God, take yourself away! for, from
this day forth, cured of your fear and become wise, I swear, with
hand extended to heaven, that you are only the tormentor of my
reason, the spectre of my conscience.
I deny, therefore, the supremacy of God over humanity; I reject
his providential government, the non-existence of which is
sufficiently established by the metaphysical and economical
hallucinations of humanity,--in a word, by the martyrdom of
our race; I decline the jurisdiction of the Supreme Being over
man; I take away his titles of father, king, judge, good,
merciful, pitiful, helpful, rewarding, and avenging. All these
attributes, of which the idea of Providence is made up, are but a
caricature of humanity, irreconcilable with the autonomy of
civilization, and contradicted, moreover, by the history of its
aberrations and catastrophes. Does it follow, because God can no
longer be conceived as Providence, because we take from him that
attribute so important to man that he has not hesitated to make
it the synonym of God, that God does not exist, and that the
theological dogma from this moment is shown to be false in its
content?
Alas! no.
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