tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large.
This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of
atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M.
Saint-Réné Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of
the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts
of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulæ, it
gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious
authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."[57]

It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be
brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in
its commencement, to favor at length _the revolts of matter run mad_.
And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the
development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is
necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of
destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the
flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the
moment that the flesh is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and
ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism
into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There
exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us
there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us:
the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an
idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for
Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to
his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic
sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really
serviceable to humanity."[58]

Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacrifices; the emancipation