existence. It is therefore impossible to admit of a fraction of God
which yet is not God. This hypothesis seemed so criminal to the Roman
Church that she has made the omnipresence of God in the least
particles of the Eucharist an article of faith.

"But how then can we imagine an omnipotent mind which does not
triumph? How associate it unless in triumph with Nature? But Nature is
not triumphant; she seeks, combines, remodels, dies, and is born
again; she is even more convulsed when creating than when all was
fusion; Nature suffers, groans, is ignorant, degenerates, does evil;
deceives herself, annihilates herself, disappears, and begins again.
If God is associated with Nature, how can we explain the inoperative
indifference of the divine principle? Wherefore death? How came it
that Evil, king of the earth, was born of a God supremely good in His
essence and in His faculties, who can produce nothing that is not made
in His own image?

"But if, from this relentless conclusion which leads at once to
absurdity, we pass to details, what end are we to assign to the world?
If all is God, all is reciprocally cause and effect; all is _One_ as God
is _One_, and we can perceive neither points of likeness nor points of
difference. Can the real end be a rotation of Matter which subtilizes
and disappears? In whatever sense it were done, would not this
mechanical trick of Matter issuing from God and returning to God seem
a sort of child's play? Why should God make himself gross with Matter?
Under which form is he most God? Which has the ascendant, Matter or
Spirit, when neither can in any way do wrong? Who can comprehend the
Deity engaged in this perpetual business, by which he divides Himself
into two Natures, one of which knows nothing, while the other knows
all? Can you conceive of God amusing Himself in the form of man,