himself in one of those desperate positions in which all human help
fails, he turns towards Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of
one of those instances of revolting injustice which stir the conscience
in its profoundest depths, and which could not on earth meet with
adequate punishment, we think within ourselves,--There is a Judge on
high! If we are reproved by our own conscience, the voice of that
conscience, which disturbs and sometimes torments us, reminds us that
though we may be shut out from all human view, there is no less an Eye
which sees us, and a just award awaiting us. Thus it is (I am seeking to
establish facts) that the thought of God operates, so to speak, in the
souls of those who believe in Him. If you look for the meaning common to
all these manifestations of man's heart, what do you find? Fear, hope,
thanksgiving, prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power
intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to act upon our
destinies. This is the idea which is found at the basis of all
religions; not only of the religion of the only God, but of the most
degraded forms of idolatrous worship. All religion rests upon the
sentiment of one or more invisible Powers, superior to nature and to
humanity.

When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it disengages from the general
sentiment of power the definite idea of the cause which becomes the
explanation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by virtue of its very
constitution, finds a need of conceiving of an absolute cause which
escapes by its eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite character
the bounds of limited existences; a principle, the necessary being of
which depends on no other; in a word a unique cause, establishing by its
unity the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with the idea of the
sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches itself to it as the only thought
which accounts to it for the world and for itself.