support of this denial I proceed to show that the hypothesis which it is
pretended to get quit of, is the generating principle of all human
knowledge.

Whence does science proceed? Does it result from mere experience? No.
What does experience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience,
separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own
sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to
demonstration,--a demonstration which constitutes his glory. It is easy,
without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well
that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the
faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought
does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not
possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its
tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no
thoughts, and will know nothing.

Is science formed by pure reason? No. No one can say what pure reason
is, for the exercise of our thought is connected indissolubly with
experience. But, without pausing at this consideration, let us ask what
pure reason can do, if deprived of all objects of experience? One thing
only, namely, take cognizance of itself. Now the reason, in taking
cognizance of itself, only creates logic, that is to say, the theory of
the laws of knowledge. Some philosophers, to be sure, have undertaken to
prove that reason, by dint of self-contemplation, might arrive at the
knowledge of all things. They have maintained that all the secrets of
the universe are contained in our thought, and that by just reasoning
one may form the science of astronomy without looking at the stars, and
write the history of the human race without taking the trouble to search
laboriously into the annals of the past. But these attempts to