pessimism, Gleïzès restores the peace of our mind, and bestows upon us the hope for a future reign of Wisdom and Love.”[223] In the preface to the _Thalysie_ Gleïzès thus expresses his convictions, his hopes, and the general purpose of his labours:-- “The system which I now publish to the world is not, as the usual acceptation of that word might seem to indicate, a collection of principles more or less probable, and of which it depends upon each one to admit or reject the consequences. It is a chain of principles, rigorously true and just, from which man cannot depart without incurring penalties proportionate to his deviation. But, in spite of these penalties which he has suffered, and which he still suffers, he is not aware of his lost condition [_égarement_]. His fate is that of the slave, born in servitude, who plays with his chains, sometimes insults the freemen, and carries his madness to the point of refusing freedom when it is offered to him, and of choosing slavery. “It is not that _all_ men have allowed themselves to be carried willingly down the fatal descent: a large number have struggled against the press, but their diverse and scattered efforts have resembled the eddies of the flood, which ends with forcing together all the diverging waters and hurrying away with them into the gulf of the ocean. Or, if some few have raised and kept themselves above the rapid current, no permanent advantage has resulted from it to the human race, which has been none the less abandoned to itself.” We know that the greatest intellects amongst the Greeks[224] had taught the better way; but they failed, says Gleïzès, inasmuch as their doctrine was too exclusive and esoteric. “The condition of the human race is a plain witness of its error. This condition, in fact, is so alarming that it might seem desperate, if it were certain that men had acquired _all_ their knowledge. But, happily, there is one branch of it--the most essential of all, and without which the rest is scarcely of any account--which is yet entirely ignored. This knowledge is precisely that of which these great men had glimpses, and of which they reserved to themselves the sole enjoyment;[225] and it is this knowledge, or, rather, this wisdom (and we know that with the Greeks these two things were comprised under the same denomination) which I publish. I shall give it an extension which it was not possible for _them_ to perceive or to give; because Nature refuses its life-giving spirit [_esprit de vie_] to solitary and isolated seeds, and makes those only to fructify which enter into the common heritage of mankind.