Theory of true civilization. It lies not in gas, nor in steam, nor in tilting tables. It lies in the diminution of the traces of original sin. Nomad peoples, shepherds, hunters, farmers, even cannibals, _all_ can rise superior in energy, in personal dignity, to our races of the West. We perhaps shall be destroyed. XLIX It is through leisure, in part, that I have grown,--to my great detriment; for leisure, without wealth, increases debts; but to my great gain, in regard to sensibility, meditation, and the faculty of dandyism and of dilettantism. L The young girl of editors. The young girl of editors in chief. The young girl, scarecrow, monstrous, assassin of art. The young girl, what she really is. A little stupid and a little slovenly; the greatest imbecility combined with the greatest depravity. There is in the young girl all the abjection of the cad and of the school-boy. LI Advice to non-communists: all is common, even God. LII The Frenchman is a backyard animal so domestic that he dare not leap any fences. See his tastes in art and literature. He is an animal of the Latin race; filth does not displease him; in his home, and in literature, he is scatophagous. He dotes on excrement. The litterateurs of the coffee-house call that the _gallic salt_. LIII _Princes and generations._ There is equal injustice in attributing to reigning princes the virtues and the vices of the people they actually govern. Those virtues and those vices should almost always, as statistics and logic will show, be attributed to the atmosphere of the preceding government. Louis XIV inherits the men of Louis XIII, glory. Napoleon I inherits the men of the Republic, glory. Louis-Philippe inherits the men of Charles X, glory. Napoleon III inherits the men of Louis-Philippe, dishonor. It is always the preceding government that is responsible for the customs of the following, in so far as a government can be responsible for anything. The sudden suppressions that circumstances bring to a reign do not allow of absolute exactitude in this law, in regard to time. One cannot, say precisely where an influence ends, but an influence will endure in all the generation that was subjected to it in youth. LIV Of the hatred of youth toward those who quote. The quoter is their enemy. "I would place spelling itself in the hands of the hangman." (Th. Gautier.) Immovable desire of prostitution in the heart of man, whence springs his horror of solitude.--He wishes to be _two_. The genius wishes to be _one_, hence alone. Glory is in remaining _one_, and in prostituting one's self in a particular way. It is that horror of solitude, the need of forgetting his _ego_ in the outer flesh, that man nobly calls the _need of love_. Two fine religions, immortally planted on the mature, eternal obsessions of the people: the ancient phallus, and "Vive Barbés!" or "A bas Philippe!" or "Vive la République!" LV