Their multiple and contradictory activity will stop sometimes, struck by surprise, to observe the sureness of your movements, and you will still be one of the terms, though no longer the same, in the disturbing problem of intelligence and instinct. I have also sometimes thought that on your earth there would be a slow return towards primordial unity. Every organism would be re-absorbed into that formless yet living jelly, which has been differentiated, little by little, in the course of time, into myriads of dissimilar beings. The movement, after reaching its climax, would retrace its steps. Evolution would continue in retrogression. The vertebrate would become once more the annelid, the annelid the nothing that creeps like a spot of oil on the surface of water. As for the destruction of our solar world by a cataclysm, it is a theatrical idea, but though theatrical, not impossible. It is at once dramatic and vulgar, within the reach of everybody, and without philosophical or scientific interest. Anybody can conceive a shock, and a bursting in pieces, as he conceives a fire, a wreck, or an explosion. If it is the truth, it is without interest. The truth is a bridge that must be crossed to gain the other side of the stream. He rose. The young women, enchanted, shook their dresses, and arranged the folds of them. Elise threw me a tender look and joined her companions, who were already moving away. HE Just so. Let us walk a little. Besides, my discourse is nearing its end. We have stirred up many ideas. In putting them in their places in your head, you will consider them with care. Order is almost the whole of knowledge. Come. The morning is about to be born, the real morning, and I do not wish to disturb that to which men are accustomed. I have never done so. The duty of the gods is to respect logic. We took a long walk through the fresh, flowering paths. It seemed to me that the familiar garden became an immense and magical forest. The perspectives stretched out under tall trees to a stream that flowed slowly under the poplars that edged it. Then the stream disappeared; it was a glade where roebuck passed in troops. We went on and the appearances changed continually. At certain moments I found again the garden of my summer mornings, with its lawns, its flower-beds, its trees, from which doves kept falling, its paths, its seats; I seemed to hear the laughter of the children, the disputes of the players, the murmur of the couples. All this went on in my head, accompanied by my friend's words, and I was drunk, with love, with ideas, and with loveliness. HE We have settled several great questions with the logical intrepidity of our minds.... I As for me, I hear and I believe. HE An understanding auditor is half of the discourse. The solitary sinks and loses himself in the whirlwind of his reasonings. A word, even a look, is enough to give him back his equilibrium.