‘Without their conquests and their defeats, thou wert in darkness still. Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your respect; for man is weak.... Weep, then, for us obscure travellers--unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and unheard-of labours, have prepared the way before you. Pity me, who, having passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for truth, only opened my eyes to shut them again for ever, and saw that I had been in vain endeavouring to support a ruin, to take refuge in a vault of which the foundations were worn away.’ * * * * * The rest of the book of Spiridion is made up of a history of the rise, progress, and (what our philosopher is pleased to call) decay of Christianity--of an assertion, that the ‘doctrine of Christ is incomplete;’ that ‘Christ may, nevertheless, take his place in the Panthéon of divine men!’ and of a long, disgusting, absurd, and impious vision, in which the Saviour, Moses, David, and Elijah are represented, and in which Christ is made to say: ‘_We are all Messiahs_, when we wish to bring the reign of truth upon earth; we are all Christs, when we suffer for it!’ And this is the ultimatum, the supreme secret, the absolute truth! and it has been published by Mrs. Sand, for so many napoleons per sheet, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_; and the Deux Mondes are to abide by it for the future! After having attained it, are we a whit wiser? ‘Man is between an angel and a beast: I don’t know how long it is since he was a brute--I can’t say how long it will be before he is an angel.’ Think of people living by their wits, and living by such a wit as this! Think of the state of mental debauch and disease which must have been passed through, ere such words could be written, and could be popular!