Perhaps this universal taste for novelty is one of nature's favours. People cry to us: "Be content with what you have, desire nothing that is beyond your estate, restrain your curiosity, tame your intellectual disquiet." These are very good maxims; but if we had always followed them, we should still be eating acorns, we should be sleeping in the open air, and we should not have had Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Poussin, Lebrun, Lemoine or Pigalle. _PHILOSOPHER_ Philosopher, _lover of wisdom_, that is to say, _of truth_. All philosophers have had this dual character; there is not one in antiquity who has not given mankind examples of virtue and lessons in moral truths. They have all contrived to be deceived about natural philosophy; but natural philosophy is so little necessary for the conduct of life, that the philosophers had no need of it. It has taken centuries to learn a part of nature's laws. One day was sufficient for a wise man to learn the duties of man. The philosopher is not enthusiastic; he does not set himself up as a prophet; he does not say that he is inspired by the gods. Thus I shall not put in the rank of philosophers either the ancient Zarathustra, or Hermes, or the ancient Orpheus, or any of those legislators of whom the nations of Chaldea, Persia, Syria, Egypt and Greece boasted. Those who styled themselves children of the gods were the fathers of imposture; and if they used lies for the teaching of truths, they were unworthy of teaching them; they were not philosophers; they were at best very prudent liars. By what fatality, shameful maybe for the Western peoples, is it necessary to go to the far Orient to find a wise man who is simple, unostentatious, free from imposture, who taught men to live happily six hundred years before our vulgar era, at a time when the whole of the North was ignorant of the usage of letters, and when the Greeks were barely beginning to distinguish themselves by their wisdom? This wise man is Confucius, who being legislator never wanted to deceive men. What more beautiful rule of conduct has ever been given since him in the whole world? "Rule a state as you rule a family; one can only govern one's family well by setting the example. "Virtue should be common to both husbandman and monarch. "Apply thyself to the trouble of preventing crimes in order to lessen the trouble of punishing them. "Under the good kings Yao and Xu the Chinese were good; under the bad kings Kie and Chu they were wicked. "Do to others as to thyself. "Love all men; but cherish honest people. Forget injuries, and never kindnesses. "I have seen men incapable of study; I have never seen them incapable of virtue." Let us admit that there is no legislator who has proclaimed truths more useful to the human race.