modern times. Descartes tells me that thought is the essence of man, and
that reason alone is the organ of truth. Helvetius tells me that man is
a mass of organized matter which receives its ideas only from the
senses. These two theses are equally legitimate, and I admit them both.
I quit now philosophers by profession to address myself to those
literary journalists who deal out philosophy in crumbs for the use of
_feuilletons_ and reviews. There I find all possible notions in the most
astounding of jumbles. "The villain has his apologist; the good man his
calumniator.... Marriage is honorable, so is adultery. Order is preached
up, so is riot, so is assassination, provided it be politic."[154] I
contemplate with a calm satisfaction, with a very deep and very pure
pleasure, these various unfoldings of the human mind; I place them all,
with the same feelings of devotion, in the pantheon of the intelligence.
I cannot do otherwise, inasmuch as there is no rule of truth superior to
the thoughts of men, and because the human mind is the supreme,
universal, and infallible intelligence.

But will our mind be able to entertain together two directly opposite
assertions? Will contradiction no longer be the sign of error? We must
come to this; we must acknowledge that the modern mind, breaking with
superannuated traditions, has proclaimed the principle "that one
assertion is not more true than an opposite assertion." We must proclaim
that the thinker has not to disquiet himself "about the _real_
contradictions into which he may fall; and that a true philosopher has
absolutely nothing to do with consistency."[155] The fear of
self-contradiction may be excused in Aristotle and Plato, in St. Anselm
and St. Thomas, in Descartes and Leibnitz. These writers were still
wrapped in the swaddling clothes of old errors; the light of the
nineteenth century had not shone upon their cradles; but the epoch of
enfranchisement is come. These things, Gentlemen, are printed