104 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



logical research made it more and more difficult for him to accept 

 implicitly the dogmas which had been hitherto the fixed stars of 

 his thought. At first he had been troubled only by metaphysical 

 difficulties, but such can be evaded, or at least one may nourish 

 the illusion of evading them; the study of the original texts now 

 revealed to him the existence of inadvertencies, errors and con- 

 tradictions which could not be denied. Neither did the dating of 

 those sacred documents by means of scientific methods tally at all 

 with the traditional chronology. Once these hard facts had been 

 faced, there was no honest way of shunning them, and his con- 

 science was a prey to unremitting distress. For a while, however, 

 he hoped against all hope that it would remain possible to recon- 

 cile the facts with his faith; and maybe he would have suc- 

 cumbed to his intense desire for such reconciliation, to his pas- 

 sionate love of the church in which he had been brought up, to 

 his fear of saddening the hearts of his teachers and of his beloved 

 mother; he might have succeeded in persuading himself that it 

 was his duty to silence the doubts of his mind and to follow the 

 road which traditions of his family, his own inclinations and fate 

 itself had traced for him from the beginning. Men, even the best 

 of them, are only too often tempted to sacrifice the essential duty 

 of their lives to some immediate duty, the importance of which is 

 more tangible. Happily at this critical juncture, at this parting of 

 the ways, Ernest received the assistance of his sister. Henriette 

 was then tutoring in Poland, but there was a close correspond- 

 ence between them; partly because of her age and experience, 

 partly because of her greater decision and the simplicity of her 

 character, she saw more clearly than her brother his main duty: 

 there can be no compromise with truth as one sees it; to evade 

 the dictates of one's conscience on a matter of fundamental im- 

 portance is cowardice, however generous the reasons for such 

 evasions be. She did not simply offer him spiritual assistance, but 

 placed at his disposal her humble savings, some twelve hundred 

 francs, which would enable him to face the first necessities with 

 less anxiety. It would be futile to imagine what his course would 



