Although he is not strictly a philosopher in the academic or professional sense, and his work belongs to literature rather than to the philosophy of the period, we cannot help calling attention briefly here, at the conclusion of this chapter, to the genial pessimism of Bergson’s great literary contemporary, Anatole France, the famous satirist of our age. His irony on questions like that of progress is very marked in _L’Ile des Penguins_ and in _Jérôme Coignard_. A remark from one of his works, this latter, will sufficiently illustrate his view on progress. “I take little interest,” remarks his character, the Abbé Coignard, “in what is done in the King’s Cabinet, for I notice that the course of life is in no way changed, and after reforms men are as before, selfish, avaricious, cowardly, cruel, stupid and furious by turns, and there is always a nearly even number of births, marriages, cuckolds and gallows-birds, in which is made manifest the beautiful ordering of our society. This condition is stable, sir, and nothing could shake it, for it is founded on human misery and imbecility, and those are foundations which will never be wanting.” The genial old Abbé then goes on to remind socialist revolutionaries that new economic schemes will not radically change human nature. We easily see the ills in history and blind ourselves with optimism for the future. Even in Sorel, the Syndicalist, who has added to his articles on _Violence_ (which appeared in 1907 in the periodical _Le Mouvement socialiste_) a work on _Les Illusions du Progrès_, we find the same doctrines about the vices of modern societies, which he considers no better than ancient ones in their morality; they are filled with more hypocrisy, that is all. France and Sorel only add more testimony to the utter collapse of the old doctrine of assured and general progress. * * * * * * * * *