ut to need;
in a word, in evolving from the social apparatus more light and more
comfort for the benefit of those who suffer and those who are ignorant.

And, let us say it, all this is but the beginning. The true question is
this: labor cannot be a law without being a right.

We will not insist upon this point; this is not the proper place for
that.

If nature calls itself Providence, society should call itself foresight.

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material
improvement. To know is a sacrament, to think is the prime necessity,
truth is nourishment as well as grain. A reason which fasts from science
and wisdom grows thin. Let us enter equal complaint against stomachs and
minds which do not eat. If there is anything more heart-breaking than
a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from
hunger for the light.

The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we
shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge
naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be
accomplished by a simple elevation of level.

We should do wrong were we to doubt this blessed consummation.

The past is very strong, it is true, at the present moment. It censures.
This rejuvenation of a corpse is surprising. Behold, it is walking and
advancing. It seems a victor; this dead body is a conqueror. He arrives
with his legions, superstitions, with his sword, despotism, with his
banner, ignorance; a while ago, he won ten battles. He advances, he
threatens, he laughs, he is at our doors. Let us not despair, on our
side. Let us sell the field on which Hannibal is encamped.

What have we to fear, we who believe?

No such thing as a back-flow of ideas exists any more than there exists
a return of a river on its course.

But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When
they say "no" to progress, it is not the future but themselves that
they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are
inoculating themselves with the past. There is but one way of rejecting
To-morrow, and that is to die.

Now, no death, that of the body as late as possible, that of the soul
never,--this is what we desire.

Yes, the enigma will utter its word, the sphinx will speak, the problem
will be solved.

Yes, the people, sketched out by the eighteenth century, will be
finished by the nineteenth. He who doubts this i