In the midst of this, observe a phenomenal contradiction: material conditions are improving, intellectual progress increases, and the nations, instead of profiting, are diminishing. Whence comes this contradiction? It is because we have lost in the moral order of things. There have been crimes at all periods; but they were never committed in cold blood, as they are nowadays, because of the loss of the religious sentiment. At this hour, they no longer revolt us, they seem a consequence of the march of time; if formerly we judged them in a different manner, it was because we were not yet, as we dare to assert, sufficiently advanced in the knowledge of man; we analyze them at the present moment; we test them in the crucible, in order to see what useful thing we can obtain from them, even as chemistry finds ingredients in the sewers. The corruption of the mind, which is very much more destructive than that of the senses, is accepted as a necessary result; it no longer belongs to a few wayward individuals: it has become public property. Many men would feel humiliated if it were proved to them that they have a soul, that beyond this life they will find another life; they would think that they were wanting in firmness and strength and genius, if they did not rise superior to the pusillanimity of our fathers; they admit annihilation, or, if you like, doubt, as a disagreeable fact perhaps, but as a truth which it is impossible to deny. Admire the stultification of our pride! That is how the decline of society and the increase of the individual are explained. If the moral sense were developed in proportion to the development of the intellect, there would be a counterpoise, and humanity would grow up without danger; but the exact opposite is happening: our perception of good and evil becomes dimmer as our intellect becomes more enlightened; our conscience shrinks as our ideas expand. Yes, society will perish: liberty, which could save the world, will not make progress, for want of leaning on religion; order, which could maintain the observance of rules, will not be solidly established, because it is combated by the anarchy of men's ideas. The purple, which used formerly to confer power, will henceforth serve as a bed only for misfortune: none will be saved unless he be born on the straw, like Christ. When the monarchs were disinterred at Saint-Denis, at the moment when the trumpet sounded for the popular resurrection; when, taken from their crumbling tombs, they lay awaiting plebeian burial, the ragmen came to this Last Judgment of the centuries: they looked with their lanterns into the eternal night; they rummaged among the remains that had escaped the first pillage. Already the Kings were there no more, but the Royalty was there still: they snatched it from the womb of time and flung it into the rubbish-basket. [Sidenote: Old and young Europe.]