Chapter 57

In the Catholic culture of Europe, and especially among the French, who are the leaders of all our discussions, the opposing camps were upon the one side those possessed of Catholic dogmatic theology, a strong metaphysical structure, and, on the other, those sceptics who denied and ridiculed the claims of such a theology, standing upon the platform of what they called pure reason; and this ideal of pure reason was as unaffected by material science as that of its opponents. The sceptical school of the Great Encyclop…