individual soul as a direct subject for positive science. It has been observed that life has its starting-point in force and motion, and its ultimate resultant in humanity. Instead of remaining confined within the narrow world of psychology, the light has been let in, and is shedding its rays above and below ; instead of dissecting the soul into faculties, we have searched for the roots, by means of which it penetrates the earth, and the branches, by means of which it touches the heavens. W e have learned that humanity is not such a simple thing as was at first supposed, that, like the planet which bears it, it is made up of the remains of extinct worlds. In place of the old attempts at explaining the universe, there have been substituted a series of patient investigations into Nature and History. Thus philosophy seems to aspire to become again what it was originally, namely, the universal science; but, instead of trying to solve the problem of the universe by means of rapid intuitions, we have dis

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D I T S F U T U R E . 1 4 5

covered that we must first analyse the elements of which the universe is composed, and construct the science of the whole out of the separate sciences of the parts. In the midst of this vast movement, boldly persisted in by eager intellects, in the face of circumstances so adverse, what becomes of Metaphysic ? Is there a place for it in the new classification of the sciences to which the present century seems led up ? Is there a science of primary truths to which all others should be tributary, or else is Metaphysic only the general result of all the sciences, and will the day of its grand apotheosis be the day in which it shall disappear from among the number of the particular sciences ? This is a problem which daily presents itself to every thoughtful man, and without the solution of which we can form no idea of the future in reserve for the speculations of the human understanding.

I.

One of the superior minds of our day and of the best trained in philosophical meditations, a thinker of a lofty character, and full of vigour, M. Yacherot, has made this problem the subject of a work which is remarkable in more respects than one.1 Its ease, its perspicuity, and its subtlety in argument render the appearance of M. Yacherot’s book a veritable epoch in the history of contemporary philosophy. W e have not for many a day been accustomed to such a frank and spirited style, to such an unbounded devotion to truth, which is disconcerted by no scepticism, and to such cordial good faith, so different from what is merely superficial, such as is enough to make an honest man, but is not enough to make a philosopher. The accession of M. Yacherot to the great family of thinkers does not date, however, from the work

1 La Mttaphysique etla Science, ou Metaphysic and Science, orThePrin- Principes de Metaphysique positive, ciples of Positive Metaphysic, by par M. Eteinne Yacherot, 2 vols. 1858. M. E. Yacherot, 2 vols. 1858.— Tr.

K


we are speaking of. W e recollect that, in the third volume of his exquisite Histoire cle Vdcole $ Alexandrie} he took his place apart and stood entirely aloof from the official instruction ; we recollect also with what courage he accepted the consequences of that secession. M. Vacherot, when he published his principal work, was director of studies at the Normal School. In Germany, directors of seminaries, professors, and clergymen have a hundred times professed doctrines as independent as those contained in the volume in question; and never, unless it were during the reaction, now happily ended, of the last few years, was there any thought of dismissing them on that account. Outside of France it never occurred to any one that the teaching of a professor is the teaching of the State. The manifest inference from such a system is that the State, or, in this case, the Minister of Public Instruction, should have a particular philosophy and science which it may dictate to its functionaries. It is out of all reason in fact that a professor should lend his philosophy to the State ; and, if the State is responsible for all that is taught from the chairs, the administrative machinery will then be perfect only when the bureaux shall teach, that is to say, when they shall send copies of instructions fully drawn up to the professors, who shall be bound to adhere to them. Our children will no doubt see that happy day. In the meantime it is easy to see how such an attempt at dispensing philosophy is the ruin of all liberty, as also how it consigns philosophical teaching into the hands of mediocrity, mediocrity alone being capable of accepting such conditions and acting upon them without compunction. M. Vacherot suffers from the effect of this false idea, which will tell so seriously upon the destinies of our country. He exchanged the right of teaching inoffensive commonplace for the right of thinking. He purchased the right to exist by the sacrifice of his official position. By this act he took rank with those whose

1 History of the School of Alexandria.— Tr.


judgment is accepted as a manly judgment, who are minded to be something more than mere sounding brass, and who have no idea of sacrificing the purpose of life for its conveniences, merely to secure some temporary ad van-• tage : propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.1

During the first period of his philosophical activity, M. Vacherot appeared as a disciple of that philosophy which it is customary to connect with the name of M. Cousin, although it falls far short of giving an idea of the range of that admirable genius. Everything which possesses reproductive power is rich in the elements of strife, and it is M. Cousin’s glory that he knew how to bridle within h im 2 and hold in check elements that are very diverse and destined to break up and be disunited. Dogmatic on the one hand, and critical on the other, this eminent man, who will grow greater every day, if only we learn to ground his glory on its true basis, that is, not on the founding of a scholastic philosophy, but on the awakening of the minds which he has influenced, serves as a starting-point in two very different lines— the one the high and elevating history of the human mind, the other the practical organisation of philosophy. The first, which was the most exalted, could not be achieved so as to gain disciples. The great thought that regulated the course of things in 1828 and 1829 was not such as to serve as the foundation of an official school. For this latter object a sort of catechism was necessary, capable of restraining some and reassuring others; but such limits, necessary as they are for timorous minds, would appear too cramped for those of active spirit. Hence inevitable schisms that estranged from the master those of his disciples that, while violating one half of his programme, realised the most important part of it.

Had I been born to be the head of a school, I should have had a singular crotchet. I should have loved only

1 To lose the motives of life on account of life.— T r .

2 Literally, ‘ in his bosom.’— T r .

i 48 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

those of my disciples that might happen to detach themselves from me. One is sometimes inclined to believe that, in spite of certain enforced harshnesses, M. Cousin must have had a soft side too towards those refractory disciples who best represented the most important side of his great enterprise. What is certain, however, is that his true glory consists far less in having created a philosophical orthodoxy than in having originated a movement, in consequence of which many of the foundations which he himself had laid will perhaps be shaken. Those of his disciples whom he taught how to investigate are those that pay him the highest homage, on the distinct understanding that they do not forget what they owe to their master, for it is permitted them to be unfaithful, but never to be ungrateful. No school, with any spirit, can conceive it to be its mission to confine itself to reproducing ad infinitum the same work on the spirituality of the soul and the existence of God. These are either matters so clear that they have no need of being demonstrated, or, when we analyse them, matters so obscure that they are not demonstrable. Dogmas of this kind (as Kant remarked with marvellous sagacity), which are not susceptible of speculative proofs, but which are evident for other reasons, are of no avail, so long as they are not converted into sentiment. A school which confines itself to a dogmatic of this sort will produce only a series of monotonous writings, superfluous for some, insufficient for others, and it will make converts of none. “ Contemporary French philosophy,” M. Yacherot very well says, “ the eclectic school in particular, has excelled in the criticism of the false, narrow, and crude metaphysical ideas, by means of which the eighteenth century had supposed that it could finally supersede the fine, elegant, but somewhat chimerical abstractions of the preceding philosophy. It has thus prepared the ground on which the new science, the true Metaphysic of the nineteenth century, will be able to raise structures of its o w n ; but

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D ■ I T S F U T U R E . M 9

it would be practising upon itself a huge deception if it supposed that it had done more than this. Its dogmatic work, if we except only a few very incomplete attempts, resolves itself into the reinstallation of ancient Metaphysic on the ruins of the philosophy of sensation. It is Plato, Descartes, Malebranche, Bossuet, Penelon, Leibnitz, and Clarke who principally contribute to it. Neither method, principle, idea, argument, nor anything else is altogether new in the Metaphysic of our day. They are the same elements, refined and combined with very ingenious art, and expressed in a language at once more simple and more scientific. A Metaphysic such as this may not unnaturally deceive the novices who do not know that the criticism of Kant and his school has destroyed it to its very foundations; but it can impose on none of those among us in France who are at all acquainted with the philosophical movement of Germany from Kant to Hegel. We appreciate it, we admire it as history, but we do not accept it seriously as science. In its place, we abide by the conclusions of the critical philosophy. The metaphysical question therefore, in France at least, is more modern than it is fain to seem. A ll that is offered to us to-day under that name dates at least from the seventeenth century; there is nothing new in it but the form. It is this which makes science and criticism attach to it a mere historical interest.”

