I open the Revue des Deux Mondes, of the 15th February, 1861.  As the author of the article I refer to[138] appears to admit “that one assertion is not more true than another opposed to it,"[139] we will not be so simple as to ask whether he adopts the opinions which he propounds.  He presents to us, in a rapid sketch, the principal tendencies of the modern mind.  The modern mind is here characterized by one of its declared partisans; you will not take therefore for a wicked caricature the picture which he puts before us.  Here then are the thoughts of the modern mind:  “There is only one infinite, that of our desires and our aspirations, that of our needs and our efforts.[140] The true, the beautiful, the just are perpetually occurring; they are for ever in course of self-formation, because they are nothing else than the human mind, which, in unfolding itself, finds and knows itself again."[141] This is only the French translation of a saying celebrated in Germany:  “God is not:  He becomes.”  What we call God is the human mind.  What was there at the beginning of things?  The human mind, which did not know itself.  What will there be in the end?  The human mind, which, in unfolding itself, will have come to know itself, and will adore itself as the supreme God.  If this be indeed the final object of the universe, it appears that, in the opinion of these philosophers, the consummation of all things must be near.  Once that humanity, faithful to their doctrine, shall have pronounced the lofty utterance, “I am God, and there is none else,” the world will no longer have any reason for existing.

Such is the system of which we have to follow out the consequences.  Let us take as our point of comparison the old ideas which we are urged to abandon.

We usually explain human destinies by the concurrence of two causes, infinitely distinct, since the one is creative and the other created, but both of which we hold for real:  man, and God.  Humanity has received from its Author the free power which we call will, and the law of that will which we name conscience.  The law proceeds from God, the liberty proceeds from God; but the acts of the created will, when it violates its law and revolts against its Author, are the creation of the creature.  God is the eternal source of good, and liberty is a good; but God is not the source of evil, which is distinctly a revolt against Him, the abuse of the first of His gifts.  Together with will, man has received understanding, and gives himself to the search after truth.  Truth is the object of the understanding, its Divine law.  Error is a deviation from the law of the understanding, as evil is a deviation from the law of the will.  Lastly, with will and understanding, man has received the faculty of feeling.  This faculty applies itself to the world of bodies, from which we receive pain or pleasure.  But our faculty of feeling does not stop there.  Above the animal life, the mind has enjoyments which are proper to