The Philosophy of Misery | Page 9

well exist and
at the same time escape your attention; and it is not certain that your
intelligence in this respect has risen to the level of your experience. But,
admitting the negative argument of M. Liebig, what follows? That,
with about fifty-six exceptions, irreducible as yet, all matter is in a
condition of perpetual metamorphosis. Now, it is a law of our reason to
suppose in Nature unity of substance as well as unity of force and
system; moreover, the series of chemical compounds and simple
substances themselves leads us irresistibly to this conclusion. Why,
then, refuse to follow to the end the road opened by science, and to

admit an hypothesis which is the inevitable result of experience itself?
M. Liebig not only denies the transmutability of elements, but rejects
the spontaneous formation of germs. Now, if we reject the spontaneous
formation of germs, we are forced to admit their eternity; and as, on the
other hand, geology proves that the globe has not been inhabited
always, we must admit also that, at a given moment, the eternal germs
of animals and plants were born, without father or mother, over the
whole face of the earth.
Thus, the denial of spontaneous generation leads back to the hypothesis
of spontaneity: what is there in much-derided metaphysics more
contradictory?
Let it not be thought, however, that I deny the value and certainty of
chemical theories, or that the atomic theory seems to me absurd, or that
I share the Epicurean opinion as to spontaneous generation. Once more,
all that I wish to point out is that, from the point of view of principles,
chemistry needs to exercise extreme tolerance, since its own existence
depends on a certain number of fictions, contrary to reason and
experience, and destructive of each other.

I certainly have less inclination to the marvellous than many atheists,
but I cannot help thinking that the stories of miracles, prophecies,
charms, etc., are but distorted accounts of the extraordinary effects
produced by certain latent forces, or, as was formerly said, by occult
powers. Our science is still so brutal and unfair; our professors exhibit
so much impertinence with so little knowledge; they deny so
impudently facts which embarrass them, in order to protect the
opinions which they champion,--that I distrust strong minds equally
with superstitious ones. Yes, I am convinced of it; our gross rationalism
is the inauguration of a period which, thanks to science, will become
truly PRODIGIOUS; the universe, to my eyes, is only a laboratory of
magic, from which anything may be expected. . . . This said, I return to
my subject.
They would be deceived, then, who should imagine, after my rapid
survey of religious progress, that metaphysics has uttered its last word
upon the double enigma expressed in these four words,--the existence
of God, the immortality of the soul. Here, as elsewhere, the most
advanced and best established conclusions, those which seem to have

settled for ever the theological question, lead us back to primeval
mysticism, and involve the new data of an inevitable philosophy. The
criticism of religious opinions makes us smile today both at ourselves
and at religions; and yet the resume of this criticism is but a
reproduction of the problem. The human race, at the present moment, is
on the eve of recognizing and affirming something equivalent to the old
notion of Divinity; and this, not by a spontaneous movement as before,
but through reflection and by means of irresistible logic. I will try, in a
few words, to make myself understood.
If there is a point on which philosophers, in spite of themselves, have
finally succeeded in agreeing, it is without doubt the distinction
between intelligence and necessity, the subject of thought and its object,
the me and the not-me; in ordinary terms, spirit and matter. I know well
that all these terms express nothing that is real and true; that each of
them designates only a section of the absolute, which alone is true and
real; and that, taken separately, they involve, all alike, a contradiction.
But it is no less certain also that the absolute is completely inaccessible
to us; that we know it only by its opposite extremes, which alone fall
within the limits of our experience; and that, if unity only can win our
faith, duality is the first condition of science.
Thus, who thinks, and what is thought? What is a soul? what is a body?
I defy any one to escape this dualism. It is with essences as with ideas:
the former are seen separated in Nature, as the latter in the
understanding; and just as the ideas of God and immortality, in spite of
their identity, are posited successively and contradictorily in
philosophy, so, in spite of their fusion in the