The alternative being that I am
left without any understanding of it at all. True science teaches, above
all, to doubt and to be ignorant; advocacy neither doubts nor believes
that it does not know. It requires a solution.
To the mentality that assumes, more or less consciously, that we must of
necessity find a solution to every problem, belongs the argument based
on the disastrous consequences of a thing. Take any book of
apologetics--that is to say, of theological advocacy--and you will see
how many times you will meet with this phrase--"the disastrous
consequences of this doctrine." Now the disastrous consequences of a
doctrine prove at most that the doctrine is disastrous, but not that it
is false, for there is no proof that the true is necessarily that which
suits us best. The identification of the true and the good is but a
pious wish. In his _Etudes sur Blaise Pascal_, A. Vinet says: "Of the
two needs that unceasingly belabour human nature, that of happiness is
not only the more universally felt and the more constantly experienced,
but it is also the more imperious. And this need is not only of the
senses; it is intellectual. It is not only for the _soul_; it is for the
_mind_ that happiness is a necessity. Happiness forms a part of truth."
This last proposition--_le bonheur fait partie de la verite_--is a
proposition of pure advocacy, but not of science or of pure reason.
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