Frankly, it makes one laugh to hear people assign a _role_ to Science, forbid her to enter such and such a domain, predict to her that she shall go no further, and declare that at this end of the century she is already so weary that she abdicates! Oh! you little men of shallow or distorted brains, you politicians planning expedients, you dogmatics at bay, you authoritarians so obstinately clinging to the ancient dreams, Science will pass on, and sweep you all away like withered leaves! Pierre continued glancing through the humble little book, listening to all it told him of sovereign Science.

She cannot become bankrupt, for she does not promise the absolute, she is simply the progressive conquest of truth.

Never has she pretended that she could give the whole truth at one effort, that sort of edifice being precisely the work of metaphysics, of revelation, of faith.

The _role_ of Science, on the contrary, is only to destroy error as she gradually advances and increases enlightenment.

And thus, far from becoming bankrupt, in her march which nothing stops, she remains the only possible truth for well-balanced and healthy minds.