"The hour has come to ascertain to what extent it is true to say and to keep on repeating, as has been the practice for the last three centuries since the time of a certain Stephenson, that all our energy, all our strength, whether physical or moral, comes to us from the sun.... (_Numerous voices: 'That is so'_). The calculation has been made: in two years, three months, and six days, if there still remains a morsel of coal there will not remain a morsel of bread! (_Prolonged sensation_.) Therefore, if the source of all force, of all motion, and all life is in the sun, and in the sun alone, there is no ground for self-delusion: in two years, three months, and six days, the genius of man will be quenched, and through the gloomy heavens the corpse of mankind, like a Siberian mammoth, will roll for everlasting, incapable for ever of resurrection. (_Excitement_.) "But is that the case? No, it is not, it cannot be the case. With all the energy of my heart, which does not come from the sun--that energy which comes from the earth, from our mother earth buried there below, far, far away, for ever hidden from our eyes--I protest against this vain theory, and against so many articles of faith and religion which I have been obliged hitherto to endure in silence. (_Slight murmurs from the centre_.) The earth is the contemporary of the sun, and not its daughter; the earth was formerly a luminous star like the sun, only sooner extinct. It is only on the surface that the earth is devoid of movement, frozen and paralysed. Its bosom is ever warm and burning. It has only concentrated its fire within itself in order to preserve it better. (_Signs of interest in the audience_.) There lies a virgin force that is unexploited, a force superior to all that the sun has been able to generate for our industry by waterfalls which to-day are frozen, by cyclones which now have ceased, by tides which to-day are suspended; a force in which our engineers, with a little initiative, will find a hundredfold the equivalent of the motive power they have lost. It is no more by this gesture (_the speaker raises his finger to heaven_), that the hope of salvation should henceforth be expressed, it is by this one. (_He lowers his right hand towards the earth.... Signs of astonishment: a few murmurs of dissent which are immediately repressed by the women_.) We must say no more: 'Up there!' but, 'below!' There, below, far below, lies the promised Eden, the abode of deliverance and of bliss: there, and there alone, there are still innumerable conquests and discoveries to be made! (_Bravos on the left_.) Ought I to draw my conclusion? (_Yes! yes!_) Let us descend into these depths; let us make these abysses our sure retreat. The mystics had a sublime presentiment when they said in their Latin: 'From the outward to the inward.' The earth calls us to its inner self. For many centuries it has lived separated, so to say, from its children, the living creatures it produced outside