第43章

If science or miracles were the end and object of humanity, Moses would have bequeathed to you the law of fluxions; Jesus Christ would have lightened the darkness of your sciences; his apostles would have told you whence come those vast trains of gas and melted metals, attached to cores which revolve and solidify as they dart through ether, or violently enter some system and combine with a star, jostling and displacing it by the shock, or destroying it by the infiltration of their deadly gases; Saint Paul, instead of telling you to live in God, would have explained why food is the secret bond among all creations and the evident tie between all living Species.In these days the greatest miracle of all would be the discovery of the squaring of the circle,--a problem which you hold to be insoluble, but which is doubtless solved in the march of worlds by the intersection of some mathematical lines whose course is visible to the eye of spirits who have reached the higher spheres.Believe me, miracles are in us, not without us.Here natural facts occur which men call supernatural.God would have been strangely unjust had he confined the testimony of his power to certain generations and peoples and denied them to others.The brazen rod belongs to all.Neither Moses, nor Jacob, nor Zoroaster, nor Paul, nor Pythagoras, nor Swedenborg, not the humblest Messenger nor the loftiest Prophet of the Most High are greater than you are capable of being.Only, there come to nations as to men certain periods when Faith is theirs.

"If material sciences be the end and object of human effort, tell me, both of you, would societies,--those great centres where men congregate,--would they perpetually be dispersed? If civilization were the object of our Species, would intelligence perish? would it continue purely individual? The grandeur of all nations that were truly great was based on exceptions; when the exception ceased their power died.If such were the End-all, Prophets, Seers, and Messengers of God would have lent their hand to Science rather than have given it to Belief.Surely they would have quickened your brains sooner than have touched your hearts! But no; one and all they came to lead the nations back to God; they proclaimed the sacred Path in simple words that showed the way to heaven; all were wrapped in love and faith, all were inspired by that WORD which hovers above the inhabitants of earth, enfolding them, inspiriting them, uplifting them; none were prompted by any human interest.Your great geniuses, your poets, your kings, your learned men are engulfed with their cities; while the names of these good pastors of humanity, ever blessed, have survived all cataclysms.

"Alas! we cannot understand each other on any point.We are separated by an abyss.You are on the side of darkness, while I--I live in the light, the true Light! Is this the word that you ask of me? I say it with joy; it may change you.Know this: there are sciences of matter and sciences of spirit.There, where you see substances, I see forces that stretch one toward another with generating power.To me, the character of bodies is the indication of their principles and the sign of their properties.Those principles beget affinities which escape your knowledge, and which are linked to centres.The different species among which life is distributed are unfailing streams which correspond unfailingly among themselves.Each has his own vocation.Man is effect and cause.He is fed, but he feeds in turn.When you call God a Creator, you dwarf Him.He did not create, as you think He did, plants or animals or stars.Could He proceed by a variety of means? Must He not act by unity of composition? Moreover, He gave forth principles to be developed, according to His universal law, at the will of the surroundings in which they were placed.Hence a single substance and motion, a single plant, a single animal, but correlations everywhere.

In fact, all affinities are linked together by contiguous similitudes;the life of the worlds is drawn toward the centres by famished aspiration, as you are drawn by hunger to seek food.