We find at the foundation of everything affecting man the influence of the natural and economic environments, and, if it is quite true that we recognize the preponderant influence of the economic environment, it is passing strange to accuse us of not recognizing the action of human intelligence, which we assert is the creator of this environment. Only we do not forget that, at any stage of development whatever, intelligence does nothing by its creations except to elaborate the elements which it finds "ready made," as it were, in the environment. Therefore, intelligence can, by working with the elements furnished by the existing environment, produce a change in this environment. This new environment thus changed becomes the determining environment of future intelligence. You see that, far from degrading the role of intelligence, we attribute to it a considerable importance; we only refuse to see in it a spontaneous phenomenon. Having replied to the reproach of not taking into consideration what is called intelligence and is paraded as the intellectual factor, it is scarcely necessary for me to honor with special replies all the other factors mobilized against us, as they are all merely products of intelligence. I will remark, however, that if it is true that we do not deduce our theory from this association of factors, this does not authorize the conclusion that morality, right, justice, psychology, and sentiment are for us words devoid of meaning. To refuse to elevate them to the rank of scientific proofs, which is what we do, and all that we do, is not to deny them; it is simply to avoid employing them for a use for which they are not and could not be destined. Because, to uphold our theory, we prefer to have recourse to the observation of facts and their tendencies, we have never proscribed the conception or sentiment of justice as motives for adhesion to that very theory, and we do not hesitate to declare that that which is unfitted to serve as a scientific proof, may be utilized as a motive for action. Moreover, even those who attribute to the "syndicate" of factors a preponderating power over historical progress do not attribute to intelligence a greater influence than we recognize as belonging to it. In fact, the controversy here is not concerning the influence of ideas. The controversy arises when we attempt to determine which ideas are influential. On either side it is simply a matter of choosing from among the products of intelligence. Our opponents insist upon the claims of the factors in combination, instead of recognizing, as do we, the predominant influence of the ideas which clothe themselves in the phenomenal form of acts, such as inventions, etc., which lead to the modification of the economic environment and consequently, as we believe, to the modification of man himself, in his mode of life first, in his habits and methods of thought afterward.