In observing, in reasoning, in generalising, I arrive at a certain knowledge of that which surrounds me; this knowledge of external objects forms within me the contents of what I call my knowledge of the world. On the other hand, in acting, in living, in exercising my will, is formed what I call my knowledge of myself. Consciousness of self, and consciousness of the world, condition and determine each other, and cannot exist without each other. But, at the same time, they enter into mortal conflict. The ego desires to master the world, and the world, in the end, devours the ego. Thought triumphs over Nature and contemns it; Nature takes its revenge and swallows up thought in its abyss. The consciousness of self wishes to bring over to itself the knowledge of the world; and this absorbs and devours the consciousness of self. The synthesis and reconciliation can only be found in the consciousness of something superior to self and the world on which both of them absolutely depend. This synthetic and pacificatory consciousness is the consciousness of universal and sovereign Being; it is the sense of the presence of God. To escape from his distress, man has never had any but this means of salvation. The savage has recourse to it, according to his degree of intellectual life, when, under terror of the phenomena of Nature, and of ever-threatening death, he calls to his aid the obscure power of his gods. The philosopher, nourished on speculation, and arrived at the dualistic and divided consciousness of the disciples of Kant, obeys the same instinctive impulse and the same vital necessity when he seeks in the notion of God the conciliation of the conflict which he feels between the ego and the world, between pure reason and the practical reason. He needs a universal Being on whom he feels himself to depend, and on whom he may equally make to depend the whole universe. In uniting himself to Him, he affirms and confirms his own life; he feels God to be active and present, in his thought under the form of logical law, in his will under the form of moral law. He is saved by faith in the interior God, in whom is realised the unity of his being. It is therefore true to say that the human mind cannot believe in itself without believing in God, and that, on the other hand, it cannot believe in God without finding Him within itself.