But no! at the same time that the last century loved men it admired them; and I can understand this. God and duty being abandoned, what remains of great and good if it be not man? Imperfect as is human nature, a mixture of good and evil, good is found there; the power of good makes itself felt. All that it possesses of what is elevated, rich, tender, or attractive, does not necessarily vanish because the mind misunderstands its source and government. {34} And if it should happen, as it then did, that these great mental errors should occur in the midst of a period of great intellectual developement, of a great outflowing of sympathetic and noble sentiments, of a great march in the condition of mankind; if, at the moment when man rises highest and shines with most brilliancy, he loses sight of his compass, his God, how can he do otherwise than admire himself? how avoid a feeling of pride? He has no longer faith or hope on high, yet he advances, prospers, becomes rich, triumphs. He must believe; he must hope in himself; he must worship himself. Does religion fall? Then idolatry must arise, the idolatry of man for man. Man was the god of the eighteenth century, the object of worship as well as of love. Thence a great and deplorable leaning to human nature, to its weaknesses and inclinations. It was loved, but with a blind and weak love, which could only approve, caress, and promise, having nothing to advise, nothing to require. Thence an immoderate thirst, in the name of and for man, of immediate worldly and palpable happiness. Loving man truly, and having nothing to offer him in this world superior to this world's happiness, nothing better or eternal beyond, it was necessary that men should be happy, that all should be happy here below; as here below their destiny and their treasure were contained. {35} To accept the imperfect condition of humanity may be the part of selfishness which cares for nothing, and of faith which hopes for everything; but he who loves men, and yet can only dispose in their favour the blessings of this life and this world, cannot resign himself to a lot for the most part so rude, to progress so slow and always so incomplete. He is compelled to find much more to bestow on men, to distribute something, and at once, to all. And as spirits imbued with so noble a longing do not dream of the impossibility of satisfying it, they are compelled to assign to the sufferings and hardships of the human state an accidental and factitious cause, one which human wisdom and power can overcome. Hence the other maxim of the last century, that, left to themselves and their natural equilibrium, men and things go on well; that evil proceeds not from our innate nature and state, but merely from the ill regulated state of society, where the few have substituted their will and interest for the wills and interests of the many; that it is society and not men that need reformation, as the latter would not need it had not society corrupted him.