The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do not stop at Christian dogma. He denies all value to those higher aspirations of the human soul which const.i.tute _reason_, in the philosophical meaning of the term.

Now, this radical negation of the reason is what those Italians who do not scruple to practise it denominate _Rationalism_. And this very unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth.

The Frenchmen, who call themselves the _critics_, are men who require that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but shall renounce the while all discrimination between truth and error. The term scepticism, in its primary signification, contains the idea of inquiring, of examining; and they give the name of _sceptics_ to the philosophers who declare that there is nothing to discover, and consequently nothing to examine, or to search for! One is a _free-thinker_ only on the express condition of renouncing all such free exercise of thought as might lead to the acceptance of beliefs generally received. This is verily the carnival of language, and the _bal masque_ of words. These corruptions of the meaning of terms are highly instructive. Doctrines contrary to the laws of human nature bear witness in this way to a secret shame in producing themselves under their true colors. Just as hypocrisy is an homage which vice pays to virtue, so these barbarisms are an homage which error pays to truth.

To return to Italy: that beautiful and n.o.ble country has not escaped the revival of atheism. The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged, will favor for a time, it may be feared, the development of evil doctrines.[85] But the lively genius of the Italians will not be long in attaching itself again to the grand traditions of its past history; and the inhabitants of the land, whose soil was trodden by Pythagoras and Saint Augustine, will not link themselves with doctrines which always run those who hold them aground sooner or later upon the sad and gloomy sh.o.r.es of a vulgar empiricism.

We have not leisure, Gentlemen, to extend our study to all parts of the globe, and besides, there are countries with regard to which information would fail me. Therefore I say nothing of Holland, where we should have, as I know, distressing facts to record. The silence imposed on Spain upon the subjects which we are discussing would render the study of that country a difficult one. I am wanting in data regarding America. Let us conclude our survey by a few words about Russia.

If we are warranted in making general a.s.sertions in speaking of that immense empire, we may say that the Russian people, taken as a whole, is good and pious, badly instructed, and often the victim of ignorance or of superst.i.tion, but disposed to open its heart to elevated and pure influences. The clergy is ignorant, though with honorable and even brilliant exceptions. It is too much cut off from general society, and consigned to a sort of caste, of which it would be most desirable to break down the barriers, in order to allow the influence of the representatives of religion to extend itself more freely. The young n.o.bles, and the university students in general, are, in too large a proportion, imbued with irreligious principles. Various atheistical writings, those of Feuerbach amongst others, have been translated into Russian, printed abroad, and furtively introduced into the empire. M.

Herzen, a well-known writer, has published, under the pseudonyme of Iscander, a work full of talent, but in which come plainly into view the worst tendencies of our time.[86] In his eyes, life is itself its own end and cause. Faith in G.o.d is the portion of the ignorant crowd, and atheism, like all the high truths of science, like the differential calculus and the laws of physics, is the exclusive possession of the philosophical few. When Robespierre declared atheism aristocratic, he was right in this sense, for atheism is above the reach of the vulgar; but when he concluded that atheism was false, he made a great mistake.

This error, which led him to establish the worship of the Supreme Being, was one of the causes of his fall. When he began to follow in the wake of the _conservatives_, as a necessary consequence he would lose his power.[87] The writings of Iscander have exerted a veritable influence in Russia. M. Herzen appears to have lost much of his repute, by the exaggerated and outrageous course he has taken in politics; but it is to be feared that the traces of his action are not altogether effaced.

The Russian Empire has been for a long time, in the eyes of the West, only an immense garrison; but now for some years past it has been taking rank among the number of intellectual powers, and nowhere in Europe is the ascending march of civilization displaying itself by signs so striking. The summons to liberty of so many millions of men, which has just been accomplished by the generous initiative of the ruling power, and with the consent of the nation, testifies that that vast social body is animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But in the solemn phase through which she is pa.s.sing, Russia is exposed to a great danger.

She is running the risk of subst.i.tuting for a national development, drawn from the grand springs of human nature, a fact.i.tious civilization, in which would figure together the fashions of Paris, the morals of the _coulisses_ of the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the West. May G.o.d preserve her!

