"What is God?" she asks; "where is he? what is his extent? what
are his wishes? what his powers? what his promises?"--and here,
in the light of analysis, all the divinities of heaven, earth,
and hell are reduced to an incorporeal, insensible, immovable,
incomprehensible, undefinable I-know-not-what; in short, to a
negation of all the attributes of existence. In fact, whether
man attributes to each object a special spirit or genius, or
conceives the universe as governed by a single power, he in
either case but SUPPOSES an unconditioned, that is, an
impossible, entity, that he may deduce therefrom an explanation
of such phenomena as he deems inconceivable on any other
hypothesis. The mystery of God and reason! In order to render
the object of his idolatry more and more RATIONAL, the believer
despoils him successively of all the qualities which would make
him REAL; and, after marvellous displays of logic and genius,
the attributes of the Being par excellence are found to be the
same as those of nihility. This evolution is inevitable and
fatal: atheism is at the bottom of all theodicy.

Let us try to understand this progress.

God, creator of all things, is himself no sooner created by the
conscience,--in other words, no sooner have we lifted God from
the idea of the social me to the idea of the cosmic me,--than
immediately our reflection begins to demolish him under the
pretext of perfecting him. To perfect the idea of God, to purify
the theological dogma, was the second hallucination of the human
race.