the same.  The philosopher declares God to be an imaginary being, and the future life an illusion; but the man protests, and, by a touching illusion of the heart, the man who in his system of doctrine has neither God nor hope, finds that he has a sister in the realms eternal, and a Father in the heavens.  It is impossible not to see, especially in literary works destined to a success of fashion, the seductive influence of art, the precautions of prudence, the concessions made to public opinion; but we cannot wholly explain the incredible contradictions of the Holbachs and Renans, without allowing full weight to that need for God which shows itself even in the farthest wanderings of human thought by sudden and abrupt returns.

The illusion which deifies matter in motion is gross enough.  It belongs only to minds which Cicero called, in the aristocratic pride of a Roman gentleman, the plebeians of philosophy.[136] It requires, in fact, no great reflection to understand that truth, beauty, and goodness are neither atoms nor a certain movement of atoms.  The attempt, which is to form the subject of our study to-day, that of deifying man, is a far more subtle one.  Let us first of all inquire into the origin of the strange worship which humanity accords to itself.

Nature, considered separately from the beings which receive sensible impressions from it, has neither heat nor light.  In a world peopled by the blind, light would have no name.  If all men were entirely paralyzed as to their sensations, the idea of heat would not exist.  Light and heat, regarded as existing in matter itself, without reference to sensitive organizations, are, in the opinion of our natural philosophers, only determinate movements.  In the same way, if nature were without any spectator whatever, beauty would not exist; if there were nowhere any intelligence, truth would no longer be.  In the same way again, if there were no wills, goodness, which is nothing else than the law of the will, would be a word deprived of all meaning.  Beauty expresses the object of the perceptions of the soul.  Truth denotes the quality of the judgments of intelligences.  Goodness (I speak of moral goodness) expresses a certain direction of the free will.  There exists no means of causing to proceed from nature, or from matter, the attributes of the spiritual being.  This is only done by imaginary transformations, by a course of arrant juggling.  The flame does not feel its own heat, light does not see itself, the planets know nothing of the laws of Kepler.  Materialism is the result of a modesty wholly misplaced which leads man to forget himself, in order to attribute gratuitously to nature realities which exist only in spiritual beings connected with nature by a marvellous harmony.  In order therefore to account for the universe, we must raise ourselves above the atom in motion, and penetrate into a higher world where truth, beauty, goodness become the objects of thought.  Truth,