“He dares nothing great, who believes that there are gods."[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 God 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 God 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 God.  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, destitute of the ray which renders truly illustrious, 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 God, for the artists which reveal to it some of the rays of the immortal light, for all those who remind it of the titles 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 passing swoon over which the vital forces of nature triumph.