abandon himself to fortune? Perfect health is better than
convalescence: should the sick man, therefore, refuse to be
cured? Reform, reform! cried, ages since, John the Baptist
and Jesus Christ. Reform, reform! cried our fathers, fifty years
ago; and for a long time to come we shall shout, Reform, reform!

Seeing the misery of my age, I said to myself: Among the
principles that support society, there is one which it does not
understand, which its ignorance has vitiated, and which causes
all the evil that exists. This principle is the most ancient of
all; for it is a characteristic of revolutions to tear down the
most modern principles, and to respect those of long-standing.
Now the evil by which we suffer is anterior to all revolutions.
This principle, impaired by our ignorance, is honored and
cherished; for if it were not cherished it would harm nobody, it
would be without influence.

But this principle, right in its purpose, but misunderstood: this
principle, as old as humanity, what is it? Can it be religion?

All men believe in God: this dogma belongs at once to their
conscience and their mind. To humanity God is a fact as
primitive, an idea as inevitable, a principle as necessary as are
the categorical ideas of cause, substance, time, and space to our
understanding. God is proven to us by the conscience prior to
any inference of the mind; just as the sun is proven to us by the
testimony of the senses prior to all the arguments of physics.
We discover phenomena and laws by observation and experience;
only this deeper sense reveals to us existence. Humanity
believes that God is; but, in believing in God, what does it