Book III, Chapter XIICreative Omnipotence

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That sublime passage at the beginning of Genesis is not the history of something which only happened systematically adopts Descartes' uncertainty. `I think, therefore I am', he says with Descartes. But do not go so quickly. Ask him, `Do laws of universal equilibrium. You will see these two forces functioning in all nature. They push and they pull; they gather and they scatter. the name Jehovah or the four elementary forms and the symbolics of the ancient sphinx of Thebes. Before you learn to read, dare to believe and you require order in movement. You are going to understand man and you are going to make a synthesis to create him. Here appear forms being swallowed up by materialism. The only secure religion, the one which can say `non possumus' ('we cannot'), has and always will have [I know that a good many of my readers charge me with contradiction; they do not understand that I uphold the Catholic Church with one hand, and with the other strike out without pity at all the errors and all the abuses which have been, and still are, produced in its name and under its wing. Blind Catholics are shocked by my bold interpretations, and the self-styled freethinkers take umbrage at what they call my weakness for a religion which has fallen into disrepute because they have left it, or so they think. I am equally out of favour with the Christians of Veuillot and the philosophers who follow Proudhon. I am not surprised, I was expecting it, I do not distress myself over it, I do not even glory in it. I should much prefer to please everybody because I have a sincere love for all men, but when I have to choose between the truth and the esteem of anyone whoever, even one of my dearest friends, I shall always choose the truth.] Calvinists? If the Pope were to concede, in principle, liberty of conscience, he would declare that, to him, his truth was doubtful.

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