despoiled of its crown becomes the
sad, and often the ignoble slave of the tastes and caprices of the
public. I do not insist further. The pretension of the worshippers of
humanity is to make their conscience wide enough to accept all, and to
have their intellect broad enough to understand all. They explain all,
except these three small particulars--the conscience, the heart, and the
reason. Goodness and truth avenge themselves in the end for the long
contempt cast upon them; and the first punishment those suffer who
accept all, in the hope of understanding all, is no longer to understand
what constitutes the life of humanity.

Let us not, Sirs, be setting up altars to the human mind; for an
adulterous incense stupefies it, and ends by destroying it. Man is
great, he is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart, and the divine
aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness, let us
leave him in his proper place. Let us leave to him the struggles which
make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him
honor, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable
testimony to his dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict,
and hope; but let us not deify him; for, no sooner shall he have said,
"I am God," than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall
find himself naked and spoiled.

Before they deified man, the pagans at least transfigured him by placing
him in Olympus. At this day, it is humanity as it is upon earth that is
proposed to our adoration, humanity with its profound miseries and its
fearful defilements. They seek to throw a veil over the mad audacity of
this attempt, by telling us of the progress which is to bring about, by
little and little, the realization of our divinity. But, alas! our
history is long already, and no reasonable induction justifies the vague
hopes of heated imaginations. Great progress is being effected, but none
which gives any promise that the profound needs of our nature can ever
be satisfied in this life. Charity has appeared on the earth; but there
are still poor amongst us, and it seems that there always will be. A
breath of justice and humanity has penetrated social institutions; still
politics have not become the domain of perfect truth and of absolute
justice, and there seems small likelihood that they ever will. Industry
has given birth to marvels; we devour space in these days, but we shall
never go so fast that