Saint Augustine to Descartes, we connect
reason with God as its principle, the grand science of metaphysics is
founded. But if reason does not rise to God, what will happen? This
reason, which proclaims itself superior to matter, is not, as we have
said already, the individual thought of Francis, Peter, or John. If an
individual presented himself as being reason itself, the absolute
reason, and said, "I am the truth," it would be necessary to take one of
three courses. If we thought that he spoke truly, and if we received
his testimony, it would be necessary to worship him, for he would be
God. If it were feared that he spoke truly, and those who so feared were
unwilling to acknowledge his rule, it would be necessary for them to
kill him in order to endeavor to kill the truth. If it were thought that
he spoke falsely, it would be necessary to watch him, and the moment he
committed an act dangerous for society, to shut him up, for he would be
a madman. But the philosophers make no such pretension. The reason of
which they speak is the reason common to all, a reason which is not that
of an individual, but that of which all rational individuals partake.
This common, universal, eternal reason,--where and how does it exist?
Reason manifests itself by ideas, and ideas are the acts of minds. To
imagine an idea without a mind of which it is the act, is the same thing
as to imagine a movement without a body of which it is also the act, in
a different sense. Take away bodies, and there is no more movement. Take
away intelligences, and there are no more ideas. The philosopher who
speaks of an idea which is not the idea of an intelligence, utters words
which have no meaning. The reason which is not that of any created
individual remains therefore absolutely inconceivable without the
eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible
conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself
in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of
ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized
with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is
always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on
shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the _positive_ by a
violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive
materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty
pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel