Science and Art have moved away from Truth

Science and Art have moved away from Truth

The immense edifice of modern science began much earlier than was supposed fifty years ago. I will be careful not to say that the Middle Ages did everything. But we must do justice to both men and women. The Middle Ages worked immensely: it penetrated very much into the nature of things. Finally, and here is his glory: He never looked at creation as a separate thing, isolated from the Creator.

It was precisely this alliance of science and science that earned him the contempt of the last three centuries. They made fun of the Middle Ages, because they spoke of God about everything, everything about God. We have made fun of the Middle Ages, because we wanted to look at nature, in the forgetfulness of its author, to look at it detached, isolated, to scrutinize it with material instruments, to examine it as an object, without respect for she, and without memory for her principle.

It was believed that Science would be more precise, more clear-sighted, more incisive, more mistress, if its eyes, detached from the sky, searched the earth, far from God. It was believed that she would have the reality, if she lost the ideal: it was believed that she would gain in depth everything she would lose in height. Science, three hundred years ago, came down from the mountain where she had grown up and where she was going to blossom under the rays of the cross and arrived one hundred years ago at this ravine where, no longer raising her eyes, she took the sky for a dream. She had descended so low that she began to despise. Quum in deepum venerit, contemnit.

To measure the horror of this second adultery, we must have a look at the admirable union of science and science, a union which was begun and was about to break out in the light when Descartes and Bacon appeared. The tendency of the Middle Ages was to feel life everywhere, to isolate nothing, and to witness the inner work of creation. Antiquity had been singularly deprived of the intimate sense of life.

The element, or the elements, which she supposed the world formed resembled the spring of a watch that plays mechanically. For Thales it was water; for Xenophanes, the earth; for Pherecid, air; for Heraclitus, fire. Empedocles had gathered them all four. But these hypotheses roamed around the creation, like laymen around a temple, and did not enter the sanctuary. They stood at a distance from life, as if they had been afraid to approach, and perhaps, indeed, were they afraid to approach.

The Science of the Middle Ages arrives and says: The beings in general have two metaphysical constituents, the Power and the Act. Compounds in general and bodies in particular have two physical elements, matter and form. Matter and form are in physical being what power and act are in metaphysical being.

Here is a coffee bean. You can destroy it, but after destroying it, try to do it again or try to do another one. Analyze all the substances that compose it, then get one by one all these substances and try to make a coffee bean. Why is the company impossible? It was because the coffee bean possessed, besides the substances of which it was composed, something which you could have taken from it, and which you could not give back to it; this something is absolutely distinct from the separate substances that the decomposed body has presented to you one by one. Now, this something is the form. By virtue of form, the coffee bean was coffee and not cocoa.

Form determined it in a kind of substance and gave it the being of coffee. Admirable thing! To have the science of matter, one must first have the science of form, an invisible virtue which substantifies, specifies and individualizes it. In other words, materialism is the absolute negation of body science. The bread that man eats becomes flesh and blood of man. The bread therefore changes substance by changing shape. (It is understood that I take here the word form in its philosophical sense.)


Natural transubstantiation is therefore the law of life. By corruption matter moves from a higher form to a lower form; by nutrition, matter goes from a lower form to a higher one. The substance that sprouts loses its substantial form first and begins to spoil itself around the germ, immortal point, which feeds on the substance of the rotting grain, and is the symbol of the resurrection. And when the Son of God said: Nisi granum frumenti, cadens in terram, ortuum fuerit, ipsum solum manet; if autem mortuum fuerit, multum fructum affert .

He laid down the law of creation, the transmission of life and death. If we use this law to elevate ourselves to the law of which it is the reflection, the grain of wheat will turn our eyes to Him whom it symbolizes: we will see life and death meet on Calvary, and the Science will sit, in its place, near the cross, on his throne.

Indeed, what is his work? Seeking everywhere the image or vestige of the One who is, she seeks and observes how he gave to creatures to be without being, like him, by themselves, and to give being, since they transmit themselves the same. form one another without being, like him, creative. Plena is omnis terra gloria ejus!

It's not a sound phrase, it's a reality. Science is responsible for discovering to what point the worlds are imbibed with eternal mercy. We took a look at Science in Antiquity and Science in the Middle Ages. In fact, the nineteenth century throws all the rivers into the sea. To understand it, it is necessary to follow on the map the road which the rivers traced during their course in the countryside.

Now, from Descartes, Science had the thought of separating from God, a strange thought whose habit alone prevents us from astonishing ourselves to the extent that it is astonishing. To amaze means to strike down, and lightning is the only natural action that resembles what man should experience when he sees that men have undertaken to make a science without God.

