LITMIR.BIZ

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common bond between great social facts. No political theory has ever lasted. Governments pass away, as men do, without handing down any lesson, and no system gives birth to a system better than that which came before it. What can we say about politics when a Government directly referred to God perished in India and Egypt; when the rule of the Sword and of the Tiara are past; when Monarchy is dying; when the Government of the People has never been alive; when no scheme of intellectual power as applied to material interests has ever proved durable, and everything at this day remains to be done all over again, as it has been at every period when man has turned to cry out, 'I am in torment!' "The code, which is considered Napoleon's greatest achievement, is the most Draconian work I know of. Territorial subdivision carried out to the uttermost, and its principle confirmed by the equal division of property generally, must result in the degeneracy of the nation and the death of the Arts and Sciences. The land, too much broken up, is cultivated only with cereals and small crops; the forests, and consequently the rivers, are disappearing; oxen and horses are no longer bred. Means are lacking both for attack and for resistance. If we should be invaded, the people must be crushed; it has lost its mainspring—its leaders. This is the history of deserts! "Thus the science of politics has no definite principles, and it can have no fixity; it is the spirit of the hour, the perpetual application of strength proportioned to the necessities of the moment. The man who should foresee two centuries ahead would die on the place of execution, loaded with the imprecations of the mob, or else—which seems worse—would be lashed with the myriad whips of ridicule. Nations are but individuals, neither wiser nor stronger than man, and their destinies are identical. If we reflect on man, is not that to consider mankind? "By studying the spectacle of society perpetually storm-tossed in its foundations as well as in its results, in its causes as well as in its actions, while philanthropy is but a splendid mistake, and progress is vanity, I have been confirmed in this truth: Life is within and not without us; to rise above men, to govern them, is only the part of an aggrandized school-master; and those men who are capable of rising to the level whence they can enjoy a view of the world should not look at their own feet.

      "November 4th.

      "I am no doubt occupied with weighty thoughts, I am on the way to

       certain discoveries, an invincible power bears me toward a

       luminary which shone at an early age on the darkness of my moral

       life; but what name can I give to the power that ties my hands and

       shuts my mouth, and drags me in a direction opposite to my

       vocation? I must leave Paris, bid farewell to the books in the

       libraries, those noble centres of illumination, those kindly and

       always accessible sages, and the younger geniuses with whom I

       sympathize. Who is it that drives me away? Chance or Providence?

       "The two ideas represented by those words are irreconcilable. If

       Chance does not exist, we must admit fatalism, that is to say, the

       compulsory co-ordination of things under the rule of a general

       plan. Why then do we rebel? If man is not free, what becomes of

       the scaffolding of his moral sense? Or, if he can control his

       destiny, if by his own freewill he can interfere with the

       execution of the general plan, what becomes of God?

       "Why did I come here? If I examine myself, I find the answer: I

       find in myself axioms that need developing. But why then have I

       such vast faculties without being suffered to use them? If my

       suffering could serve as an example, I could understand it; but

       no, I suffer unknown.

       "This is perhaps as much the act of Providence as the fate of the

       flower that dies unseen in the heart of the virgin forest, where

       no one can enjoy its perfume or admire its splendor. Just as that

       blossom vainly sheds its fragrance to the solitude, so do I, here

       in the garret, give birth to ideas that no one can grasp.

       "Yesterday evening I sat eating bread and grapes in front of my

       window with a young doctor named Meyraux. We talked as men do whom

       misfortune has joined in brotherhood, and I said to him:

       "'I am going away; you are staying. Take up my ideas and develop

       them.'

       "'I cannot!' said he, with bitter regret: 'my feeble health

       cannot stand so much work, and I shall die young of my struggle

       with penury.'

       "We looked up at the sky and grasped hands. We first met at the

       Comparative Anatomy course, and in the galleries of the Museum,

       attracted thither by the same study—the unity of geological

       structure. In him this was the presentiment of genius sent to open

       a new path in the fallows of intellect; in me it was a deduction

       from a general system.

       "My point is to ascertain the real relation that may exist between

       God and man. Is not this a need of the age? Without the highest

       assurance, it is impossible to put bit and bridle on the social

       factions that have been let loose by the spirit of scepticism and

       discussion, and which are now crying aloud: 'Show us a way in

       which we may walk and find no pitfalls in our way!'

       "You will wonder what comparative anatomy has to do with a

       question of such importance to the future of society. Must we not

       attain to the conviction that man is the end of all earthly means

       before we ask whether he too is not the means to some end? If man

       is bound up with everything, is there not something above him with

       which he again is bound up? If he is the end-all of the explained

       transmutations that lead up to him, must he not be also the link

       between the visible and invisible creations?

       "The activity of the universe is not absurd; it must tend to an

       end, and that end is surely not a social body constituted as ours

       is! There is a fearful gulf between us and heaven. In our present

       existence we can neither be always happy nor always in torment;

       must there not be some tremendous change to bring about Paradise

       and Hell, two images without which God cannot exist to the mind of

       the vulgar? I know that a compromise was made by the invention of

       the Soul; but it is repugnant to me to make God answerable for

       human baseness, for our disenchantments, our aversions, our

       degeneracy.

       "Again, how can we recognize as divine the principle within us

       which can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? How conceive of

       immaterial faculties which matter can conquer, and whose exercise

       is suspended by a grain of opium? How imagine that we shall be

       able to feel when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Why

       must God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is the vitality

       of matter in its innumerable manifestations—the

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