the other, the type of the first
being that process of reasoning by which we show that two and two make
four, and the second that experience by which we demonstrate that heat
above a certain degree melts ice, and that cold below a certain degree
freezes water. This is the sole process that is convincing; all others,
less and less sure in proportion as they diverge from it, possess only
a secondary, provisional and contestable value, that which it confers on
them after verification and check.--Let us accordingly avail ourselves
of this one, and not of another, to express, restrain or suspend
our judgment. So long as the intellect uses it and only it, or its
analogues, to affirm, set aside or doubt, it is called reason, and the
truths thus obtained are definitive acquisitions. Acquired one by one,
the truths thus obtained have for a long time remained scattered, in
the shape of fragments; only isolated sciences have existed or bits of
science. About the middle of the eighteenth century these separate parts
became united and have formed one body, a coherent system. Out of this,
formerly called philosophy, that is to say a view of nature as a whole,
consisting of perfect order on lasting foundations, a sort of universal
network which, suddenly enlarged, stretches beyond the physical world
to the moral world, taking in man and men, their faculties and their
passions, their individual and their collective works, various human
societies, their history, customs and institutions, their codes and
governments, their religions, languages, literatures and fine arts,
their agriculture, industries, property, the family and the rest.[6233]
Then also, in each natural whole the simultaneous or successive parts
are connected together; a knowledge of their mutual ties is important,
and, in the spiritual order of things, one accomplishes this, as in
the material order, through scientific distrust, through critical
examination, by credible experimentation and process.[6234]

Undoubtedly, in 1789, the work in common on this ground had resulted
only in false conceptions; but this is because instead of credible
processes another hasty, plausible, popular, risky and deceptive method
was applied. People wanted to go fast, conveniently, directly, and, for
guide, accepted unreason under the name of reason. Now, in the light of
disastrous experience, there was a return to the narrow, stony, long and
painful road which alone leads, both, in speculati