Armine, Chapter XV-XVII [pp. 685-708]

1883.3 A~M!KE. 697
height to which she will rise when she, who was the eldest
daughter of the church, the first among barbarous nations to recognize and embrace the truth, shall again lift her eyes to that
truth and be the first, perhaps, to return to that faith which so
many of her noblest children have never forsaken. That is what
the fine sense of logic which you deride may do for lier. It is
not logic which has been her bane, but the false principles which
she accepted as a basis for thought. Given just principles, and
there is no intellect in the world so lucid and so luminous as the
French in its demonstration of truth. The compromises with
error, the building up of high~sounding premises on unstable
foundations, which are the characteristics of English thought, are
unknown~ to the French mind. It either embraces truth in its
entirety or it does not shrink from the utmost consequences of
negation."
Those who had never heard D'Antignac talk on some subject
which deeply moved him could form little idea of how his eyes
would glow, his whole face light up with the energy of his feeling. As Sibyl Bertram looked at him now she thought that she
had never before realized how clearly the spirit might reveal itself through its fleshly covering.
"Bien dii, mon ami," said the professor. "On that point we
agree. The French mind does not shrink from the utmost consequences of negation. And therein lies our strength and our
best hope for the future. The present may be dark and uncertain; but it is by following the pure light of reason that we
may at last solve our problems, rather than by returning to the
twilight of that superstition which you call faith. For France,
which has ever been in the van of human thought, is not likely
to retrace her way. It is true that she was the first among barbarous nations to accept Christianity, but it was then a step
into the light. It would now be a step into darkness."
"That," said D'Antignac, "is a favorite assertion of your
school of thought~or rather of Opinion, for I do not honestly
believe that there is much thought in the matter-but assertions
without proof, as you must be aware, carry little weight. And
it is difficult for you to prove that Christianity is synonymous
with darkness, when every ray of the light of your boasted civilization directly or indirectly emanates from it. There are in any
travesties of history, but none which can absolutely blind men to
the fact that modern Europe, with its whole civil and moral
order, is the creation of the church, and of the church alone.
She rescued from barbarism and built up into nations the people