“With such support, the most feeble must have an advantage over the strongest without it. I have, besides, another advantage. Men feeling to-day, more than ever, the privation of what is wanting to them, invoke on all sides new principles, and demand a higher civilisation. It is not the first time, doubtless, that such a state of things has been manifested. It has been seen to supervene after all the moral revolutions that have left man greater than they have found him. But that of which we have been the witnesses [the revolution in France of 1789--the reforms of 1830] seems to have something more remarkable, more complete--one would almost be tempted to believe that it must be the last, and terminate that long sequence of vain disputes across which the human kind has painfully advanced, seeing it rise in the midst of the _débris_ of all the old-world ideas which have expired or are expiring at one’s feet. What a moment for rebuilding! No more favourable one could exist; and it is urged on, so to speak, by the breeze of these happy circumstances that I offer to the meditation of men the following propositions.... “I shall add but a few words. The principles which I have laid down are absolute--they cannot bend [_fléchir_]. But there are _steps_ on the route which conduct to the heights which they occupy; and were there but a single step made in that direction, that single step could not be regarded as indifferent and unimportant. Thus this work--guide of those whom it shall convince--will be useful also to the rest of the world as, at least, a moderator and a check; and, I shall avow it, my hopes do not extend beyond this latter object. I should feel myself even perfectly satisfied, if this book should inspire in my contemporaries enough of esteem and favour to prevent them from arresting and impeding it at its start, and to allow it to follow its course towards a generation, I will not say more worthy, but better prepared than the present to receive it.” Gleïzès divides his great work into twelve Discourses, in two volumes, supplemented by a third volume which he entitles _Moral Proofs_. It is an almost exhaustive, as well as eloquent, _résumé_ of the history and ethics of the subject. The only fault of this, perhaps, most heartfelt appeal to the reason and conscience of mankind ever published is its too great discursiveness. The manifest anxiety of the author to meet, or to anticipate, every possible objection or subterfuge on the part of the hostile or the indifferent, may well excuse this apparent blemish; and the slightest acquaintance with his _New Existence_ can hardly fail to extort, even from the most prejudiced reader, a tribute of admiration to a spirit so noble and so pure, devoting all its energies to the furtherance of an exalted and refined morality.