In other words, atheism, sometimes called humanism, true in its
critical and negative features, would be, if it stopped at man in
his natural condition, if it discarded as an erroneous judgment
the first affirmation of humanity, that it is the daughter,
emanation, image, reflection, or voice of God,--humanism, I say,
if it thus denied its past, would be but one contradiction more.
We are forced, then, to undertake the criticism of humanism; that
is, to ascertain whether humanity, considered as a whole and
throughout all its periods of development, satisfies the Divine
idea, after eliminating from the latter the exaggerated and
fanciful attributes of God; whether it satisfies the perfection
of being; whether it satisfies itself. We are forced, in short,
to inquire whether humanity TENDS TOWARD God, according to the
ancient dogma, or is itself BECOMING God, as modern philosophers
claim. Perhaps we shall find in the end that the two systems,
despite their seeming opposition, are both true and essentially
identical: in that case, the infallibility of human reason, in
its collective manifestations as well as its studied
speculations, would be decisively confirmed.--In a word, until we
have verified to man the hypothesis of God, there is nothing
definitive in the atheistic negation.

It is, then, a scientific, that is, an empirical demonstration of
the idea of God, that we need: now, such a demonstration has
never been attempted. Theology dogmatizing on the authority of
its myths, philosophy speculating by the aid of categories, God
has existed as a TRANSCENDENTAL conception, incognizable by the
reason, and the hypothesis always subsists.