Part 2 — MATTER AND SPIRIT IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE[196]

MATTER AND SPIRIT IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE[196]

There is nothing more advantageous, and at the same time more dangerous; more beneficial to the cause of truth, and yet more apt to induce error, than the modern idea of studying man in nature alone; or rather, of scrutinizing its depths with the design of discovering all that concerns him.

Doubtless there were times when philosophy did not pay sufficient regard to the study of the physical sciences; when philosophers put themselves too far outside the physical world. Metaphysics were too full of abstractions, too much confined to the me and consciousness.

Some systems wished to dig an abyss between the world of matter and that of spirit, regarding the passage from the one to the other as impossible. Even the discoveries of Des Cartes in the realms of physical nature, as well as in the kingdom of his own consciousness, notwithstanding their importance and grandeur, only served to widen the abyss; for the Cartesian theory supposed the mind to be incapable of communicating with the exterior world save by a chain frequently broken—by a long and devious path. The preëstablished harmony of Leibnitz was the last term of the separation of these two worlds, which had no longer any thing in common even in their agreement, and only existed in juxtaposition without mutual action or reciprocal influence.

This was an excess of which metaphysics was at the same time the author and the victim; it deprived itself of a powerful element of investigation; it veiled one of the faces of nature; and closed the door to research and knowledge in one of the great domains of the world. Metaphysicians, in striving to obtain the exclusive and victorious reign of spirit, compromised its triumph.

Doubtless that which at the same time unites and separates the intellectual from the material world will never be perfectly understood. But it will always be necessary to throw light on both sides of the problem by comparing them without confounding them; to place both face to face without partiality or exclusion; the working of thought and of matter, and between the two the mysterious phenomenon of life which is their connecting link and term of similitude.

It could not be expected that philosophy should first and alone prepare the ground of this conciliation and comparison. The peculiarly speculative studies of metaphysicians would not naturally carry them to this point; and besides, the very elements necessary for this comparison were wanting to them.

It is, therefore, to the natural sciences, as they are called, that we must owe the most of our knowledge and comprehension of the two worlds, which co-penetrate each other. Not that the sciences have preconceived the thought of this result, and formed a plan on the subject; for the science of the day, especially that which really deserves the name, has confined itself generally to impartial discoveries, and for premise and conclusion has taken merely the facts themselves. Notwithstanding evil examples, which would persuade a different course, it still perseveres, and on this account it deserves praise in its isolated labors and exclusive studies. It would not be difficult to cite the names of some of the most distinguished savants, who, impartially and without being preoccupied with conclusions, have enriched the domain of truth with most important and curious discoveries. But the occupation of the savant, which is not without merit and trouble, cannot satisfy mankind.

By a natural instinct man feels the want of synthesis; he is not content with mere phenomena. He wants to go further than analysis; he longs to generalize and draw consequences. He wishes to profit by past labor; he wants to know not only results but causes.

Here philosophy must again be called in to judge of and compare facts, to deduce consequences from, and erect systems upon them. If the spiritualist philosophers, quitting abstractions and leaving the solitude of consciousness, have by an enlightened change, which will be serviceable both to truth and to their own cause, begun to dig deeply into the scientific mine which is so rich and productive; on the other hand, the positivists and materialists, forced by the natural inclination of the human mind to draw conclusions and build theories, even after proclaiming the sovereign reign of matter, and after trying to remain in it alone; after attributing to it every property and every function; after making it the absolute foundation of their doctrine and teaching, have here admitted that an inferior supposes a superior order; there accepted final causes; elsewhere invoked the ideal or spoken of truths which are eternal; and in their desire to explain the phenomena of matter or the forms of life, they have been compelled to leave the region of purely material facts and to ascend to those metaphysical ideas which in theory they so strenuously reject.[197]

But although the human mind, placed in presence of problems, goes faster and further than science, yet it cannot do without its aid; it rightly seeks its assistance, and finds in it one of its most solid and safe foundations.

