thesis of the divine tottered and fell. Only that little school
book, nothing but the universal desire for knowledge, that education
which ever extends and penetrates the whole people, and behold the
mysteries became absurdities, the dogmas crumbled, and nothing of ancient
faith was left. A nation nourished upon Science, no longer believing in
mysteries and dogmas, in a compensatory system of reward and punishment,
is a nation whose faith is for ever dead: and without faith Catholicism
cannot be. Therein is the blade of the knife, the knife which falls and
severs. If one century, if two centuries be needed, Science will take
them. She alone is eternal. It is pure _naivete_ to say that reason is
not contrary to faith. The truth is, that now already in order to save
mere fragments of the sacred writings, it has been necessary to
accommodate them to the new certainties, by taking refuge in the
assertion that they are simply symbolical! And what an extraordinary
attitude is that of the Catholic Church, expressly forbidding all those
who may discover a truth contrary to the sacred writings to pronounce
upon it in definitive fashion, and ordering them to await events in the
conviction that this truth will some day be proved an error! Only the
Pope, says the Church, is infallible; Science is fallible, her constant
groping is exploited against her, and divines remain on the watch
striving to make it appear that her discoveries of to-day are in
contradiction with her discoveries of yesterday. What do her sacrilegious
assertions, what do her certainties rending dogma asunder, matter to a
Catholic since it is certain that at the end of time, she, Science, will
again join Faith, and become the latter's very humble slave! Voluntary
blindness and impudent denial of things as evident as the sunlight, can
no further go. But all the same the insignificant little book, the manual
of truth travels on continuing its work, destroying error and building up
the new world, even as the infinitesimal agents of life built up our
present continents.

In the sudden great enlightenment which had come on him Pierre at last
felt himself upon firm ground. Has Science ever retreated? It is
Catholicism which has always retreated before her, and will always be
forced to retreat. Never does Science stop, step by step she wrests truth
from error, and to say that she is bankrupt because she cannot explain
the world in one word and at one effort, is pure and s