Human nature is without reproach, continues Renan (L'Avenir de la Science), and proceeds toward the perfect by means of forms successively and diversely imperfect. All the ideas which primitive science had formed of the world appear narrow, trivial, and ridiculous to us after that which progressive research has proven to be true. The fact is that science has only destroyed her dreams of the past, to put in their stead a reality a thousand times superior; but were science to remain what it is, we should have to submit to it while cursing it, for it has destroyed and not builded up again; it has awakened man from a sweet sleep without smoothing the reality to him. What science gives us is not enough, we are still hungry. True science is that which belongs neither to the school nor the drawing-room, but which corresponds exactly to the wants of man. Hence true science is a religion which will solve for men the eternal problems, the solution of which his nature imperatively demands. Herein lies the hope of humanity; for, like a wild beast, the uneducated masses stand at bay; ready to turn and rend those who are willing to keep them in their present condition, in order to be able to make them answer their own purposes.... I am firmly convinced, continues Renan, for my own part, that unless we make haste and elevate the people, we are upon the eve of a terrible outbreak of barbarism. For if the people triumph in their present state, it will be worse than it was with the Franks and Vandals. They will destroy of their own accord the instrument which might have served to elevate them; we shall then have to wait until civilization once more emerges spontaneously from the profound depths of nature. Morality, like politics, is summed up, then, in this grand saying: To elevate the people. If I were to see humanity collapse on its own foundations, mankind again slaughter one another in some fateful hour, I should still go on proclaiming that perfection is human nature's final aim, and that the day must come when reason and perfection shall reign supreme. Sailing, sailing in the same staunch ship-- We are sailing on together; We see the rocks and we mark the shoals, And we watch for cyclone weather. The perils we run for one alone Are perils for all together,-- The harbour we make for one alone, Makes haven for all, through the weather. Stand by your ship: be brave, brothers mine! Be brave, for we'll stand together! We'll yet reach the port for which we sail In this black and stormy weather. Sailing, sailing the same stormy sea, We are sailing all together! There are rocks ahead and shoals beneath, And 'round us hurricane weather. I see in the West a star arise, That will guide us all together:-- Stand firm by your helm and trust in God Who pilots us through this weather.