It is quite true
that the reaction against Positivism is making itself felt among our
literary fellow-students, and that they, like others, are haunted by the
idea of that famous bankruptcy of science. This is perhaps due to their
masters, the neo-spiritualists and dogmatical rhetoricians into whose
hands they have fallen. And it is still more due to fashion, the whim of
the times which, as you have very well put it, regards scientific truth
as bad taste, something graceless and altogether too brutal for light and
distinguished minds. Consequently, a young fellow of any shrewdness who
desires to please is perforce won over to the new spirit."
"The new spirit!" interrupted Pierre, unable to restrain himself. "Oh!
that is no mere innocent, passing fashion, it is a tactical device and a
terrible one, an offensive return of the powers of darkness against those
of light, of servitude against free thought, truth and justice."
Then, as the young man again looked at him with growing astonishment, he
relapsed into silence. The figure of Monseigneur Martha had risen before
his eyes, and he fancied he could again hear the prelate at the
Madeleine, striving to win Paris over to the policy of Rome, to that
spurious neo-Catholicism which, with the object of destroying democracy
and science, accepted such portions of them as it could adapt to its own
views.
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