We have pa.s.sed in review some of the symptoms of the revival of atheism, and it is impossible not to acknowledge the gravity of the facts which we have established. What must especially awaken solicitude is, that the irreligious manifestations of thought have a.s.sumed such a character of generality, that the sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews, (I allude especially to the French-speaking public), widely-circulated journals which take good care not to violate propriety, and which could not with impunity offend the interests or prejudices of the social cla.s.s from which their subscribers are recruited, are able to entertain without danger, and without exciting energetic protestations, the productions of an open, or scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are ample reasons for thoughtfulness; but this thoughtfulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to do with a challenge the very audacity of which inspires me with confidence, rather than with dread. In fact all the productions of irreligious philosophy rest on one and the same thought, the common watchword, of the secularism of the English, of the rationalism of the Italians, of the positivism of the French, and which may even be recognized, with a little attention, under the haughty formulas which bear the name of Hegel. And the thought is this: The earth is enough for us, away with heaven; man suffices for himself, away with G.o.d; reality suffices for us, away with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting ourselves with the world as it is. It is attempted ridiculously enough to place this wisdom under the patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are bidden, forsooth, to see in the negation of the real and living G.o.d, a conflict of progress with routine, of science with a blind tradition, of the modern mind with superannuated ideas.[88] We know of old this defiance hurled against the aspirations of the heart, the conscience, and the reason. We know the destined issue of this ancient revolt of the intellect against the laws of its own nature. There were atheists in Palestine in the days when the Psalmist exclaimed, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no G.o.d."[89] There were atheists at Rome when Cicero wrote,[90] that the opinion which recognizes G.o.ds appeared to him to come nearest to the resemblance of truth. A poet of the thirteenth century has expressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in vogue among a great many of our contemporaries: "He dares nothing great, who believes that there are G.o.ds."[91] There were atheists in the seventeenth century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound them, and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits of their time.[92] And who, again, does not know that in the eighteenth century atheism marched with head aloft, and filled the world with its clamors. The attempt to do without G.o.d has nothing modern about it, it is met with at all epochs. The means employed now-a-days to attain this end have nothing new about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with the characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of which are transient crises. The moment the negation is blazoned openly, humanity protests.

Why? Because man will never be persuaded to content himself with the earth, and with what the earth can give him: his nature absolutely forbids it. When we compare the reality with the desires of our souls, we can all say with the aged patriarch Jacob: "Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage;"[93] we can all say with Lamartine:

Though all the good desired of man In one sole heart should overflow, Death, bounding still his mortal span, Would turn the cup of joy to woe.[94]

And it is not the heart only which is concerned here; without G.o.d man remains inexplicable to his own reason. The spiritual creature of the Almighty, free by the act of creation, and capable of falling into slavery by rebellion,--he understands his nature and his destiny; but it is in vain that the apostles of matter and the worshippers of humanity harangue him in turn to explain to him his own existence. Man is too great to be the child of the dust; man is too miserable to be the divine summit of the universe. "If he exalts himself, I abase him; if he abases himself, I exalt him; and I contradict him continually, until he understands at last that he is an incomprehensible monster."[95]

"The proper study of mankind is man;" and man remains an enigma for man, if he do not rise to G.o.d. So it is that our very nature is a living protest against atheism, and never allows its triumphs to be either general, or of long duration. A solid limit is thus set to our wanderings; and, to the errors of the understanding, as to the tides of the ocean, the Master of things has said, "Ye shall go no further."

Therefore atheists may become famous, but, dest.i.tute of the ray which renders truly ill.u.s.trious, humanity refuses them the aureole with which it encircles the brows of its benefactors. This aureole it reserves for the sages which lead it to G.o.d, for the artists which reveal to it some of the rays of the immortal light, for all those who remind it of the t.i.tles of its dignity, the pledges of its future, the sacred laws of the realm of spirits. Humanity desires to live; and to live it must believe; for it must believe in order to love and to act. Atheism is a crisis in a disease, a pa.s.sing swoon over which the vital forces of nature triumph. Now the vital forces of humanity are neither extinct nor stupefied in our time. The world of literature is sick, and grievously sick in some of its departments; but even there again are manifesting themselves n.o.ble and powerful reactions. Then look in other directions.

Contemplate the religious movement of society at large, the wide efforts making in the domain of active beneficence, the progressive conquests of civilization, the awakening of conscience on many subjects:--I could easily instance numerous facts in proof of what I advance, and say to you:

Know, by these speaking signs, a G.o.d to-day As yesterday the same--the same for aye: Veiling, revealing, at His sovereign will, His glory,--and His people guarding still.[96]

Wrestle then against the invasion of deadly doctrines, wrestle and do not fear. If men rise against G.o.d in the name of the modern mind, of the science of the age, of the progress of civilization, do not suffer yourselves to be stunned by these clamors. Let the past be to you the pledge of the future! To make of atheism a novelty, is an error. To make of it, in a general way, the characteristic of our epoch, is a calumny.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Xenophon, _Memorab. of Socrates_, Bk. iv. 10.

