It is here that one must make a distinction, though it is hardly scientific, between the body and the mind, sensitive matter and the will. Without a doubt acts directed against bodily sensibility should be repressed; but the case is not the same with acts against the intellectual sensibility. Acts called immoral may be prohibited in such a measure as custom recommends; provocations to immoral acts should be permitted. The only crime is the crime of violence. It matters little that I am asked to do something by written or spoken word; the evil begins only when I am made to do so by force. _The Word "God."_ Renan loved it, finding it convenient for the connotation of an entire order of ideas, none of which is easily limited verbally. It is undefinable; and moreover, if it were defined it would lose all its value. God is not all that exists; God is all that does not exist. Therein resides the power and the charm of that mysterious word. God is tradition, God is legend, God is folklore, God is a fairy-tale, God is a romance, God is a lie, God is a bell, God is a church window, God is religion, God is all that is absurd, useless, invisible, intangible, all that is nothingness and that symbolizes nothingness. God is the _nihil in tenebris_--(nothing in the darkness)--men have made of him light, life and love. _Money_. It is hard to read without irritation the old pleasantries of the journalists and the ancient lamentations of socialists upon the worship of the golden calf. To rail at money, to wax indignant against it, are equally silly. Money is nothing; its power is purely symbolical. Money is the sign of liberty. To curse money is to curse liberty,--to curse life, which is nothing, if it be not free. Popular simplicity adores money. Look at that poor huckstress: she makes the sign of the cross with the first coin she takes in during the morning. A God has come to visit her and bless her. It is a communion at once mystic and real, in the guise of metal. Money, which is liberty, is also fecundation. It is the universal sperm without which human societies would remain but barren wombs. Paganism, which knew and understood everything, opens to a shower of gold from on high the conquered thighs of Danaë. That is what we should see on our coins, instead of a meaningless head, if we were capable of contemplating without embarrassment that religious tableau. _Antinomy_ The most interesting thing about man is man as the human animal. Almost all the rest is folly. As soon as he loses contact with nature, with primitive nature, man wanders. Yet it is this very divagation that is called reason, wisdom, morality. And the natural conduct that man might follow, and which he sometimes does follow, is called unreason, immorality. But, through a balance of logic, this immorality that we disparage we make the sole object of our dreams, our desires, our speeches, our acts, our meditations, our dissertations, our art and our science. _The Supernumerary._