Christians, priests, and even Bishops, too often drift in practice into a neutrality they would condemn in theory. It is indeed unquestionably true that neutrality is sometimes necessary. Problems of physics, chemistry, biology, and of social economy are never to be studied with the pre-conceived object of finding in them a confirmation of our religious beliefs. To consider an object scientifically it must be mentally isolated if it is to be examined in all its bearings, and if its significance is to be grasped with precision and clearness. Whenever the progress of thought (conditioned by the present division of labour) has called forth from the pele-mele of empiric observations a new science, it is because some man of genius has brought to light, from the disorderly mass in which others have been groping, a new aspect of a truth until then unperceived. The older scholastics called this distinct aspect, which is the object of a new science, the 'formal' object of this science. Hence, to consider a science from any point of view other than that of its 'formal' object, is to consider it with an attention divided between this object and some problem involving another principle, or between this object and apologetics; and to reason thus is to disregard the essence of scientific speculation, and recede from that progress that every seeker of truth should follow.