ause of the evil,
or as to its remedy.

"In 1839, your programme, always original and varied in its academical
expression, became more exact. The investigations of 1838 had pointed
out, as the causes or rather as the symptoms of the social malady,
the neglect of the principles of religion and morality, the desire for
wealth, the passion for enjoyment, and political disturbances. All these
data were embodied by you in a single proposition: _THE UTILITY OF THE
CELEBRATION OF SUNDAY AS REGARDS HYGIENE, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL AND
POLITICAL RELATION_.

"In a Christian tongue you asked, gentlemen, what was the true system
of society. A competitor [3] dared to maintain, and believed that he
had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals
is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of
conditions; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and
an impossibility: that equality alone can revive this ancient and
mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not meet with
your approbation, since, without denying the relation pointed out by
the competitor, you judged, and rightly gentlemen, that the principle of
equality of conditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author
were nothing more than hypotheses.

"Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental principle of equality you
presented for competition in the following terms: THE ECONOMICAL AND
MORAL CONSEQUENCES IN FRANCE UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, AND THOSE WHICH
SEEM LIKELY TO APPEAR IN FUTURE, OF THE LAW CONCERNING THE EQUAL
DIVISION OF HEREDITARY PROPERTY BETWEEN THE CHILDREN.

"Instead of confining one to common places without breadth or
significance, it seems to me that your question should be developed as
follows:--

"If the law has been able to render the right of heredity common to
all the children of one father, can it not render it equal for all his
grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

"If the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family, can
it not, by the right of heredity, cease to heed it in the race, in the
tribe, in the nation?

"Can equality, by the right of succession, be preserved between
citizens, as well as between cousins and brothers? In a word, can the
principle of succession become a principle of equality?

"To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question: What is the
principle of heredity? What are the foundations of inequality? What is
property?

"Such, gentle