God forbid that I should depreciate an attempt that has certainly had its honourable side, although we are unable to assign it a very important place in the history of the human mind. To give philosophy a form which would admit of its introduction into the public schools, so as not to jar with the narrow ideas in vogue in France regarding the responsibility of the State, and, consequently, without offence to any of the beliefs which the State is compelled to respect, was certainly an honourable and generous thought. To make the Normal School the seminary of this orthodox


philosophy was a pregnant thought, to the actual fruitfulness or productiveness of which there was wanting only what, indeed, in a revolutionary country, is wanting to all creations of the State, namely, length of time. But, as always happens in human affairs, by taking such a decisive step, the future was seriously compromised; by patronising philosophy on the one hand, no small prejudice was done it on the other. I even venture to say that, looking only to the interests of science, it would have been far better had the Normal School not taught philosophy. Such teaching gives to young minds an assurance beyond all bounds, and familiarises them with the error that the philosophy and the theology of Nature can be reduced to programmes and drawn up in questions for examination. It leads them to believe that we can easily arrive at generalities without going through a study of details; and it turns them away from science properly so called. That is why the Normal School has accomplished both more and less than it ought to have done. It has produced writers, publicists, and courageous and talented men. Not to speak of its heroic age, in which, like all new institutions not yet hampered by rules, and still aglow with the enthusiasm that created them, it bore fruits that it would be unjust to expect of its age of sham improvements and artificial pedagogy, can we forget that from its bosom, thanks, it is true, to breaches such as we meet with at the commencement of nearly all original careers, so many have issued, who, for one excellence and another, attracted from the first and in the highest degree the attention and regard of the public ? On the other hand, can we forget that this brilliant nursery has achieved nothing that we have a right to expect of a school, that it has produced neither an Helenist, nor an orientalist, nor a geographer, nor an epigraphist, nor, before the School in Athens existed,1 an archaeologist ?

1 I.e. before the French Government founded an Archaeological Institute in Athens.— T r .

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D I T S F U T U R E .

•Pedantic without being learned, it sought to create what is not created, namely, historians and philosophers, all unaware of the fact that philosophy is an art whose secret is not learned, while only the branches that go to nourish it and keep it alive are learned. Thus, in spite of so many important services (and truly when I think of some of the masters and pupils whom it may claim as its own, I feel tempted to blot out the page I have just written), the Normal School has remained almost barren as regards the advancement of science. W ith its history at second hand and its philosophy taken on trust, it has produced but few of those devoted workers who place themselves at the head of the intrenchment in order to extend it. More inclined to take science by the summit than the base, those whom it has moulded1 have rarely had the courage to prefer to the easy successes of talent the self- denial of the inquirer, who condemns himself to ignorance that others after him may know.

W ithout disesteem for what is worthy of regard in the philosophical teaching of the day, we are therefore free to conclude that it has rather impeded than promoted the true advancement of thought. B y accustoming the mind to feel satisfied with formulas which are of value only when we know the details to which they correspond, it has lessened curiosity, it has damped the zeal for original researches, it has diminished appreciation of the facts, which alone can serve as the basis of general views, it has given rise to that inadmissible pretension of the philosopher in aspiring to lord it over all the sciences, and in claiming to include in his formulas the universal law of things. There is no greater danger to solid culture of the mind than that which threatens it from the tricks by which man persuades himself that he knows, when, in reality, he does not. The contempt of the philosopher for every branch of study but his own is perfectly legi

1 Whose training, habits, principles, methods, &c., have been shaped b y a scientific education.— T r .


timate, if philosophy is the science of sciences, if there really exists any means of arriving at truth otherwise than by patient and attentive study. If, on the contrary, the philosopher does the same thing as the savants do with the natural and the historical sciences, but does so independently of the specialties of knowledge, what do these airs of superiority mean ? How can we speak of the world and of man without having exhausted all that the methods of investigation can supply us with regarding the constitution of the world and the hidden virtues of humanity ?

The jejuneness and the insignificant moral influence of philosophical works arise from no other cause. Does not the literary impression, at times painful, which works of this kind leave behind them, proceed from this, that the philosopher is busied killing the hen with the golden eggs, and is rendering art impossible, by reducing everything to abstract formulas ? The ingenuity of the writer lies in his having a philosophy and hiding it. The public must see the streams that issue from paradise, but not the springs from which they gush forth; they must hear the sound, but not see the instrument from which it emanates. The philosopher, on the contrary, like the theologian, the jurist, and scholastics in general, pretends to explain everything without any background; every book of philosophy, if it realised its object, would exhaust the infinite. After reading works of this kind, one is tempted to ask one’s-self, W hat will the author do next, now that he has said his last word ? True science does not deliver itself at a single stroke; it is always relative, always incomplete, always capable of being perfected. A science of sciences that would render the others useless would be the tomb of the human mind, and would have the same effects as a revelation; by laying down for us the absolute dogma, it would lay an arrest on all mental progress and on all research. It would be difficult to compare the ennui of the heaven of the scholastics with


that of those whose sole industry is to meditate idly on a truth with no shade in it, which, not having been discovered by them, would not be cherished by them, and on which nobody would have the right to imprint the. seal of his individuality.

W ill the work of M. Vacherot disperse the prejudices which many subtle and scientific minds of the time have conceived against Metaphysic ? I question it, and ja'-veyy superficial consideration of the matter encourages this/ distrust. The two bulky volumes of this ingenious thinker are devoted to proving that there is such a thing as Metaphysic. The natural and the historical sciences do not set to work in this fashion. The first geologists did not compose volumes to prove that there is such a thing as geology ; they made geology. The founders of comparative philology did not write to prove that this method of studying languages constitutes a real science ; they made comparative philology. I f Metaphysic were a science, as M. Vacherot seems to imply, it would have been established, accepted, and organised when his work appeared eighteen months ago. Two years after the first manifesto of Bopp, comparative philology was common property in all the schools of learning ; two years after the first writings of Cuvier, comparative anatomy already reckoned up numerous adepts. Such a difference is fraught with inferences. Metaphysic very much resembles those Buddhistic Sutras— vast porticoes, endless preambles, where every effort is exhausted in the announcement of a perfect revelation. Fifty pages of theory would prove more as regards the reality of Metaphysic than the twelve hundred pages of M. Vacherot— pages whose value, excellent, and charming, and of genuine solidity as they are, proceeds far less from the doctrine they seek to establish than from the criticism they contain, criticism which the author, in disdain of what constitutes his chief merit, seems much at fault in making light of.


