to remain outside the circle of his studies.
Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe
infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in
order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what
journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by
means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have
occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that
experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a
metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out,
Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good
philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own
without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues
who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in
making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of
their own despotism.

We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth
with _eclat_ by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and
projects, and lastly materialism. The elements are the same as in
France, but exhibit themselves in a different order. This diversity
suggests some observations worth your attention.

France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose
to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the
greater part of its atheistical manifestations. German atheism, having
as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man
was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.[65] We may
inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to
the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural
movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.

Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man,
and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence. We are
nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without
leaving any trace of ever having been together. Is not this a thing to
be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world? Why then are the
apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and
uttering shouts of triumph? It is that they feel themselves free,
emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,

... that brood of idle fear