276 CONCLUSION
fairly rude shocks before being consigned to the museum of history.
For our part, let us remain hopeful. Hope, in fact, is inseparable
from faith and love. Only form is mortal; truth remains. It is knowledge
and consciousness; it is life. Because the incomparable history of
Freemasonry touches the Absolute—that is to say, the truth—it is rea-
sonable to think that the Freemasons will figure out a way to rediscover
it beneath the antiquated veil now covering it and will discover a way
to restore it with enthusiastic force and vigor.
Those who have faith in God don't see him with the eyes of chil-
dren, enthroned on top of a mountain of sugar between blessed rivers
of honey. We refrain from talking of him too much and seeking to
define him. It is preferable to envision the itinerary that allows us to
approach him and to think that God constructed himself in such a way
that man's gravitation to the Spirit is, by virtue of reason, the best proof
of God's existence. Those of increasing number who do not believe in
God or who turn him into an abstraction out of a concern for tolerance,
base what they deem to be just, good, and desirable on the good use of
reason, on their trust in intelligence, and on the infinite perfectability of
humanity.
The difference between these two attitudes is essentially dependent
on the value given to the origin of reason: God, still unknown to the
believer; or the unknown, for the nonbeliever another cause for natural
laws that govern life. In one case or the other, if we use our ability to
reason as best we can, to work with the certitude of the goal yet to be
attained, what are we doing if not working under the auspices of and
for the glory of this Unknown? And what better symbol for this
Unknown than that of the Great Architect of the Universe?
The sound use of reason, the goal to be attained, and the rule of
conduct to follow still remain to be set. The common denominator to
which all is reduced and which encompasses everything in accordance
with the initiatory tradition is the human being in whom all virtual
states are immanent. The goal is the flowering and fullness of human
destiny. The conduct to be upheld is love—the love that permits this
flowering through what we receive and, even more, through the com-
plete gift of self to the Absolute. The key to happiness is nowhere else.
The vast chain of union formed by Freemasons remains relevant