that comets sometimes played tricks on astronomers, that scientists, who apparently are men, did not willingly speak of their failures, and that, if they should speak of them, they would have to count more defeats than victories.
That day, M. LeRoy evidently overreached himself. If science did not succeed, it could not serve as rule of action; whence would it get its value? Because it is 'lived,' that is, because we love it and believe in it? The alchemists had recipes for making gold, they loved them and had faith in them, and yet our recipes are the good ones, although our faith be less lively, because they succeed.
There is no escape from this dilemma; either science does not enable us to foresee, and then it is valueless as rule of action; or else it enables us to foresee, in a fashion more or less imperfect, and then it is not without value as means of knowledge.
It should not even be said that action is the goal of science; should we condemn studies of the star Sirius, under pretext that we shall probably never exercise any influence on that star? To my eyes, on the contrary, it is the knowledge which is the end, and the action which is the means. If I felicitate myself on the industrial development, it is not alone because it furnishes a facile argument to the advocates of science; it is above all because it gives to the scientist faith in himself and also because it offers him an immense field of experience where he clashes against forces too colossal to be tampered with. Without this ballast, who knows whether he would not quit solid ground, seduced by the mirage of some scholastic novelty, or whether he would not despair, believing he had fashioned only a dream?
3. The Crude Fact and the Scientific Fact
What was most paradoxical in M. LeRoy's thesis was that