nison. Now, here are contrasts, which, contrary to all rational data,
so far from being exaggerated by contact, diminish gradually, until they
are utterly annihilated. Thus, then, given two instruments of the same
nature, if the harmony which they effect be true, they enter by reason
of their conjunction into a negative state which neutralizes their
sonority; while the contrary occurs in the case of false unison. Here
the instruments become identical with one another, the sonority is
increased and the tonal deviation is corrected to the most perfect
harmony.

Obstinate rationalists, what is your logic worth here? Has it armed you
against the surprises held in store for you by a multitude of facts
inaccordant with your reasonings? Oh, proud and haughty reason, bow your
head! Confess the inanity of your ways. Bow yet, once again, and
contemplate the mystery whence luminous instruction shall beam for you!

At bottom these mysteries may surprise and baffle a reason deprived of
principle; but they are never contrary to it, because they proceed from
reason itself, from that Supreme Reason which created us in its own
image; and, by that very fact, is always in accord with individual
reason in so far as this will consent to sacrifice its own prejudices to
it, or listen to its infallible lessons.

But man's reason most frequently heeds itself alone. Thence, once again,
arise its infirmities. Thus, what will happen, if, because the truths
which I utter here are obscure and do not at the first glance appear to
conform to the requirements of logic, you hastily reject them with all
the loftiness of your scornful reason, which would blush to admit what
it did not understand! Poor reason! which in and of itself understands
so little, and admits so many follies as soon as a scholar affirms them.
The consequence will be that you will be strengthened in the error which
flatters your ignorance. Behold that proud reason which would never
bend before a mystery revealed, behold it, I say, bowed beneath the
weight of prejudices, which there will be more than one scholar, more
than one logician, ready to endorse.

Thus reason will refuse as unworthy itself, all belief in the actions of
God or of unseen spirits, the angels, heaven, but will not dare to doubt
the existence of _moving atoms_, invisible corpuscles. This is the
mental poverty into which the enemies of religious faith unwittingly
fall. They pervert that instrument of reason whose