and enclosures. I know very well, better, perhaps, than many amongst
you, because I have longer reflected on the subject, what are the
differences which separate studies specially religious, from
philosophical inquiries. But when the question relates to God, to the
universal cause, we find ourselves at the common root of religion and
philosophy, and distinctions, which exist elsewhere, disappear. Besides,
these distinctions are never so absolute as they are thought to be. You
will understand this if you pay attention to these two considerations:
there is no such thing as pure thought disengaged from every traditional
element: there is no such thing as tradition received in a manner purely
passive, and disengaged from all exercise of the reflective faculties.

You think you are employed about philosophy when you shut yourself up in
your own individual thoughts. A mistake! The most powerful genius of
modern times failed in this enterprise. Descartes conceived the project
of forgetting all that he had known, and of producing a system of
doctrine which should come forth from his brain as Minerva sprang all
armed from the brain of Jupiter. Now-a-days a mere schoolboy, if he has
been well taught, ought to be able to prove that Descartes was mistaken,
because the current of tradition entered his mind together with the
words of the language. It is not so easy as we may suppose to break the
ties by which God has bound us all together in mutual dependence. Man
speaks, he only thinks by means of speech, and speech is a river which
takes its rise in the very beginnings of history, and brings down to the
existing generation the tribute of all the waters of the past. No one
can isolate himself from the current, and place himself outside the
intellectual society of his fellows. We have more light than we had on
this subject, and the attempt of Descartes, which was of old the happy
audacity of genius, could in our days be nothing but the foolish
presumption of ignorance.