m, very small, for the propagation of a
universal language or a certain method of short-hand writing; others
with large arms, such as that which has recently been established for
the defence of the English coast, or for the avoidance of lawsuits, and
so on. To make a list of the associations which exist in Europe, volumes
would be necessary, and it would be seen that there is not a single
branch of human activity with which one or other does not concern
itself. The State itself appeals to them in the discharge of its most
important function--war; it says, "We undertake to slaughter, but we
cannot take care of our victims; form a Red Cross Society to gather up
the wounded on the battle-field and to take care of them."

Let others, if they will, advocate industrial barracks or the monastery
of Authoritarian Communism, we declare that the tendency of society is
in an opposite direction. We foresee millions and millions of groups
freely constituting themselves for the satisfaction of all the varied
needs of human beings--some of these groups organised by quarter,
street, and house; others extending hands across the walls of cities,
over frontiers and oceans. All of these will be composed of human beings
who will combine freely, and after having performed their share of
productive labour will meet together, either for the purpose of
consumption, or to produce objects of art or luxury, or to advance
science in a new direction. This is the tendency of the nineteenth
century, and we follow it; we only ask to develop it freely, without any
governmental interference. Individual liberty! "Take pebbles," said
Fourrier, "put them into a box and shake them, and they will arrange
themselves in a mosaic that you could never get by entrusting to anyone
the work of arranging them harmoniously."

PART III.

Now let me pass to the third part of my subject--the most important with
respect to the future.

There is no more room for doubting that religions are going; the
nineteenth century has given them their death blow. But religions--all
religions--have a double composition. They contain in the first place a
primitive cosmogony, a rude attempt at explaining nature, and they
furthermore contain a statement of the public morality born and
developed within the mass of the people. But when we throw religions
overboard or store them among our public records as historical
curiosities, shall we also relegate to museums the moral princi