In the course of time all that fills our dictionaries and our grammars was developed and achieved, and nothing remained for poets and philosophers to do but to add to and deduce from the materials which they had inherited or had themselves acquired as the result of their own efforts; and however powerful the imagination of poets may be, and however subtle the reasoning of philosophers, the materials which both use to form their monuments are exactly the same, and these are nothing but the words derived from roots and collected in dictionaries. Most decidedly Michael Angelo was something more than a mason or bricklayer, but yet the basilica of St Peter’s is made only of stones and bricks and a little cement, which, when brought down to its final constituents, is nothing but pulverised stone. Most decidedly one of Shakespeare’s plays is possessed of other qualities than a mere assemblage of the letters of the alphabet arranged in a certain order, but the materials of which the plays are formed were drawn from the inexhaustible supply of words accumulated during thousands of years, and which contain no single particle of gold or silver that is not found in the thousand roots of our language and the 121 concepts conceived in our minds. Amongst the men who know how to think, many are astonished that the so-called civilised portion of humanity should have advanced so little, there is nothing astonishing in this; let us consider the point, and remember that we are only now on the morrow of the day when we were still immature humanity, and in which the human character, with its germs of language and of thought, only began to be visible in us. The universe obeys the unchangeable law which we name Divine Providence; an irresistible law which compels matter to make certain predetermined movements, and the mind to tend towards perfection; man knows that he is morally free, and not necessarily subject to animal impulses. Man’s moral liberty being conceded, he uses it as he will; at times he seeks and finds opportunities for resisting the moral law; man, even the nominal Christian, stifles the spirit’s higher voice and compels himself to listen to the lower voice of the flesh. Pascal said plainly: “According to the carnal Christian the Messiah has come to dispense us from the necessity of loving God by providing sacraments which act as charms apart from our co-operation,” and our hatred and our injustice continue--under cover of a scrupulous observance of rites--to infect the world as well as ourselves. He spoke truly, and saw clearly, who first said: “Every being tends to preserve its existence.” With regard to the man of whom Pascal speaks, this means to follow incessantly his evil practices. But, happily, there exist other men who feel that, besides oxygen and pleasure, they must also absorb science and true prosperity for their well-being.