s, no more mutually devouring interests, no
more wars; a sort of new life, composed of concord and light, pervades
and soothes the world; the fraternity of nations soars through space,
and holds communion in the eternal azure; men mingle in the skies.

While we await this final progress, let us consider the point to which
this age had brought civilization.

Formerly there was a world in which people walked slowly, with bent
back, and eyes cast down; in which the Comte de Gouvon was served at
table by Jean-Jacques; in which the Chevalier de Rohan belaboured
Voltaire with a stick; in which Daniel Defoe was placed in the pillory;
in which a city like Dijon was separated from a city like Paris by the
necessity of making one's will, by robbers at every corner, and ten
days by stage; in which a book was a sort of infamy and filth which the
hangman burned upon the steps of the Palais de Justice; in which
superstition and ferocity shook hands; in which the Pope said to the
Emperor: "_Jungamus dexteras, gladium gladio copulemus_;" in which
one met at every step crosses hung with amulets, and gibbets hung with
men; in which there were heretics, Jews, and lepers; in which houses
had battlements and loop-holes; in which streets were closed with a
chain, rivers with a chain, and even camps with a chain (as at the
battle of Tolosa), cities with walls, kingdoms with prohibitions and
penalties; in which, with the exception of force and authority, which
stuck tightly together, everything was penned up, distributed, divided,
cut into fragments, hated and hating, scattered and dead; men were as
dust, power a solid block. But now we have a world in which everything
is alive, united, combined, coupled, mingled together; a world in which
thought, commerce, and industry reign; in which politics, more and more
firmly fixed, tends to an intimate union with science; a world in which
the last scaffolds and the last cannon are hastening to cut off their
last heads and to vomit forth their last shells; a world in which light
increases every instant; a world in which distance has disappeared, in
which Constantinople is nearer to Paris than Lyons was a hundred years
ago, in which Europe and America pulsate with the same heart-throb; a
world all circulation and all love, of which France is the brain, the
railroads the arteries, and the electric wires the fibres. Do you not
see that simply to set forth such a state of affairs is to explain, to
demonst