Reason rather separates us
from Him. We cannot first know Him in order that afterwards we may love
Him; we must begin by loving Him, longing for Him, hungering after Him,
before knowing Him. The knowledge of God proceeds from the love of God,
and this knowledge has little or nothing of the rational in it. For God
is indefinable. To seek to define Him is to seek to confine Him within
the limits of our mind--that is to say, to kill Him. In so far as we
attempt to define Him, there rises up before us--Nothingness.
The idea of God, formulated by a theodicy that claims to be rational, is
simply an hypothesis, like the hypotheses of ether, for example.
Ether is, in effect, a merely hypothetical entity, valuable only in so
far as it explains that which by means of it we endeavour to
explain--light, electricity or universal gravitation--and only in so far
as these facts cannot be explained in any other way. In like manner the
idea of God is also an hypothesis, valuable only in so far as it enables
us to explain that which by means of if we endeavour to explain--the
essence and existence of the Universe--and only so long as these cannot
be explained in any other way. And since in reality we explain the
Universe neither better nor worse with this idea than without it, the
idea of God, the supreme _petitio principii_, is valueless.
But if ether is nothing but an hypothesis explanatory of light, air, on
the other hand, is a thing that is directly felt; and even though it did
not enable us to explain the phenomenon of sound, we should nevertheless
always be directly aware of it, and, above all, of the lack of it in
moments of suffocation or air-hunger.
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