ws the
existence of the universe: "The universe, that vast assemblage of all
that exists, everywhere presents to our view only matter and
motion.--Nature is the grand whole which results from the assemblage of
different material substances, from their different combinations, and
from the different motions which we see in the universe."[132] Here is a
clear doctrine: all that exists, the soul included, is nothing but
matter in motion. I pass from the beginning to the end of the work, and
I arrive at this conclusion: "O nature! sovereign of all beings! and ye,
her adorable daughters, virtue, reason, truth! be ye for ever our sole
divinities; to you it is that the incense and the homage of the earth
are due."[133] If we try to translate this sort of hymn in accordance
with the express definitions of the author, we shall obtain the
following result: "O matter in motion! sovereign of all material
substances in motion! and ye, virtue, reason, truth, who are various
names of matter which moves, be ye the only divinities of that moving
matter which is ourselves." Yet this author was no blockhead. What then
passed in his mind? He laid down the thesis of materialism: bodies in
motion are the only reality. But he is all the while a man. The need
for adoration is not destroyed in his soul, and he deceives himself. He
defines nature as consisting wholly of matter, and when he sets himself
to worship it, he entirely forgets his definition. This is not on his
part a piece of philosophical jugglery, but the manifestation of the
real condition of our nature, which is always giving the lie, in one
direction or another, to erroneous systems. The power of wholly
maintaining himself in error has not been granted to man. He who denies
God is always deifying something; and all worship which is not that of
the Eternal and Infinite Mind is stultified by glaring contradictions.
Here is a recent example of this: We were not a little surprised a short
time since to see M. Ernest Renan deny clearly enough the immortality of
our persons, and, in the opening of the very book in which this negation
appears, to find him invoking the soul of his sister at rest with
God.[134] Elsewhere, the same writer says that the Infinite Being does
not exist, that absolute reason and absolute justice exist only in
humanity, and he concludes his exposition of these views by an
invocation of the Heavenly Father.[135] The Baron d'Holbach had put
eight hundred and thirty-