Every epoch directs all its efforts towards a supreme goal, which for it is the all-important one. There have been epochs ablaze with religious fervour, whose chief aspiration it was to diffuse and to defend the faith. There have been epochs with a profound sense of the ambition for glory, which fought great wars. Others again have turned their attention to the fostering of the arts and sciences. Our civilisation aims, in the first place, at the mastery over nature, and the intensive exploitation of all the riches of the earth. We enjoy the advantages of it. We are not inclined to abjure railways and telegraphs. We have no wish again to run the risk of famine, which was such an ever-present one to the civilisations of the past. We enjoy the incredible abundance and liberty of the day and are by no means eager to return to the pristine régime of discipline and parsimony. We Europeans also, then, must resign ourselves to paying the price which all these advantages cost, and to living in an epoch in which art cannot flourish in any high degree, in which religion will no longer have the strength to emanate waves of mystical ardour, and even science will be cultivated only so far as it can be of immediate service to practical ends, by intensifying and making more prolific the exploitation of natural riches. For this, too, is a phenomenon noticeable to-day in every part of Europe: disinterested studies are falling into disfavour. Rich as it is, the world of to-day is less capable of searching after the true for the sole pleasure of expanding the field of knowledge, than it was two centuries ago, when it was so much poorer. Even scientists nowadays want to see their discoveries turned into money. * * * * *