Without examining the question whether life is sad or gay, without attempting to say which is right, the groaning pessimist or the optimist singing hymns of praise, one may be allowed the remark that a great many people encounter between birth and death a great deal of trouble. Conspicuous among them is the multitude of wretches who from morning until night wear themselves out in ungrateful and monotonous labour for which they receive just enough to enable them to continue wearing themselves out without rest or reward. The "fortunate ones of the world," those whom the others call fortunate because they are safe from cold and hunger day by day, readily believe that men bowed all their lives in the slavery of labour can no more than beasts of burden feel the cruelty of their fate. It is, in fact, a great aid to optimism to believe that the small allowance of worldly good which some of us can get along with, though we feel our share insufficient, is not paid for by a corresponding amount of worldly evil at the other end of the divinely instituted social scale. In so far as he thinks at all, the peasant entertains the same idea about the animals, whom he uses without forbearance, and beats unmercifully, satisfied with the argument that "they cannot feel anything." As for him, what exactly does he feel in connection with the good and evil of life? In looking for an answer one should discriminate between the peasant of the past and the peasant of to-day, who in a vague way has been developed by military service, emancipated, not very coherently, by the primary school and universal suffrage, to say nothing of the railroads. When I look at the peasant of to-day, and compare him with the one I knew in my youth, I realize that a breach has been made in the impenetrable hedge that once closed his horizon. I do not know whether he is happier or less happy. He has come into relation with the rest of the world; that is the chief difference. I do not say that he personally has even a dim conception of things in general. I do not believe he asks himself any troublesome questions concerning the universe. But how many inhabitants of cities are like him in that respect? Schools have remained a place where words are taught. Barracks teach obedience and discourage thought, agreeing in this with _Monsieur le Curé_, who exacts blind faith, to the detriment of reason, that instrument of the devil. Finally, the right to vote, which makes of men with such poor preparation the sovereign arbiters of the most important social and political questions, the right to vote so frequently reduces itself to a simple matter of business or local interest, that the least daring generalizations are beyond the understanding of the average peasant.