progress? If all things are indeed moving toward perfection why do we
die young? why do not nations perpetuate themselves? The world having
issued from God and being contained in God can it be stationary? Do we
live once, or do we live always? If we live once, hurried onward by
the march of the Great-Whole, a knowledge of which has not been given
to us, let us act as we please. If we are eternal, let things take
their course. Is the created being guilty if he exists at the instant
of the transitions? If he sins at the moment of a great transformation
will he be punished for it after being its victim? What becomes of the
Divine goodness if we are not transferred to the regions of the blest
--should any such exist? What becomes of God's prescience if He is
ignorant of the results of the trials to which He subjects us? What is
this alternative offered to man by all religions,--either to boil in
some eternal cauldron or to walk in white robes, a palm in his hand
and a halo round his head? Can it be that this pagan invention is the
final word of God? Where is the generous soul who does not feel that
the calculating virtue which seeks the eternity of pleasure offered by
all religions to whoever fulfils at stray moments certain fanciful and
often unnatural conditions, is unworthy of man and of God? Is it not a
mockery to give to man impetuous senses and forbid him to satisfy
them? Besides, what mean these ascetic objections if Good and Evil are
equally abolished? Does Evil exist? If substance in all its forms is
God, then Evil is God. The faculty 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