eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible
conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself
in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of
ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized
with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is
always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on
shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the _positive_ by a
violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive
materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty
pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene
Doctor Büchner and his fellows.

The great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as it is often said to
be, the combat of idealism against materialism. Idealism begins well,
and we must not refuse to acknowledge the services which it has rendered
to the cause of truth. But philosophy must follow the road traced out in
an ancient adage: _Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad
superiora_.[67] If the mind does not go to the end of this royal road;
if idealism, having surmounted the fascinations of the senses, remains
in ideas, without ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of matter
and the worship of the idea call mutually one to another, and revolve in
a fatal circle. The struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds
one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied honor, the
adversaries breakfast together, and gather strength to combat, in case
of need, a common enemy. The great combat which forms the main subject
of the history of ideas is the combat between belief in God and an
atheistical philosophy. Whether atheism admits for its first principle
an atom without a Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is a
fact very important for the history of philosophy, but the importance of
which is small enough in regard to the interests of humanity.