A theory of religion, dogmatics can have no other starting point than religious phenomena themselves. From this concrete and experimental principle, from this state of soul produced by the immediate feeling of a necessary relation to God, the entire system should spring and develop. What is not in religious experience should find no place in religious science, and should be banished from it. It would only be to its detriment, then, that the science of dogmas should throw away its liberty by espousing beforehand metaphysical theses or the final conclusions of any philosophy whatsoever. These theses, springing from another source than religion, have no right, in that religion, to become articles of faith. Rational truths not born of religious feeling would be in dogmatics so many dead weights and heterogeneous elements, which would lead to the greatest incoherence. To build up a professedly revealed theology on a professedly natural one is to construct a system without either unity or profound connection. Such a dualism of principles is as intolerable to science as to piety. Instead of dogmatics subordinating itself to metaphysics, metaphysics ought to include dogmatics as well as the results of all the other sciences. It is altogether different with the criticism of our means of knowing. In every order of science it is mere levity of mind to commence or to conclude researches a little general without having first determined the precise conditions of real knowledge. The absence of a philosophical critique of this nature explains why savants, so rigorous in their special studies, show a philosophical _naivety_ so great in the conclusions that they draw from them, and so readily crown their discoveries by a pseudo-metaphysic that they impose upon the multitude with all the authority and prestige of science. More than any others, theologians are guilty of this abuse when they wish to make their science the sum of universal knowledge. They would be more soundly religious were they more modest and more reserved. An excellent means of putting ourselves on our guard against this illusion and its deplorable consequences will be to institute, without further delay, a rigorous criticism of religious knowledge. This task, I believe, has never been seriously attempted in France. It is, however, as indispensable to the right conduct of the mind as it is fitted radically to cure us of our dogmatic pride and to inspire us with tolerance and humility. This will be the object of the following chapter. CHAPTER IV CRITICAL THEORY OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE