1.C.7.6. THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER
WITH regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided
that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in
the infinite.
There is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite.
There is also a philosophy, pathologically classified, which
denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.
To erect a sense which we lack into a source of truth, is a
fine blind man's self-sufficiency.
The curious thing is the haughty, superior, and compassionate
airs which this groping philosophy assumes towards the
philosophy which beholds God. One fancies he hears a mole
crying, "I pity them with their sun!"
There are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At
bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not
absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a
question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe
in God, being great minds, they prove God.
We salute them as philosophers, while inexorably denouncing
their philosophy.
Let us go on.
The remarkable thing about it is, also, their facility in
paying themselves off with words. A metaphysical school of
the North, impregnated to some extent with fog, has fancied
that it has worked a revolution in human understanding by
replacing the word Force with the word Will.
To say: "the plant wills," instead of: "the plant grows":
this would be fecund in results, indeed, if we were to add:
"the universe wills." Why? Because it would come to this:
the plant wills, therefore it has an I; the universe wills, therefore
it has a God.
As for us, who, however, in contradistinction to this school,
reject nothing a priori, a will in the plant, accepted by this
school, appears to us more difficult to admit than a will in the
universe denied by it.
To deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible
on any other conditions than a denial of the infinite.
We have demonstrated this.
The negation of the infinite leads straight to nihilism.
Everything becomes "a mental conception."
With nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist
logic doubts the existence of its interlocutor, and is not quite
sure that it exists itself.
From its point of view, it is possible that it may be for
itself, only "a mental conception."
Only, it does not perceive that all which it has denied it
admits in the lump, simply by the utterance of the word,
mind.
In short, no way is open to the thought by a philosophy
which makes all end in the monosyllable, No.
To No there is only one reply, Yes.
Nihilism has no point.
There is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist.
Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.
Man lives by affirmation even more than by bread.
Even to see and to show does not suffice. Philosophy should
be an energy; it should have for effort and effect to ameliorate
the condition of man. Socrates should enter into Adam and
produce Marcus Aurelius; in other words, the man of wisdom
should be made to emerge from the man of felicity. Eden
should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should be a
cordial. To enjoy,— what a sad aim, and what a paltry
ambition! The brute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst
of men, to give them all as an elixir the notion of God, to
make conscience and science fraternize in them, to render
them just by this mysterious confrontation; such is the function
of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of
truths. Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should
be practicable. It is necessary that the ideal should be breathable,
drinkable, and eatable to the human mind. It is the
ideal which has the right to say:
Take, this is my body, this
is my blood. Wisdom is a holy communion. It is on this
condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science and
becomes the one and sovereign mode of human rallying, and
that philosophy herself is promoted to religion.
Philosophy should not be a corbel erected on mystery to
gaze upon it at its ease, without any other result than that of
being convenient to curiosity.
For our part, adjourning the development of our thought
to another occasion, we will confine ourselves to saying that we
neither understand man as a point of departure nor progress
as an end, without those two forces which are their two
motors: faith and love.
Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type.
What is this ideal? It is God.
Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.