To what excess of imbecility, then, have we not seen these freethinkers fall, these apostles of independent reason, who on principle boast that they have no faith and no law! Thence comes the scorn which afflicts these unbelievers for all who believe and hope here below; thence, their systematic ignorance of fundamental questions; thence, the incurable blindness in which they bask; thence, finally, the inconsistencies and contradictions which make them a spectacle humiliating to the human mind.
But agnostic man labors in vain. He cannot escape the mysteries which surround him on every hand, like a gulf in which reason is inevitably lost so soon as it ceases to seek the light.
Man stumbles at every turn against the efforts of a stronger reason than his own,--the Supreme Reason before which, nilly nilly, his must bow and confess the insanity of its judgments.
Logic is not, to reason, a sure guide; and even where it feels its foothold most strong, it sometimes trips, to the disgrace of the good opinion it had of its own infallibility.
Let us show by a simple example to what rebuffs our reason is exposed when counting on the support of its logic, face to face with the reason of facts.
Undoubtedly it is logical and perfectly in conformity with reason, to say that one and one make two. No doubt seems possible on that point. Well, this elementary truth, the most undeniable in the eyes of all men which can be produced, does not, despite the assurances which seem to uphold it, constitute an impregnable axiom; for there are cases when one and one do not make two! Certainly such a proposition seems scarcely reasonable, for its admission would entail the reversal of what are called the sound notions of logic! But what will the logician say if I affirm that in a certain case, one and one make but one-half? Would he even take the trouble to refute me? No, he would laugh in my face; he would not listen to me; he would tax me with absurdity and insanity, preferring thus to lose a chance of instruction rather than confess the impotence of his logic.
There is the evil, and it is generally in this way that ignorance is perpetuated. But let us return to the fact which we desire to prove, contrary to logic and the pretensions of ordinary reason.
Now, it is logical and perfectly in conformity with reason to say that two musical instruments make more noise than one; and that thus two double basses, for example, tuned in unison and placed side by side, produce one sound of a double intensity. This seems an elementary matter. It is as clear, you say, as that one and one make two. Well, no, it is not so clear as you suppose. It is, on the contrary, a mistake; for attentive experiment proves that the result is diametrically opposite to the logical conclusion.
This is a fact which no argument can destroy. Two double basses, placed in the above-named conditions--conditions of vicinity and tonal identity--far from adding up their individual result, are thus reduced each to a quarter of its own sonority, which in the sum total, instead of producing a double sound, produces a sound reduced to half of that given individually by each instrument taken alone. This is how a power plus an analogous power equals together with it but half a power; and thus we are forced to admit that one and one do not necessarily make two.
I have carried the experiment still farther; in the instrument which gained me a first-class medal at the exhibition of 1854, I was enabled to put thirty-six strings of the same piano into unison at once. Well! All these strings, struck simultaneously, did not attain to the intensity of sound produced by one of them struck singly. All these sounds, far from gaining strength by union, reciprocally neutralized one another. This is not logical, I admit; but we must submit to it.