I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man’s future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring. People forget that Hellenic rationalism only really enlightened the world during seven hundred years, that it was then hidden (this _a minima_ verdict will be granted me) for twelve centuries, and has begun to shine again for barely four centuries; so that _the longest period of consecutive time in human history on which we can found inductions is, upon the whole, a period of intellectual and moral darkness_. Looking at history, we may say in a more synthetic manner that, with the exception of two or three very short, luminous epochs whose light, like that of certain stars, lightens the world long after they are extinct, humanity lives generally in darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of decadence and the organism in disorder. And the disturbing thing is that humanity does not seem to mind these long periods of cave-dwelling. To come back to the realism of my contemporaries and their contempt for a disinterested existence, I must add that my mind is sometimes haunted by a dreadful question. I wonder whether humanity, by adopting this system to-day, has not discovered its true law of existence and adopted the true scale of values demanded by its essence? The religion of the spiritual, I said just now, seems to me a lucky accident in man’s history. I shall go further, and say it seems to me a paradox. The obvious law of human substance is the conquest of things and the exaltation of the impulses which secure this conquest. Only through an amazing abuse were a handful of men at desks able to succeed in making humanity believe that the supreme values are the good things of the spirit. To-day humanity has awakened from this dream, knows its true nature and its real desires, and utters its war-cry against those who for centuries have robbed it of itself. Instead of waxing indignant at the ruin of their domination, would it not be more reasonable for these usurpers (if there are any left) to wonder that it lasted so long? Orpheus could not aspire to charm the wild beasts with his music until the end of time. However, one could have hoped that Orpheus himself would not become a wild beast.