desires happiness, and seeks it in religious belief; but this is an
order of things which science cannot take account of. Science has only
truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason.
If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience,
no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results.
"There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning,
than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may
do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is
certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it
entails dangerous consequences."[38] So wrote the patriarch of modern
sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; it is
repeated to us, without end, in the columns of the leading journals of
France, and in the pages of the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The adversaries
of spiritual beliefs have changed their tactics. In the last century,
they replied to minds alarmed for the consequences of their work: "Truth
can never do harm."--"Truth can never do harm," retorted J.J. Rousseau:
"I believe it as you do, and this it is that proves to me that your
doctrines are not truth." The argument is conclusive. So the adversary
has taken up another position; and he says at this day:--"Our doctrines
do perhaps pain the heart, and wound the conscience, but this is no
reason why they should be false: moral goodness, utility, happiness, are
not signs by which we may know what is true."

Philosophy, Gentlemen, has always assumed to be the universal
explanation of things, and you will agree that it is on her part a
humiliating avowal, that she is enclosed, namely, in a circle of pure
reason, and leaves out of view, as being unable to give any account of
them, the great realities which are called moral goodness and happiness.
One might ask what are the bases of that science which disavows, without
emotion, the most active powers of human nature. One might ask whether