We must purify the dictionary, and consign to the history of obsolete expressions such terms as good, evil, esteem, contempt, vice, virtue, honor, infamy, and the like.  The doctrine which, to be consistent with itself, ought to reduce us to a kind of stupid indifference, does such violence to human nature that its advocates are incapable of enunciating it without contradicting themselves by the very words they make use of.

All these extravagances are the inevitable consequence of the adoration of humanity.  The Humanity-God has no rule superior to itself.  Whatever it does must be put on record merely, and not judged:  it is the immolation of the conscience.  But on what altar shall we stretch this great victim?  Shall we sacrifice it to pure reason, to reason disengaged from all prejudice?  Allow me to claim your attention yet a few minutes longer.

The Humanity-God in all its acts escapes the judgment of the conscience.  What measure shall we be able to apply to its thoughts?  None.  The God which cannot do evil, cannot be mistaken either.  For the modern savant all is true, for exactly the same reason that all is right.  The human mind unfolds itself in all directions; all these unfoldings are legitimate; all are to be accepted equally by a mind truly emancipated.  Furnished with this rule, I make progress in the history of philosophy.  The Greek Democritus affirms that the universe is only an infinite number of atoms moving as chance directs in the immensity of space:  I record with veneration this unfolding of the human mind.  The Greek Plato affirms that truth, beauty, good, like three eternal rays, penetrate the universe and constitute the only veritable realities:  I record with equal veneration this other unfolding of the human mind.  I pass to modern times.  Descartes tells me that thought is the essence of man, and that reason alone is the organ of truth.  Helvetius tells me that man is a mass of organized matter which receives its ideas only from the senses.  These two theses are equally legitimate, and I admit them both.  I quit now philosophers by profession to address myself to those literary journalists who deal out philosophy in crumbs for the use of feuilletons and reviews.  There I find all possible notions in the most astounding of jumbles.  “The villain has his apologist; the good man his calumniator....  Marriage is honorable, so is adultery.  Order is preached up, so is riot, so is assassination, provided it be politic."[154] I contemplate with a calm satisfaction, with a very deep and very pure pleasure, these various unfoldings of the human mind; I place them all, with the same feelings of devotion, in the pantheon of the intelligence.  I cannot do otherwise, inasmuch as there is no rule of truth superior to the thoughts of men, and because the human mind is the supreme, universal, and infallible intelligence.