s an idiot! The future
blossoming, the near blossoming forth of universal well-being, is a
divinely fatal phenomenon.

Immense combined propulsions direct human affairs and conduct them
within a given time to a logical state, that is to say, to a state of
equilibrium; that is to say, to equity. A force composed of earth and
heaven results from humanity and governs it; this force is a worker
of miracles; marvellous issues are no more difficult to it than
extraordinary vicissitudes. Aided by science, which comes from one man,
and by the event, which comes from another, it is not greatly alarmed
by these contradictions in the attitude of problems, which seem
impossibilities to the vulgar herd. It is no less skilful at causing a
solution to spring forth from the reconciliation of ideas, than a lesson
from the reconciliation of facts, and we may expect anything from that
mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident
face to face one fine day, in the depths of a sepulchre, and made the
imaums converse with Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid.

In the meantime, let there be no halt, no hesitation, no pause in the
grandiose onward march of minds. Social philosophy consists essentially
in science and peace. Its object is, and its result must be, to dissolve
wrath by the study of antagonisms. It examines, it scrutinizes, it
analyzes; then it puts together once more, it proceeds by means of
reduction, discarding all hatred.

More than once, a society has been seen to give way before the wind
which is let loose upon mankind; history is full of the shipwrecks of
nations and empires; manners, customs, laws, religions,--and some fine
day that unknown force, the hurricane, passes by and bears them all
away. The civilizations of India, of Chaldea, of Persia, of Syria, of
Egypt, have disappeared one after the other. Why? We know not. What are
the causes of these disasters? We do not know. Could these societies
have been saved? Was it their fault? Did they persist in the fatal vice
which destroyed them? What is the amount of suicide in these terrible
deaths of a nation and a race? Questions to which there exists no reply.
Darkness enwraps condemned civilizations. They sprung a leak, then they
sank. We have nothing more to say; and it is with a sort of terror that
we look on, at the bottom of that sea which is called the past, behind
those colossal waves, at the shipwreck of those immense vessels,
Ba