t murmurs from
the centre_.) The earth is the contemporary of the sun, and not its
daughter; the earth was formerly a luminous star like the sun, only
sooner extinct. It is only on the surface that the earth is devoid of
movement, frozen and paralysed. Its bosom is ever warm and burning. It
has only concentrated its fire within itself in order to preserve it
better. (_Signs of interest in the audience_.) There lies a virgin force
that is unexploited, a force superior to all that the sun has been able
to generate for our industry by waterfalls which to-day are frozen, by
cyclones which now have ceased, by tides which to-day are suspended; a
force in which our engineers, with a little initiative, will find a
hundredfold the equivalent of the motive power they have lost. It is no
more by this gesture (_the speaker raises his finger to heaven_), that
the hope of salvation should henceforth be expressed, it is by this one.
(_He lowers his right hand towards the earth.... Signs of astonishment:
a few murmurs of dissent which are immediately repressed by the women_.)
We must say no more: 'Up there!' but, 'below!' There, below, far below,
lies the promised Eden, the abode of deliverance and of bliss: there,
and there alone, there are still innumerable conquests and discoveries
to be made! (_Bravos on the left_.) Ought I to draw my conclusion?
(_Yes! yes!_) Let us descend into these depths; let us make these
abysses our sure retreat. The mystics had a sublime presentiment when
they said in their Latin: 'From the outward to the inward.' The earth
calls us to its inner self. For many centuries it has lived separated,
so to say, from its children, the living creatures it produced outside
during its period of fecundity before the cooling of its crust! After
its crust cooled, the rays of a distant star alone, it is true, have
maintained on this dead epidermis their artificial and superficial life
which has been a stranger to her own.

"But this schism has lasted too long. It is imperative that it should
cease. It is time to follow Empedocles, Ulysses, AEneas, Dante, to the
gloomy abodes of the underworld, to plunge mankind again in the fountain
from which it sprang, to effect the complete restoration of the exiled
soul to the land of its birth! (_Applause here and there_.) Besides,
there is but this alternative: life underground or death. The sun is
failing us: let us dispense with the sun. The plan, which it remains for
me to propos