63.  Now let us come to what M. Bayle says (p. 999) on the distinction we are concerned with.  ‘It seems to me’, he says, ’that an ambiguity has crept into the celebrated distinction drawn between things that are above reason and things that are against reason.  The Mysteries of the Gospel are above reason, so it is usually said, but they are not contrary to reason.  I think that the same sense is not given to the word reason in the first part of this axiom as in the second:  by the first is understood rather the reason of man, or reason in concreto and by the second reason in general, or reason in abstracto.  For supposing that it is understood always as reason in general or the supreme reason, the universal reason that is in God, it is equally true that the Mysteries of the Gospels are not above reason and that they are not against reason.  But if in both parts of the axiom human reason is meant, I do not clearly see the soundness of the distinction:  for the most orthodox confess that we know not how our Mysteries can conform to the maxims of philosophy.  It seems to us, therefore, that they are not in conformity with our reason.  Now that which appears to us not to be in conformity with our reason appears contrary to our reason, just as that which appears to us not in conformity with truth appears contrary to truth.  Thus why should not one say, equally, that the Mysteries are against our feeble reason, and that they are above our feeble reason?’ I answer, as I have done already, that ‘reason’ here is the linking together of the truths that we know by the light of nature, and in this sense the axiom is true and without any ambiguity.  The Mysteries transcend our reason, since they contain truths that are not comprised in this sequence; but they are not contrary to our reason, and they do not contradict any of the truths whereto this sequence can lead us.  Accordingly there is no question here of the universal reason that is in God, but of our reason.  As for the question whether we know the Mysteries to conform with our reason, I answer that at least we never know of any non-conformity or any opposition between the Mysteries and reason.  Moreover, we can always abolish such alleged [109] opposition, and so, if this can be called reconciling or harmonizing faith with reason, or recognizing the conformity between them, it must be said that we can recognize this conformity and this harmony.  But if the conformity consists in a reasonable explanation of the how, we cannot recognize it.

64.  M. Bayle makes one more ingenious objection, which he draws from the example of the sense of sight.  ‘When a square tower’, he says, ’from a distance appears to us round, our eyes testify very clearly not only that they perceive nothing square in this tower, but also that they discover there a round shape, incompatible with the square shape.  One may therefore say that the truth which is the square shape is not only above, but even against,