God and man, having divided
between them the antagonistic faculties of being, seem to be
playing a game in which the control of the universe is the stake,
the one having spontaneity, directness, infallibility, eternity,
the other having foresight, deduction, mobility, time. God and
man hold each other in perpetual check and continually avoid
each other; while the latter goes ahead in reflection and theory
without ever resting, the former, by his providential incapacity,
seems to withdraw into the spontaneity of his nature. There is a
contradiction, therefore, between humanity and its ideal, an
opposition between man and God, an opposition which Christian
theology has allegorized and personified under the name of Devil
or Satan,--that is, contradictor, enemy of God and man.
Such is the fundamental antinomy which I find that modern critics
have not taken into account, and which, if neglected, having
sooner or later to end in the negation of the man-God and
consequently in the negation of this whole philosophical
exegesis, reopens the door to religion and fanaticism.
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