The sixteenth century, which made the Revolt of Science, awakens in the mind the memory of the Paradise catastrophe. Remarkable thing! He did not think of denying God, but he thought of doing without him in Science. He admitted God, but wished to drive him away, and the Holy Ark, where he placed him with an enemy respect, was a means of forgetting him. It is true that God exists, said the sixteenth century, but to be learned, man must act as if he did not exist. Since God exists, he is necessarily the truth. Let us try then, as the sixteenth century would have said, if it had been frank, let us try to dispense with the truth by taking up science. Let us create a science apart from the God who is truth, let Science separate from truth.

He did not say it with that frankness, but he did it with this brutality. The idea of ​​independence still presented itself to the human mind, and it resulted in hallucinations. The man thought that it was shameful for him to be subjected, in Science, to the affirmations of the truth, and that he would be more glorious when he would only report on his own studies.

And Science accepted the role that was given to it. Forgetting that her life is the knowledge of the truth, she has consented to decapitate herself, to commit suicide, to separate herself from the principle and end for which she exists. She has consented to be the knowledge of the false, for apart from the true, there is only the false. Having consented to be the knowledge of forgery, she has admired herself, she has delighted in her strength and independence, for self-esteem always grows with shame.

The day when the crime was accomplished, Science fell asunder; for it did not deprive itself only of the supernatural light which sixteen centuries had kindled before them; it separated itself internally, by the spirit of revolt which entered into it, from the natural order. The necessary, obvious union of Science and truth begins in the natural order and is consummated in the supernatural order. The spirit of rebellion that crept into Science broke with both, under the pretext of studying the first, under the pretext of respecting the second.

Here is a general law: The spirit of revolt is hostile to all science, because Science supposes the adherence of intelligence to the nature of things; so when he has entered, the spirit of revolt does not stop at the logical negations that his first negation entails. He goes before him, in denial, denying for pleasure denier, and sinking into darkness because he loves them. Hegel is the son of Descartes, not by the logic of reason, but by the logic of the heart.

The reasonings of Descartes do not necessarily call those of Hegel; but the Spirit that made Descartes awakened the spirit that made Hegel. The natural order was also covered with a veil, because the eye that had wanted to study it was not pure, and the man ended up denying God, because he had looked at the creation with the eyes of a rebel.

Then the nations saw an extraordinary spectacle, but not unheard: the sciences were detached from God, and, by a justice that they did not avoid, were detached from each other. Their mutual adherence was destroyed when they ceased to adhere to the unity of God. No longer attached to him, they no longer held between them.

The sciences nonetheless engaged in a great deal of research, and they possessed a great deal of knowledge. They studied, with minute care and indefatigable work, the ways of being of things, but they lost the unity which constitutes Science and which is the name of its glory.

They even believed (it is necessary to speak of them in the plural) that the philosophical science could impede the knowledge of detail which had become the object of their ambition, that the Being was a dream whose preoccupation could impede those who had the microscope in the hand to look at the beings. They did not descend from a single leap to this degree; they took two centuries to make this fall, which lasted from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, from Descartes to the Encyclopedia.

The Encyclopedia represents the state of God's spare sciences, detached from science, bent over microscopic animalcules, denying everything they do not see, not understanding anything about the little things they see, because they have lost the key of beings, but seeking to discover the details of creation; happy and proud when, by dint of blindness, they thought they found in a fact they saw badly, the opportunity to mock a truth they did not see.

Science must proclaim the harmony of the facts it observes with the truths that contain them, embrace them, and dominate them. Science in the eighteenth century forgot the truths of creation, distorted the facts of creation and put their happiness in proclaiming the contradiction of these denatured facts and these forgotten truths. These two ignorances, coming to the aid of ill-will, the eighteenth century cast upon nature a troubled and impure look, and the Encyclopedia appeared.

The spirit of the eighteenth century was a poisonous breath which seemed to have the property of infiltrating through the pores in the blood and of making the substance it penetrated rotten. This breath touched Science: it disappeared to make room for science. This breath touched Art: it disappeared to make way for the arts. The spiritual element, which keeps the unity, flew away and the substance of the beings, abandoned of the spirit, went away in dust. Florian represented literature, Boucher and Fragonard represented painting, Voltaire represented philosophy, and Encyclopedists represented Science. It was the dust that reigned.

Thus the law of the rays of the circle was shown. The further they go from the center, the further away they are from each other. "If they depart further," says St. Dionysius, "they continue to separate in the same proportion; in a word, the closer or more distant they are from the central point, the more their proximity or their respective distance is increased."

Thus, the more the branches of science and art, which are the rays of a circle, deviate from the truth, the more they deviate from each other, and when they have completely lost sight of the truth, they lose sight of each other.


Ernest Hello - Man - Life - Science - Art (1872)