_THE CREATOR._

(At Geneva, 4th Dec. 1863.--At Lausanne, 27th Jan. 1864.)


GENTLEMEN,

Man is not a simple product of nature; in vain does he labor to degrade
himself by desiring to find the explanation of his spiritual being in
matter brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the summit and
principle of the universe; in vain does he labor to deify himself. He is
great only by reason of the divine rays which inform his heart, his
conscience, and his reason. From the moment that he believes himself to
be the source of light, he passes into night. When thought has risen
from nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its impetus be not
strong enough to carry it on to God. These assertions do but translate
the great facts of man's intellectual history. "There is no nation so
barbarous," said Cicero,[160] "there are no men so savage as not to
have some tincture of religion. Many there are who form false notions of
the gods; ... but all admit the existence of a divine power and
nature.... Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all nations is to
be reckoned a law of nature." No discovery has diminished the value of
these words of the Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of human
society, there remains always some vestige of the religious sentiment.
The knowledge of the Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition;
but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world is found wherever
there are men.

Cicero brings forward this universal consent as a very strong proof of