BEFORE or AFTER, this alternative sums up all philosophy. To
dispute over the posteriority or priority of mind is all very
well, but to deny mind in the name of fatality is an exclusion
which nothing justifies. To refute it, it is sufficient to
recall the very fact on which it is based,--the existence of
evil.
Given matter and attraction, the system of the world is their
product: that is fatal. Given two correlative and contradictory
ideas, a composition must follow: that also is fatal. Fatality
clashes, not with liberty, whose destiny, on the contrary, is to
secure the accomplishment of fatality within a certain sphere,
but with disorder, with everything that acts as a barrier to the
execution of the law. Is there disorder in the world, yes or no?
The fatalists do not deny it, for, by the strangest blunder, it
is the presence of evil which has made them fatalists. Now, I
say that the presence of evil, far from giving evidence of
fatality, breaks fatality, does violence to destiny, and supposes
a cause whose erroneous but voluntary initiative is in
discordance with the law.
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