In making a god in their likeness, as miserable as themselves, men resemble monkeys, who, raising themselves to the idea of God, would figure him as a Grand Ape, dogs who would make him a Grand Dog, fleas who would represent him in the shape of a Grand Flea. But it does not follow that, because this inferior god does not exist, therefore the universe goes on without thought, without a destiny, and without laws. If the believers of all religions are in error, those who deny the existence of any intellectual principle in the world are equally mistaken. Yes, the evolution of nature takes place without the acts of an anthropomorphic deity, without malice and without miracles. The only name which would fit God would be the Unknowable. God remains hidden by the very perfection of nature’s mechanism. In a healthy body we do not feel the passage of the blood through the heart, nor the circulation of blood in the brain, nor that of the air in the lungs, nor the liver, nor the kidneys, nor the stomach, nor the bowels. The attention is not directed to those organs unless they work badly. The world is so arranged that they appear to work by themselves, and that is its divine quality. Everything functions regularly by means of a perfect construction, the gearing of which is invisible and silent, but which we can only judge by the infinitesimal fraction of which we form a part, and the author of which is a transcendental thought, impenetrable to mankind. Force governs matter; _mens agitat molem_; but Thought guides nature. Yes, the supreme being is unknowable. The human mind cannot comprehend the infinite, eternal, immutable spirit, the organising power of that All of which the Earth and Man are but particles as imperfect as they are mediocre. This Infinite is to the infantile deity imagined by man as the midday sun is to the muddy obscurity of a mole-burrow under the roots of meadow grass. His existence is proved by the universal organisation. Everything is organised, from the humblest leaf to the world system. An invisible, immaterial element of a spiritual nature, as yet imperfectly revealed by our means of investigation, manifests itself within us and around us. This spiritual principle should be revered as enveloping the world and enfolding us. But the clergy of all religions, of all times and of all countries, have always monopolised the idea of God and appropriated it to their exclusive and intolerant purpose of domination. When they speak of God, they mean their own God. The free spirits who do not acknowledge their figure-head are treated as atheists and hated and persecuted as such. They will not admit that one may be a Deist and yet anticlerical. But they are not too unintelligent to know that it is an injustice, a stupidity, and a lie to treat as atheists those thinkers who deny the divinity of Jesus. The people who dare to reduce God to their size and even to put Him in their pocket are the greatest blasphemers.