HKB
regarded as the foundations of morality? how so profoundly religious, without having professed one of the dogmas of what is called natural religion? It is important to make this inquiry.
The doubts, which, to the view of speculative reason, hover above the truths of natural religion, are not, as Kant has admirably shown, accidental doubts, capable of being removed, belonging, as is sometimes imagined, to certain conditions of the human mind. These doubts are inherent to the nature even of these truths, if one may say it without a paradox; and, if these doubts were removed, the truths with which they quarrel would disappear at the same time. Let us suppose, in short, a direct, positive proof, evident to all, of future sufferings and rewards: where will be the merit of doing good? They would be but fools whom gayety of heart should hasten to damnation. A crowd of base souls would secure their salvation without concealment: they would, in a sense, force the divine power. Who does not see, that, in such a system, there is neither morality nor religion? In the moral and religious order it is indispensable to believe without demonstration. It deals not with certainty: it acts by faith. This is what Deism forgets, with its habits of intemperate affirmation. It forgets that creeds too precise concerning human destiny would destroy all moral merit. For us, they would say that we should do as did St. Louis when he was told of the miraculous wafer,--we should refuse to see it. What need have we of these brutal proofs which trammel our liberty?
We should fear to become assimilated to those speculators in virtue, or those vulgar cowards, who mingle with spiritual things the gross selfishness of practical life. In the days which followed the belief in the resurrection of Jesus, this sentiment was manifested in the most touching manner. The faithful in heart, the sensitive ones, preferred to believe without seeing. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed," became the word for the time. Charming words! Eternal symbol of tender and generous Idealism, which has a horror of touching with the hands that which should only be seen with the heart!