imple nonsense. If
she leaves, and no doubt will always leave a smaller and smaller domain
to mystery, and if supposition may always strive to explain that mystery,
it is none the less certain that she ruins, and with each successive hour
will add to the ruin of the ancient hypotheses, those which crumble away
before the acquired truths. And Catholicism is in the position of those
ancient hypotheses, and will be in it yet more thoroughly to-morrow. Like
all religions it is, at the bottom, but an explanation of the world, a
superior social and political code, intended to bring about the greatest
possible sum of peace and happiness on earth. This code which embraces
the universality of things thenceforth becomes human, and mortal like
everything that is human. One cannot put it on one side and say that it
exists on one side by itself, whilst Science does the same on the other.
Science is total and has already shown Catholicism that such is the case,
and will show it again and again by compelling it to repair the breaches
incessantly effected in its ramparts till the day of victory shall come
with the final assault of resplendent truth. Frankly, it makes one laugh
to hear people assign a _role_ to Science, forbid her to enter such and
such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare
that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she
abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you
politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians
so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and
sweep you all away like withered leaves!

Pierre continued glancing through the humble little book, listening to
all it told him of sovereign Science. She cannot become bankrupt, for she
does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of
truth. Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one
effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of
revelation, of faith. The _role_ of Science, on the contrary, is only to
destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment. And
thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she
remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds. As
for those whom she does not satisfy, who crave for immediate and
universal knowledge, they have the resource of seeking refuge in no
matter what religious hypothesis