He has found God, he has found the light. Reason does not deceive, when
it is faithful to its own laws: the senses do not deceive, when they are
exercised according to the rules of the understanding. Error is a
malady; it is not the radical condition of our nature; it is not without
limits and without remedy, for the final cause of our being is God, that
is to say truth and goodness.


From everlasting God was true,
For ever good and just will be,


says one of our old psalms. Faith in the veracity of God--such is the
ground of the assurance of believers; such is also the foundation on
which has been raised the greatest of modern philosophies. Without the
knowledge of God and faith in his goodness, man remains plunged in
irremediable doubt, possessing only this single, poor, and frightful
certainty: I am; and I exist perhaps only to be eternally deceived.

But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it--What
a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that
God is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good
because God is. His reason demonstrates God to him, and God demonstrates
his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once
see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said
again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple
consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely
that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very
closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that
have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a