The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES In fact, Pascal died mad. But Voltaire blasphemed no less against science, when he declared that every hypothesis of faith was absurd, and admitted for the rule of reason only the witness of the senses. Moreover, the last word of Voltaire was this contradic- tory formula: “Gop AnD Liperty.” God! that is to say, a Supreme Master, excludes every idea of liberty, as the school of Voltaire understood it. And Liberty, by which is meant an absolute independence of any master, which excludes all idea of God. The word Gop expresses the supreme personification of law, and by consequence, of duty; and if by the word LiBerTY, you are willing to accept our interpretation, THE RIGHT OF DOING ONE’s Duty, we in our turn will take it for a motto, and we shall repeat, without contradiction and without error: “Gop AND LiBErTy.” As there is no liberty for man but in the order which results from the true and the good, one may say that the conquest of liberty is the great work of the human soul. Man, by freeing himself from his evil passions and their slavery, creates himself, as it were, a second time. Nature made him living and suffering; he makes himself happy and immortal; he thus becomes the representative of divinity upon earth, and (relatively) exercises its almighty power. Axiom I Nothing resists the will of man, when he knows the truth, and wills the good. 235