, from the time there is no
longer any rule of right? How is it possible to approve, when we have
no power to blame? The idea of good implies the idea of evil; the
opposition of good and evil supposes a standard applied to things, a law
superior to fact. He who approves of everything may just as well despise
everything. But contempt itself has no longer any meaning, if esteem is
a word void of signification. We must say simply that all is as it is,
and abandon those terms of speech which conscience has stamped with its
own superscription. We must purify the dictionary, and consign to the
history of obsolete expressions such terms as good, evil, esteem,
contempt, vice, virtue, honor, infamy, and the like. The doctrine which,
to be consistent with itself, ought to reduce us to a kind of stupid
indifference, does such violence to human nature that its advocates are
incapable of enunciating it without contradicting themselves by the very
words they make use of.

All these extravagances are the inevitable consequence of the adoration
of humanity. The Humanity-God has no rule superior to itself. Whatever
it does must be put on record merely, and not judged: it is the
immolation of the conscience. But on what altar shall we stretch this
great victim? Shall we sacrifice it to pure reason, to reason
disengaged from all prejudice? Allow me to claim your attention yet a
few minutes longer.

The Humanity-God in all its acts escapes the judgment of the conscience.
What measure shall we be able to apply to its thoughts? None. The God
which cannot do evil, cannot be mistaken either. For the modern savant
all is true, for exactly the same reason that all is right. The human
mind unfolds itself in all directions; all these unfoldings are
legitimate; all are to be accepted equally by a mind truly emancipated.
Furnished with this rule, I make progress in the history of philosophy.
The Greek Democritus affirms that the universe is only an infinite
number of atoms moving as chance directs in the immensity of space: I
record with veneration this unfolding of the human mind. The Greek Plato
affirms that truth, beauty, good, like three eternal rays, penetrate the
universe and constitute the only veritable realities: I record with
equal veneration this other unfolding of the human mind. I pass to
modern times. Descartes tells me that thought is the essence of man, and
that reason alone is the organ of truth. Helvetius tells me that man is
a m