“‘Everything is possible to science,’ said Archibold, authoritatively. 

“‘Easy, even,’  Hatchitt approved. “‘The world will be ended by science, as Edenic humankind perished. All religions have predicted it.’ 

“‘Science must have limits?’  I objected, in order to reassure myself. 

“‘Science has no limits,’  Archibold replied. “‘Science is progress—a forward march, with no pause, and no terminus. Its law, the law of mind, is to accelerate, just as the law of bodies is to accelerate as they fall, increasing their speed in proportion to the square of the distance. It’s only two hundred years since man began the conquest of science; he’s still stammering its elements, trying his first steps—but he will take his course, and his speed will be multiplied by the square of centuries. We would go mad if it were given to us to see where man has arrived a thousand years hence, progressing at such a pace, and yet it is we ourselves who will have made that road. For humankind, Pascal says, is but one man ‘who always subsists and who learns incessantly;’ one man who will know, one day, the ultimate limits of things; for whom his world will have no more secrets, and who, disdaining even the puerile work of destroying it, will kick it away like a cadaver worn out by the scalpel, and will pursue his studies on a better planet, on golden Vulcan, or even in a sun.’”

Comte Didier de Chousy, 1884