We have, therefore, deemed it interesting to indicate at what point the labors of the physicists have arrived, even by exhibiting their premature solutions. We think it useful to examine some of their conclusions, which have been deduced rather precipitately perhaps, but which, while treating only of bodies, concern more or less directly the sovereign questions of the soul and of the intelligence.

We must say that, in consequence of so many deep researches and fruitful experiments, the empire of the natural sciences has been so vastly extended that nothing in the future seems impossible of attainment, while most unexpected results, intoxicating, as it were, and turning the heads of savants, have seemed to furnish a justification of their defence of even the most rash and surprising theories.

There has been a regeneration of ideas regarding the material world; analysis has probed to its lowest depths and let in the light of day. Men think they have discovered its mode of action and arrived at its very elements.

Two leading theories have been produced, both of which pretend to be based on the most minute verification of details and the most recent facts. If they are not absolutely irreconcilable, they present at least very different formulas.

The one affirms that there is nothing in matter except movement.

The other declares that there is nothing in matter but forces.

I.

The system which reduces every thing in matter to movements is as simple as it is curious. It exhibits at the same time a character of grandeur and of unity which is seductive. Matter in the universe, it says,[198] remains the same in quantity; it is neither created nor destroyed; its phenomena are merely transformations.

According to this system, the abstract notion of force does not exist. Force is a cause of motion; and the cause of motion is a motion itself. Physical phenomena, as heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, are certain kinds of motion, which beget each other. Heat is transformed into electricity and electricity into light. Transformations take place according to fixed rules, and are reduced to rigorously determined unities.

In another order of facts, cohesion, chemical affinity, and gravity, are equally the effects of communication of motion, since the phenomena which derive from them exist only by attraction—that is to say, by the movement of molecules and bodies toward each other.

The same rule holds good in the system of the universe; the heavenly as well as the terrestrial bodies have not in themselves that which attracts them to each other. Universal gravitation is only the expression of a result; it merely means that every thing happens as if bodies had the intrinsic property of attracting each other in the direct ratio of their quantity and the inverse ratio of their distance.

It is not this force or property; it is the ether which is the cause of attraction. The ether is composed of atoms which collide with each other and with neighboring bodies. It is everywhere diffused, forming a universal medium, and exercising a continual pressure on all the molecules in nature. The gravity of bodies is owing to the pressure of this medium. Their movement is, as it were, a transformation of the motions of ether. Thus, the ether, moving in every direction, and obeying no fixed pressure, produces material attraction without being subject to it; it gives to bodies their gravity, while it remains itself imponderable.[199]

It had been already physically demonstrated that sound and light were the result of undulations—that is, of motions; sonorous and luminous movements which have been measured and verified in all their modes. The nature of caloric movement has not yet been so completely understood; but the mechanical effects of heat have been established in the most precise manner. The identity of heat and of mechanical labor has become a commonly received idea for several years past. Heat, which was formerly regarded as a material substance, is now considered as a mere mode of motion; it is by their repercussion that the molecules of bodies cause us to experience the sensation of heat; and the intensity of these repercussions determines the degrees of temperature. This heat, manifesting itself by different effects, produces now light or sounds, again mechanical labor.

The energy or the living force which molecules or bodies in motion possess, in a degree exactly known, is partially lost if these molecules produce a work, that is to say, if they displace a quantity of matter; but in that case the living force which they lose is stored up in the labor produced, and is reborn when the latter ceases to exist.

Just as the calorific and luminous fluids are no longer regarded as possessing a special substance and existence, so also the electric fluid, positive as well as negative, and the magnetic fluid, which is only one of its derivatives, are but opposite movements of matter. The electrical movement of imponderable matter, or ether, is not even a vibratory motion; it is a real current, a real transport which takes place in the conducting body; and it is so far of the same nature as the luminous motion that it has approximately the same velocity—that is to say, it travels seventy-five thousand leagues a second.

