mes up again whole and
entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine
that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature,
that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an
impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies
the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first
man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series
of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth,
by making it pass through the long series of animality--the question is
a grave one, but it is of secondary importance. The first question is to
know whether we are merely the ephemeral product of the encounter of
atoms, or whether there is in us an essence, a nature, a soul, a reality
in short, with which may connect itself another future than the
dissolution of the sepulchre; whether there remains another hope than
annihilation as the term of our latest sorrows, or, for the aspirants
after fame, only that evanescent memory which time bears away with
everything beside.

This is the question. Do not allow it to be put out of sight beneath
details of physiology and researches of natural history, which can
neither settle, nor so much as touch the problem. If therefore you fall
in with any one of these philosophers of matter, bid him take this for
all your answer: "There is one fact which stands out against your theory
and suffices to overthrow it: that fact is--myself!" And since, to have
the better of materialism, it is sufficient to understand well what is
one thought of the mind, one throb of the spiritual heart, one utterance
of the conscience,--add boldly with Corneille's Medea:

I,--I say,--and it is enough.

In fact, nature does not explain man, and to this conclusion has tended
all that I have said to you to-day.

FOOTNOTES:

[97] _Harmonices mundi, libri quinque._

[98] _Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica._

[99]

The whole universe is full of His magnificence.
May this God be adored and invoked for ever!

[100] _Le Rationalisme_, page 19.

[101] _Force et Matiere_, page 262.

[102] _Les Mondes Causeries astronomiques_ by Guillemin; see p. 122 (3rd
edition), where Kepler is described as an intelligence "penetrated by a
profound faith in nature and exalted by a noble pride." See also pages
327 and 336.

[103] The question discussed in these pages must not be