r of electric
currents. The science of nature does not demonstrate the existence of
God; still less can it deny His existence. To deny God, it would be
necessary for science to demonstrate that there is no order, and
consequently no cause of the order to discover; for when we point out
the harmony of the universe, we manifestly prepare a basis for the
argument which, from the intelligence recognized in the phenomena, will
infer the intelligence of the Power which governs them. To prove that
there is no order would be to prove that there is no science. For any
one who well understands the value of terms, the words _atheistical
science_ contain a contradiction; they signify science which proves that
there is no science.

Such, Gentlemen, is the real state of the question. Our savants, when
they remain faithful to their method, seek to determine the laws of
phenomena, and do not occupy themselves either with the First Cause of
nature, or with its general object; they leave the question of God on
one side. Whence come then the negations of naturalists? They arise in
this way: those savants who succeed in strictly confining themselves
within the limits of their science are rare exceptions. Almost always
the _man_ introduces his thoughts into the work of the savant, and the
results of his study appear to him religious or irreligious, according
to his views of religion. Newton ends his book with a hymn to the
Creator; but it is not the _mathematical principles_ of nature which
have revealed to him the Sovereign God. He perceives the rays of His
glory because he believes in Him. In the same way, the atheist thinks
that his researches disprove the existence of God, because God is veiled
from his soul. In both cases it is a doctrine foreign to pure natural
science which gives a color to its results. Self-deception is very
common in this matter, and in both directions. The religious mind does
not understand how it is possible to contemplate the universe, and not
see inscribed upon it distinctly the name of its Author; and the
intrusion of atheism into the sciences of observation is veiled beneath
confusions of ideas which it is of importance for us to dissipate.

Modern science, as we have said, stops at laws, without troubling itself
with causes. The laws which determine the series of facts as they offer
themselves to observation express the mode of the action of the causes.
There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the powe