matter, a something--I know not what--which has no longer a name. Vain attempt! This nameless something, so long as it is anything, will not be _nothing_. Between it and nothing there will always be the infinite. If the goodness of God is applied to any object which was existing independently of Him, however poor and abject that object be conceived to have been, then God is no longer the unique, the absolute Creator. If imagination will cross the abyss, we shall come of necessity to say--what? that the object of infinite love must have been non-existence. This is what the orator already quoted has done:--"All perfection supposes an object to which to apply itself. The divine goodness therefore requires an object as vast and profound as itself. God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said to Time: Begin!" This, Gentlemen, is eloquence. The thought in itself does not bear a rigorous analysis; but do not think that the lustrous beauty of the language is only a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the cloud is lighted up by the ray that issues from it. Our goodness, finite creatures as we are, is so much the greater as the object on which it is bestowed is less. Infinite goodness must create for itself an object. It does not love nothingness, but a creature which is nothing in itself, a creature simply possible, which, before owing to it the blessings of existence, shall owe to it that existence itself. The only being that we can represent to ourselves, by a sublime image, as stooping towards nothingness, is He whose look gives life. The creature is willed for itself, or,--to quote the words of Professor Secretan, addressed to you last year,--the foundation of nature is grace.[182] We ask: What can have been the object of creation? Our reason answers: The Infinite Being can only act from goodness, He can have no other object than the happiness of His creatures.