great Toulouse mathematician seemed to suppose ‘that 
     in saying a thing is easy to believe, I meant only to say 
     that it is probable. This is far from my position: I consider 
     everything that is only probable as almost false. . . .’ Such 
     a position has led to the admission as true of only what is 
     verifiable in tangible and increasingly in measurable terms, 
     or in terms of mathematical demonstrations which start 
     from propositions artificially divorced from the actual 
     experience of living. Since it is impossible, as Pascal seems 
     to have been the first to recognize, to offer the same kind 
     of tangible proof and to get the same kind of assent in 
     matters of faith, of morals and of beauty, the truths of 
     religion, moral philosophy and art have come to be 
     treated as subjects of private opinion rather than of 
     public knowledge. Their contributions to the 
     contemporary world are indirect , though not for that