Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are multiplying with the object of defending the existence of God, Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against the rising flood of atheism.[53] And here is a fact still more significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are passing in review the worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of God, without having their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention directed to contemporary productions.[54] I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing principally as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed, doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the Rhine. A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the following words: "I have only had one disciple who has understood me--and he has misunderstood me." A man distinguished in metaphysical research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect, devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secretan, writes with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian system: "If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one has ever understood it."[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor, in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.