is that, from the point of view of principles, chemistry needs to
exercise extreme tolerance, since its own existence depends on a
certain number of fictions, contrary to reason and experience,
and destructive of each other.



I certainly have less inclination to the marvellous than
many atheists, but I cannot help thinking that the stories of
miracles, prophecies, charms, etc., are but distorted accounts of
the extraordinary effects produced by certain latent forces, or,
as was formerly said, by occult powers. Our science is still so
brutal and unfair; our professors exhibit so much impertinence
with so little knowledge; they deny so impudently facts which
embarrass them, in order to protect the opinions which they
champion,--that I distrust strong minds equally with
superstitious ones. Yes, I am convinced of it; our gross
rationalism is the inauguration of a period which, thanks to
science, will become truly PRODIGIOUS; the universe, to my eyes,
is only a laboratory of magic, from which anything may be
expected. . . . This said, I return to my subject.

They would be deceived, then, who should imagine, after my rapid
survey of religious progress, that metaphysics has uttered its
last word upon the double enigma expressed in these four
words,--the existence of God, the immortality of the soul. Here,
as elsewhere, the most advanced and best established conclusions,
those which seem to have settled for ever the theological
question, lead us back to primeval mysticism, and involve the new
data of an inevitable philosophy. The criticism of religious