Each one, then, should love his life, even though it be not Very attractive, for it is the only life. It is a boon that will never return and that each person should tend and enjoy with care; it is one's capital, large or small, and can not be treated as an investment like those whose dividends are payable through eternity. Life is an annuity; nothing is more certain than that. So that all efforts are to be respected that tend to ameliorate the tenure of this perishable possession which, at the end of every day, has already lost a little of its value. Eternity, the bait by which simple folk are still lured, is not situated beyond life, but in life itself, and is divided among all men, all creatures. Each of us holds but a small portion of it, but that share is so precious that it suffices to enrich the poorest. Let us then take the bitter and the sweet in confidence, and when the fall of the days seems to whirl about us, let us remember that dusk is also dawn. INSINUATIONS _Esthetic Morality_. Perhaps we ought to renounce such distinctions as beautiful and ugly, good and bad, good and evil, and so on, and consider in life's acts only the curve of movements. Thus morality and esthetics would blend. Already men of more than average culture consider the subject of a painting only to judge whether the painter has submitted to the same logic the subject of the picture itself, the composition that compasses it, the color that unites it to the vital milieu. A subject, in art, may be criticized only in relation to the purpose of the work and the manner in which it is treated. It might be the same with human acts, in which case they would be judged only according to their opportunity and their esthetic curves. One must act,--must be always stirring; life is a series of movements, the lines of which interlace. This forms a design. Is it harmonious? That is the whole question; that is all of morality. _Another Point of View._ In order to make a system of morality by separating what is good from what is evil we must have fixed principles, a definite belief,--and we live in an age of skepticism. Doubtless religion is not true, but neither is anti-religion true: truth dwells in a perfect indifference. Governments should restrict themselves to a truly scientific neutrality and consider all manifestations of intelligence or feeling legitimate, whatever their nature. The State should be but a visible providence, a sovereign police that would protect the exercise of all human activity, opposing only those deeds which could fetter the plenitude of all liberties, of every kind.