"Men were not born to become astronomers or chemists, to spend their whole life hanging on a telescope or fastened to a furnace, for no better purpose than to draw afterwards from their laborious observations useless consequences. Granting some astronomer was the first in discovering lands, seas, and mountains in the moon; that he was the first to perceive spots moving upon the sun, and that he has calculated their movements exactly. Granting some chemists to have finally discovered the secret of fixing mercury or to make that alkahest by means of which Van Helmont boasted he could dissolve all matter: were they the wiser and happier for it?" In expressing themselves so disdainfully concerning the sciences, Nicole and Malebranche meant, in fact, only that one should not prefer speculative knowledge to the science of man or to the science of God; and it is most true that if we view the sciences from a standpoint of dignity, we must admit that the moral sciences have greater excellence than the physical sciences. But that which is equally true is, that we must not measure the merit of the sciences by their material or even moral or logical utility. Science is in itself, and without regard to any other end but itself, worthy to be loved and studied. Intelligence, in fact, was given to man that he might know the truth of things; investigation is its natural food. Man, in raising himself to science, increases thereby the excellence of his nature; he becomes a creature of a higher order; for in the order of divine creatures, the most perfect are at the same time those who know the most, and the highest degree of happiness promised to religious faith, is to know truth face to face. It is therefore no frivolous amusement to increase here below the sum of knowledge we are capable of, though this knowledge be only that of the things of this world, and not yet the higher and direct knowledge of God.