And this last consideration will suffice to make us reject
humanism also, as tending invincibly, by the deification of
humanity, to a religious restoration. The true remedy for
fanaticism, in our view, is not to identify humanity with God,
which amounts to affirming, in social economy communism, in
philosophy mysticism and the statu quo; it is to prove to
humanity that God, in case there is a God, is its enemy.
What solution will result later from these data? Will God, in
the end, be found to be a reality?
I do not know whether I shall ever know. If it is true, on the
one hand, that I have today no more reason for affirming the
reality of man, an illogical and contradictory being, than the
reality of God, an inconceivable and unmanifested being, I know
at least, from the radical opposition of these two natures, that
I have nothing to hope or to fear from the mysterious author whom
my consciousness involuntarily supposes; I know that my most
authentic tendencies separate me daily from the contemplation of
this idea; that practical atheism must be henceforth the law of
my heart and my reason; that from observable necessity I must
continually learn the rule of my conduct; that any mystical
commandment, any divine right, which should be proposed to me,
must be rejected and combatted by me; that a return to God
through religion, idleness, ignorance, or submission, is an
outrage upon myself; and that if I must sometime be reconciled
with God, this reconciliation, impossible as long as I live and
in which I should have everything to gain and nothing to lose,
can be accomplished only by my destruction.
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