Man, by his power of thought, and consequently of suffering, by the conception which he is able to make of the non-self, by his faculties of abstraction and the notion of good and evil, is vastly superior to every other living being. So that, for respecting, defending and loving men, I have not only the reason that man is my brother, but also that this brother is superior to every other living thing. That is why a moral code must be essentially human, having for its highest object the happiness of other men. Every other code of morals, having in view a different purpose supporting itself on metaphysical lucubrations or haunted by puerile anxieties, such as the adoration of beasts, appears to me to bear the stamp of fetishism. An unknown power has caused us to be born; we are entirely ignorant of our destinies, we know not why we were born, why we die, why, following in the wake of countless generations, we transmit the vital spark to countless succeeding generations. We know nothing of all that; but it matters little from the point of view of our duty. Duty is independent of all theory. No mere religion is necessary to constitute a moral code. _Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto_, or rather our moral code, will be the religion of humanity. It does not seem to me possible to conceive of any other. And when we say humanity, we take that word in its largest acceptation. It is not a question of compatriots, nor of Europeans, nor even of humanity of to-day. It is also a question of the humanity of the future. We have our duties towards the man of to-day; but we have also our duties towards the man who will live in the centuries to come. We should prepare the way for a happier and better humanity. Our task is not limited to the present hour; it extends to all those human beings who will come after us. Inasmuch as we of to-day, at every moment of our lives, benefit from the accumulated services of our ancestors, so the men to come will profit by the benefits which we are endeavouring to prepare for them. Assuredly, Humanity will not be eternal, and Science seems to prove that a time will come when the sun's heat will be insufficient to develop life on the surface of our puny planet. A time will come when the earth will have cooled down and become like our pale satellite, the moon, a dead star, where the debris of extinct multitudinous civilisations will disappear under the ice. But what matter! We have not to trouble ourselves about those far-off times. We have to think of the man of the coming centuries, and, at the same time, it goes without saying, of the man of to-day. To lessen their misery, to make their existence less lamentable, to develop within them the sentiments of justice and brotherhood, to secure their moral welfare and their material welfare, that is our strict and sole duty. I recognise no other.