Curiosity is the
expansive force, which, if it were allowed an unchecked action upon us,
would disperse and volatilize us; belief represents the force of
gravitation and cohesion which makes separate bodies and individuals of
us. Society lives by faith, develops by science. Its basis then is the
mysterious, the unknown, the intangible--religion--while the fermenting
principle in it is the desire of knowledge. Its permanent substance is
the uncomprehended or the divine; its changing form is the result of its
intellectual labor. The unconscious adhesions, the confused intuitions,
the obscure presentiments, which decide the first faith of a people, are
then of capital importance in its history. All history moves between the
religion which is the genial instinctive and fundamental philosophy of a
race, and the philosophy which is the ultimate religion--the clear
perception, that is to say, of those principles which have engendered
the whole spiritual development of humanity.
It is always the same thing which is, which was, and which will be; but
this thing--the absolute--betrays with more or less transparency and
profundity the law of its life and of its metamorphoses. In its fixed
aspect it is called God; in its mobile aspect the world or nature. God
is present in nature, but nature is not God; there is a nature in God,
but it is not God himself.
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