be eternally deceived.

But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it--What
a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that
God is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good
because God is. His reason demonstrates God to him, and God demonstrates
his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once
see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said
again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple
consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely
that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very
closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that
have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a
fault of logic which any schoolboy can discover? Self-sufficient levity
of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading
minds; and it very often happens to us to fail of understanding because
we have failed in respect.

Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes,
as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes
is one of the most illustrious representatives.

To recognize in the reason traces of God, and to show that in faith in
God consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a
vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed
in is not reasoning, but analysis; we are establishing a fact in order
to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the
natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals
to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of
certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his
individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is
evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were
thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages,
when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of
our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would
contradict our own. We believe in a general reason, everywhere and
always the same, and in which the reason of each individual
participates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth
which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere
present; in other words, we believe in God considered as the sour