Now, all these motions of heat, all these motions of light and electricity, which correlative phenomena offer, are all reducible to the idea of mechanical labor. Produced by one labor, they reproduce another. Thus disappear from chemistry, as from the natural sciences, the forces called repulsive as well as those called attractive. The molecules no longer act at a distance; actions take place by contact, by the communication of movements. In the same way the pressure exercised by the ethereal atoms on the molecules of the sidereal bodies takes the place of the initial force or acquired velocity which astronomy regarded as the cause of their movements.

According to this sovereign unity, the physical world is composed of one single element. There are no simple bodies. Oxygen and hydrogen, like gold or platina, are composed only of atoms. There is no difference in material quality; properties vary according to the diversity of movements. Becoming grouped and interwoven, the atoms form the molecules, and the changes of these movements constitute for us the different phenomena, the mode of which depends on the masses and the velocities which are in play.

Consequently, ethereal atoms, elementary molecules, compound or chemical molecules, particles of gaseous bodies, liquids, solids—such is the hierarchy of phenomena.

The system is triumphantly epitomized in these words:

Atoms and motion form the universe.

Let us pause before this conclusion, the simplicity of which is not without grandeur, although the theory is absolute and hasty. Let us be allowed to interfere in the name of the notion of causality, in the name of that metaphysics to which the system itself, although taking its starting-point from facts alone, renders homage by its generalizations and by its synthesis. If it confined itself exclusively to its conclusion, that atom and movement form the supreme axiom of the universe, we should have downright materialism. The author avoids this absolute conclusion, which would cause us, moreover, to go outside the limits of scientific research, and he admits that even in motion there are original causes which remain entirely unknown.

But this cannot suffice. Our mind sees this reserve and will not rest satisfied with it.

If the system merely gives to ethereal atoms the intrinsic force and primitive motion which it takes away from the molecules and bodies, it only postpones the difficulty and avoids the true solution. It merely admits an effect without assigning to it an origin or a reason of being. It does not indicate the primary cause of motion; it does not make known the prime mover, which neither facts nor reason can place in the atoms or in the phenomena.

Nor can the formation of worlds be explained by atoms and motion. The author[200] gives up facts, reality, and the logic of his own system when he supposes some of the chief primitive atoms forming the centre of a group for several others, and thus constituting a sphere. Then, after this operation in the universal mass, the molecular groups appear gifted with gravity and enter into that evolution which constitutes the admirable order of the universe.

We have no longer modern science arriving, by way of decomposition and analysis, at results as curious as they are incontestable. It is, in truth, but the renewal of an old system which goes as far back as ancient philosophy—to Leucippus, to Democritus, to Epicurus; a system without foundation or reality, which brings us to gross materialism, and gives us no rational or experimental explanation of phenomena.

For whence have these atoms come? Do you give them their reason of being by simply calling them primitive? Do they exist from all eternity, or have they created themselves? After being proclaimed indivisible points, they are, contrary to this principle of unity, made unequal and preponderating. Whence do they derive these contradictory, and at the same time indispensable characters, which enable them to perform their functions? Who has given them the first motion necessary for their meeting? Or, if they have been eternally in motion, does it not follow that the formations that are attributed to them must be also eternal? What causes them to produce ponderable molecules and to become heavy bodies while they are essentially imponderable and devoid of attraction?

As for us, a friend of truth, and believing that it can never be opposed to itself, having in its regard no fear or party prejudice, we are disposed to accept willingly the results given by scientific observation and experience, provided there be no disposition to draw conclusions from them which are not legitimate. We are far from disputing that matter is one in its grand simplicity, and that it is reducible to elements of one species; that phenomena of a single order, motion, produce all the effects of nature which we admire. The spiritualist philosophy will readily find in these atoms their first author, God, and in these movements God, the prime mover.

We also admit willingly that this theory holds good even in the domain of organized matter, and that, in the regular order of succession, it runs through all the kingdoms. We see nothing in this admission which contradicts directly our belief.

