There is, according to the theories of M. Quinton, in the social realm as in the biological, a fixed point, and one that must remain fixed unless decline is to set in, and that is life; but we must not confuse life with the environment in which it evolves. Life is constant and the milieu is variable. The most diverse political and social institutions have been successively imagined by man to assure, according to the needs of the moment, the development of his life. And as, in the course of time, they have appeared to him insufficient, he has rejected them to imagine others more in confirmity with his requirements: and thus social progress appears as a necessity, in the same way that anatomical progress has transformed an ocean worm into a fish and the fish into a mammal or a bird. In the two cases there is a certain end sought. It is for man to create for himself the social conditions that will permit his life to maintain its loftiest aims. When the social conditions that the old regime brought about in France appeared to men unsuited any longer to the maintenance of their life, they acted like good vertebrates,--they revolted. Civilization is nothing but a succession of insurrections, now against the hostility of physical forces,--especially against the cold,--now against social forces, which, after a period of usefulness, tend almost always to evolve in the direction of parasitism. THE PESSIMISM OF LEOPARDI Leopardi has never been widely read in France. While Schopenhauer has achieved a certain literary popularity, Leopardi has remained, even for scholars, in the shade. This is due in large measure to the mediocrity of his translators and his commentators.... Leopardi's poetry is difficult to enjoy. M. Turiello says that it is obscure even to Italians of the present generation. It is true that Leopardi is somewhat addicted to archaism and that, moreover, the Italian language has since his day undergone rapid development under the influence of French. His prose, despite its severe form, now too concise and now a trifle oratorical, is more approachable.... But if translation, is always a difficult task, it is particularly difficult to translate Leopardi.