e does the same on the other.
Science is total and has already shown Catholicism that such is the case,
and will show it again and again by compelling it to repair the breaches
incessantly effected in its ramparts till the day of victory shall come
with the final assault of resplendent truth. Frankly, it makes one laugh
to hear people assign a _role_ to Science, forbid her to enter such and
such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare
that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she
abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you
politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians
so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and
sweep you all away like withered leaves!

Pierre continued glancing through the humble little book, listening to
all it told him of sovereign Science. She cannot become bankrupt, for she
does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of
truth. Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one
effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of
revelation, of faith. The _role_ of Science, on the contrary, is only to
destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment. And
thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she
remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds. As
for those whom she does not satisfy, who crave for immediate and
universal knowledge, they have the resource of seeking refuge in no
matter what religious hypothesis, provided, if they wish to appear in the
right, that they build their fancy upon acquired certainties. Everything
which is raised on proven error falls. However, although religious
feeling persists among mankind, although the need of religion may be
eternal, it by no means follows that Catholicism is eternal, for it is,
after all, but one form of religion, which other forms preceded and which
others will follow. Religions may disappear, but religious feeling will
create new ones even with the help of Science. Pierre thought of that
alleged repulse of Science by the present-day awakening of mysticism, the
causes of which he had indicated in his book: the discredit into which
the idea of liberty has fallen among the people, duped in the last social
reorganisation, and the uneasiness of the _elite_, in despair at the void
in which their liberated m