In fact, the system extends even to the order of living nature, and there it points out two things.

On the one hand, it indicates, as the basis and chief constituent of living beings, the very materials of the inorganic world, the solid bodies, liquids, gases, which we find in all organizations, and especially in the human organization, the most complex of all; for this organization comprises fourteen of those elements which we call simple bodies, because we have not been able as yet to reduce them.

On the other hand, in animated nature itself there takes place a series of motions which succeed each other according to a determined order, with an especial character, yet not opposed to the laws of molecular mechanism; so that in the human body in motion heat is transformed into work and work into heat, according to the ordinary relation of calorics, and the human mover gives in labor the same proportion of heat produced as the other movers.[201]

Does this mean, continues the author of the system, that we have in this process all the elements of life? What is the cause which forms the first cell, the basis of living bodies? What deduces from it the developments of being? What limits and regulates its evolution? "Here we must suspend our judgment, or admit a special cause, the principle of which is peculiar to vital phenomena."

This cause, although its nature is unknown and undetermined, is manifested by movements, and may take, according to the same order of ideas, the rôle and name of vital force. This force is endowed with a peculiar activity, which transforms without creating, just as motion only transforms in virtue of anterior movements.

This doctrine, pushed to extremity, seems to infer that the phenomena of thought and volition are only pure movements, the result of physical or vital actions. But is not the human soul, the animating principle, thereby put in danger?

The author thinks not. "In the midst of material transformations," says he, "causes active by nature may intervene, and we have instanced some of them, in marking the nature and limits of such intervention. This is sufficient to leave the ground free to all the solutions of metaphysics."

We are more affirmative and precise. These causes, from the starting-point of the atom and movement, necessarily exist and act. In fact, if the atom and movement are the universe, outside the universe there must be and there is something superior to the atom and to motion—that which has given them birth; for we cannot suppose that the atom exists by itself, nor that motion is produced by itself. All that we see and conceive about atom and motion only gives us phenomenal relations and contingent results. Beyond this is the absolute. The observations and relations which experience offers us may be fruitful enough to render an account of the facts, to extend and enlighten our knowledge, to establish laws and attest actions. But let us not grow tired in repeating that these actions are not produced alone, and that these laws suppose an ordainer.

Especially when we endeavor to understand the nature of life, atoms and movement may come again into play; but the cause increases and is detached from the functions of beings; and the superiority of the effects more imperiously establishes the necessity of an author.

II.

The second theory admits only forces in nature, and places in these forces the principle of all that is produced. It also goes up to the atom, and considers it as equally indivisible and imponderable. It attributes to matter properties, so to speak, immanent which give it its power and action. Atoms, separated from each other in the bodies which they compose, and forming mere simple mathematical points, possess, when they are reunited in mass, a force of attraction which acts at a distance, and then reacts on them in order to produce all the sensible phenomena.

Several savants and certain spiritualist philosophers agree on this theory. Both take facts as the starting point in establishing their synthesis; the former build it on a foundation more exclusively physical; the latter give to their generalization a more philosophical basis.

M. Magy and M. Laugel, hardly overstepping the limits of the experimental world, follow the action of forces into their different modes and transformations.

M. Paul Janet, in his turn, delivers his theory on matter.[202]

"It is in fact," he writes, "force and not extent which constitutes the essence of bodies; an atom in motion occupies successively places which it fits exactly. What distinguishes this atom from the space previously occupied by it? It is not the extent, since in both cases the shape is the same; every thing which relates to extent is absolutely identical in the empty and in the full atom. It is, therefore, something else which distinguishes them, and this something is solidity or weight; but neither solidity nor weight is a modification of extent; both are derived from force, and represent it."

M. Ch. Lévêque adds:[203]

"How do we make the extension which we need? Always by resistance; when extension is not a pure abstraction, when it is real and concrete, it is always equivalent to a sum of resisting points or forces. There is no longer occasion to ask how, with unextended elements, we may form extension. There is but one question possible, and it is this: How to form a sum of resistance with resisting points?"

