That a thinker, who is at the same time the instructor of the ignorant masses, should look upon faith as a means of salvation, is not new, and cannot be considered as a sign of mental aberration; for millions of sane common-sense men have for thousands of years held this opinion. Even if we apply the word salvation exclusively to society in general, to the race, or to one nation, leaving out any references to individual salvation in another world, faith of some kind is the only source from which it could spring. Scientists of Nordau’s type seem unable to understand that science means the knowledge of absolute facts which, while quite capable of undermining and destroying the foundations on which a more or less primitive religion rests, cannot possibly come into collision with faith in the widest sense of the term. When a scientist and a religionist differ about things which have not come under scientific inquiry—such as the final aim of the scheme of humanity, for example—the dispute is not between science and faith, but between two different faiths. Science therefore cannot regulate our conduct, determine our views, or save a nation. This alone can be done by faith, be it based on science, on tradition, or emotion. A great scientific knowledge might be degraded into an excuse for, and a means of, an irresponsible, selfish, and wicked life; or it might ennoble the mind, intensify the sense of responsibility, and serve as the means of rendering great services to humanity. All depends on the faith of the scientist. The end of what we may call the era of scientific atheism, now at hand, presents most deplorable results, as we have already pointed out, of removing the only foundations of a moral balance available to those who have not had any opportunity of drawing from scientific studies that strength of character, and those noble aspirations to be met with in scientists who have a genuine faith—a faith in their science and in humanity, if in nothing else. Tolstoi, who, like every thinking man of our time, had seen the disastrous effects which scientific atheism had produced, cannot possibly be regarded as of weak intellect because he rejected scientific superstition and proclaimed faith as the true basis of conduct and character.