number of masterpieces. Let us hope that this
lamentable movement will soon abate. If the sun once more, as after the
different glacial epochs, succeeds in awakening from his lethargy and
regains fresh strength, let us pray that only a small part of our
population, that which is the most light-headed, the most unruly, and
the most deeply attacked by incurable "matrimonialitis", will avail
itself of the seeming yet deceptive advantages offered by this open air
cure and will make a dash upwards for the freedom of those inclement
climes! But this is highly improbable if one reflects on the advanced
age of the sun and the danger of those relapses common to old age. It is
still less desirable. Let us repeat in the words of Miltiades our august
ancestor, blessed are those stars which are extinct, that is to say, the
almost entire number of those which people space. Radiance, as he truly
said, is to the stars what the flowering season is to the plants. After
having flowered, they begin to bear fruit. Thus, doubtless, weary of
expansion and the useless squandering of their strength through the
infinite void, the stars collect the germs of higher life in order to
fertilize them in the depth of their bosom. The deceptive brilliancy of
these widely scattered stars, so relatively few in number, which are
still alight, which have not finished sowing what Miltiades called their
wild oats of light and heat, prevented the first race of men from
thinking of this, to wit of the numberless and tranquil multitude of
dark stars to whom this radiance served as a cloak. But as for us,
delivered from their spell and freed from this immemorial optical
delusion, we continue firmly to believe that, among the stars as among
mankind, the most brilliant are not the best, and that the same causes
have brought about elsewhere the same results, compelling other races of
men to hide themselves in the bosom of their earth, and there in peace
to pursue the happy course of their destiny under unique conditions of
absolute independence and purity, that in short in the heavens as on the
earth true happiness lives concealed.

NOTE ON TARDE

Gabriel Tarde was originally a member of the legal profession. For a
long time he was examining magistrate at Sarlat. His works on sociology
and criminology revealed him to the public. He was appointed head of the
Statistical bureau at the Ministry of Justice, a post in which he was
able to obtain first hand the