ich mine for my
purpose. It contains (and it is one of its best privileges) a goodly
number of savants, whom the observation of the facts of matter have not
caused to forget the claims of mind, and who know how to raise their
souls to the Author of the marvels which they study. You will understand
therefore that it has not been from anxiety for my cause, but from a
motive of discretion, that I have forborne to bring into this discussion
the names of men in whom we have a near interest, and many of whom
perhaps are present in this assembly. I will take advantage of Mr.
Faraday's letter to make a single exception, by naming M. de la Rive.
More than once, and in public, we have heard him distinctly point out
the place occupied by the sciences of mind in relation to the natural
sciences, and render glory to the Creator. And I do not think that any
one, in Switzerland or elsewhere, can claim to speak with disdain, in
the name of the physical sciences, of the religious convictions boldly
professed by our learned fellow-countryman.[113]

Recollect, Gentlemen, that I have not undertaken to prove the existence
of God, by making appeal to the authority of men of science. All I have
sought to do has been to destroy a prejudice. They tell us, and scream
it at us, that the best naturalists become atheists. This is not true,
as I think I have shown. There do exist atheists who cultivate the
natural sciences,--no doubt of the fact. But even though half the whole
number of naturalists were atheists, inasmuch as other naturalists, and
those some of the greatest, find in their studies new motives to
adoration, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true cause why
these savants repudiate religion has nothing to do with their science.
We shall come to be more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass
now from the question of fact to considerations of sound reason.

The weakness of the human mind leads it to forget the facts with which
it is not occupied. All special culture of the intellect risks
consequently the paralyzing a part of our faculties. Hegel, lost in
abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by
pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race. A
geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and
demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic
masterpiece, "And what does that prove?" A physiologist absorbed in the
study of sensible phenomena says: