; FOUNDED ON LABOR, AND
NOT ON FICTITIOUS OCCUPANCY, OR IDLE CAPRICE. I said, further, that this
idea was the result of our revolutionary movements,--the culminating
point towards which all opinions, gradually divesting themselves of
their contradictory elements, converge. And I tried to demonstrate
this by the spirit of the laws, by political economy, by psychology and
history.

A Father of the Church, finishing a learned exposition of the Catholic
doctrine, cried, in the enthusiasm of his faith, _"Domine, si error est,
a te decepti sumus_ (if my religion is false, God is to blame)." I, as
well as this theologian, can say, "If equality is a fable, God, through
whom we act and think and are; God, who governs society by eternal laws,
who rewards just nations, and punishes proprietors,--God alone is the
author of evil; God has lied. The fault lies not with me."

But, if I am mistaken in my inferences, I should be shown my error, and
led out of it. It is surely worth the trouble, and I think I deserve
this honor. There is no ground for proscription.

For, in the words of that member of the Convention who did not like
the guillotine, _to kill is not to reply_. Until then, I persist in
regarding my work as useful, social, full of instruction for public
officials,--worthy, in short, of reward and encouragement.

For there is one truth of which I am profoundly convinced,--nations
live by absolute ideas, not by approximate and partial conceptions;
therefore, men are needed who define principles, or at least test them
in the fire of controversy. Such is the law,--the idea first, the pure
idea, the understanding of the laws of God, the theory: practice follows
with slow steps, cautious, attentive to the succession of events; sure
to seize, towards this eternal meridian, the indications of supreme
reason.

The co-operation of theory and practice produces in humanity the
realization of order,--the absolute truth. [74]

All of us, as long as we live, are called, each in proportion to his
strength, to this sublime work. The only duty which it imposes upon
us is to refrain from appropriating the truth to ourselves, either by
concealing it, or by accommodating it to the temper of the century,
or by using it for our own interests. This principle of conscience, so
grand and so simple, has always been present in my thought.

Consider, in fact, sir, that which I might have done, but did not wish
to do. I reason on the most honora