asterpieces are preserved for the pleasure of beholders. It is
this certainly, but it is still more than this. Fine books are, before
anything else, living works. They not only have lived, but they continue
to live. They live within us, underneath those ideas which form our
conscience and those sentiments which inspire our actions. There is
nothing of greater importance for any society than to make an inventory
of the ideas and the sentiments which are composing its moral atmosphere
every instant that it exists. For every individual this work is the very
condition of his dignity. The question is, should we have these ideas
and these sentiments, if, in the times before us, there had not been
some exceptional individuals who seized them, as it were, in the air and
made them viable and durable? These exceptional individuals were capable
of thinking more vigorously, of feeling more deeply, and of expressing
themselves more forcibly than we are. They bequeathed these ideas
and sentiments to us. Literary history is, then, above and beyond all
things, the perpetual examination of the conscience of humanity.

There is no need for me to repeat what every one knows, the fact that
our epoch is extremely complex, agitated and disturbed. In the midst of
this labyrinth in which we are feeling our way with such difficulty, who
does not look back regretfully to the days when life was more simple,
when it was possible to walk towards a goal, mysterious and unknown
though it might be, by straight paths and royal routes?

George Sand wrote for nearly half a century. For fifty times three
hundred and sixty-five days, she never let a day pass by without
covering more pages than other writers in a month. Her first books
shocked people, her early opinions were greeted with storms. From that
time forth she rushed head-long into everything new, she welcomed
every chimera and passed it on to us with more force and passion in it.
Vibrating with every breath, electrified by every storm, she looked up
at every cloud behind which she fancied she saw a star shining. The work
of another novelist has been called a repertory of human documents. But
what a repertory of ideas her work was! She has said what she had to say
on nearly every subject; on love, the family, social institutions and on
the various forms of government. And with all this she was a woman.
Her case is almost unique in the history of letters. It is intensely
interesting to study the in