“Well, Monsieur, I am sent into the departments by a company of bankers and capitalists, who have apprehended the enormous waste which rising men of talent are thus making of time, and, consequently, of intelligence and productive ability. We have seized the idea of capitalizing for such men their future prospects, and cashing their talents by discounting--what? TIME; securing the value of it to their survivors. I may say that it is no longer a question of economizing time, but of giving it a price, a quotation; of representing in a pecuniary sense those products developed by time which presumably you possess in the region of your intellect; of representing also the moral qualities with which you are endowed, and which are, Monsieur, living forces,--as living as a cataract, as a steam-engine of three, ten, twenty, fifty horse-power. Ha! this is progress! the movement onward to a better state of things; a movement born of the spirit of our epoch; a movement essentially progressive, as I shall prove to you when we come to consider the principles involved in the logical co-ordination of the social fabric. I will now explain my meaning by literal examples, leaving aside all purely abstract reasoning, which I call the mathematics of thought. Instead of being, as you are, a proprietor living upon your income, let us suppose that you are painter, a musician, an artist, or a poet--” “I am a painter,” said the lunatic. “Well, so be it. I see you take my metaphor. You are a painter; you have a glorious future, a rich future before you. But I go still farther--” At these words the madman looked anxiously at Gaudissart, thinking he meant to go away; but was reassured when he saw that he kept his seat. “You may even be nothing at all,” said Gaudissart, going on with his phrases, “but you are conscious of yourself; you feel yourself--” “I feel myself,” said the lunatic. “--you feel yourself a great man; you say to yourself, ‘I will be a minister of state.’ Well, then, you--painter, artist, man of letters, statesman of the future--you reckon upon your talents, you estimate their value, you rate them, let us say, at a hundred thousand crowns--” “Do you give me a hundred thousand crowns?” “Yes, Monsieur, as you will see. Either your heirs and assigns will receive them if you die, for the company contemplates that event, or you will receive them in the long run through your works of art, your writings, or your fortunate speculations during your lifetime. But, as I have already had the honor to tell you, when you have once fixed upon the value of your intellectual capital,--for it is intellectual capital,--seize that idea firmly,--intellectual--” “I understand,” said the fool. “You sign a policy of insurance with a company which recognizes in you a value of a hundred thousand crowns; in you, poet--” “I am a painter,” said the lunatic.