What sort of a fatality, in short, is that which is contradicted
every instant by the facts which take place within its bosom?
This the fatalists are bound to explain, quite as much as the
theists are bound to explain what sort of an infinite
intelligence that can be which is unable either to foresee or
prevent the misery of its creatures.
But that is not all. Liberty, intelligence, fatality, are at
bottom three adequate expressions, serving to designate three
different faces of being. In man reason is only a defined
liberty conscious of its limit. But within the circle of its
limitations this liberty is also fatality, a living and personal
fatality. When, therefore, the conscience of the human race
proclaims that the fatality of the universe--that is, the
highest, the supreme fatality--is adequate to an infinite reason
as well as to an infinite liberty, it simply puts forth an
hypothesis in every way legitimate, the verification of which is
incumbent upon all parties.
3. Now come the HUMANISTS, the new atheists, and say:
Humanity in its ensemble is the reality sought by the social
genius under the mystical name of God.
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