4 8 



both have then evolved their successive forms 

 following an initial creative impulse. 



One cannot, however, deny that these 

 theories, whilst rendering more and more 

 inflexible and universal the idea of causality, 

 lead necessarily to the negation of God, 

 because one can always ask oneself : " and 

 who has created God? " And if the answer 

 is : " God has always existed," one can retort 

 by affirming that the universe has always 

 existed. Following the remark of M. Ardigo, 

 human thought cannot conceive that the chain 

 which binds effects to causes, can terminate 

 at a purely conventional given point.* 



God, as Laplace has said, is an hypothesis 

 of which positive science has no need. He is, 

 according to Herzen, at the most an X which 

 contains in itself not the unknowable as 

 Spencer and Dubois Reymond claim but all 

 that humanity does not yet know. Also it is 

 a variable X which decreases in proportion 

 as the discoveries of science advance. 



It is for this reason that science and religion 

 are in inverse ratio one to the other ; the 

 one diminishes and becomes feeble in the 

 same measure as the other increases and is 

 strengthened in its struggle with the unknown. 



And if this is a consequence of Darwinism, 

 its influence on the development of socialism 

 is perfectly evident. 



The disappearance of the faith in something 

 beyond when the poor will become the elect 



* Ardigo, La Formazione naturale, vol. n, in his 

 Opere filologiche, and vol. 6, La Ragione, Padua, 1894. 



