On the dunghill like Job, under the stick like Epictetus, under contempt like Molière, mind remains mind. This it is that shall say the last word. The Caliph Almanzor makes the people spit on Averroes at the door of the mosque of Cordova; the Duke of York spits in person on Milton; a Rohan, almost a prince,--"duc ne daigne, Rohan suis,"--attempts to cudgel Voltaire to death; Descartes is driven from France in the name of Aristotle; Tasso pays for a kiss given a princess twenty years spent in a cell; Louis XV. sends Diderot to Vincennes; these are mere incidents; must there not be some clouds? Those appearances that were taken for realities, those princes, those kings melt away; there remains only what should remain,--the human mind on the one side, the divine minds on the other; the true work and the true workers; society to be perfected and made fruitful; science seeking the true; art creating the beautiful; the thirst of thought, torment and happiness of man; inferior life aspiring to superior life. Men have to deal with real questions,--with progress in intelligence and by intelligence. Men call to their aid the poets, prophets, philosophers, thinkers, the inspired. It is seen that philosophy is a nourishment and poetry a want. There must be another bread besides bread. If you give up poets, you must give up civilization. There comes an hour when the human race is compelled to reckon with Shakespeare the actor and Isaiah the beggar. They are the more present that they are no longer seen. Once dead, these beings live. What life did they lead? What kind of men were they? What do we know of them? Sometimes but little, as of Shakespeare; often nothing, as of those of ancient days. Has Job existed? Is Homer one, or several? Méziriac made Æsop straight, and Planudes made him a hunchback. Is it true that the prophet Hosea, in order to show his love for his country, even when fallen into opprobrium and become infamous, espoused a prostitute, and called his children Mourning, Famine, Shame, Pestilence, and Misery? Is it true that Hesiod ought to be divided between Cumæ in Æolia, where he was born, and Ascra, in Bœotia, where he had been brought up? Velleius Paterculus makes him live one hundred and twenty years after Homer, of whom Quintilian makes him contemporary. Which of the two is right? What matters it? The poets are dead, their thought reigns. Having been, they are. They do more work to-day among us than when they were alive. Others who have departed this life rest from their labours; dead men of genius work. They work upon what? Upon minds. They make civilization. "All ends under six feet of earth "? No; everything commences there. No; everything germinates there. No; everything flowers in it, and everything grows in it, and everything bursts forth from it, and everything proceeds from it! Good for you, men of the sword, are these maxims! Lay yourselves down, disappear, lie in the grave, rot. So be it.