Thus the idea of the cause is kept out of sight. Let us now see the fate
to which are consigned those other requirements of the reason--the
eternal and the infinite. I take up Dr. Büchner's book, and I read: "We
are incapable of forming an idea, even approximately, of the _eternal_
and the _infinite_, because our mind, shut up within the limits of the
senses, in what regards space and time, is quite unable to pass these
bounds so as to rise to the height of these ideas." I follow the text,
and thirteen lines further on, in the same page, I read, "Therefore
matter and space must be eternal."[118] Observe well the use which this
writer makes of the great ideas of the reason. Is it desired to employ
them to prove the existence of God? He will have nothing to do with
them. Is the object in question to deny God's existence? He makes use of
them; and all in the same page. This is coarse work, no doubt, and Dr.
Büchner damages his cause; but, under forms, often more subtle and more
intelligent, the same sophism turns up in all systems of
materialism.[119] It is affirmed that we have no real idea of the
infinite, and it is sought at the same time to beguile the need which
reason feels of this idea by applying it to matter.

Pray do not suppose that I am here attacking the natural sciences, in
the interest of metaphysics. I am not attacking but defending them. I am
endeavoring, as far as in me lies, to avenge them from the outrages
which are offered to them by materialism, while it seeks to cover with
their noble mantle its own shameful nakedness. Naturalists on the one
hand, and theologians and philosophers on the other, are too often at
war. They are men, and as nothing human is foreign to them, they are not
unacquainted either with proud prepossessions, or with jealous
rivalries, or with the miserable struggles of envy: with these things
the passions are chargeable. But never render the sciences responsible