If we inquire of the Academy of Sciences whether it is mathematically true that there are Three Persons in one God and whether, on the basis of physiology, it can be certified that Mary, the Mother of God, was conceived immaculate, the Academy of Sciences will decline to judge thereon, and it will be right. Scholarship has no title to pronounce, as the questions belong to the realm of faith. An article of faith is believed or is not believed, but in either case it is not a matter of discussion: it is of faith precisely because it eludes examination by science. When Joseph de Maistre assures us that one of these days we shall speak in terms of wonder about our actual stupidity, he is referring, no doubt, to those people of pretended strong mind who daily inform us that they will believe in the truth of a dogma when it has been proved scientifically. This is equivalent to saying that they will believe when nothing is left for believing, when dogma as such is destroyed, having become a scientific theorem. It is another way of suggesting that we shall confess to the infinite when it has been explained, determined, circumscribed, defined, or, in a word, changed into the finite. We will believe in the infinite when we are quite certain that it does not exist; we will admit the immensity of the ocean when we see it put into bottles. But then, my friends, that which has been proved to you and brought within your comprehension is henceforth a matter of knowledge and not of faith. On the other hand, if you are informed that the Pope has decided that two and two are not four and that the square of the hypotenuse is not equal to the squares drawn on the two other sides of a right-angled triangle, you would be justified in replying that the Pope has not so decided because he has no title; these things do not concern him and he may not meddle therein. Here a disciple of Rousseau will exclaim that this is all very well, but the Church does require us to believe in things which are in formal opposition to mathematics. All mathematical science tells us that the whole is greater than the part; this notwithstanding, when Jesus Christ communicates with his disciples, He must hold His entire body in His hand and put His head in His own mouth. The miserable pleasantry in question occurs textually in Rousseau. It is easy to answer that the sophist is confounding science with faith and the natural order with that which is supernatural or divine. Were it claimed by religion that in the communication of the Eucharist our Saviour had two natural bodies of the same form and size, and that one was eaten by the other, science would be entitled to protest. But religion lays down that the body of the Master is divinely and sacramentally contained under the natural sign or appearance of a fragment of bread. Once more, it is a question of believing or not believing: whosoever reasons thereon, and discusses the thing scientifically, deserves to be classed as a fool.[119]