Certainly there is one view of the matter in which I entirely agree with M. Vacherot. If by Metaphysic is meant the right and the power of man to rise above and go beyond facts, to recognise the laws of them, their reason, their harmony, their poetry, and their beauty (all matters essentially metaphysical in one sense); if it is meant to affirm that no limit can be set to the human mind, that it will go on for ever scaling the infinite ladder of speculation (and, for my part, I believe that there is not in the universe any intelligence superior to man’s, so that the greatest genius of our planet is truly the world’s priest, since he is its highest reflection) ; if the science which is opposed to Metaphysic is that vulgar empiricism which is contented with its own mediocrity, which is the negation of all philosophy, then, indeed, I admit that there is such a thing as Metaphysic : nothing is too high for man, and the old adage, Quce supra nos, quid ad nos ? 1 is non-sense. But if what is meant is that there is a primary science containing the principles of all the others, a science which, by itself alone, and by abstract combinations, can lead us to the truth regarding God, the world, and man, I do not see the necessity for such a category of human knowledge. This science is everywhere and nowhere; it is nothing, if it is not everything. There is no truth that has not its starting-point in scientific experiment, that does not emanate either directly or indirectly from a laboratory or a lib rary; for all that we know we know by the study of nature or of history. Doubtless the science of nature and of history would not exist without the essential formulas of the understanding ; we should not perceive the poetry of the world if we did not carry within ourselves the focal centre of all light and of all poetry. These words, “ infinite,” “ absolute,” “ substance,” “ universal ” are not chimaeras, as shallow minds suppose. A ll this forms a totality of ideas indispensable to the proper discipline of the mind, which may be called the logic or

1 W hat to us are the things that are above us ?— T b .

the criticism of the human mind, but all this is not Metaphysic. Kant, the great promoter in modern times of this criticism of the human mind, protests that he is not a metaphysician. Aristotle, who founded it in ancient times, strives to build up science only on the study of facts and the observation of details.

M. Yacherot admits the essential difference that exists between Metaphysic and the other branches of human knowledge. “ Metaphysic,” says he, <£ is not yet a science; ” “ but the time,” he adds elsewhere, “ is not so far remote when natural philosophy was in the same state, as uncertain in its principles as in its theories. In two centuries it has recovered the time lost in hypotheses ; and when we consider its magnificent results and its marvellous advances, we might be apt to think that it dated from the highest antiquity. W hy should not Metaphysic do the same ? It is only two centuries behind the other.” This thought recurs in every page of his book; I cannot accept it without reserve. Metaphysic is not a young science; it is the first-born of the sciences ; it is the oldest of them all. The other sciences have had their infancy and their grow th; Metaphysic and logic, like everything that does not yield fruit, were perfect from the commencement. They are susceptible of improvement in exposition, but they leave no room for real discoveries. The theory of the syllogism may be explained more aptly than Aristotle has done it, but it can neither be improved nor completed. Invented once for all, these theories, like algorithms,1 remain stationary ; they are not, like the sciences, susceptible of improvement.

Like in this respect to the infinite theme with which it is occupied, philosophy therefore presents this peculiarity that we can say with almost equal reason that it exists, and that it does not exist. To deny it is to uncrown the human mind ; to accept it as a distinct science, is to contradict the general tendency of the studies of our times.


1 Called also algorisms.— T r.


In my opinion there remains but one means of getting philosophy out of this uncertain situation, and that is by allowing that it is less a science than a side of all the sciences. Let me make a familiar comparison: Philosophy is the seasoning without which every dish is tasteless, but in itself alone it does not constitute a food. We must not liken it to particular sciences, such as Chemistry, Physics, & c.; it will be more correct if we ranked the word philosophy in the same category as the words art and poetry. The humblest as well as the most sublime intelligence has had its own fashion of construing the w orld; every thinking head has, in its own way, been the mirror of the universe; every living being has had his own dream, which ravished, exalted, and consoled h im : imposing or mean, commonplace or elevating, that dream has been his philosophy. This is why the history of philosophy is not at all analogous to the history of the other sciences; it has no regular development, it does not proceed by successive increments. The individuality of each thinker is reflected in it. Take the Annates de Physique et de Chimie ; 1 in it you will find memoirs displaying more or less ingenuity; but you will find none that affords an index of the moral character of the author. It is not so with philosophy. Philosophy is the man him self; every man acquires naturally his philosophy as his own style. This is so true that personal originality is the most necessary quality in philosophy, whilst in the positive sciences the truth of results is the only thing to be considered.

People shall always be producing philosophy, as they shall always be composing poetry; but just as I have apprehensions for the future of most kinds of poetry without being apprehensive of the fate of poetry itself, so I have little faith in the future of philosophy viewed as a special science, though I do not at the same time entertain the least doubt that philosophical thought will

1 Annals of Physics and of Chemistry.— Tr.


endure for ever. Perhaps a day will come in which everything will he done poetically and philosophically, without exactly producing either poetry or philosophy. Who, in our times, are the interpreters of that sublime poetry, of that which, like an eternal lament and a divine wailing, emanates from Nature and the soul of man ? Some few poets, no doubt, still faithful to philosophical or religious tradition, but more especially scholars and critics. W e no longer believe either in systems or in fictions. W e no more conceive the possibility of a new philosophical hypothesis than we conceive the possibility of an epic poem. Criticism has for a long time closed up the way against those noble productions, which presuppose a certain simple-hearted spontaneity. We sit unmoved at the spectacle of a pageant open to our sight, and of which we at the same time see the inner mechanism.1 W e are pleased at first with the efforts which the poet makes to deceive us ; we know beforehand that the system which is presented to us will not, any more than those that have gone before it, escape the fatal law of liability to decay. Such a thought is enough in itself to check all enthusiasm. To escape from it, we would require to become boors again, for it is only an illiterate dullard2 who does not know that all formulas are essentially incomplete, that the pretensions of philosophy are not better grounded than those of theology, and that it issues in a dogmatism quite as unbearable. Perhaps, when we are old and incapable of comprehending anything, we shall end by forgetting at this stage the experience of three thousand years of history and our own experience; but so long as we are sufficiently sane and strong not to sacri

1 “ Les machines ” means, in 2 The word for it in the original stage-language, the mechanical con- is bfatien. It is in allusion to the trivances made use of to effect Boeotians, who were considered illi- changes of scene, and to perform terate among the Greeks. It is col- other acts, such as the flight of loquialisin.— IAttre Die. de la langue genii, the movements of different Franqaise.— Tr. images, &c.— IAttre Die. de la langueFranqaise.— Tr.


fice one portion of truth to another, we shall never willingly place a screen before our eyes, we shall never raise around us the walls of a prison, we shall never assume to ourselves the privilege of infallibility, knowing full well that the future will refuse to confirm it.

II.

