第 一百三十五 章 · PRAYER

They pray.

To whom?

To God.

To pray to God,—what is the meaning of these words?

Is there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent,

permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite; and because,

if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since

it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would end

there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we

can attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence? In other terms,

is it not the absolute, of which we are only the relative?

At the same time that there is an infinite without us, is there not an

infinite within us? Are not these two infinites (what an alarming

plural!) superposed, the one upon the other? Is not this second

infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter’s

mirror, reflection, echo, an abyss which is concentric with another

abyss? Is this second infinity intelligent also? Does it think? Does it

love? Does it will? If these two infinities are intelligent, each of

them has a will principle, and there is an _I_ in the upper infinity as

there is an _I_ in the lower infinity. The _I_ below is the soul; the

_I_ on high is God.

To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought,

with the infinity on high, is called praying.

Let us take nothing from the human mind; to suppress is bad. We must

reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards the

Unknown; thought, reverie, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is

conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, reverie,

prayer,—these are great and mysterious radiations. Let us respect them.

Whither go these majestic irradiations of the soul? Into the shadow;

that is to say, to the light.

The grandeur of democracy is to disown nothing and to deny nothing of

humanity. Close to the right of the man, beside it, at the least, there

exists the right of the soul.

To crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law. Let

us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of

creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We

have a duty to labor over the human soul, to defend the mystery against

the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd, to

admit, as an inexplicable fact, only what is necessary, to purify

belief, to remove superstitions from above religion; to clear God of

caterpillars.