_Tristano_. Assuredly. It is true that sometimes I think one of the ancients was physically worth four of us. And the body is the man; because (apart from all else) high-mindedness, courage, the passions, capacity for action and enjoyment, and all that ennobles and vivifies life, depend on the vigour of the body, without which they cannot exist. The weak man is not a man, but a child, and less than a child, because it is his fate to stand aside and see others live. All he can do is to chatter. Life is not for him. Hence in olden times, and even in more enlightened ages, weakness of body was regarded as ignominious. But with us, it is very long since education deigned to think of such a base and abject thing as the body. The mind is its sole care. Yet, in its endeavours to cultivate the mind, it destroys the body without perceiving that the former is also necessarily destroyed. And even if it were possible to remedy this false system of education, it would be impossible to discover, without a radical change in the state of modern society, any cure for the other inconveniences of life, whether public or private. Everything that formerly tended to preserve and perfect the body, seems to-day to be in conspiracy for its destruction. The consequence is, that, compared with the ancients, we are little better than children, and they in comparison with us may indeed be termed perfect men. I refer equally to individuals in comparison with individuals, as to the masses (to use this most expressive modern term) compared to the masses. I will add also that the superior vigour of the ancients is manifested in their moral and metaphysical systems. But I do not allow myself to be influenced by such trifling objections, and I firmly believe that the human race is perpetually in a state of progression. _Friend_. You believe also, if I rightly understand you, that knowledge, or, as, it is called, enlightenment, continually increases.