Man, endowed with activity and intelligence, has the power to
disturb the order of the world, of which he forms a part. But
all his digressions have been foreseen, and are effected within
certain limits, which, after a certain number of goings and
comings, lead man back to order. From these oscillations of
liberty may be determined the role of humanity in the world; and,
since the destiny of man is bound up with that of creatures, it
is possible to go back from him to the supreme law of things and
even to the sources of being.
Accordingly I will no longer ask: How is it that man has the
power to violate the providential order, and how is it that
Providence allows him to do so? I state the question in other
terms: How is it that man, an integrant part of the universe, a
product of fatality, is able to break fatality? How is it that a
fatal organization, the organization of humanity, is
adventitious, contradictory, full of tumult and catastrophes?
Fatality is not confined to an hour, to a century, to a thousand
years: if science and liberty must inevitably be ours, why do
they not come sooner? For, the moment we suffer from the delay,
fatality contradicts itself; evil is as exclusive of fatality as
of Providence.
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