11. Genesis comprises two divisions, - the history of the formation of the material world, and that of humanity in its dual (corporal and spiritual) principle. Science is limited in its researches by laws which rule matter. In dealing with man it has studied only his bodily envelope. And concerning this it has been enabled to give an account with incontestable precision of the main parts of the mechanism of the universe and of the human organism. This important point attained, it has been further able to complete the Genesis of Moses, and to rectify the defective parts of it.
But the history of man, considered as a spiritual being, is attached to a special order of ideas, which is not, properly speaking, in the domain of science, and which the latter, for this reason, has not made the subject of its investigations. It belongs more particularly to philosophy, which has formulated upon this point only contradictory systems, from genuine spirituality to the denial of the spiritual principle, and even of God, without other foundation than the personal ideas of human authors. It has thus left the question undecided for want of sufficient light to answer it.
