Let us now apply these considerations to the Infinite Being, and to the problem of the end of the creation. Leaving ourselves to the guidance of the laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall be able to attribute to the Creator in His work? Will creation be the effect of a necessity? No, Sirs, for in that case everything in the world would be a matter of fate, and liberty would remain inexplicable. If a blind power were directing the Almighty Will, we should return to the worship of destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out of a design of which the motive is interest? But what conceivable interest can influence Him who is the plentitude of being? Or will creation be a duty? But whence should come the obligation for the Being who is in Himself the absolute law? Creation can only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness, of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by Pere Lacordaire.[181] He is entering upon this question: What can have been the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the love which gives itself, which he designates by the term--goodness. "Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before God, which preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give a name without betraying the truth?... There remained something, Sirs, be very sure, more generous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and if you find it hard to understand me, if your own endowments are unknown to you, listen to Bossuet speaking of you:--'When God,' says he, 'made the heart of man, the first thing He planted there was goodness:' goodness; that is to say, that virtue which does not consult self-interest, which does not wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to be solicited by the attraction of the beautiful, but which stoops towards its object all the more, as it is poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy of contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man possesses that adorable faculty. It is not genius, nor glory, nor love, which measures the elevation of his soul,--it is goodness. This it is which gives to the human countenance its principal and most powerful charm; this it is which draws us together; this it is which brings into communication the good and the evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth, the great mediating principle.