ears which philosophy inspires in
theology and the hostile attitudes which they assume towards each other.
What brings about this attitude is, on the side of theology, that for
her philosophy does nothing but corrupt, pull down, and profane the
content of religion, and that she understands God in a totally different
manner from that after which religion understands Him. It is the same
opposition which long ago among the Greeks caused a free and democratic
people like the Athenians to burn books and to condemn Socrates. In our
own day, however, this opposition is considered a thing which it is
natural to admit--more natural indeed than the other opinion concerning
the unity of religion and philosophy.

Diverse religions offer us, it is true, only too often the most bizarre
and monstrous representations of the divine essence. But we must not
confine ourselves to a superficial consideration and consequent
rejection of these representations and the religious practices which
follow upon them as being engendered by superstition, by error, or by
imposture, or even by a simple piety, and so neglect their essential
value. There is need to discover in these representations and in these
practices their relation with truth.

_II.--GOD THE UNIVERSAL_

For us, who have religion, God is a familiar being, a substantial truth
existing in our subjective consciousness. But, scientifically
considered, God is a general and abstract term. The philosophy of
religion it is which develops and grasps the divine nature and which
teaches us what God is. God is a familiar idea, but an idea which has
still to be scientifically developed.

The result of philosophic examination is that God is the absolute truth,
the universal in and for itself, embracing all things and in which all
things subsist. And in regard to this assertion, we may appeal in the
first place to the religious consciousness, and to its conviction that
God is the absolute truth whence all things proceed, whither they all
return, upon which all things depend, and in respect of which nothing
can possess a true and absolute independence.

The heart may very well be full of this representation of God, but
science is not built up of what is in the heart. The object of science
is that which has arisen to the level of consciousness, and of thinking
consciousness that is, in other words, that which has attained to the
form of thought.

In so much as He is the universal, God is, fo