It is not then to deny philosophy, it is to raise and dignify it, to declare that it is not a particular science, but the general result of all the sciences ; it is the sound, the light, the vibration that issues from the divine ether which everything carries in itself. Such at bottom has been the notion of the great philosophers. Aristotle was the encyclopaedist of his tim e; Eoger Bacon, the true prince of thought of the Middle Ages, was a positivist in his own w a y ; Descartes took in everything excepting the historical sciences, of which he did not perceive the importance. Leibnitz, why, he is a shoreless sea ; he devours all science, even visionary science, scholasticism and alchemy; Kant knew all that his age knew. A ll the great philosophers were great scholars, and the times when philosophy was a specialty were times of decline. Such was indeed the second age of Cartesian- ism, as represented by Malebranche. Such was, in the highest degree, the barren scholasticism of the latter end of the Middle Ages. In our day the absolute attempts of Schelling and Hegel have in like manner rather impeded than promoted our progress in the several branches of knowledge, by turning young men aside from special investigations, and by leading minds to be easily satisfied, and to believe that we can think by means of mere formulas. The Tourniquet1 (turnpike) of Eaymond Lully that

1 It. is a metaphorical expression “ It is the system of Raymond for the Lullian method, which is a Lnlly, a mystic philosopher of the pretended mechanical aid to the mind beginning of the fourteenth century, in the acquisition and retention of particularly known by his abridged knowledge. art of discovering truth, which is a


was to contribute to the discovery of all truth, and the refutation of all error, would not have been followed by consequences much more disastrous than that self-styled logic by which it was supposed that study and patient labour could be dispensed with. To sum up, to philosophise is to know the universe. The universe is composed of two worlds, the physical and the moral, nature and humanity. The study of nature and humanity constitutes therefore all philosophy.

In general it is by the study of nature that we have hitherto arrived at philosophy; but I do not think I am mistaken in saying that it is from the sciences of the second group, namely, those of humanity, that we shall henceforth seek for the principles of the highest speculations. Psychology sets out from the hypothesis of a perfectly homogeneous humanity, which has always been such as we now find i t ; and this hypothesis contains a portion of truth, for there really are attributes common to mankind, which constitute its unity. But it also contains a grave error, or rather it fails to recognise a fundamental truth revealed by history, which is that humanity is not a simple body, and cannot be treated as such. Man endowed with the ten or the dozen faculties such as the psychologist recognises is a fiction; in reality one is more or less man, more or less son of God. W e know each man has as much of God and of Truth as he is capable of, and as he deserves. I do not see any reason why a Papuan 1 should be immortal. Instead of regarding human nature as Thomas Eeid and Dugald Stewart regarded it, namely, as a revelation written down all at once,2 a Bible inspired and perfect from its very

means of forming reasonings with They are the lowest in the scale of the help of letters and figures by humanity.— T r .

assuming a certain number of prin- 2 “ D ’un seul jet,” in the original, ciples furnished by theology and means in literature and art a com- scholasticism.” — Littre Die. de la position produced at first view and langue Franqaise.— T r . without being retouched many times

1 The Papuas or Negritos of some over.— Littri. Die. de la langue Fran- parts of New Guinea and the interior caise.— T r .

forests of some of the Sunda Islands.


beginning, we have come to detect in it retouches and successive additions. Civilised worlds existed before ours, and we are living on what remains of these. The science of humanity has thus undergone a revolution similar to that of geology. The planet whose formation was formerly described in these few words : “ God created the heavens and the earth,” has become an aggregate of superimposed layers of successive beds.

I am aware that the role which I here ascribe to the historical sciences will appear to many to be the very negation of philosophy. M. Vacherot’s work is intended to protest, in the name of Metaphysic, against this universal encroachment on history, and some of the best pages of his w ork1 are devoted to criticising the tendency which I have just indicated. I confess that in the present state of historical and philological studies, the claim which I have put forth on their behalf may seem exaggerated. The physical sciences have been understood for more than two hundred years. The sciences of humanity are as yet in their infancy. Very few people perceive their object and harmony. To describe the sum-total of the labours that compose them, we find no other word than erudition, which with us suggests little more than amusing by-play and pleasant pastime. W e understand what is meant by the physicist and the chemist, the artist and the p oet; but the erudite man, in the eyes of the vulgar, and even many subtle minds, is only a useless piece of furniture, somewhat like those learned abbots of old who formed part of the furnishing of a castle in the same way as a library did. W e are fain to fancy that it is because he cannot create that he inquires into and comments on the works of others. The vagueness that hovers round the subject of his studies, the almost indefinite latitude that under the same name embraces researches so various, easily persuade us that he only is an amateur promenading in the variety of his

1 Vol. i. p. 301 et seq.

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D I T S F U T U R E . 16 r

works, and making explorations into the past very much in the way that certain burrowing animals dig holes under ground, for the simple pleasure of doing it.

We have here a very grave misconception, kept up partly by the public interest being otherwise occupied, and also, it must be confessed, partly through the fault of scholars, who too often see in their works only the food for a very idle curiosity. It is true, curiosity must not be slighted. It is an essential element in the human organisation, and constitutes half the pleasure of life. The inquisitive man and the amateur may both render eminent services to science, but they are neither scholars nor philosophers. Science has, in fact, only one single theme which is worthy of it, namely, to solve the mystery of things, to explain to man the secret of the universe, and of his own destiny. Of all the phenomena presented for our study, the existence and development of humanity is the most extraordinary. How, how are we to know humanity if not by the very same processes that enable us to know Nature, that is to say, by investigating the traces that remain of its successive changes ? History is possible only by the direct study of monuments, and these monuments are not accessible without the special researches of the philologist and the antiquary. Every phenomenon of the past is enough by itself alone to occupy a laborious life. A n ancient and often halfunknown language, a special palaeography, an archaeology, and a history painfully deciphered— here is more than enough to engross all the energies of the most patient investigator, if humble artisans did not consecrate long- continued toil to dig out of the quarry, and to collect the materials with which he must reconstruct the edifice of the past. Would the literary revolution that, since 1 820, has changed the face of historical studies, or rather that has laid the foundation of history among us, have been possible without the large collections of the seventeenth and


eighteenth centuries ? Mabillon, Muratori, Baluze, Du- cange, were neither great philosophers nor great writers, and yet they have done more for true philosophy than so many systematic minds who have attempted to build up from their imagination the edifice of things, and who will leave nothing behind them amongst the final acquisitions of the human mind.

The role of the historian and the philologist is therefore exactly parallel to that of the physicist, the naturalist, and the chemist. The union of philology and philosophy, of erudition and thought, ought to be the distinguishing feature of the intellectual labours of our age. The thinker presupposes the scholar, and, were this only in view of the severe mental discipline, we should think little of the philosopher who had not, once in his life, laboured to clear up some particular point in science. Doubtless, the two roles may be separated, and such a division is indeed often desirable ; but it would require at least that an intimate intercourse should be established between these different functions. In order to appreciate the value of the historical sciences, we need not ask ourselves what is the worth of a certain abstruse dissertation, or of such and such a monograph, destined, when it has borne its fruit, to remain for ever forgotten. W e must accept in its entirety the revolution brought about by philology, and inquire what the human mind was before the cultivation of philology, what it has become since under it, and what changes the critical knowledge of antiquity has introduced into the modes of construing things under the moderns. Now, a careful history of the human mind since the fifteenth century, would, it seems to me, prove that the most important revolutions in modern thought have been brought about, directly or indirectly, by the conquests of philology. The Renaissance and the Reformation followed as a natural result in the wake of a revolution in philology. The eighteenth cen


tury, although shallow in erudition, arrived at its results much more by criticism, by history, or by positive science, than by metaphysical abstraction. Universal criticism is the only characteristic feature that can be assigned to the subtle, fugitive, inapprehensible thought of the nineteenth century : those who cavil at criticism are themselves incapable of anything but criticism ; but for this their works have no value. To seize the physiognomy of things, that is the whole of philosophy, and he would approach nearest to it who should be able to arrange in parallel groups several existences in order to explore all the byways of thought. W hat a single individual cannot do the human mind will do, because it does not die, and all work for it. W ill you say that those who have contributed to this work, who have polished one of the surfaces of this diamond, and taken away a portion of the dross that veils its native lustre, are but pedants, idlers and dullards, who, strangers to the world of living beings, take refuge in that of mummies and in cities of the dead ?

