But why do men wander so far from the straight way? Why do they their best to ensure each other's unhappiness? They seem, alas! ignorant of the tendency of their actions, while attaching themselves to things transitory, and despising things imperishable. These, indeed, they would utterly ignore; they would live, like the brutes, unconscious of their destiny, if, at the bottom of their indestructible conscience, there did not prevail a glimmer of light, though more or less eclipsed, if they did not all feel themselves attracted, if they did not all irresistibly gravitate, some more quickly, others more slowly, towards the sun of eternal truth and justice. Instead of moving with sidelong sinuous pace, instead of taking ninety-nine steps backward for every one hundred taken in advance, they would all march onward in the way of progress; were it not that they pass their time in clipping their own wings; were it not that, to bend their heads the better--_Veluti pecora ventri obedientia_--they check the aspiring flight of that thought which would soar beyond the present; in a word, were it not that they lay a sacrilegious hand--unfortunate wretches!--on that which God Himself has respected in His creature--Liberty! The doubt which perplexes us as to the great problem of our destiny,--the doubt which allows so much latitude to the workings of our conscience,--does it not indicate the path we ought to follow? Should not men regard their freedom with peculiar reverence, when the Divinity they invoke has mercifully refrained from fettering it? Creatures of a day, who live as if you would never die! the contradictions and the miseries of which you so incessantly complain, are your own work. Help, help yourselves, by the development of your faculties, by the cultivation of your heart and mind, for herein you shall see the law and the prophets. Barren lip-service is nothing better than blasphemy! * * * * * But let us return to the ground which we tread, and where our life-companions are the animals and the plants. * * * * *