Society lives by faith, and develops by science.

Amiel distinguishes between two social necessities: “faith” as the shared trust, moral commitment, and collective belief that binds people into a functioning community, and “science” as the disciplined inquiry that expands knowledge and enables material and institutional progress. The point is not simply to oppose religion to science, but to assign them different roles: faith supplies cohesion, purpose, and legitimacy; science supplies methods for improvement and adaptation. Read this way, the aphorism warns that scientific advancement alone cannot guarantee social stability, while faith without critical inquiry can stagnate. Its significance lies in framing modernity as requiring both a unifying moral imagination and an engine of empirical development.