four Gospels, a single piece of reasoning,
any more than there is an interjection to be found.

Let us add that faith does not reason: which does not mean, as so many
misbelievers feign, that faith is fulfilled by blindness or ignorance of
the objects of its veneration. Quite the contrary. Faith dispenses with
reason because of the perfection of its sight. It is, finally, because
it is superior to reason and sees things from a higher plane. This is
what so many short-sighted people cannot see; and, to return to our
analogy, it seems to them able to see nothing save through the glasses
of reason. It seems to them, I say, that any man who does not wear
glasses must see crooked. Keep your glasses, my good souls! They suit
short limits of sight. But we, who, thank God, have sound sight, are
only troubled and clouded by them.

It is thus that reason, which is given us to make clear what is not
evident, frequently obscures even the very evidence itself. We might
confirm this declaration by a thousand examples. To cite but one, let us
point out how plainly the spectacle of the universe of thought and the
idea of a Divine Creator prove that no glasses are required to
contemplate God in His works. Well! scientists have felt obliged to
direct theirs upon these simple notions, and have thus, _i.e._, by force
of reasoning, succeeded in confusing out of all recognition a question
sparkling with evidence, so much so that they will fall into such a
state of blindness that they can no longer see in this world any trace
of the Supreme Intelligence which is yet manifested with glory in the
least of His creatures. Consequently, they will bluntly deny the
existence of God; but as they still must needs admit a creative cause,
they have to that end invented _moving atoms_ and have made from these
strange corpuscles something so perfectly invisible that they can spare
themselves the trouble of providing public curiosity with a living proof
of their theory.

The scientist is born perverted, as was said of the Frenchman who
created the vaudeville; and men, too strong-minded and above all too
full of reason to give any credence to the mysteries taught by the
church, have displayed a blind faith in respect to _moving atoms_. They
think thus to set themselves free from what they call the prejudices of
their fathers. They find no difficulty in attributing to invisible
corpuscles both the plan and the execution of the beings who people the
unive