I answer these reasoners that, if, to give legitimacy to a wholly
arbitrary opinion, it suffices to fall back on the
unfathomability of mysteries, I am as well satisfied with the
mystery of a God without providence as with that of a Providence
without efficacy. But, in view of the facts, there is no
occasion to invoke such a consideration of probability; we must
confine ourselves to the positive declaration of experience.
Now, experience and facts prove that humanity, in its
development, obeys an inflexible necessity, whose laws are made
clear and whose system is realized as fast as the collective
reason reveals it, without anything in society to give evidence
of an external instigation, either from a providential
command or from any superhuman thought. The basis of the belief
in Providence is this necessity itself, which is, as it were, the
foundation and essence of collective humanity. But this
necessity, thoroughly systematic and progressive as it may
appear, does not on that account constitute providence either in
humanity or in God; to become convinced thereof it is enough to
recall the endless oscillations and painful gropings by which
social order is made manifest.
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