testimony of his fellow. In this order of things a man can observe
directly only what he concurs in producing. With this reservation, we
may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that
of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be
held as true when it accounts for facts.

And so, Gentlemen, we conclude that every scientific truth is, in its
origin, a supposition of the mind, the result of which is to produce the
meeting together of experience and reason, and so to permit the rational
reconstruction of the facts.

Every system is shown to be at fault by facts, if facts contradict it.

When a system explains the facts, we hold it as proved just to the
extent to which it explains them. This accordance of our thought with
the nature of things is the mark of what we call truth.

If you grant me these premises, my demonstration is completed, and it
only remains for me to draw my conclusions.

It is said that the idea of God can have no place in a serious science,
because this idea comes neither from experience nor from reason; that it
is only an hypothesis, and that hypothesis has no place in science. I
reply, grounding my answer on the preceding reasonings: No science is
formed otherwise than by means of hypothesis. For the solution of the
universal problem there exists in the world an hypothesis, proposed to
all by tradition, and which bears in particular the names of Moses and
of Jesus Christ. This hypothesis has the right to be examined. If it
explains the facts, it must be held for true. The idea of God comes
therefore within the regular compass of science; the attempt to exclude