CRITICISMS AND DIFFICULTIES 29 



a certain number of the most distinguished physicists refuse 

 to subscribe to the logical philosophical consequences that 

 can be deduced from it. They perhaps fear that the fragility 

 of their theories will be shown up by the weakening of 

 determinism. But this is tantamount to admitting that 

 determinism is a dogma, and they quite rightly profess a 

 violent dislike for dogmas in general. From our point of 

 view, we simply wanted to mention this important theory 

 which renders great services in undulatory mechanics, 

 for it is sometimes good to be reminded that even exact 

 sciences are far from having attained their definite form, 

 assuming that such an expression is not entirely mean- 

 ingless. 



It is evident that this new concept is of a nature to upset 

 the ideas of many people, especially of those, who uncon- 

 sciously and as a result of a blind confidence in Science — 

 with a capital S — had launched themselves into far-fetched 

 extrapolations, of a purely speculative and unscientific 

 nature. The combination of sentiment and science is not 

 often a happy one, and I am inclined to think that certain 

 optimistic anticipations, so flattering to the human mind, are 

 nothing but a reaction against certain moral disciplines which 

 all tend to glorify humiUty and severely condemn pride. At 

 its dawn, science was greeted as a liberator. At that time the 

 simpHcity of a theory or a doctrine appeared as a proof of its 

 value. New discoveries and events have taken it upon them- 

 selves to cure us of this candidness, which, however, has not 

 yet quite disappeared from the world. But we are forced to 

 admit to-day that science has not fulfilled the promises which 

 man made in her name. We can only blame ourselves for 

 this failure, as not a single experimental fact acquired in the 

 past has ceased to be true. Science has never had to retract 

 a single statement resulting from well-established facts within 

 well-determined hmits. The retractations that science has had 

 to make were not of the domain of pure science, but concerned 

 precisely the prediction of the jfuture. Facts remain, but 

 human anticipations fade away. 



