Thus instead of saying what God is, the philosophers, heathen as well as Christian, prefer to say what He is not. But in that case what idea could man form of a Being whom the wisest amongst them could not represent or describe? Do we understand the nature of this Supreme Being better by using the name so well known of Providence? Again no; since we have introduced several meanings into this word which are inconsistent the one with the other. Amongst them there might well be some that are erroneous, which would thus lead us to rest our hopes on false foundations. This mist, hiding from us the meaning of words and obscuring our ideas, is partly owing to a fault committed by the ancients themselves. When our ancestors communed with their divinities, they did not ask themselves what the names they pronounced really meant; in invoking Varuna, Helios, Athene, Prithvi, and the others, they were satisfied, at least for the time being, since names possess a strange calming property; this unquestioning acquiescence has been bequeathed to us. We are neither more enquiring, more exact, nor more pedantic than the greater part of our ancestors; we speak of angels, for instance, without seeking to fathom their nature, much in the same way as we might mention lords and dukes without troubling ourselves to reflect that the one means “bread-giver” and the other “dux,” or one capable of being a leader of men. In speaking of the soul, the immortality of the soul, and of religion, we use words which have become common property, and it is not necessary to analyse them in order to feel sure that they represent things which are very real; still we do not strive to understand what these things really are. Thus it happens that words whose meaning is unknown to us or escapes us, are generally those of which we make daily use; we keep to the impression received of them in our childhood, or accepted by current opinion, or with which sentiment invests them, but this is unsatisfactory; we should feel ashamed of not possessing more accurate knowledge than this of geography or arithmetic. On the other hand, there are scientific terms which seem to us so technical that we willingly abandon their use to experts, and yet their meaning can be readily and definitely grasped. What meaning, for instance, has the word _infinite_ for us, even if taken in its most simple acceptation; this _infinite_ towards which our thoughts travel when we raise our eyes to the skies? Astronomers say to us, “Look at something greater than the greatest possible greatness, that is the infinitely great.” They then quote figures, but these figures of infinite greatness elude our imagination, we repeat them mechanically and only out of respect to the high scientific authority who guarantees the accuracy of the calculations or the value of the appreciation.