disappeared from our manners, one only
exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But
candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of
thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and,
while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.

Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted
that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny
God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every
soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a
secret hope, or by a secret dread? This is true, as I think; but we are
speaking here of doctrines and not of men. It is true again that the
negation of the Creator allows of the existence, in certain
philosophies, of generous ideas and elevated conceptions. Such men,
while they put God out of existence, desire to keep the true, the
beautiful, the good; they hope to preserve the rays, while they
extinguish the luminous centre from which they proceed. Such systems
always tend to produce the deadly fruits pointed out in my last lecture;
but men devoted to the severe labors of the intellect often escape, by
a noble inconsistency, the natural results of their theories. Therefore,
in the inquiry on which we are about to enter, the term 'atheism'
implies, with regard to persons, neither reproach nor contempt. It
simply indicates a doctrine, the doctrine which denies God. This denial
takes place in two ways: It is affirmed that nature, that is to say
matter, force devoid of intelligence and of will, is the sole origin of
things; or, the reality is acknowledged of those marks which raise mind
above nature, but it is affirmed that humanity is the highest point of
the universe, and that above it there is nothing. Such are the two forms
of atheism.

Perhaps you expect here the explanation of a doctrine which is often
described as holding a sort of middle place between the negation and the
affirmation of God, namely, pantheism. Pantheism, in the true sense of
that word, is a system according to which God is all, and the universe
nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek,
Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime
infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses
in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is
manifold and transitory a disdain which pass