order to be exercised in regard to us, demands an immortal soul, it does not demand an impossible thing. The spirituality of the soul is the necessary foundation of immortality. The law of merit and demerit is the direct demonstration of this. The first proof is called the metaphysical proof, the second, the moral proof, which is the most celebrated, most popular, at once the most convincing and the most persuasive. What powerful motives are added to these two proofs to fortify them in the heart! The following, for example, is a presumption of great value for any one that believes in the virtue of sentiment and instinct. Every thing has its end. This principle is as absolute as that which refers every event to a cause.[254] Man has, therefore, an end. This end is revealed in all his thoughts, in all his ways, in all his sentiments, in all his life. Whatever he does, whatever he feels, whatever he thinks, he thinks upon the infinite, loves the infinite, tends to the infinite.[255] This need of the infinite is the mainspring of scientific curiosity, the principle of all discoveries. Love also stops and rests only there. On the route it may experience lively joys; but a secret bitterness that is mingled with them soon makes it feel their insufficiency and emptiness. Often, while ignorant of its true object, it asks whence comes that fatal disenchantment by which all its successes, all its pleasures are successively extinguished. If it knew how to read itself, it would recognize that if nothing here below satisfies it, it is because its object is more elevated, because the true bourne after which it aspires is infinite perfection. Finally, like thought and love, human activity is without limits. Who can say where it shall stop? Behold this earth almost known. Soon another world will be necessary for us. Man is journeying towards the infinite, which is always receding before him, which he always pursues. He conceives it, he feels it, he bears it, thus to speak, in himself,--how should his end be elsewhere? Hence that unconquerable instinct of immortality, that universal hope of another life to which all worships, all poesies, all traditions bear witness. We tend to the infinite with all our powers; death comes to interrupt the destiny that seeks its goal, and overtakes it unfinished. It is, therefore, likely that there is something after death, since at death nothing in us is terminated. Look at the flower that to-morrow will not be. To-day, at least, it is entirely developed: we can conceive nothing more beautiful of its kind; it has attained its perfection. My perfection, my moral perfection, that of which I have the clearest idea and the most invincible need, for which I feel that I am born,--in vain I call for it, in vain I labor for it; it escapes me, and leaves me only hope. Shall this hope be deceived? All beings attain their end; should man alone not attain his? Should the greatest of