The Philosophy of Misery | Page 7

at the
time of its first promulgation, arriving after a long interval, seemed a
heresy to those faithful to the old dogma, has been none the less
considered the complement of divine majesty, necessarily postulated by
eternal goodness and justice. Unless the soul is immortal, God is
incomprehensible, say the theists; resembling in this the political
theorists who regard sovereign representation and perpetual tenure of
office as essential conditions of monarchy. But the inconsistency of the
ideas is as glaring as the parity of the doctrines is exact: consequently
the dogma of immortality soon became the stumbling-block of
philosophical theologians, who, ever since the days of Pythagoras and
Orpheus, have been making futile attempts to harmonize divine
attributes with human liberty, and reason with faith. A subject of

triumph for the impious! . . . . But the illusion could not yield so soon:
the dogma of immortality, for the very reason that it was a limitation of
the uncreated Being, was a step in advance. Now, though the human
mind deceives itself by a partial acquisition of the truth, it never
retreats, and this perseverance in progress is proof of its infallibility. Of
this we shall soon see fresh evidence.
In making himself like God, man made God like himself: this
correlation, which for many centuries had been execrated, was the
secret spring which determined the new myth. In the days of the
patriarchs God made an alliance with man; now, to strengthen the
compact, God is to become a man. He will take on our flesh, our form,
our passions, our joys, and our sorrows; will be born of woman, and die
as we do. Then, after this humiliation of the infinite, man will still
pretend that he has elevated the ideal of his God in making, by a logical
conversion, him whom he had always called creator, a saviour, a
redeemer. Humanity does not yet say, I am God: such a usurpation
would shock its piety; it says, God is in me, IMMANUEL, nobiscum
Deus. And, at the moment when philosophy with pride, and universal
conscience with fright, shouted with unanimous voice, The gods are
departing! excedere deos! a period of eighteen centuries of fervent
adoration and superhuman faith was inaugurated.
But the fatal end approaches. The royalty which suffers itself to be
limited will end by the rule of demagogues; the divinity which is
defined dissolves in a pandemonium. Christolatry is the last term of this
long evolution of human thought. The angels, saints, and virgins reign
in heaven with God, says the catechism; and demons and reprobates
live in the hells of eternal punishment. Ultramundane society has its left
and its right: it is time for the equation to be completed; for this
mystical hierarchy to descend upon earth and appear in its real
character.
When Milton represents the first woman admiring herself in a fountain,
and lovingly extending her arms toward her own image as if to embrace
it, he paints, feature for feature, the human race.--This God whom you
worship, O man! this God whom you have made good, just, omnipotent,
omniscient, immortal, and holy, is yourself: this ideal of perfection is
your image, purified in the shining mirror of your conscience. God,
Nature, and man are three aspects of one and the same being; man is

God himself arriving at self-consciousness through a thousand
evolutions. In Jesus Christ man recognized himself as God; and
Christianity is in reality the religion of God-man. There is no other God
than he who in the beginning said, ME; there is no other God than
THEE.
Such are the last conclusions of philosophy, which dies in unveiling
religion's mystery and its own.
II.
It seems, then, that all is ended; it seems that, with the cessation of the
worship and mystification of humanity by itself, the theological
problem is for ever put aside. The gods have gone: there is nothing left
for man but to grow weary and die in his egoism. What frightful
solitude extends around me, and forces its way to the bottom of my
soul! My exaltation resembles annihilation; and, since I made myself a
God, I seem but a shadow. It is possible that I am still a ME, but it is
very difficult to regard myself as the absolute; and, if I am not the
absolute, I am only half of an idea.
Some ironical thinker, I know not who, has said: "A little philosophy
leads away from religion, and much philosophy leads back to it." This
proposition is humiliatingly true.
Every science develops in three successive periods, which may be
called--comparing them with the grand periods of civilization--the
religious period, the sophistical period, the scientific period.[3] Thus,
alchemy represents the religious period of the science afterwards called
chemistry, whose definitive plan is