Les Misérables, page 143
CHAPTER VI--THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER
With regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they aresincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite.
There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There isalso a philosophy, pathologically classified, which denies the sun; thisphilosophy is called blindness.
To erect a sense which we lack into a source of truth, is a fine blindman's self-sufficiency.
The curious thing is the haughty, superior, and compassionate airs whichthis groping philosophy assumes towards the philosophy which beholdsGod. One fancies he hears a mole crying, "I pity them with their sun!"
There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, ledback to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure thatthey are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and inany case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they proveGod.
We salute them as philosophers, while inexorably denouncing theirphilosophy.
Let us go on.
The remarkable thing about it is, also, their facility in payingthemselves off with words. A metaphysical school of the North,impregnated to some extent with fog, has fancied that it has worked arevolution in human understanding by replacing the word Force with theword Will.
To say: "the plant wills," instead of: "the plant grows": this would befecund in results, indeed, if we were to add: "the universe wills." Why?Because it would come to this: the plant wills, therefore it has an _I_;the universe wills, therefore it has a God.
As for us, who, however, in contradistinction to this school, rejectnothing _a priori_, a will in the plant, accepted by this school,appears to us more difficult to admit than a will in the universe deniedby it.
To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible onany other conditions than a denial of the infinite. We have demonstratedthis.
The negation of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everythingbecomes "a mental conception."
With nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist logic doubtsthe existence of its interlocutor, and is not quite sure that it existsitself.
From its point of view, it is possible that it may be for itself, only"a mental conception."
Only, it does not perceive that all which it has denied it admits in thelump, simply by the utterance of the word, mind.
In short, no way is open to the thought by a philosophy which makes allend in the monosyllable, No.
To No there is only one reply, Yes.
Nihilism has no point.
There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist. Everythingis something. Nothing is nothing.
Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread.
Even to see and to show does not suffice. Philosophy should be anenergy; it should have for effort and effect to ameliorate the conditionof man. Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius; inother words, the man of wisdom should be made to emerge from the manof felicity. Eden should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should bea cordial. To enjoy,--what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition! Thebrute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all asan elixir the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternizein them, to render them just by this mysterious confrontation; such isthe function of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of truths.Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should be practicable. It isnecessary that the ideal should be breathable, drinkable, and eatable tothe human mind. It is the ideal which has the right to say: _Take, thisis my body, this is my blood_. Wisdom is holy communion. It is on thiscondition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science and becomes theone and sovereign mode of human rallying, and that philosophy herself ispromoted to religion.
Philosophy should not be a corbel erected on mystery to gaze upon itat its ease, without any other result than that of being convenient tocuriosity.
For our part, adjourning the development of our thought to anotheroccasion, we will confine ourselves to saying that we neither understandman as a point of departure nor progress as an end, without those twoforces which are their two motors: faith and love.
Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.
What is this ideal? It is God.
Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.
