is perfectly natural; it is received, encouraged: witness
attraction--an hypothesis which will never be verified, and
which, nevertheless, is the glory of its originator. But when,
to explain the course of human events, I suppose, with all
imaginable caution, the intervention of a God, I am sure to shock
scientific gravity and offend critical ears: to so wonderful an
extent has our piety discredited Providence, so many tricks
have been played by means of this dogma or fiction by charlatans
of every stamp! I have seen the theists of my time, and
blasphemy has played over my lips; I have studied the belief of
the people,--this people that Brydaine called the best friend of
God,--and have shuddered at the negation which was about to
escape me. Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to
reason; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic
contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori
dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who
knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us?

I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my
heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of
social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an
hypothesis,--I mean a necessary dialectical tool.



I.

If I follow the God-idea through its successive transformations,
I find that this idea is preeminently social: I mean by this that
it is much more a collective act of faith than an individual