This is what a learned Englishman, P. Bayma, establishes with precision.[204] According to him, the elements, or atoms, are indivisible points without material extent, and extension is not an essential property of matter.

"The extension of bodies is an appearance caused by the dissemination in space of the elements which compose them; abstract space is extension; consequently the science of extension, or geometry, is not a science of observation but of abstraction."

According to this theory, the forces placed from the beginning in elements govern every thing in the world. Nature is under their control; matter obeys them, or is, rather, entirely a compound of forces. One of the partisans of this system[205] lays down these conclusions: 1st, the last element of matter is always an active, simple, and indivisible force like the soul itself; 2d, the properties of matter are only manifestations of this simple active force. Then, pushing the consequences of this notion of force further, he admits

"that there is only one substance, material and spiritual, at the same time; spiritual in its elements, material in its composition. The soul, conscious of its personal energy, conceives physical beings as forces acting like itself."

A contemporary philosopher,[206] developing further the thesis of conciliation and relation between the two orders of existence, adds:

"Matter has at bottom no other substantial element than spirit. The essence of both is active force, consequently materialism has no reason to exist; there is no longer in nature any thing but spiritualism, or, to speak more correctly, dynamism. This dynamism has nothing which attacks the dignity and preëminence of the soul. The soul alone is capable of thinking or willing, because it alone is a simple force, whereas the smallest body is a compound of simple forces."

Such are the theories which, according to their supporters, are sustained by the most recent discoveries of science.

As for us, we admit that from a scientific stand-point there have been many new and curious observations collected; that the analysis of matter has exposed to view the most astonishing phenomena; that the material element has been almost apprehended, its depths investigated; that it has been stripped of extension as an essential property, its mode of action and constituting principle discovered; that it has been reduced to a unity as sovereign as it is marvellous; and we follow with the most lively interest these results of disinterested and impartial science. We go further; according as the plan gains in unity and grandeur, appearing at the same time more imposing and probable, it brings us nearer to Him who has conceived it, who has given it order and completion. The more of mystery we discover in the universe, the more we bow with admiration, but without astonishment, before the thought and will of the Sovereign who is the origin and reason of the existence of these wonders and of their laws.

But our reason cannot go beyond its limits, and the metaphysical consequences which some have attempted to draw from these phenomena, we have not up to the present been able to admit.

The theory which reduces all to force, which recognizes in bodies an intrinsic mode of acting, whether it divide these forces in the mass of matter, or cause them to mount up to the primitive element, to the atom, indivisible point, or monad, seems to us in every case to beg the question. What is in fact a force, and especially a force attributed to any object? It is undoubtedly neither a being, since it is joined to a first element, nor a substance, since it is considered as an attribute. It is only a manner of indicating an action, the cause of which is unknown. To say that matter acts because it bears in it the power of acting, is simply to say that it acts because it acts; to reply by asserting the fact itself which is in question. Therefore we have only one of those words, new or old, which may cause illusion for an instant, but which do not stand a serious analysis.

Moreover, to attempt to compare and assimilate matter and spirit by giving to both the name of force, and attributing to them the properties attached to this name, is merely to use a word without a definite meaning; for if they were both forces, they would be forces of entirely different, if not opposite action. And if we say that force, being half body and half spirit, is the link which unites them to each other, we create, merely to suit our purpose, a third being which is discovered nowhere, a mere phantasmagoria without reality, which the imagination itself is incapable of representing to us.

Finally, in the parallel and assimilation between body and soul, to reserve, with the power of thinking, preëminence to the mind because it is a simple and unique force, while the smallest body is a compound of these same simple forces, amounts to saying that a body could think if it were only decomposed and reduced to its simple elements, and to the unity of force. There is such a difference in act, mode, and aim between what is called the force of resistance, attributed to bodies, and designated, we know not why, by the name of active force, and between the faculty of thinking, that no common appellation, no matter how specious it may be, can ever confound or identify them.

