not proceed from something, and which does not lead to something. The just, the unjust, good, evil, good works, evil deeds, fall into the abyss, but are not lost there, passing on into the infinite, for the benefit or the burden of those who have accomplished them. After death they are collected, and the sum-total cast up. To disappear, to vanish, to be annihilated, to cease to be, is no more possible for the moral atom than for the material atom. Hence, in man, that great twofold sense of his liberty and of his responsibility. It is given him to be good or to be bad. It is an account that will have to be settled. He may be guilty, and therein--a striking circumstance upon which I dwell--consists his grandeur. There is nothing similar for the brute. With the brute it is all instinct: to drink when thirsty, to eat when hungry, to procreate in due season, to sleep when the sun sets, to wake when it rises, or _vice versa_, if it be a beast of night. The brute has only an obscure sort of _ego_, illumined by no moral light. Its entire law, I repeat, is instinct: instinct, a sort of railway, along which inevitable nature impels the brute. No liberty, therefore, no responsibility, and consequently no future life. The brute does neither evil nor good; it is wholly ignorant. Even the tiger is innocent. If, perchance, you were innocent as the tiger! At certain moments one is tempted to believe that, having no warning voice within, any more than the tiger, you have no more sense of responsibility. Really, at times I pity you. Who knows? perhaps after all, you are only a miserable blind force! Louis Bonaparte, you have not the notion of good and evil. You are, perhaps, the only man of all mankind who has not that notion. This gives you a start over the human race. Yes, you are formidable. It is that which constitutes your genius, it is said; I admit that, at all events, it is that which at this moment constitutes your power. But do you know what results from this sort of power? Possession, yes; right, no. Crime essays to deceive history as to its true name; it says, "I am success."--Thou art crime! You are crowned and masked. Down with the mask! Down with the crown! Ah! you are wasting your trouble, you are wasting your appeals to the people, your plebiscites, your ballots, your footings, your executive committees proclaiming the sum total, your red or green banners, with these figures in gold paper,--7,500,000! You will derive no advantage from this elaborate _mise-en-scene_. There are things about which universal sentiment is not to be gulled. The human race, taken as a whole, is an honest man.