examining is adopted, it must be carried out to its consequences, and
the bearing of it clearly seen. Man, it is said, is the consummation of
the monkey. The monkey is an improvement upon some quadruped or other,
and this quadruped is an improvement upon another, and so on. We must
descend, in an inevitable logical series, to the most elementary
manifestations of life, and thence, finally, to matter. If it is not
admitted that pure matter is a man in a state of torpor, it must be
admitted that man is a _mélange_ of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, azote,
phosphorus--a _mélange_ which has been brought little by little to
perfection. Such is the final inference from the doctrine which we are
examining; and there are theorists who deduce it clearly. Now what is it
that goes on in the minds of these savants? When the object is to banish
God from nature, the creative Intelligence is resolved into thousands of
ages. When it is desired to get rid in man of the reality of mind, they
seek to resolve the human intelligence into a long series of
modifications which have caused life to spring from matter, superior
animals from simpler organisms, and man from the animal. Do not allow
yourselves to be caught in this trap. Maintain firmly, that, whatever
the degree of intelligence, of will, of spiritual essence, which may
exist in animals, if that element is really found in them, it demands a
cause, and cannot, without an enormous confusion of ideas, be regarded
as a mere perfecting of matter. In fact, a thing in perfecting itself,
realizes continually more fully its own proper idea, and does not become
another thing. A perfect monkey would be of all monkeys the one which is
most a monkey, and would not be a man. But let us leave the animals in
the darkness in which they abide for our minds, and let us speak of what
for us is less obscure.

Our spiritual existence is a fact; it is of all facts the one which is
best known to us; it is the fact without which no other fact would exist