those some of the greatest, find in their studies new motives to
adoration, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true cause why
these savants repudiate religion has nothing to do with their science.
We shall come to be more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass
now from the question of fact to considerations of sound reason.

The weakness of the human mind leads it to forget the facts with which
it is not occupied. All special culture of the intellect risks
consequently the paralyzing a part of our faculties. Hegel, lost in
abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by
pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race. A
geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and
demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic
masterpiece, "And what does that prove?" A physiologist absorbed in the
study of sensible phenomena says: "Where is that soul they talk of? I
have never seen it." These are phenomena of the same order. This
infirmity of the mind, which leads certain savants to think that the
ordinary subject of their studies is everything, must not be imputed to
science. A man accustomed to the exclusive observation of material
phenomena, may become a materialist by the effect of his mental habits,
and this really happens, in fact, in too many instances; but the study
in itself is not responsible for this result. Let us endeavor to prove
this, by clearly defining the object of the natural sciences.

When the matter of a phenomenon is given to us, the understanding
proposes to itself three questions:

1. How does the fact manifest itself? what is the mode of its existence?
The answer gives us the law of the phenomenon. Bodies fall to the ground
at a determined rate of speed: the determination of this rate is the law