W hat is termed erudition is not then, as it is often supposed to be, a mere fan cy; it is a sober science with a lofty philosophical purpose; it is the science of what has been realised by the human mind. From this point of view, literatures the most foreign to our taste, those that transport us farthest from the present state, are precisely the most important. Comparative anatomy draws far more results from the observation of the lower animals than from the study of the higher species. Cuvier might all his life have dissected domestic animals without suspecting the great problems that the molluscs and the annelides opened up to him. In like manner, productions apparently the most insignificant are often most valuable in the eyes of the critic, because they bring out into vivid relief features that, in works of reflection, have less of esprit and originality. The humblest of primitive


literatures teaches us more about the history of the human mind than a study of the masterpieces of modern litU- rateurs. In this sense, bits of foolery even have their interest and their value. It is, in fact, more easy to study different natures in their critical moments than in their natural state, in which the regularity of the life permits us to see only a calm and uniform habit of m ind' and action. In these ebullitions, on the contrary, all the deep secrets come to the surface and offer themselves to observation.

W e must add, however, that it would be unfair to require of the scholar that he should always have an immediate consciousness of the object of his labour. Is it necessary that the workman who digs out blocks of stone from the quarry should have a conception of the monument for which they are intended ? In studying the origin of each science, we find that the first steps have almost always been taken without a very distinct idea of the object to be attained, and that philological studies in particular owe a great deal to ordinary minds, who were the first to lay down the material conditions. There are even works of patience 1 to which men under the tyranny of too imperious philosophical wants would with difficulty restrict themselves. Tew philosophers would have the courage and the self-denial necessary for submitting to the humble labour of the lexicographer, and yet the noblest book of generalities has not had so great an influence on science as the dictionary (not remarkably philosophical) by which Wilson has rendered Sanskrit studies possible in Europe.

Scientific specialties are the great stumbling-block of men of the world, as generalities are the stumbling-block of scholars. The truth, as it seems to me, is that specialties have a meaning only in view of the generalities, but that generalities in their turn are rendered possible only

1 Labours requiring patience.— T r.


by the most minute studies. Men devoted to special investigations are often wrong in supposing that their labours have their proper end in them selves; their specialty thus becomes a small world in which they shut themselves up obstinately and scornfully ; every extended combination alarms them and seems to them of little value. Certainly, if they confined themselves to make war upon hap-hazard generalities and superficial views, we could only applaud their severity. I can wonderfully well understand that a date happily restored, a certain circumstance attending any important event recovered, any obscure point in history cleared up, are of greater value than entire volumes of the kind often called “ philosophy of history but it is not by themselves that such discoveries are worth anything. It is in philosophy that we must look for the true value of philology. There we see the dignity that attaches to specialty of investigation and the utmost details of erudition, which have no meaning for shallow and flippant minds. There is no research that is useless or frivolous ; there is no study, however trivial its object may appear, that does not bring its own ray of light to bear upon the science of the whole, upon the true philosophy of realities. General results that are not based upon the knowledge of details are necessarily hollow and factitious, while particular researches, even when they are devoid of the philosophical spirit, may be of the highest value, when they are exact and conducted according to a strict method. The spirit of science constitutes the intellectual commonwealth which unites, one with another, the learned man and the thinker, that awards to each the honour he deserves, and merges their different functions in a common aim.

Monographs on all points of science, such ought, therefore, to be the work of the nineteenth century,— -a work which is painful, humble, and laborious, and requiring the most disinterested devotion, but yet solid, durable,


and, moreover, greatly exalted by the grandeur of its ultimate aim. It would certainly be more agreeable and flattering to our vanity to be able at first sight to gather the fruit that will, perhaps, ripen only in the distant future. It requires a deep-rooted devotion to science to be able to resist this propensity and lay a veto on over- haste in arriving at results, seeing, especially, that human nature is so impatient of solutions that come short of final. Those are the true heroes of science who, though capable of the most exalted views, have yet had strength enough to decline to indulge in any merely anticipated generalities, and to be content to remain, out of a true scientific devotion, mere humble workers. To many this is but a slight sacrifice. The truly deserving men are those who, comprehending in a noble way the supreme object to be attained, devote themselves to the rude trade of common labourers, and so restrict themselves as to be content to see only the furrow which they themselves cut. These patient investigators are in appearance wasting their time and labour. There is no public for them ; their works are read by three or four persons, sometimes by him only who will take up the same work again. Ah ! well, monographs still endure longest. A book containing generalities is necessarily superseded after ten years ; a monograph, being a fact in science, a stone added to the edifice, is in a sense eternal in its results. We may overlook the author’s name, the book itself may fall into oblivion, but the results which it has served to establish endure. The historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who laid claim to write and be read, Mezerai, Daniel, Velly, are now altogether laid aside. The works of the Benedictines, who only aspired to collect materials, although they are susceptible of great improvement, are as fresh as they were the day they appeared.

The insignificant results arrived at by certain branches of philological studies cannot even be adduced as an

METAPHYSIC AND ITS FUTURE.

objection to these studies. Science, in reality, always appears to man in the form of a terra incognita. The first navigators who discovered America were very far from suspecting the exact forms and true relations of the different parts of the new world. The attraction of amber was in the eyes of the ancient physicists merely a curious phenomenon, until the day when upon this isolated fact a science began to be built. Rigorous logical method is no more to be required in scientific investigations, than a plan beforehand of his discoveries at the hands of the voyager, or an account of the wealth concealed in the mine at the hands of him who digs it. Science is a secular edifice, which can rise only by the accumulation of gigantic masses. A laborious life will be but one obscure and nameless stone in these huoe structures.o

This matters n o t; each one will have his place in the temple, each will have contributed to the solidity of its layers. On the monuments of Persepolis we see the several nations tributary to the King of Persia represented by a personage who wears the costume of his country and holds in his hands the productions of his province with which to pay homage to the sovereign. Such is humanity : each several nation, each several form of intellect, of religion, and of morality leaves behind it a brief expression, which is, as it were, its abridged and expressive type, and which endures that it may represent the millions of men, for ever forgotten, who have lived and died grouped around it. Science, like all other phases of human work, must be sketched on a large scale. It is not necessary that the scientific results should be meagrely and separately attained; it is necessary that the final result which shall survive in the domain of the human mind should be drawn from a vast mass of particular truths. Just as no man is useless in humanity, so is no worker useless in the field of science. Because we remove the scaffolding when the building is finished, does it follow that those who built it

t 68 P H I L O S O P H I C A L F R A G M E N T S .

have toiled only at a work of trifling worth and no continuance ?

