ence between right and fact, between what is and what ought to be.
And what is the real account to give of all this? It is as follows:
Humanity is the highest point of the universe; above it there is
nothing; humanity is God, if we consent to take that sacred name in a
new sense. How then is it to be judged? In the name of what rule? since
there is no rule: in the name of what law? since there is no law. All
judgment is a personal prejudice, the act of a narrow mind. We do not
judge God, we simply recount His dealings; we accept all His acts, and
record them with equal veneration. All science is only a history, and
the first requisite in a historian is to reduce to silence his
conscience and his reason, as sorry and deceitful exhibitions of his
petty personality, in order to accept all the acts of the
humanity-deity, and establish their mutual connection. The deification
of the human mind is the justification of all its acts, and, by a direct
consequence, the annihilation of all morality. Let us look more in
detail at the origin and development of these notions.

The individual placing himself before humanity is to accept everything:
this is the disposition recommended to us, in the name of the modern
mind. Good and evil are narrow measures which minds behind the age
persist, ridiculously enough, in wishing to apply to things. "We no
longer transform the world to our image by bringing it to our standard;
_on the contrary, we allow ourselves to be modified and fashioned by
it_."[147] The individual goes therefore to meet humanity without any
inner rule: he gives himself up, he abandons himself to the spectacle of
facts. But the world is large, and history is long. Even those who spend
their whole life in nothing else than in satisfying their curiosity,
cannot see and know everything. To what then shall be directed that
vague look, equally attracted to all points for want of any fixed rule?
At what shall it stop? It will rest on that which shines most
brilliantly, like a moth attracted by light. Now, nothing shines more
brightly than success; nothing more solicits the attention. The
glorification of success is the first and most infallible consequence of
moral indifference. In leaving ourselves to be fashioned by the world
instead of bringing it to our standard, we shall begin by according our
esteem to victory. This philosophy is come to us from Germany. It was
set forth on one occasion, in France, with great _eclat_, by