In our days atheism is being revived.  In going over in your memory the symptoms of this revival, as we have pointed them out to you, you will perceive that the direct and primitive negation of God is comparatively rare; but that what is frequently attempted is, if I may venture so to speak, to effect the subtraction of God.  Any religious theory whatever is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such remarks as these:  “How is it that real sciences are formed?  By observation on the one hand, and by reasoning on the other.  By observation, and reasoning applied to observation, we obtain the science of nature and the science of humanity.  But do we wish to rise above nature and humanity?  We fail of all basis of observation; and reason works in a vacuum.  There is therefore no possible way of reaching to God.  Is God an object of experience?  No.  Can God be demonstrated a priori by syllogisms?  No.  The idea of God therefore cannot be established, as answering to a reality, either by the way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it is a mere hypothesis.  We do not, however, it is added, in our view of the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid!) to exclude the sentiment of the Divine from the soul, nor the word God from fine poetry.  We accept religious thoughts as dreams full of charm.  But is it a question of reality? then God is an hypothesis, and hypothesis has no admission into the science of realities.”

These ideas place those who accept them in a position which is not without its advantages.  When a man of practical mind says with a smile, “Do you happen to believe in God?” one may reply to him, smiling in turn, “Have I said that God is a real Being?” And if a religious man asks, “Are you falling then into atheism?” one may assume an indignant tone, and say:  “We have never denied God:  whoever says we have is a slanderer!” So God remains, for the necessities of poetry and art.  But as we cannot know either what He is, or whether He is, real life goes on in complete and entire independence of Him.  The taking up of this position with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a literary artifice.  In other cases it is seriously done.  There are certain natures of extreme delicacy, which, touched by the breath of modern scepticism, have lost all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in the absence of all belief, and they do not deny that which they believe no longer.  Such a mind is in an exceptional position.  Is it yours? and would you preserve it?  Keep a solitary path, and do not seek to communicate your ideas to others.  Contact with the public, and such an unfolding even of your own thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work of proselytism, would place you under the empire of those laws which govern the human mind in these matters.  Now what are these laws?  A poet has already answered for us this question: 

     En presence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.[161]