This is why our effort is painful and meritorious. We are going, it cannot be too often repeated, against the law of force. Our adversaries are driven forward by a power that drives us back. They are advancing in the direction of nature, whereas we are swimming against the great current that flows around the globe. Earth has an idea that is no longer ours. She is convinced that man is an animal in all respects like other animals. She has not yet noticed that he has drawn away from the herd. She does not yet know that he has climbed her highest mountains. She has not yet heard of justice, of pity, of loyalty, of honor; she knows not what these are, or she confuses them with weakness, inefficiency, stupidity, and fear. She has held to the original certitudes that were indispensable in the beginnings of life. She is falling behind us, and the space between is growing rapidly. She thinks less swiftly and has yet had the time to comprehend us. Besides, she does not count as we do, and the ages for her are less than our years. She is slow because she is almost eternal, while we are swift because we have not many hours before us. It is possible that her thought may some day rejoin ours; meanwhile, we have to defend our advance and prove to ourselves, as we are beginning to do, that it is permitted to be right against her will, that our advance is not fatal, and that it is possible to maintain it. For it is beginning to be difficult to maintain that earth, or nature, or brute force, is always right, and that those who do not blindly follow its mandates are doomed to perish. We have learned to observe nature more attentively and have acquired the right to judge her. We have ascertained that, far from being infallible, she never ceases to deceive herself. She hesitates, she gropes. She does not know just what she wants. She begins with enormous blunders. She first peoples the world with fantastic and inchoate monsters, not one of which is stable, and they all disappear. Gradually, at the expense of the life which she creates, she acquires an experience which is the cruel fruit of innumerable sufferings inflicted with indifference. In the long run she grows wiser, learns moderation, corrects herself, retraces her steps, redresses her errors, and devotes to their reparation the best of her intelligence and of her forces. It is incontestable that she is perfecting her methods and that she is showing herself more able, more prudent, less given to excess, than in the beginning. It is none the less true that in all reigns, in all organisms, and even in our own bodies, the bad workmanship, the double uses, the inadvertencies, the things repented of, the absurdities, the useless complications, the sordid economies, and the senseless wastes continue.