Thus everything has its place in the great work that the human mind has been prosecuting athwart the centuries. The thinker can do nothing without the scholar, the scholar is not worth anything except in view of the thinker. Both of them are, to use a mathematical term, functions in a vaster whole, which is the complete development of the world’s consciousness accomplishing itself through the medium of humanity. A noble sentiment is equivalent to a noble thought, a noble thought to a noble act, a life of science to a life of virtue. He would be an

. accomplished man who could be at once a poet, a philo- / sopher, a scholar, and a virtuous man, and that not by I fits and starts (he would in that case be only moderately \ so), but by an intimate permeation at every moment of his / life ; who would be a poet when he is a philosopher, and a l philosopher when he is a scholar, in whom, in short, as i in humanity itself, all the elements of humanity would be < reunited in perfect harmony. The model of perfection is | in fact afforded us by human nature. For, human nature I is at once wise, inquisitive, poetical, and impassioned.

I f the metaphysician is the poet who renders back the spirit and the life of all this, I acknowledge him and crown h im ; but if he only substitutes abstraction for life, I prefer the scholar, who unfolds to me nature and history, for in nature and history, I see the divine much better than in the abstract formulas of an artificial theodicy, and of an ontology unconnected with facts. The absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only in humanity : viewed as external to humanity, this absolute is but an abstraction; viewed as in humanity, it is a reality. And say not that the form it assumes in the hands of man defiles and lowers it. No, indeed, the infinite exists only when it assumes a finite form. God sees himself only in his incarnations. Criticism, which


knows how to perceive the divine in everything, is thus the condition of refined religion and philosophy, and, I will add, of all vigorous and enlightened morality. Whatever exalts man must of necessity better him. “ The critical philosophy,” says M. Yacherot, “ has no fancy for fanatics, it takes little account of martyrs, and it does not plume itself much on inspiring heroes.” What do you know of this ? Moral strength is not the fruit of a syllogism. To understand everything is not to absolve everything; the critical school still waits till it be caught in the very fact of weakness. Its dogma is faith in the divine, and the large share that man has in it. Its morality rests on the sense of human nobleness, and on a yet surer foundation. Morality need not be made to depend upon any system. Confide in him who carries it in the necessities of his nature; for, even though the degeneracy of the age should give the lie to the good opinion he has of his kind, his own conscience would suffice to inspire him with self-respect, and enable him to defy the sneer of those who think that virtue is always either a mere boast or a deception.

Certainly, if those who find fault with us for being but the secretaries of the human mind furnished us with the whole truth, with clear signs in evidence of it, we should have only to fall on our knees and throw into the background our humble researches ; but a long experience has taught us that reason alone does not create truth. A Male- branche, preaching to man to remain shut up in himself in order to search there for the Logos,1 which should teach him everything, would no longer be listened to. The man obsti-

1 “ Logos ” is God manifest to (or word Tittered). The platonizing the world— a term first used by the Jews spoke of God in his essence, Alexandrine Jews, as by Philo, the unmanifested, as the Former Logos, platonizing expositor of the Jewish and of God manifested to the world religion, contemporary with Christ, as the Latter Logos. Hence, in the The Stoics, after Aristotle, distin- Targums, the phrase “ the word of guished between the “ logos endia- God.” In St. John’s Gospel, Christ thetos ” (or word reasoned in the is identified with the Logos— “ God mind) and the “ logos prophorikos ” manifest in the flesh.”— T r .


nately shut up in himself would find nothing there but a dream. If, instead of disdaining the history of the human mind as a profitless description of all that others have thought, the proud oratorian had chosen rather to consider the world and humanity, how his horizon would have extended, how he would have got rid of his prejudices ! He would have seen the infinite meanderings of legend and of history; he would have seen the endless web of divine creations ; and, if the spectacle of this should have cost him the sacrifice of his own narrow faith, he would have got at the meaning of true theology, which is the science of the world and of humanity, the science of the universal becoming, culminating as a worship in poetry and art, and, above all, in morals. Study, therefore, we say to those whom noble curiosity still animates; as philosophers, study Chemistry, Physiology, and History. Dissect every form of life, analyse every substance, learn every language, compare every literature ; let every word of the past deliver up to us all that it conceals; let every inch of ground yield us up the remains that it contains. Eansack old Phoenicia; nobody knows what lies concealed in that country ; as geologists, question the table-lands of Asia, which man first inhabited; ransack Susa, ransack Yemen, ransack Babylon. W hat is Eden ? What is Saba ? W hat is Ophir ? Tell me if, after so many humanities have crumbled away, ours will fall in its tu rn ; if wise men may hope to guide it a little, or else, if it is indeed a law of fate that refinement be expiated by decay. Tell me the secrets of birth and of death, the secrets of the stone and of the metal, the secrets of the ultimate cell within which life has its origin. Who knows if the real infinite is as vast as it is supposed to be ? And the grand law that will give us power over the atom (when we shall possess it, mark you, we shall be the lords of creation), who knows if it will for ever escape us ?


III.

It would be unjust to say that M. Vacherot is satisfied with having advocated the advantages and rights of Metaphysic : his work contains a theodicy, a development of that which the author had already sketched in the third volume of his JEcole d'Alexandria, and which I regard as the most original that France has produced in the present century. It may be summed up in this sentence : God is the idea of the world, and the world the reality of God. “ To insist in finding united in the same subject perfection and reality, is to commit one’s-self to the most palpable contradictions. One has only to read St. Augustine, Malebranche, Fenelon, and Leibnitz, to be convinced of this. The K ritik of Kant, powerful though it be, is perhaps less decisive than the sight of such subtleties. A perfect or a real God,1 theology must choose between them. The perfect God is but an ideal; but, as such, he is still the worthiest theme of Theology; for, whoever speaks of the ideal, speaks of the highest and purest truth. As to the real God, he lives, he develops himself in the immensity of space and in the eternity of time ; he appears to us in the infinite variety of forms that manifest h im ; this is the Kosmos. W ith its imperfections and lacunce, it is still a God very great and beautiful for whoso comprehends it, sees it, and contemplates it through the eyes of science and philosophy. Pantheism is satisfied with i t ; but it is the glory of human thought to mount higher. . . . For ourselves, the world, being not less than being-in-itself,2 possesses in the series of its manifestations through space and time, infinity, necessity, independence, universality, and all the metaphysical attributes that theologians reserve exclusively for God.

.1 God as manifested to the world.— T r.2 The Seyn-an-sich of the German metaphysicians.— Tr.


From that moment it is clear that, as regards its existence, its movement, its organisation, and its preservation, it is sufficient for itself, and has no need whatever of a hyper-cosmic principle. Now, from the moment that God is no longer regarded either as the substance or the cause of the world, there is no longer any absurdity in regarding him as no more than the supreme ideal of universal life. This is, to our mind, the only conception that saves theology from the two rocks against which in turn it threatens ever to strike, namely, the doctrines of creation ex nihilo and of pantheism.”

