“Monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor, “you despise science.”
“Not so, Monsieur Bergeret, not so! I hold, on the contrary, according to the example of Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the great doctors, that science and philosophy ought to be held in high esteem in the schools.
“One does not despise science without despising reason; one does not despise reason without despising man; one does not despise man without insulting God. The rash scepticism which lays the blame on human reason is the first step towards that criminal scepticism that defies the divine mysteries. I value science as a gift which comes to us from God. But if God has given us science, he has not given us _His_ science. His geometry is not ours. Ours speculates on one plane or in space; His works in infinitude. He has not deceived us: that is why I consider that there is a true human science. He has not taught us all: that is why I declare the powerlessness of this science, even though true, to agree with the truth of truths. And this discrepancy, every time that it occurs between the two, I see without fear: it proves nothing, neither against heaven, nor earth.”
M. Bergeret confessed that this system seemed to him as clever as it was bold, and ultimately consonant with the interests of the faith.
“But,” added he, “it is not our Archbishop’s doctrine. In his pastoral letters, Monseigneur Charlot speaks voluntarily of the truths of religion being confirmed by the discoveries of science, and especially by the experiments of M. Pasteur.”
“Oh!” answered Abbé Lantaigne in a nasal voice that hissed with scorn, “His Eminence observes, in philosophy at least, the vow of evangelical poverty.”
At the moment when this phrase was lashing the air beneath the quincunxes, a corpulent great-coat, capped by a wide clerical hat, passed in front of the bench.
“Speak lower, monsieur l’abbé,” said the professor; “Abbé Guitrel hears you.”
M. _le Préfet_ Worms-Clavelin was chatting with Abbé Guitrel in the shop of Rondonneau junior, goldsmith and jeweller. He leant back in an arm-chair and crossed his legs so that the sole of one of his boots stuck up towards the placid old man’s chin.
“Monsieur l’abbé, it is useless for you to speak: you are an enlightened priest; you see in religion a collection of moral precepts, a necessary discipline, and not a set of antiquated dogmas, of mysteries whose absurdity is only too little mysterious.”