It is said that science leads away from God, and that faith continues to be the lot only of the ignorant.  Listen on this head first of all to the Italian Franchi.  “The class of society in which infidels and sceptics especially abound is that of savants and men of letters,—­men, in short, who have gone through studies, in the course of which they have certainly become acquainted with the famous demonstrations of the existence of God.  But no sooner have they examined them with their own eyes, and submitted them to the criterion of their own judgment, than these demonstrations no longer demonstrate anything; these reasonings turn out to be only paralogisms."[100] Here we have the thesis in its general form:  to become an infidel or a sceptic, it is enough to be a well educated man.  The German Buechner will now show us the application of this notion to the special study of nature.  “At this day, our hardest laborers in the sciences, our most indefatigable students of nature, profess materialistic sentiments."[101] The same tendencies are often manifested among French writers.  The author of a recent astronomical treatise, for example, draws a veil of deceitful words over the profound faith of Kepler, and takes evident pleasure in throwing into relief the tokens of sympathy bestowed unfortunately by the learned Laplace upon atheism.[102] Here then we have open attempts to found a prejudice against religion on the authority of science; and these attempts disturb the minds of not a few.  I ask two questions on this head.  Is it true, in fact, that modern naturalists are generally irreligious?  Is it possible that the science of nature, rightly considered, should lead to atheism?[103]

Let us begin with the question of fact; and first of all let us settle clearly the bearing and object of this discussion.  I wish to destroy a prejudice, and not to create one.  I am not proposing to you to take the votes of savants, in order to know whether God exists.  No.  Though all the universities in Europe should unite to vote it dark at mid-day, I should not cease on that account to believe in the sun, and that, Gentlemen, in common with you all, and with the mass of my fellow-men.  I have instituted a sort of inquiry in order to ascertain whether modern naturalists have in general been led to atheistical sentiments, as some would have us believe.  In appealing to the recollections of my own earlier studies and subsequent reading, I have marked the names of the men best known in the various sciences, and I have inquired what religious opinions they may have publicly manifested.  I will now give you briefly the result of my labor.