These are very ingenious formulas, and very rich in truth. The contradiction involved, and necessarily so, in every theodicy, inasmuch as its object is to define the Infinite, has never been better forestalled; but we must see if such formulas have, in a sufficiently high degree, the character of scientific and acquired results to constitute a positive Metaphysic. And, first of all, let us only treat with contempt the idle accusations of atheism the narrow-minded have always raised against the most religious men, because the latter have been afraid of detracting from the majesty of God in limiting it by means of any formula whatever. To refuse to define God is not to deny h im ; much rather is this reserve the effect of a profound piety which dreads blasphemy by saying what he is not. W e cannot allow that, for the satisfaction of certain timorous minds, the philosopher should be obliged to restrain himself in his language, and deprive himself of a powerful or expressive stroke. “ In old times,” M. Yacherot very well says, “ all doctors of theology accused of atheism the philosophers who did not accept without reserve the God of their particular churches. Now, when philosophy has broken with all the traditions of the empiricism of the last century, the theologians have substituted the charge of pantheism for that of atheism.” The witty saying of M. Cousin about that


small “ spectre conjured up for the use of vestries ” is perfectly just. The witticism is clever in that the calumny gains in probability without losing any of its weight. Pantheism, as they [the theologians] set it forth, is less absurd it may be, yet more immoral and more dangerous than atheism. The first suppresses God, whose metaphysical attributes are of no importance to m orality; the second does away with liberty and duty, that is to say, with all that constitutes the value of human life.

Setting aside this unjust accusation, can it be said that M. Vacherot’s theodicy is of a nature to satisfy all the requirements of the soul, and that an ideal of perfection which to him embodies truth but not reality, like the abstract figures of the geometrician, is indeed what humanity adores? One immense fact is at first sight in M. Vacherot’s favour. Theodicy has no experimental basis. The existence and nature of a being are proved only by his particular, individual, and voluntary acts ; and if the Deity had wished to be perceived by the scientific sense, we should have discovered in the general economy of the world acts bearing the stamp of what is free and designed. Meteorology would be incessantly disturbed by the effect of the prayers of men, and astronomy at times in fault. No instance of such an infringement has been scientifically verified. No miracle has ever been performed before a learned body ; all those that are met with are either the fruit of imagination and of legend, or else they happened before witnesses who had not the necessary means of guarding against illusions, or of judging of the miraculous character of an event. Malebranclie has fully summed it up in the aphorism: “ God does not act by private volitions.” Par from revealing God, Nature is immoral. Good and evil are indifferent to her. Never has an avalanche been arrested so as not to crush an honest man ; the sun has not paled before any crim e; the earth drinks in the


blood of the just man as well as the blood of the sinner. History, in like manner, is a permanent stumbling-block from the point of view of morality. History, like Nature, reveals laws, but it does not, any more than Nature, disclose a plan all mapped out beforehand. Doubtless there is harmony in Nature ; without it she would not e x is t; but if we take account of the infinite number of cases, which make existence certain to all that is possible, and of the flexibility in accommodating itself which leads each being to aspire to place itself in equilibrium with the external conditions, we cease to find room in the world for an & priori choice. A ll the theories that presupposed intentional laws in the configuration of continents, in the distances of planets, &c., are found to be at fault. It is to practise self-deception to seek for the Deity in experience. The mechanical explanation of the world’s formation, such as Descartes, Huyghens, Newton, and Laplace conceived it, is not complete in its details; but it is unassailable in its principle. M. Vacherot was right in seeking a surer way to arrive at Glod.

But can it be said that abstraction is here more effective than experience, and that it is adequate to reveal to man that first cause of which, in truth, he seeks rather to discover the nature than to prove the existence ? Descartes was the first to attempt this method, and he showed himself beneath his genius. An unrivalled mathematician, a less successful physicist, a moralist and a psychologist of the second order, Descartes was always a very imperfect theologian. Misled by his geometrical habits of thought, and by the somewhat dry nature of his mind, seeing in body only extension— (Berkeley and Malebranche, his true disciples, were logical when they deduced absolute idealism from his principles),— he never understood life. History, physiology, chemistry, the great sciences of our day, did not exist for him. It


may be that an incomplete view of nature has equally led M. Yacherot to this wholly speculative theodicy. W hat reveals the true God, is the moral sentiment. If mankind were simply intelligent they would be atheists; but the great races have found within themselves a divine instinct whose force, originality, and richness break out in history with an unprecedented splendour. Duty, devotion, self-sacrifice— none of the interests history is full of— can be explained without God. If we reject this great testimony of Nature, we must be logical; we must allow that all honest men have been dupes, the martyrs of all ages must be treated as fools, Jesus must be pitied for having died at the age of thirty-three,— who, in fact, knows if he did not shorten a happy life by thirty or forty years under the fig-trees of Galilee ? But to maintain this is as formally to contradict the testimony of human nature as when we deny the veracity of our senses of perception. In both cases the reluctance is equal, and the mind finds itself in a situation in which scepticism is impossible.

W hile agreeing with M. Yacherot about the inadequacy of vulgar deism, I therefore differ with him as to the nature of the processes proper to theodicy. The instinctive horror in all master-minds of formulas that tend to represent God as a something must not throw us back on abstract idealism. God is the product of consciousness, not of science and metaphysic. It is not reason, it is sentiment that determines God. This is why in theodicy art and religion are superior to philosophy. The poet, the artist, and the pious man, by frankly accepting the symbols, are in a sense more logical than the philosopher ; indeed the latter pretends to dispense with all figurative language, and does not dispense with it in reality, for the most abstract theories regarding the Deity are in their way symbols. Every phrase applied to an infinite object is a myth ; it includes within limited and exclusive terms


that which is unlimited. It is certainly very far from the crude imagination that degrades the Deity to the philosophical formula which seeks to raise him above popular errors; but, at bottom, the inability is the same. The attempt to explain the Ineffable by words is as hopeless as that of explaining it by narratives or images. Language, put to such torture, protests, howls, and goes out of tune; every phrase implies a vast hiatus. Every proposition applied to God is impertinent, with one single exception, namely, that he is.

Popular anthropomorphism is the great rock that philosophical theodicy seeks to avoid, and it is righ t; but there is an anthropomorphism from which it is impossible for it to extricate itself, and which is inherent in its very attem pt; it is a psychological anthropomorphism. A ll the expressions made use of by theodicy to explain the nature and attributes of God imply a finite psychology. W e transfer to God all that in man which has the character of perfection, free-will, intelligence, &c., without remarking that these words are the very negation of infinity. Is it necessary to add that the words “ necessity,” “ unconsciousness,” &c., are yet more faulty ? The truth is that these words are all relative to man, and are unmeaning when they are applied to God. When you make God personal, Strauss steps in, and says righ tly : “ Personality is an ego concentrated in itself in opposition to another ego ; the absolute, on the contrary, is the infinite that embraces and contains all, and, consequently, excludes nothing. An absolute personality is therefore non-sense, an absurd idea. God is not a person beside and above other persons. . . . The personality of God must not be conceived as individual, but as a total, a universal personality, and instead of personalising the absolute,1 we must learn to think of the absolute as

1 As orthodox Christianity does.— T r.


personalising itself ad infinitum !'1 I f we make him impersonal, conscience protests, for we conceive existence only under a personal form, and to say that God is impersonal is tantamount, in our way of thinking, to saying that he does not exist. Of these two theories, one is not true, and the other is not false. Neither the one nor the other rests on a solid basis ; both imply a contradiction. Let us, in fine, boldly set aside, as secondary and in the highest degree open, all such questions as are foredoomed from the very statement of them to remain for ever without solution. W e dare to assert that they matter little to religion. The moment we believe in the free-will and the spirit of man, we believe in God. To love and to know God is to love what is beautiful and good, and to know that which is true. The religious man is he who knows how to find the divine in everything, not he who professes some dry and unintelligible formula regarding the Deity. The problem of the supreme cause transcends and eludes u s ; it resolves itself into poems (these poems are religions), not into law s; or, if we must speak here of laws, it is the law of Physics, of Astronomy, and of History that alone are the laws of being, and have a perfect reality.

