We are to consider to what
extent the one was dependent upon the other; and whether, in reality,
the artist whom so many voices proclaimed "incomparable" owed his vast
superiority to acts of religious devotion, to his adhesion to the dogmas
of the church.
It is not arbitrarily that a transcendent intellect pointed out a
difference between _religion_ and _religions_: every mind devoted to
philosophy must needs reach this distinction.
I shall keep strictly within the limits of that which concerns art, in a
question so vast and of such great importance.
_Religion_ is that need which all generations of men have felt for
establishing a relationship between man and the supreme power or powers
whence man supposes he proceeded. To some it is an outburst of
gratitude and homage; to others, an instinct of terror which makes them
fall prostrate before an unknown being upon whom they feel themselves
dependent, although they cannot know him, still less define him.
_Religions_ are all which men have established in answer to those
aspirations of the conscience, to satisfy that intuition which forces
itself upon our mind so long as sophistry has not warped it. It follows
from this, that religions vary, are changed, and may be falsified until
the primitive meaning is lost. But whatever may be the faith and the
rites of religions--whether fanaticism disfigure them or fetichism make
a caricature of them, whether politicians use them as an ally, or the
traces of the apostolate fade beneath the materialism of
speculation,--there will always remain at the bottom, _religion_: that
is, the thought which keeps such or such a society alive for a variable
time, and which, in periods of transition, seeks refuge in human
consciences awaiting a fresh social upward flight.
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