We will here terminate this review.  It is time, however, which fails us, not subject-matter, for continuing it.  You may have noticed that the name of no one of the savants of Switzerland figures in this inquiry.  Nevertheless our country would have furnished a rich mine for my purpose.  It contains (and it is one of its best privileges) a goodly number of savants, whom the observation of the facts of matter have not caused to forget the claims of mind, and who know how to raise their souls to the Author of the marvels which they study.  You will understand therefore that it has not been from anxiety for my cause, but from a motive of discretion, that I have forborne to bring into this discussion the names of men in whom we have a near interest, and many of whom perhaps are present in this assembly.  I will take advantage of Mr. Faraday’s letter to make a single exception, by naming M. de la Rive.  More than once, and in public, we have heard him distinctly point out the place occupied by the sciences of mind in relation to the natural sciences, and render glory to the Creator.  And I do not think that any one, in Switzerland or elsewhere, can claim to speak with disdain, in the name of the physical sciences, of the religious convictions boldly professed by our learned fellow-countryman.[113]

Recollect, Gentlemen, that I have not undertaken to prove the existence of God, by making appeal to the authority of men of science.  All I have sought to do has been to destroy a prejudice.  They tell us, and scream it at us, that the best naturalists become atheists.  This is not true, as I think I have shown.  There do exist atheists who cultivate the natural sciences,—­no doubt of the fact.  But even though half the whole number of naturalists were atheists, inasmuch as other naturalists, and those some of the greatest, find in their studies new motives to adoration, we are forced to the conclusion, that the true cause why these savants repudiate religion has nothing to do with their science.  We shall come to be more strongly confirmed in this opinion, if we pass now from the question of fact to considerations of sound reason.

The weakness of the human mind leads it to forget the facts with which it is not occupied.  All special culture of the intellect risks consequently the paralyzing a part of our faculties.  Hegel, lost in abstractions, persuades himself that he will be able to construct by pure reasoning the history of nature and that of the human race.  A geometrician, who no longer saw in the world anything but theorems and demonstrations, asked, after the representation of a dramatic masterpiece, “And what does that prove?” A physiologist absorbed in the study of sensible phenomena says:  “Where is that soul they talk of?  I have never seen it.”  These are phenomena of the same order.  This infirmity of the mind, which leads certain savants to think that the ordinary subject of their studies is everything, must not be imputed to science.  A man accustomed to the exclusive observation of material phenomena, may become a materialist by the effect of his mental habits, and this really happens, in fact, in too many instances; but the study in itself is not responsible for this result.  Let us endeavor to prove this, by clearly defining the object of the natural sciences.