tuous men, who, as students of physical science, devoted
their lives, during the eighteenth century, to asking of nature--What are
the facts of the case?

It was no coincidence, but a connection of cause and effect, that during
the century of _philosopher_ sound physical science throve, as she had
never thriven before; that in zoology and botany, chemistry and medicine,
geology and astronomy, man after man, both of the middle and the noble
classes, laid down on more and more sound, because more and more extended
foundations, that physical science which will endure as an everlasting
heritage to mankind; endure, even though a second Byzantine period should
reduce it to a timid and traditional pedantry, or a second irruption of
barbarians sweep it away for awhile, to revive again (as classic
philosophy revived in the fifteenth century) among new and more energetic
races; when the kingdom of God shall have been taken away from us, and
given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

An eternal heritage, I say, for the human race; which once gained, can
never be lost; which stands, and will stand; marches, and will march,
proving its growth, its health, its progressive force, its certainty of
final victory, by those very changes, disputes, mistakes, which the
ignorant and the bigoted hold up to scorn, as proofs of its uncertainty
and its rottenness; because they never have dared or cared to ask
boldly--What are the facts of the case?--and have never discovered either
the acuteness, the patience, the calm justice, necessary for ascertaining
the facts, or their awful and divine certainty when once ascertained.

[But these philosophers (it will be said) hated all religion.

Before that question can be fairly discussed, it is surely right to
consider what form of religion that was which they found working round
them in France, and on the greater part of the Continent. The quality
thereof may have surely had something to do (as they themselves asserted)
with that "sort of rage" with which (to use M. de Tocqueville's words)
"the Christian religion was attacked in France."

M. de Tocqueville is of opinion (and his opinion is likely to be just)
that "the Church was not more open to attack in France than elsewhere;
that the corruptions and abuses which had been allowed to creep into it
were less, on the contrary, there than in most Catholic countries. The
Church of France was infinitely more tolerant than it ever had been