verse, but of the God of the
heart, who makes us live. We should be justified in calling it a
rational proof only on the supposition that we believed that reason was
identical with a more or less unanimous agreement among all peoples,
that it corresponded with the verdict of a universal suffrage, only on
the supposition that we held that _vox populi_, which is said to be _vox
Dei_, was actually the voice of reason.

Such was, indeed, the belief of Lamennais, that tragic and ardent
spirit, who affirmed that life and truth were essentially one and the
same thing--would that they were!--and that reason was one, universal,
everlasting and holy (_Essai sur l'indifference_, partie iv., chap,
viii.). He invoked the _aut omnibus credendum est aut nemini_ of
Lactantius--we must believe all or none--and the saying of Heraclitus
that every individual opinion is fallible, and that of Aristotle that
the strongest proof consists in the general agreement of mankind, and
above all that of Pliny (_Paneg. Trajani_, lxii.), to the effect that
one man cannot deceive all men or be deceived by all--_nemo omnes,
neminem omnes fefellerunt_. Would that it were so! And so he concludes
with the dictum of Cicero (_De natura deorum_, lib. iii., cap. ii., 5
and 6), that we must believe the tradition of our ancestors even though
they fail to render us a reason--_maioribus autem nostris, etiam nulla
ratione reddita credere_.

Let us suppose that this belief of the ancients in the divine
interpenetration of the whole of Nature is universal and constant, and
that it is, as Aristotle calls it, an ancestral dogma (_patrios doxa_)
(_Metaphysica_, lib. vii., cap. vii.); this would prove only that there
is a motive impelling peoples and individuals--that is to say, all or
almost all or a majority of them--to believe in a God. But may it not be
that there are illusions and fallacies rooted in human nature itself? Do
not all peoples begin by believing that the sun turns round the earth?
And do we not all naturally incline to believe that which satisfies our
desires? Shall we say with Hermann[40] that, "if there is a God, He has
not left us without some indication of Himself, and if is His will that
we should find Him."

A pious desire, no doubt, but we cannot strictly call it a reason,
unless we apply to it the Augustinian sentence, but which again is not
a reason, "Since thou seekest Me, it must be that thou hast found Me,"
believing that God is the cause