When the human soul is treated with the impartiality with which physical science is treated in the study of material things, an immense step will have been taken; it is the only means by which humanity can put itself above itself.
 Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881). copy citation

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Author Gustave Flaubert
Source Bouvard et Pécuchet
Topic humanity science
Date 1881
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46909/46909-h/46909-h.htm

Context

“it is not for us to declaim upon such and such a form, but to show in what it consists, how it is attached to another and by what it lives (æstheticism awaits its Saint-Hilaire, that great man who has shown the legitimacy of monsters) . When the human soul is treated with the impartiality with which physical science is treated in the study of material things, an immense step will have been taken; it is the only means by which humanity can put itself above itself. It will then consider itself frankly through the mirror of its works; it will be like God and judge from on high. Well, I believe that feasible; perhaps, as in mathematics, we have only to find the method.” source