tendencies of the modern mind. The modern mind is here characterized by
one of its declared partisans; you will not take therefore for a wicked
caricature the picture which he puts before us. Here then are the
thoughts of the modern mind: "There is only one infinite, that of our
desires and our aspirations, that of our needs and our efforts.[140] The
true, the beautiful, the just are perpetually occurring; they are for
ever in course of self-formation, because they are nothing else than the
human mind, which, in unfolding itself, finds and knows itself
again."[141] This is only the French translation of a saying celebrated
in Germany: "God is not: He becomes." What we call God is the human
mind. What was there at the beginning of things? The human mind, which
did not know itself. What will there be in the end? The human mind,
which, in unfolding itself, will have come to know itself, and will
adore itself as the supreme God. If this be indeed the final object of
the universe, it appears that, in the opinion of these philosophers, the
consummation of all things must be near. Once that humanity, faithful to
their doctrine, shall have pronounced the lofty utterance, "I am God,
and there is none else," the world will no longer have any reason for
existing.

Such is the system of which we have to follow out the consequences. Let
us take as our point of comparison the old ideas which we are urged to
abandon.

We usually explain human destinies by the concurrence of two causes,
infinitely distinct, since the one is creative and the other created,
but both of which we hold for real: man, and God. Humanity has received
from its Author the free power which we call will, and the law of that
will which we name conscience. The law proceeds from God, the liberty
proceeds from God; but the acts of the created will, when it violates