But on the continent of Europe, Syncretism has been much more fully developed, and fearlessly applied to every department of human thought.

Pushed to its ultimate consequences, it obliterates the distinction not only between truth and error, but also between virtue and vice, nay even between Religion and Atheism; and represents them all as constituent parts of a scheme, which is developed under a law of "fatal necessity," but which is described also as a scheme of "optimism." Its range is supposed to be unlimited: for it has been applied to the History of Philosophy, by Cousin, to the theory of the Passions, by Fourier, to the doctrines of Christianity, by Quinet and Michelet, and to the Philosophy of Religion, by Benjamin Constant.

The practical result of such speculations is a growing _skepticism_ or _indifference_ in regard to the distinction between truth and error, and a very faint impression of the difference between good and evil.[225] The speculations of Pierre Leroux, the head, if not the founder, of the Humanitarian School, are strongly tinged with this spirit: they amount to a justification of evil, an apotheosis of man.[226] We do not class these speculations among the formal systems of Atheism, although they have often been associated with it; but we advert to them as specimens of that style of thinking which has a natural tendency to induce an atheistic frame of mind.[227] The profession of such sentiments is a symptom rather of incipient danger, than of confirmed disease.

But that danger is far from being either doubtful or insignificant.

For should the distinction between "truth and error" be obliterated or even feebly discerned, should it come to be regarded as a matter of comparative indifference whether our beliefs be true or false, should it, above all, become our prevailing habit to "call good evil, and evil good," we can scarcely fail, in such circumstances, to fall into a course of _practical Atheism_; and this, as all experience testifies, will leave us an easy prey, especially in seasons of peculiar temptation and trial, to any form of _speculative Infidelity_ that may happen to acquire a temporary ascendancy.