We would not be able to comprehend how the soul, considered as a monad or simple element, should have by this fact the faculty of thinking, and yet two or several monads united and forming a body would not possess the same power. Why, in the latter case, should there be absence of thought instead of a union of two or several thoughts, concordant or contrary? How could we say that, because there is an assemblage of forces, there is an impossibility of thinking, and that the part is capable of doing what the whole cannot do? It is useless to choose and isolate the most delicate and ethereal element in a body; we can never imagine the soul to be really one of its parts, no matter how pure that part may be.

The notion of force, for the soul as well as for the body, must be put among those appellations which explain nothing, and only serve to cloak our ignorance.

Science itself begins to renounce this name of force; and the first theory which we have exposed, that which recognizes only motions in matter combats the theory of forces with energy, and considers it as vain and illusory. It is not here, consequently, that we shall find the philosophical explanation of phenomena, nor the reconciliation between the two orders of spirit and matter.

The theory of motions rests on a more solid foundation; at least, it employs a word having a precise signification and resting on a real fact, motion. It is only by induction and reasoning that it ascends to ether and the atom. It has never seen either of them, although it affirms their existence. It makes a synthesis. It admits in the universe something else besides atoms and movement, since the thought which it expresses implies the idea of being, of substance and cause. It has seen motions, vibrations, radiations, currents, and it has concluded from them that there is something which moves, vibrates, radiates; thus it has mounted up to a second cause, to ether, to the atom. But this is not sufficient. If it has seen that there is no motion without an object which moves, logic compels it to acknowledge that there is no change without an agent, no movement without a mover; and if the atom exists and moves, this atom also has an origin, a reason of being, a principle from which it has received the gift of existence and the power of motion.

If an admirable plan embraces the universe, if a sovereign unity directs and governs all phenomena, there must be a cause for them. The plan appears more manifestly, and the cause shows itself more necessarily in the very simplicity of the work, in its grandeur in this double quality raised to a higher power.

If the world be, as it is acknowledged to be, the work of thought; if a general and supreme reason presides over the universe, this thought lives in a spirit, this reason belongs to a soul.[207] Can there be a thought without a thinking subject and being? A thought implies a thinking being; reason means a living intelligence; or it must mean nothing, and then there is no sense in words, no reality in things.

It is useless to object; the human mind will have it so; it is the law of its conscience, it is the result of its profound conviction that it does not derive all from itself, and that nothing can produce nothing.

Now, can we say of the atom and motion combined, behold the universe? Yes, the mechanical universe, perhaps. But the mechanical universe is not self-sufficing; for we can always say, Who has made the atom? who has created motion? And then we have the right to propose another affirmation and to conclude: the notion of causality is the entire world—the physical, intellectual, and moral world.

This has been true from the very beginning of thought and the commencement of human reason. This has been true from the days of ancient philosophy, proclaiming through its greatest logician that whatever is in the effect ought to be found in the cause, that the cause must really exist before the effect, and that the perfection of all effects supposes the existence of a primary cause which contains them—a living, spiritual, and perfect cause, which cannot be produced by what is imperfect, inferior, material, or deprived of life, but which is and must be necessarily its generating principle and producing power.

III.

Thus the two systems of motions and of forces, brought before the metaphysical world, for they call themselves syntheses, fall short of the mark and do not reach the true principle. The one assigns no cause for the elements and phenomena which it represents. The other attributes to these same elements and phenomena, a word and a name which cannot be a cause. The former does not give, and does not pretend to give, a real explanation. The latter formulates an explanation, but presents nothing satisfactory.

