or
eight hundred years, has applied the brush to this picture; still, at
the present time we see it grow under our eyes, acquiring a stronger
relief, deeper color, a more vigorous harmony, an ever more fixed and
striking expression.--To the articles of belief which constitute the
creed for the Greek and Slavic church, thirteen subsequent Catholic
councils have added to it many others, while the two principal dogmas
decreed by the last two councils, Transubstantiation by the council of
Trent and the Infallibility of the Pope by that of the Vatican, are just
those the best calculated to hinder forever any reconciliation between
science and faith.

Thus, for Catholic nations, the dissimilarity, instead of diminishing,
is aggravated; both pictures, one painted by faith and the other
by science, become more and more dissimilar, while the profound
contradiction inherent in the two conceptions becomes glaring through
their very development, each developing itself apart and both in
a counter-sense, one through dogmatic verdicts and through the
strengthening of discipline and the other by ever-increasing discoveries
and by useful applications, each adding daily to its authority, one by
precious inventions and the other by good works, each being recognized
for what it is, one as the leading instructor of positive truths and the
other as the leading instructor of sound morality. That is why we find a
combat in each Catholic breast as to which of the two concepts is to
be accepted as guide. To every sincere mind and to one capable of
entertaining both, each is irreducible to the other. To the vulgar mind,
unable to combine both in thought, they exist side by side and clash
with each other only occasionally when action demands a choice.
Many intelligent, cultivated people, and even savants, especially
specialists, avoid confronting them, one being the support of their
reason and the other the guardian of their conscience; between them, in
order to prevent any possible conflict, they interpose in advance a wall
of separation, a compartment partition,[5350]" which prevents them from
meeting and clashing. Others, at length, clever or not too clear-sighted
politicians, try to force their agreement, either by assigning to each
its domain and in prohibiting mutual access, or by uniting both domains
through the semblance of bridges, by imitation stairways, and other
illusory communications which the phantasmagoria of human eloquence can
a