I recognise the good sides of Deism, and I assign to it a high place in the history of the human m ind: but I cannot admit that it is the final formula in which all religions must culminate and lose themselves. Its manifest clearness will always prevent it from being a religion. Men are bound to each other only by their particular beliefs. A religion that should be as clear as geometry would inspire neither love nor hate. That alone creates a bond among men which implies a free and personal choice : the more evident truth is, the less sublime it i s ; we

1 A free rendering would give : infinitude of personal lives in age“ We must learn to think of the after age.”— T r. absolute as manifesting itself in an


wax enthusiastic only about what is obscure, for evidence excludes all personal choice. Besides, is such evidence of a nature to place Deism under the wing of criticism ? By no means. Deism has its sym bol; its forms, although they have nothing plastic, are nevertheless well defined. Such is not the religion of the critical philosopher. He does not attempt to despoil religions of their particular dogmas; he does not believe that in analysing various beliefs truth should be found at the bottom of the crucible. Such an operation would yield only nothingness and vacuum, since the value of everything lies merely in the particular form that clothes and characterises it. But it takes every symbol for what it is, namely, the particular expression of a sentiment which cannot deceive. The truth of a symbol we from that moment come to know is not in proportion to its simplicity. In the eyes of the Deist, Islamism should pass for the best of religions; in the eyes of the critic, Islamism is a very defective religion, which has done more harm than good to mankind. W e should let religions speak of God, and be afraid of destroying them by simplifying them. Let us not declare ourselves superior to them ; their formulas are only a little more mythical than ours, and they have immense advantages tQ which we shall never attain. A phrase is a limit, and is open to objection ; a hymn, a harmony is not open to such objection, because there is nothing dialectic in them ; they do not decide anything that is controversial. The dogmas of the Catholics offend us, while their old churches enchant us. The confessions of faith of Protestants hardly satisfy us, but the austere poetry of their worship ravishes us. Ancient Judaism does not please us, yet its psalms are still our consolation. Absolute freedom of style must be permitted in prayer. Would it not be a pity that because the music of Mozart is sublime, that of Beethoven should not exist ?


To leave the religious idea in its complete indeterminateness, to hold at once by these two propositions— 1st, “ That religion will be eternal in hum anity;” 2nd, “ That all religious symbols are open to attack and perishable,”— such, then, if the opinion of wise men could be the opinion of the majority, would be the true theology of our time. A ll those who labour to show, beyond the symbol, the pure sentiment that constitutes the soul of it, work for the future. To what, indeed, shall you attach religion, if this immortal basis is not sufficient for you ? To a historical fact in which you will believe that you see the signs of a revelation ? The historical sciences will protest and will prove to you that the Deity has not been exclusively present in a single point of space and time. Or is it a false spiritualism founded on an erroneous notion of substance, and which would much better deserve the name of materialism, since it would overlook what really constitutes being ? The physiological sciences will protest; they will tell you that they can discover 110 moment at which the soul, such as you understand it, comes to join itself to the body, and that nothing founded on experiment reveals to them such an infusion. Do you, then, hold to this, that humanity is of a transcendental nature; quis Dcus incertum est, habitat Deus ? 1 Ah ! that is what no science will deny, what all science proclaims. No formula will ever suffice to explain the infinite problems regarding God and man’s destiny ; it will always be impossible to say a word regarding these subjects that will not be absurd in its way ; but what is worth remarking is, that applied to such problems, negation is far more absurd still. Atheism is in one sense the grossest of anthropomorphisms. The atheist sees justly that God does not act in this world after the manner of m an; hence he concludes that he does not e x ist; he would believe if he beheld a miracle, in other words, if God

1 What God there is is uncertain, but there exists a God.— Tii.


acted as a finite force with a determinate object in view. Systematic materialism is likewise a flagrant contradiction, since, to lower human nature, it exercises exactly those virtues and faculties that constitute the greatness of that nature, the disinterested love of truth, the thirst for knowledge, and the most exalted processes of judgment and of reason.

To conclude, what results from the history of religion and of philosophy is not a series of aphorisms, as shallow eclectics would have it. If moral truths were results mathematically demonstrated, they would lose all their value; they would even cease to be moral, because there would be no more merit in believing in them than in believing in geometry, or in being restrained by the penal code. W hat is obscure must be admitted to be obscure. The obscure is what transcends us, and what imposes itself upon us by transcending us. Had religion been a mere chimsera, it would long ago have been extin ct; were it susceptible of a definite formula, that formula would long ago have been discovered. The same must be said of philosophy ; it is a sign, among so many others, a witness, though not the most startling, of that infinite mystery of which we get a glimpse behind a cloud, and regarding which it will for ever be as impossible for man to feel satisfied as it is impossible for him to give up all inquiry. The glory of philosophy lies not in solving the problem, but in putting it, for to put it is to attest its reality, and that is all that lies in man’s power in a matter in which, by the very nature of the subject, he can possess but fragments of truth.

O Heavenly Father! I know not what Thou hast reserved for us. That faith which Thou dost not permit us to efface from our hearts, is it a consolation which Thou hast so contrived as by it to render our frail destiny endurable ? Is this a beneficent illusion which Thy

M E T A P H Y S I C A N D I TS F UT U RE . 181

mercy has wisely ordained, or rather, is it a deep instinct, a revelation which is sufficient for those that are worthy of it ? Is it right to despair, and shall truth make us sad ? Thou hast not willed that these doubts should receive a clear answer, in order that faith in what is good should not go without its reward, and that virtue should not be a mere matter of calculation. A clear revelation would have levelled the noble with the ignoble ; evidence in such a matter would have been a blow to our freewill. It is on our innate dispositions that Thou hast willed our faith to depend. In all that is the subject of science and of rational discussion, Thou hast delivered the truth to the most ingenious; in the moral and religious world Thou hast decreed that it should belong to the best. It would have been unjust that genius and mind should here constitute a privilege, and that the beliefs which must be the common property of all should be the result of a reasoning better or worse conducted,' of investigations better or worse patronised. Blessed be Thou in Thy mystery, blessed in Thy unseen being, blessed for having afforded complete liberty to our hearts !

TIIE END.

P R I N T E D B Y B A L L A N T Y N E , H A N S O N A N D C O .

E D I N B U R G H A N D L O N D O N .

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PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUES AND FRAGMENTS.exposition, at once clear and attractive, of the Hegelian philosophy, and as such, perhaps, the only book of the ... Page 82, footnote 2,