It appears, however, that all the tendencies of modern science are toward the idea of unity in the universal system, toward a simplification and spiritualization in the plan; and the belief of some goes so far as to admit that this plan offers parallel lines more or less similar in both the material and the spiritual world. But here again the rock rises and the danger appears. In making bodies so like spirits, we run the risk of making the spiritual too much like the material, and, in both cases, by such confusion we almost touch on pantheism, the theory of which, consisting in the admission of but one substance, is equally dangerous whether this one substance be material or spiritual. We will allow matter, therefore, to raise itself toward unity, purify itself more and more, and disentangle its essence from its innumerable and marvellous combinations, provided that it be admitted that it possesses a real existence, that it is really matter, that it can never become spirit or thought, and that it is not its own force or cause or reason of being. What would be gained for it from a spiritualist point of view, to admit in matter an immediate power, to clothe it with intrinsic qualities which nothing either in ideas or facts manifests or demonstrates? No problem would be solved thereby, no mystery cleared up; it would be necessary to establish why and how the same substance, at the same time and alternately, feels and does not feel, wills and is inert, thinks and is devoid of intelligence, is immovable in the stone, awakes in the plant, and is organic in the animal, and finally creates and vivifies the genius of man.

There must be logic in the assertion that the essence of matter is found in an atom or in a force, that it is inactive or endowed with movement, that there is in bodies unity or variety of substance, that the different kingdoms are united by greater affinities or separated by more marked distinctions; these properties, comparisons, and differences must have their logic and their reason of being, and do not derive the laws which govern them from a spontaneous or fortuitous formation.

Nothing, consequently, in the secondary explanations which are given to us, can satisfy our metaphysical wants. The mind of man will never stop at the mere properties of things or their effects. Its instinct of causality does not accept incomplete theories and theses which do not sound the depths. Casting aside all idea of confusion and of inexact comparison, the human mind wishes to rise higher; it wishes, in its admiration for order and the harmony of phenomena, to ascend to the very summit of being. Yes, it admits and recognizes the fact that every thing which exists has a single and sovereign cause, and this cause is itself the most spiritual of spiritual substances—God the creator and ordainer of worlds. Author of all things, God causes with the qualities which belong to him the different manifestations of nature; he acts on matter, possesses it, causes it to subsist, gives it the power of producing its phenomena, is its force, its order, its law; and thus, if we may say so, he animates the world, not indeed in the same manner as the human soul animates the body, because we cannot compare essences and actions so unlike each other, but with a certain superior and divine power of animation which produces the being, motion, and life of all that exists in the universe, moves or breathes, as the soul is the source and focus of the life of the body.

To destroy this supreme cause is to degrade at the same time the material and the intellectual world; it is to renounce the notion of perfection and of the absolute; it is to condemn, together with one of the mother-ideas, one of the axioms of the human mind, that logic which can never see aught complete or satisfactory in mere effects or phenomena; it is to attack one of the most beautiful faculties of the intelligence, of that intelligence which the contingent cannot content, which will not allow itself to be restrained by the mere limits of time and space, which, from the present which it studies, from facts which it investigates, and peculiarities which it admires, ascends to the infinite, to the all-powerful, to the Eternal.

Thus we consider that the most recent discoveries of science, in their rational and superior interpretation, lead us naturally to God, and we have at the same time the belief and the hope that materialism will be involuntarily stricken down, and will perish perhaps by the very hands of those who study and search after matter alone.

No doubt the considerations which might be actually drawn from the results obtained do not lead to definite theories nor do they offer any thing but premature conclusions. The majority of the savants, moreover, properly refuse to touch on the domain of the supernatural and metaphysical; they confine themselves to facts; some so veil their opinions and philosophical doctrines as even to cause us to doubt whether they follow the standard of spiritualism or of materialism. They do not arrogate to themselves either the right or the power of drawing conclusions; and the synthesis which results from their experiments can only be a premature conjecture, more or less plausible.

But since their researches already give occasion to perceptions so simple and so grand, since they open horizons in the distance where light certainly exists, since there is from the stand-point of truth a serene and unalterable confidence in the final and definite results of modern discoveries, we may be permitted even now to describe them for the elevation and the encouragement of the mind, for the justification and the honor of human science, for the revindication of the grandeur and of the glory of God.