[41] _La Religion naturelle_. Preface.

[42] Emile Saisset, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of March, 1845.

[43] See the _Lettres sur les verites, les plus importantes de la revelation_, by Albert de Haller, translated into French by one of his grandsons. Lausanne, Bridel, 1846.

[44] _La Metaphysique et la Science_, 2 tom. Oct. 1858.

[45] _Notice sur M. Littre_, page 57.

[46] _Paroles de philosophie positive_, page 33.

[47] _Idem_, page 30.

[48] _Paroles de philosophie positive_, page 34.

[49] _Apercus generaux sur la doctrine positiviste_, par M. de Lombrail, ancien eleve de l'ecole polytechnique. The author says in his preface: "Auguste Comte examined this work with the conscientious attention which he was accustomed to give to the simplest task. He desired by his useful counsels to render it worthy of publication."

[50] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, of 15th Jan. 1860, page 367.

[51]

Je soupconne entre nous que vous croyez en Dieu.

N'allez pas dans vos vers en consigner l'aveu; Craignez le ridicule, et respectez vos maitres.

Croire en Dieu fut un tort permis a nos ancetres.

Mais dans notre age! Allons, il faut vous corriger _Et suivre votre siecle_, au lieu de le juger.

[52]

Entre ces deux chemins j'hesite et je m'arrete.

Je voudrais a l'ecart suivre un plus doux sentier.

Il n'en existe pas, dit une voix secrete: En presence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.

Je le pense, en effet: les ames tourmentees Vers l'un et l'autre exces se portent tour a tour; Mais les indifferents ne sont que des athees; Ils ne dormiraient plus, s'ils doutaient un seul jour.

[53] See, for example, _La Religion naturelle_, by Jules Simon; _Essai de philosophie religieuse_, by Emile Saisset; _De la connaissance de Dieu_, by A. Gratry; _La raison et la christianisme, douze lectures sur l'existence de Dieu_, by Charles Secretan; _Essai sur la Providence_, by Ernest Bersot; _De la Providence_, by M. Damiron; _L'Idee de Dieu_, by M. Caro; _Theodicee, Etudes sur Dieu, la Creation et la Providence_, par Amedee de Magerie.

[54] See, for example, the _Etudes orientales_ of M. Franck, the _Bouddha_ of M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire; _L'Histoire de la philosophie au XVIIIe siecle_, of M. Damiron.

[55] _Philosophie de la liberte_, vol. i. p. 225.

[56] _Toutes ces revoltes de la matiere en furie._

[57] _Revue des Deux Mondes_, April, 1850.

[58] _Qu'est-ce la religion?_ page 586 of the translation of Ewerbeck.

[59] _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of 15th April, 1850, p. 288.

[60] General Report addressed to the _Conseil d'Etat_ of Neuchatel on the secret German propaganda, and on the clubs of Young Germany in Switzerland, by Lardy, Doctor of law. Neuchatel, 1845.

[61] _Pourvu qu'on le delivre d'une vertu bourgeoise et d'une morale d'honnetes negociants_. Blatter der Gegenwart fur sociales Leben.

[62] See the _Chroniqueur Suisse_ of 19 Jan. 1865.

[63] April, 1850, p. 292.

[64] _Force et Matiere_, by Louis Buchner, Doctor in medicine: translated into French from the seventh edition of the German work, by Gamper, Leipzig, 1863.

[65] My object is to point out the atheistical systems which are being produced in various parts of Europe, and not to estimate, in a general way, the tendency of contemporary philosophies. The reader, who would understand the position occupied by materialism in relation to German thought in general, may consult with advantage, _Le Materialisme contemporain_, by Paul Janet, Paris, 1864; and the review of this work by M. Reichlin-Meldegg (_Zeitschrift fur Philosophie_, Sechsundvierzigster Band). A Swiss writer, M. Bohner, has lately published a learned work on the subject ent.i.tled: _Le Materialisme au point de vue des sciences naturelles et des progres de l'esprit humain_, by Nath. Bohner, member of the _Societe helvetique des sciences naturelles_, translated from the German, by O. Bourrit, 1 vol. 8vo.

(_Geneve, imprimerie Fick_), 1861.