Nor is this life-impulse (_elan de la vie_) produced in the void, or objectless. It rests upon a feeling inherent in every conscious individual, the feeling of dependence which every man experiences with respect to universal being. Which of us can escape this feeling of absolute dependence? Not only is our destiny, in principle, decided outside ourselves and apart from ourselves according to the general laws of cosmical evolution, in the course of which we appear at a given time and place with a heritage of forces which we have not chosen or produced, but, not being able to discover in ourselves or in any series of individuals the sufficient reason of our existence, we are obliged to seek outside ourselves, in universal being, the first cause and ultimate aim of our existence and our life. To be religious is, at first, to recognise, to accept with confidence, with simplicity and humility, this subjection of our individual consciousness; it is to bring this back and bind it to its eternal principle; it is to will to be in the order and the harmony of life. This feeling of our subordination thus furnishes the experimental and indestructible basis of the idea of God. This idea may possibly remain more or less indetermined, and may indeed never be perfected in our mind; but its object does not on that account elude our consciousness. Before all reflection, and before all rational determination, it is given to us and, as it were, imposed on us in the very fact of our absolute dependence; without fear we may establish this equation: the feeling of our dependence is that of the mysterious presence of God in us. Such is the deep source from which the idea of the divine springs up within us irresistibly. But it springs at once as religion and as an effect of religion.