To understand is to master an object, to mould it so as to fit our intelligence. We can understand the infinite, we can master it. Therefore, we are at least equal to the infinite, 'we are ourselves the infinite,' we ourselves lay it down by a logical process. Hence the astounding proposal which Fichte made to his disciples, that the next day he would proceed to create God, was nothing else but the echo and logical consequence of the cry raised by the unfrocked monk of Wittenberg, proclaiming the independence of reason from the shackles of all authority. On the other hand, the denial of human liberty and the absolute predestination of the Calvinists give the same result. If we are not free agents, if God can do what he lists with us, we are no longer agents in the strictest and truest sense of the word. Now, every substance is an act, a _monos_, a force; if, then, we are not agents, we are not substances, and hence we become qualities, phenomena of the infinite substance. All this as regards doctrine. But Protestantism ran into Pantheism by another road almost as soon as it arose, for the action of the feelings is swifter and more rapid than logic. Protestantism being rationalism in doctrine is necessarily naturalism with regard to the soul; and by presenting to the soul only nature, its authors left the craving after the supernatural and the infinite thirsty and bleeding. What was the consequence? Many Protestant sects fell into mysticism, which is but a sentimental Pantheism, a species of interior theurgy. History is too well known to render necessary any proof of these assertions. These are the consequences at which active minds must arrive when, in their researches, they do not meet with truth. As to those minds which are not active, or not persevering in their inquiries, they fall into indifference, which is but a scepticism of the soul, as doubt is the scepticism of the mind. Now, the question arises, What is the best method of refuting Pantheism? Many have been the refutations of Pantheism, but they are limited to pointing out the absurd consequences following from it, which consequences, summed up, amount to this: that Pantheism destroys and makes void the principle of contradiction in all the orders to which it may be applied; that is to say, it makes void that principle in the ontological order or order of realities, in the logical order, etc.