This was the moment at which I was inclined to think that all the ideas of America and the optimistic spirit which animates them, beginning with the idea of progress, could only be a passing ebullition and the merry madness of youth. This nation, I said to myself, favoured as it is at the moment by unusual facilities for the creation of wealth, has been so much carried away by its success as to make of riches, which are and can be only a means, an end in themselves. A longer experience of history will convince America of its mistake. One day, however, as I was again pondering intently over the facts I had observed, which seemed to prove that the Americans were often dreamers, idealists, almost mystics in matters in which the Europeans show themselves eminently practical, an idea flashed across my mind. What if American progress, which to me had seemed up to then to be but a youthful madness, should prove, if thoroughly analysed, to be only an idealistic and semi-mystical conception of wealth itself? What if this nation, accused of desiring only the immediate possession of worldly goods, was wearing itself out in an unbridled and diabolical activity from dawn till sundown, not with the object of increasing its happiness and pleasure, but for a distant end, transcending the egoism and even the consciousness of the individual? What if all, without knowing it, or impelled as it were by a superior, if not directly mystical force, were labouring and even suffering for this end—a new end, to which history can show us no parallel; the conquest of an immense continent from one sea to the other, by means of a new instrument unknown to our forefathers: steam- or electricity-driven machinery? * * * * * From progress, from the democratic and philanthropic ideality of the Americans, from the economic difficulties with which our kind hostess had to wrestle, to machinery and to the conquest of the great territory of the United States, may seem a risky, violent, and unexpected transition or transitions. As a matter of fact, I could not have executed so bold a transition unaided. I was helped by my wife, in an indirect, but, for that very reason, strange and decisive way. In fact, without her help I should not have succeeded in finding my bearings in the chaos of my American experiences, nor in understanding how and to what extent the Old World and the New World are opposed to each other; as a result, I could not have written the philosophical dialogue on Europe and America, which will be published shortly. It seems to me necessary, then, to recount how this help was given me; and I hope that my brief account will not be read without interest.