The Supreme Being once posited by a primary mystical judgment, man immediately generalizes the subject by another mysticism, -- analogy.God, so to speak, is as yet but a point: directly he shall fill the world.
As, in sensing his social me, man saluted his Author, so, in finding evidence of design and intention in animals, plants, springs, meteors, and the whole universe, he attributes to each special object, and then to the whole, a soul, spirit, or genius presiding over it; pursuing this inductive process of apotheosis from the highest summit of Nature, which is society, down to the humblest forms of life, to inanimate and inorganic matter.From his collective me, taken as the superior pole of creation, to the last atom of matter, man extends, then, the idea of God, -- that is, the idea of personality and intelligence, -- just as God himself extended heaven, as the book of Genesis tells us; that is, created space and time, the conditions of all things.
Thus, without a God or master-builder, the universe and man would not exist: such is the social profession of faith.But also without man God would not be thought, or -- to clear the interval -- God would be nothing.
If humanity needs an author, God and the gods equally need a revealer;
theogony, the history of heaven, hell, and their inhabitants, -- those dreams of the human mind, -- is the counterpart of the universe, which certain philosophers have called in return the dream of God.And how magnificent this theological creation, the work of society! The creation of the demiourgos was obliterated; what we call the Omnipotent was conquered; and for centuries the enchanted imagination of mortals was turned away from the spectacle of Nature by the contemplation of Olympian marvels.
Let us descend from this fanciful region: pitiless reason knocks at the door; her terrible questions demand a reply.
"What is God?" she asks; "where is he? what is his extent? what are his wishes? what his powers? what his promises?" -- and here, in the light of analysis, all the divinities of heaven, earth, and hell are reduced to an incorporeal, insensible, immovable, incomprehensible, undefinable I-know-not-what; in short, to a negation of all the attributes of existence.
In fact, whether man attributes to each object a special spirit or genius, or conceives the universe as governed by a single power, he in either case but SUPPOSES an unconditioned, that is, an impossible, entity, that he may deduce therefrom an explanation of such phenomena as he deems inconceivable on any other hypothesis.The mystery of God and reason! In order to render the object of his idolatry more and more rational, the believer despoils him successively of all the qualities which would make him real; and, after marvellous displays of logic and genius, the attributes of the Being par excellence are found to be the same as those of nihility.This evolution is inevitable and fatal: atheism is at the bottom of all theodicy.
Let us try to understand this progress.
God, creator of all things, is himself no sooner created by the conscience, -- in other words, no sooner have we lifted God from the idea of the social me to the idea of the cosmic me, -- than immediately our reflection begins to demolish him under the pretext of perfecting him.To perfect the idea of God, to purify the theological dogma, was the second hallucination of the human race.
The spirit of analysis, that untiring Satan who continually questions and denies, must sooner or later look for proof of religious dogmas.Now, whether the philosopher determine the idea of God, or declare it indeterminable;
whether he approach it with his reason, or retreat from it, -- I say that this idea receives a blow; and, as it is impossible for speculation to halt, the idea of God must at last disappear.Then the atheistic movement is the second act of the theologic drama; and this second act follows from the first, as effect from cause."The heavens declare the glory of God,"
says the Psalmist.Let us add, And their testimony dethrones him.
Indeed, in proportion as man observes phenomena, he thinks that he perceives, between Nature and God, intermediaries; such as relations of number, form, and succession; organic laws, evolutions, analogies, -- forming an unmistakable series of manifestations which invariably produce or give rise to each other.He even observes that, in the development of this society of which he is a part, private wills and associative deliberations have some influence;
and he says to himself that the Great Spirit does not act upon the world directly and by himself, or arbitrarily and at the dictation of a capricious will, but mediately, by perceptible means or organs, and by virtue of laws.
And, retracing in his mind the chain of effects andcauses, he places clear at the extremity, as a balance, God.
A poet has said, --
Par dela tous les cieux, le Dieu des cieux reside.
