In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools, it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some prophetic vision of the future.  This is no task of ours.  It is enough for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas.  It discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a materialistic enthusiasm for corporeal indulgences.  Disregarding the sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn our attention elsewhere.

M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred pages destined to maintain the thesis that God does not exist.[44] Man conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception of a real and perfect being:  such is the usual process of metaphysical reasoning.  For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one another; this is one of his fundamental theses.  This thesis does but interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to raise ourselves higher.  The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect; therefore—­say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes—­the perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to the world.  The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect, therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the absolute rule of truth.  To say therefore of God that He is perfect, is to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never realized.  Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd and violent.  If God is perfect, He does not exist.  If God exists, He is not perfect.  The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His perfection.  The author of this theory renders a worship to that ideal which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the world is gravitating by the law of progress.  This worship is of too abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular by taking another shape, and it does so in this way:  We conceive of that perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our thought.  Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human mind.  The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is it that we must adore.  We are here out of the region of pure abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.