This theory of the universe, which is the true fundamental idea of Christianity, spread itself with incredible rapidity, like a contagious disease, over the whole Roman empire. These sufferings, at times strung to fever-pitch, then again relaxing into exhaustion, lasted all through the middle ages; and we moderns still feel in our limbs those convulsions and that debility. And if among us, here and there, there be one who is already convalescent, he cannot flee from the universal hospital, and feels himself unhappy as the only healthy person among invalids. When once mankind shall have recovered its perfect life, when peace shall be again restored between body and soul, and they shall again interpenetrate each other with their original harmony, then it will be scarcely possible to comprehend the factitious feud which Christianity has instigated between them. Happier and more perfect generations, begot in free and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy, will then smile sadly at their poor ancestors, who held themselves gloomily aloof from all the pleasures of this beautiful world, and through the deadening of all warm and cheerful sensuousness almost paled into cold spectres. Yes, I say it confidently, our descendants will be more beautiful, more happy, than we; for I have faith in progress; mankind is destined to be happy, and I have a more favourable opinion of the Divinity than those pious souls who imagine that He created mankind only to suffer. Already here on earth, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, would I seek to found that millennium which, according to the belief of the pious, is not to be until the day of judgment. The one is perhaps as visionary a hope as the other, and possibly there will be no resurrection of humanity, either in the politico-moral or in the apostolic-Catholic sense. Perhaps mankind _is_ doomed to eternal misery; the masses _are_ perhaps condemned to be for ever trodden under foot by despots, to be plundered by their accomplices, and to be jeered at by their lackeys. Alas! in that case we must seek to maintain Christianity, even if we recognise it to be an error. Barefoot, and clad in monkish cowls, we must traverse Europe, preaching the vanity of all earthly good, and inculcating resignation. We must hold up the consoling crucifix before scourged and derided humanity, and promise, after death, all the seven heavens above.