For my present purpose--which is to examine the progress of Barrès, and especially his influence on recent literature, it is enough to say that these first volumes were the work of a man for whom the inner world alone exists. He, who was to become the voice of his province and his race, makes his first appearance as a being released from all ties and all traditions. The hero of _Sous l’œil des Barbares_ has no country, no profession, no family, no local habitation, and no name. The one existence and the one reality are, in his eyes, the Ego,--in other words, his own mind. His sole adventure is the lonely courage of a descent into that Inner Abyss. He might have exclaimed with Leopardi: ‘E dolce, il naufragar in questo mare!’ In the depth of this depth is something deeper still, continuous beneath the difference of individuals, as the mass of the sea is one below the variety of the waves. ‘Penser solitairement, c’est s’acheminer à penser solidairement,’ Barrès exclaimed, half ironically, in _Les Déracinés_. If we sink deep enough into our own souls, we fall into the general soul of all: we find the deep subterranean flood that fills all the fountains of the city! And so the Egoist discovers that he is not alone, that he is a living cell in a living organism. It is this sense of Life and solidarity which distinguishes Barrès, the man of action, Barrès, the political leader, Barrès, the inventor of Nationalism, the apostle of decentralisation, from the delightful nihilist, the exquisite anarchist, that he was at twenty--and even at thirty years of age. He has gone far since then! Sure, now, of the existence of his race; accompanied in all his thoughts by those mysterious cohorts of the dead and the unborn which prolong the importance of the humblest life; our philosopher bids us lay no stress upon our own experience, and sacrifice, if needs be, the details of our happiness to the welfare of the whole. Slowly this second manner has developed since the closing years of the last century: between _L’Ennemi des Lois_ (published in 1895) and _Les Déracinés_ (1897) there is a chasm, an apparent disconnection. Something mysterious divides them--something akin to a religious conversion. What is the secret substratum which unites two phases evidently alike sincere? What makes their diversity none the less organic? It is, I think, _the sense of continuity_, the desire to persist and to preserve. The Barrès of _Les Déracinés_ has reached the further edge of youth: he is five-and-thirty years of age.