seeks the perfect, the eternal, the infinite. The doctrine of creation
alone explains how the universe subsists in presence of its first cause.
In ignorance of this doctrine, some bold thinkers have cut the knot
which they could not untie. They have declared that reason alone is
right, and that experience is wrong: the world does not exist, it is but
an illusion of the mind. Whence proceeds this illusion? If perfection
alone exists, how comes that imperfect mind to exist which deceives
itself in believing in the reality of the world? To this question the
system has no answer. Such is true pantheism; but it is not to dangers
so noble that most minds run the risk of succumbing. What is commonly
understood by pantheism is the deification of the universe. The idea of
God is not directly denied, but it undergoes a transformation which
destroys it. God is no longer the eternal and Almighty Spirit, the
Creator; but the unconscious principle, the substance of things, the
whole. The universe alone exists; above it there is nothing; but the
universe is infinite, eternal, divine. The higher wants of the reason,
mingling with the data derived from experience, form an imposing and
confused image, which, while it beguiles the imagination, perverts the
understanding, deceives the heart, and places the conscience in peril.
In a philosophical point of view, it is a contradiction of thought,
which seeks the Infinite Being, and, being unable to discover Him, gives
the character of infinity to realities bounded by experience. In a
religious point of view, it is an aberration of the heart, which
preserves the sentiment of adoration, but perverts it by dispersing it
over the universe. "Pantheism," says M. Jules Simon, "is only the
learned form of atheism; the universe deified is a universe without
God."[41] From the moment that the reason endeavors to see distinctly,
pantheism vanishes like a deceitful glare. Atheism disengages itself
from the cloak which was concealing its true nature, and the mind
remains in presence of nature only, or of humanity only. We will proceed