The human mind seeks that by reason to which it is impelled by an intellectual instinct; how to reduce plurality to unity, to re-unite, as it were, all the variety of existences in a point from which they all proceed, and in which they are all absorbed. The understanding knows that the conditioned must be included in the unconditioned, the relative in the absolute, the finite in the infinite, the various in the one. In this, all religions, all schools of philosophy agree. The proclamation of this truth belongs to no one of them exclusively; it is to be met with in all countries of the world, in primitive times, back even to the cradle of the human race. Beautiful, sublime tradition! Preserved through all generations, amid the ebb and flow of events, it offers us the idea of the Divinity presiding over the origin and destiny of the universe. 101. Yes! The unity sought by philosophers is the Divinity itself,--the Divinity whose glory the firmament declares, and whose august face of ineffable splendor appears to us in our inmost consciousness. Yes! it is the Divinity which enlightens and guides the true philosopher, but blinds and confounds the proud sophist; it is what the true philosopher calls GOD, and venerates and adores in the sanctuary of his soul, but what the insensate philosopher, with sacrilegious profanation, calls the _me_. Considering its personality, its consciousness, its infinite intelligence, and its most perfect liberty, it is the foundation and the copestone of religion: distinct from the world, it produced the world from nothing, and preserves and governs it, and leads it by mysterious paths to the destiny assigned in its immutable decrees. 102. There is then unity in the world; there is unity in philosophy. In this all agree; the difference is that some separate, with the greatest care, the finite from the infinite, the thing created from the creative power, unity from multiplicity, and maintain the necessary communication between the free will of the omnipotent agent and finite existences, between the wisdom of the sovereign intelligence and the fixed course of the universe: while others, affected with melancholy blindness, confound the effect with the cause, the finite with the infinite, the various with the one, and reproduce in the domain of philosophy the chaos of primeval times; but all scattering and in frightful confusion, without any hope of order or union: the earth of these philosophers is void, and darkness is upon the face of their deep; the spirit of God has not moved over the waters to fecundate the chaos, and produce oceans of life and light out of darkness and death. The absurd systems invented by philosophical vanity explain nothing; the system of religion, which is that also of sound philosophy, and of all mankind, explains everything: the intellectual, as well as the corporeal world, is a chaos to the human mind the instant it abandons the idea of God: restore this and order reappears.