ulty of
reasoning as well as the faculty of feeling having been given to man
to use, nothing can be more excusable in him than to seek to know the
meaning of human suffering and the prospects of the future.

"If these rigid and rigorous arguments lead to such conclusions
confusion must reign. The world would have no fixedness; nothing
would advance, nothing would pause, all would change, nothing would be
destroyed, all would reappear after self-renovation; for if your mind
does not clearly demonstrate to you an end, it is equally impossible to
demonstrate the destruction of the smallest particle of Matter; Matter
can transform but not annihilate itself.

"Though blind force may provide arguments for the atheist, intelligent
force is inexplicable; for if it emanates from God, why should it meet
with obstacles? ought not its triumph to be immediate? Where is God?
If the living cannot perceive Him, can the dead find Him? Crumble,
ye idolatries and ye religions! Fall, feeble keystones of all social
arches, powerless to retard the decay, the death, the oblivion that
have overtaken all nations however firmly founded! Fall, morality and
justice! our crimes are purely relative; they are divine effects whose
causes we are not allowed to know. All is God. Either we are God or God
is not!--Child of a century whose every year has laid upon your brow,
old man, the ice of its unbelief, here, here is the summing up of your
lifetime of thought, of your science and your reflections! Dear Monsieur
Becker, you have laid your head upon the pillow of Doubt, because it is
the easiest of solutions; acting in this respect with the majority
of mankind, who say in their hearts: 'Let us think no more of these
problems, since God has not vouchsafed to grant us the algebraic
demonstrations that could solve them, while He has given us so many
other ways to get from earth to heaven.'

"Tell me, dear pastor, are not these your secret thoughts? Have I evaded
the point of any? nay, rather, have I not clearly stated all? First, in
the dogma of two principles,--an antagonism in which God perishes for
the reason that being All-Powerful He chose to combat. Secondly, in the
absurd pantheism where, all being God, God exists no longer. These two
sources, from which have flowed all the religions for whose triumph
Earth has toiled and prayed, are equally pernicious. Behold in them the
double-bladed axe with which you decapitate the white old man whom you
enth