God, according to the humanists, is nothing but humanity itself,
the collective me to which the individual me is subjected as to
an invisible master. But why this singular vision, if the
portrait is a faithful copy of the original? Why has man, who
from his birth has known directly and with out a telescope his
body, his soul, his chief, his priest, his country, his
condition, been obliged to see himself as in a mirror, and
without recognizing himself, under the fantastic image of God?
Where is the necessity of this hallucination? What is this dim
and ambiguous consciousness which, after a certain time, becomes
purified, rectified, and, instead of taking itself for another,
definitively apprehends itself as such? Why on the part of man
this transcendental confession of society, when society itself
was there, present, visible, palpable, willing, and
acting,--when, in short, it was known as society and named as
such?
No, it is said, society did not exist; men were agglomerated, but
not associated; the arbitrary constitution of property and
the State, as well as the intolerant dogmatism of religion, prove
it.
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