In 1868, however, he
became a member of the Institute in succession to Cousin. A Liberal of
the old school, he has separated himself from the republicans since the
war, and has made himself felt as a severe critic of republican blunders
in the _Revue des deux Mondes_. _La Religion_, which discusses the
psychological origins of the religious sense, was published in 1868.]
book "La Religion," 1869, and it has set me thinking. I have a feeling
that his notion of religion is not rigorous and exact, and that
therefore his logic is subject to correction. If religion is a
psychological stage, anterior to that of reason, it is clear that it
will disappear in man, but if, on the contrary, it is a mode of the
inner life, it may and must last, as long as the need of feeling, and
alongside the need of thinking. The question is between theism and
non-theism. If God is only the category of the ideal, religion will
vanish, of course, like the illusions of youth. But if Universal Being
can be felt and loved at the same time as conceived, the philosopher may
be a religious man just as he may be an artist, an orator, or a citizen.
He may attach himself to a worship or ritual without derogation. I
myself incline to this solution. To me religion is life before God and
in God.
And even if God were defined as the universal life, so long as this life
is positive and not negative, the soul penetrated with the sense of the
infinite is in the religious state.
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