When we shall have exhausted all the arguments for and against all the degrees of responsibility that may be discovered in a healthy or a sick person, we shall find ourselves in agreement with the social wood-cutters, with the magistrates, on the necessity of removing and forever ridding society of him. Then, having once more become philosophers, we shall try to reach agreement upon this point: that it is a matter not of administering punishment but of preserving ourselves; our interest should be centered not upon the author, but the purpose of the crime. Let us not even speak of crime; let us speak of danger. Ah! How simple it all would be, or at least more simple than at present, if the notion of criminal act was superseded by that of dangerous act. The idea of crime is a metaphysical idea; the idea of danger is a social idea. The opinions of MM. Baudin, Faguet and de Fleury, which frighten M. Grasset, are in principle highly acceptable. On the occasion of each new crime society cannot institute a new philosophical debate nor set about resolving questions which, ever since there have been men who think, have troubled human thought. For some time they have not been asking the jury for their opinion upon the materiality of a fact; they subject them to an examination in philosophy. It's ridiculous. There are on one side the assassins and on the other the assassinated. What difference does it make to me whether the fellow who'll split my head be an _apache_ or a lunatic? What does matter to me, is to live. I feel intense compassion for the sick, but I am very anxious that persons suffering with madness be shut in. All men are ill, said Hippocrates. We all need care; so I see nothing wrong about criminals attracting special attention from the medical corps. There are so many interesting cases among them! THE INSURRECTION OF THE VERTEBRATES It is well known how the spiritualists tried to capture Pasteur, because his theories, denying spontaneous generation, seemed to them his consecration of the old dogma of a Creator. Pasteur never professed such ideas; he limited himself to pursuing brilliantly his profession as a scientist. It was not without a feeling of sadness that, pestered by the admiration of a too pious gentry, he wrote to Sainte-Beuve, I believe: "Let us continue our labors, without giving heed to the philosophic or religious deductions that may be drawn from them."